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Originally Posted by svinay
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Hi, my first Gmat Prep score (I took it even before I started to learn about GMAT) was 570.
3 weeks after studying 2-3 hours a day I took the second test and the score was 640. By this second time I tried it - I was able to solve pretty much any problem in
OG, but I was concentrating more on learning how to solve them and completely disregarded time management in my practice, hence I did not pace myself on this second prep test and there were 4 quant and 5 verbal questions I did not have time to answer.
After that I realized how important it was to learn how to pace yourself. The rest of the studies (next 3 weeks) were dedicated not just to solving problems, but to solving problems really fast. My stopwatch became a part of my studies.
When I was solving a problem under pressure of my stopwatch, I realized that there were moments when I looked at the time and at the problem, and then time again, and then back to problem, and back to time... in other words I was not working as efficiently as I could. I believe practice helped get rid of those inefficiencies (but then at the real exam my paranoia, described above, kicked in).
Another thing that I believe is important - it is not to spend too much time on one question. In practice it happened several times that I would spend 8 minutes on a tough question (because I just could not let it go)... and at the end I would have to leave 3-4 really easy questions unanswered just because I ran out of time. So, I would skip the question that takes too much time and instead have some time to solve 3-4 more. Learning how to pace is very important!
About the rumor you mentioned: I did not feel that the test was harder than the Gmat prep. In fact, I think the difficulty level was pretty close.
I hope this helps,
Gene