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Within my grasp!
Join Date: Jun 2009
Posts: 101
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Thanks for your great sharing, it's so useful for the GMAT candidates.
Quote:
Originally Posted by star_321
Day 09/20/2008 Time around 12.15pm
I was walking on the street, towards PATH Station on 33rd Street NY, with tears in eyes. I was talking to my Girlfriend cursing myself, telling her how worthless I am feeling and how this English language is withholding me from achieving my dreams.
Day 02/16/2009 Time: Around 12.15 pm
I was waking on the street, towards WTC PATH station, again with tears in my eyes but the only difference between this day and 09/20/08 was that these tears were tears of happiness. I was talking to my Girlfriend who was always there with me.
Guys I am a non native English speaker so please ignore grammatical errors I am making but read the content which I feel will helpful to many. As other people's debrief helped me.
September 20, 2008 GMAT Preparation Experience:
Books Used: OG11
Verbal Review
Kaplan Premier Program 2008
Manhattan GMATPrep 2007
Other Books on Math which I collected during my preparation for CAT. (This test is a Indian Aptitude test to get into Indian B School. )
Approach: My biggest mistake was that I was confident that I would get a decent score without much preparation. As what I had heard about GMAT from my friends is that it is comparatively easy exam than Indian CAT.
I was working on a IT implementation project from onsite (US). So work was hectic. I had to work for 12 hrs a day and after that I use to find some time to study. But I always made sure that I devote some time for my GMAT studies daily. Back of my mind I use to think that this exam is going to be easy and you would perform well. So don't worry keep on working and I did the same.
In July our project went live and a lot of issues came up. I got more busy in work. I have a problem that I am not able to take out issues (work related) from my head once I leave office. Whenever new issues use to come, I was unable to concentrate on other things till I find the root cause of the issue. Once you know the root cause then only you are able to fix that thing. So Iuse to be restless till I am able to find the root cause. (I feel this is a general statement valid in any field of life). So these attitudes use to hurt my GMAT preparation. I knew this still I use to feel that I am going to do better. Why I use to feel like this I don't know but I am for sure that this approach doomed me to my failure on the G Day.
September 20 was a Saturday. My appointment was at 8. I had started waking up at 5 for few days before the appointment date. I didn't took vacation on the day before or any other vacation during my complete preparation. It's difficult to get vacation when you are working from Onsite, because you are alone supporting one application and there is no backup for you to support the production issues if there are any. So what I did that I worked from home on Friday so that I can be away from my daily work load and be in GMAT mood. But I feel this approach didn't helped me. That day also I had to work and as usual work issues were running in my mind as I was preparing for my GMAT on September 20.
The G Day:
I woke up at 5 got ready and went to PATH train station but I missed the 6am train to 33rd street. Then I waited for other train which leaves about 6.35am. Bt that day something happened and train were running late. That train was rescheduled at 6.55am. It takes around 25 mins to reach 33rd street and from there I had to walk for another 10 to 15 mins to reach the center. So I decided to chuck the train and took a Taxi to reach the center. I spent $60 to reach the center. But I reached in time.
After initial formalities the test started around 8am.
AWA: It was ok. Somehow things click when I get a writing task and I end up writing something good that makes sense. Frankly speaking I didn't study much on AWA. My Girl Friend had given me a book on GRE and GMAT essays. I read few essays when I was feeling bore of other studies. While reading this I made notes of the structure and the words the author most often used. SO these notes helped me. Overall the section was fine. It helped me to feel relax and concentrate on my test.
Math: As I have being preparing for CAT since last two had half years I was confident that I would do good in math. Still I remember I was feeling panicked and restless when I was stuck on any problems. I also remember that I was thinking a lot to remember that concept. I feel that as I was not in touch with those chapters the concepts were taking time to click. I didn't get any Permutation and combinations problems or probability problems. Somehow I felt that I could have performed better than this. When you are really prepared you don't have to think about the concept. Its just clicks after you read the problem. If it is not clicking it means you need to work on that topic, because you don’t have time to think on G day. You have to execute things that you have learned. So after test I felt that I was not that prepared for Math.
Verbal: This 75 mins were like a nightmare for me. To be frank, I didn't understood any sentence correction, Critical reasoning or reading comprehension question. The first two questions on SC doomed me. I remember these two question (how could I forget them, after all they screwed me) were on past participle and modifier concept. I didn't get head and tail out of them and I just marked something and went ahead. Now If you know that you have screwed yourself in the first two questions then you are not able to concentrate on the remaining test. The same thing happened to me. My thoughts were lingering on old question even when I was reading new question. I just was not able to concentrate. When I felt that I was understanding what the sentence means, I had to reread the complete critical reasoning or SC again as I had not read the first part properly. I was totally lost when I was taking Verbal section. There was no strategy no plan just reading the questions and trying to answer them. After the test I new this is the worst attempt one can take on Verbal. I felt that I don't know this language at all.
Still I considered reporting the score. The screen popped up, while I was clearly hearing my heartbeats and the thoughts running in my minds that you have screwed up but still somewhere I was feeling that I might end up scoring something around 650 to 680, showing Maths scaled score 49 (88 percentile) and verbal scaled score 25 (35 something percentile).
I was devastated.
I was not sure what to do. When you think of improving your language you don't have correct direction and defined way. Even if you think of putting efforts but not in correct way you end up nowhere. Language is something which develops with your age. Its not like Math in which we can learn concepts and formulae to improve. All these tasks overwhelmed me. I thought I can never improve my language and so my GMAT score.
My Girl Friend tried to remind me all the good things I did till that point of my life. She helped me believe in myself and think of again preparing for the test. I made up my mind to take a another shot at the exam.
But the main thing was I had no direction. How should I approach, What should I do etc all these questions started troubling me. Fortunately I have a mentor who guides me whenever I feel lost. He is my lead on my project. I called him and told him about my situation and dilemma I was going through. He said that you are not alone. There are so many people around the world who are facing the same situation who are going through. He mailed me mentioning few links of various forums where people come together share there knowledge and try to develop. ( I had never used internet until this point of time in my life for preparing for any exam).
I went through these forums. One of these forums was Test Magic. When I came to GMAT portion of this forum I was surprised to see the number of posts and lively discussion that was happening. Mostly the Verbal Section where I needed guidance.
I went through the threads in 'Just took the GMAT section' . I remember the first thread I read was from tushar84. I read all the books he went through. This was the first thread that showed me some direction. I said this is the best site which can guide me. I feel when you are lost and willing to work God shows you direction and gives you clues. You have to actively see them and act on them. I joined this forum after seeing posts on this section of the forum. And You Know this was the turning point in my preparation for my GMAT Test. If you see my joining date it says September 2008 to be more precise it was around 24 September 2008.
Here I would like to thank Erin for creating such a great platform for people like us. If he is reading I would just like to say that I won't forget this forum throughout my life. Whatever I scored I strongly feel that I would have not able to score without this site. Hats off to you and I pray and you live a very happy and healthy life. I am sure so many people might be praying for you in this way. You are doing great job.
Preparation:
After reading debriefs of many people, successful and well as those who scored less marks I guess I was in a position to analyze myself and where I stand. I decided to analyze my strengths and things I need to work on. As mentioned Verbal was the weakest area of my preparation. I wrote down what all I know. Frankly speaking I knew all the different Parts of speech, but when I thought how clearly I knew them I felt I don't know anything. Even after taking the test I was not able to describe in layman terms about the significance of the verb, conjunction or a preposition. How these are used in sentence, what role they play. I knew nothing. I thought how you can imagine of scoring in 700s without this basic knowledge. I had to do something about this. I bought Wren And Martin and English Made Simple, books which deal with basic grammatical sentences and usages. These are not GMAT specific books but general books where I tried to learn the basic function of these different concepts in English Grammar. These books were really helpful.
After getting sufficient knowledge about basic English Grammar I turned towards OG11 and OG10 (which I came to know that this exists after going through the post of different people). I did all the sentence correction questions from these books. I tried to understand why particular answer is correct and why particular answer in not correct (this part I never did during my initial preparation). I felt that I am going somewhere after doing this. But still I was not confident to take date and take the exam. While doing this I was constantly going through the Just Finished My GMAT section. There I came to know about SC1000 question. I decided to solve these.
I download the document and started solving these question .Daily 25 queston in the morning no matter what. This was my target for each day. Solve it, analyze it and get the inputs from different people on the forum. Initially I was a passive member but later I started posting question and getting clarifications. I use to feel that people must not think how silly questions I was asking but when I asked such question I remember people taking extra efforts to resolve my confusion. This really changes my approach. I became so regular here that for last 4 and half months I don't remember there would have been a single day when I would have not logged in on this site.
Here I would like to take few names from whom I learned a lot.
800Bob, Erin, gschmilinsky, Makumajon, philosopher57,Shooter,bear&bull, 12rk34, effective_factor,mitzi, chatru, bholebaba,nimitb,amit_gd, and so many more people. These are the name I remember without going back to forum. All people who are regular on verbal section of this forum would be familiar to these names. These are great people. You guys don't know what role you are played in my life and also in many other people's life.
800Bob you words where like golden words. The way you explain to the point, crisp and clear. I just remembered the comments you use to make and those words use to always echo in my mind.
Erin your posts mostly written in 2002 to 2006 are superb. Your explanations are so lively that while reading those I use to feel that I am sitting in the class and learning from those. Your various chapters on Grammar specifically GMAT grammar are really great. Frankly speaking I don't have words to express what I feel about them and the respect I have for the work you have done.
You both guys are really superb and are really making difference in life of many students like us.
Ok back to my preparation. After feeling confident about my SC I turned my attention towards critical reasoning. I got to know about Critical Reasoning Bible from PowerScore. This is a awesome book. I bought this book during start of month of November. After reading this book I came to know that I knew nothing about the correct way of tackling critical reasoning on GMAT. I solved the entire question on that book and later started solving 1000CR document that is floating on the site. I concentrated on these two sections till mid December.
Then I decided to take date as I felt confident that I understood what I was reading and felt that had a fair knowledge of GMAT SC and critical reasoning. I didn't put much concentration on reading comprehension. I tried to solve all reading comprehension's from OG10 but till exam date I was not able to complete those.
During my last preparation I had exhausted Manhattan GMAT tests, Kaplan test . Princeton Review test so I had no new tests to take. I bought test series from 800score.com. I just don't wanted to take test where I face the same questions again.
To add to these I decided to solve Sets 21 to 31.
These are the two things I started doing after taking the date. For math I just went through the forum question and general good question from each chapter I studied before. As I am preparing for these kind of test since a long time I had good knowledge of Math chapters and concepts so was confident that I would do well. Just to make sure that I don't have to think to remember during the exam I made sure that I solve at least 10 questions daily. From anywhere but at least 10 question. I also solved Math from OG10. I feel these are better than what are present in OG11.
Getting Ready For G Day:
As mentioned before I am not able to concentrate if I am involved in any unsolved office work, I tried to avoid taking more work in the office as the G date was approaching. I completed all the pending open items and new development that was assigned to me well in advance. I requested for vacation on 12/13/2009 which is a Friday. I worked from home on Thursday. Being away from my office for 4 days before the exam helped me to get myself in the GMAT mood. I went through all the note I prepared for verbal and math. Solve all the good questions that I had marked in my notebook. Took 2nd GMATPrep Test on 02/13/2009 and scored 720. Felt good after seeing the score.
G Day:
Woke up at 5am. Got ready. Had something to eat. Mostly had bread, dry fruits, fruits and chocolates. As I stay alone and don't cook I had nothing else to eat. I took some fruits and chocolates with me to have during breaks.
I was was the first to reach the center. I reached there around 7.10am. The Pearson staff came around 7.30 to 7.45 am. I went in completed the formalities and was ready for test. This was second time I was taking the test so I was not feeling tensed. Somehow Iwas feeling confident and ready to face questions.
AWA: First got a argument. Not a usual topic something different which I never thought of. Completed it .
Then came the issue. Good topic. The topic was something in which I believed myself. So I guess was able to write some good things about that topic.
Break: Took break. Had a apple and water. Sprinkled water on my face and came back to take math.
Math:
The first question I got was on probability. Was not much complex but yes i was not expecting first question on probability. I didn't got a single question on PC and Probabilty in my last attempt. After that few question were on inequalities, percentages, profit and loss, work and mixtures, Geometry etc regular topics. I got many question at least 2 or 3 ( these are many ) on functions which involved graphs and diagram. Something very unusual. On top of that all these were data sufficiency question. Over all I guess I did well. I had little time for my last question . It was on work rate related concept. I could have solved that but I had 40 sec and I felt if I started solving this by using my pen then I might not not able to confirm this answer. So I thought what should be the best guess and marked it and confirmed the answer before 7 secs remaining in the test.
Overall I feel that it is easy to score upto scaled score 48 which is around 85 percentile.
But if you wish to score more than 49 than you have to be really good in math. You should be so much prepared that you should not have to think in exam. Once you read question approach should be already ready in your mind to solve this question Then you don't lose time and are able to take each question properly. Math question are not straight forward. They are tricky. Small tricks but they will be there. Question will be such that they will test your basic knowledge. Remember whenever you feel lost while solving particular question don't panic. See what is given and what is asked. Go to the basics of that chapter and see whether you are able to use data given in the question. If you are then spent time else just make educated guess and move on. I feel that a person know in first 40 to 50 secs whether he has a chance to get a particular problem right. So don’t waste your time if you don’t know about particular chapter the problem is testing you on.
Break: Took the break. I was feeling hungry. Had a apple and a chocolate and sprinkled water on my face. While having this I was thinking that the real test is about to become. Be clam and composed. Be ready to face and question with aggressive and attacking attitude. Drank some water and got back to the exam.
Verbal: When the proctor logged me in the system gave me a message that you have exceeded your break time by 46 seconds and so that time is deducted from your actual time for the test. This was a little disturbing to me. But I remember words from many test takers. Don't panic, breath long breaths when you feel like this. I took a long breath and thought that though I have lost this minute so what I should do what I can in available 74 minutes. You know when you are panicked you don't know what you are reading. At times you might be able to solve a math problem but not a English problem as it requires you to be calm and composed while solving it.
First two question where SC and next two were critical reasoning.
You know I was feeling so different while taking this test compared to what I felt during my first attempt.
I felt like SC itself is telling me where the errors are in it. The errors were so obvious that I was able to eliminate the options in single read. I used my fingers (A strategy I learned for Test Magic students) to keep track of eliminated option. The first queston I was able to solve in 2 mins which was very less than what I took during my practice tests. So I told myself that you have not lost any minutes and you have the same time what you use to have while taking your practice test. This helped me.
Here I would like to mention 800Bobs words here. In one of his posts he has said that "You won't have to compromise on any SC item on GMAT. There will be always a correct and best answer choice which will make itself stand out."
I was feeling this so true.
After that I had reading comprehension. A small one but little dense. I guess I did well in that.
After that I got SC and CRs. The questions were getting tougher and sometimes easy. But I was feeling that I am doing well. I got a Bold Pattern question as 18th question. After that I got a really big passage. My Girl Friend had mentioned to me earlier in the day that don't get afraid after seeing a big passage. Those words just echoed in my ears and I became more relaxed and started reading the passage. While reading the passage my aim was trying to understand why author has written the passage, what he wants to convey through the passage and general structure of the passage. I would say after getting idea of this questions become quite simple. You know where to go for specific answers. For inference questions I was not required to again read the passage.
After the passage I got two big SC with whole part underlined. I guess I got at least one. During this time I got little panicked. I was slow in solving the question so I solved few question without taking much time. But I didn't blindly marked any answer.
In critical reasoning during my first attempt I almost got weakening or strengthening question. During this attempt it got at least one question of each type. I ws not able to solve the Paallel reasoning question but I guess I got the method of reasoning and bold face question. There was one main point, 1 method of reasoning, 1 parallel reasoning, 1 complete the sentences and all others were either strengthen or weaken questions.
Overall 2 small passages and 2 very big passages. The last question was on SC which was a big SC and that made me think that I did well in my verbal section.
Report Score: I was sure that I am going to report the score. I had decided on this before starting the test as I wanted to see how much progress I had made in last 5 months.
I went through all screen and submitted the report button. My heart was beating fast and I remembered my last score and the feeling I felt that time. During this time the score flashed and it showed 740 (Math 50 (94 percentile ) and Verbal 40 (89 Percentile)) 97 percentile. I was like ahhhhhaaa… tears just came in my eyes. I was not able to control them. Ihad never scored 40 in verbal in any of the practice tests. All the efforts have paid off. I felt so relaxed and so relieved. The thought of not studying thee same ting that I had being studying for last 2 and half year made me feel so relieved. Imagine I had no life other than work and studies. I stopped enjoying, working-out etc.(I love to do workout. I can't live without working out) I felt that I will get some tie for me know. It was so wonderful feeling. I came out of the center called my Girlfriend. She was so happy to hear that. She believed that I will cross 700 mark but after hearing score she also got surprised.
Books used:
OG11
OG10
Verbal review
Criticle Reasoning Bible from PowerScore
General High School Grammar Books.
Spidy Notes
Adhmajons Note (Compilation of posts by Bob)
Kaplan Premier
Kaplan 800
SC1000
CR1000
Test Magic Forms (Mostly Verbal nad critical reasoning).
Advice:
I guess have covered all in above section about my preparation and all.
One thing I would like to mention about verbal is that knowing the Subject of the sentence, the action perform by the subject, the action being performed on the object and the role of different parts of the sentence (conjuction, preposition , modifier etc ) on the meaning of the sentence will help a lot to eliminate many options. Always read a sentence to understand the meaning of the sentence.
Listen to conversation, debates etc between good speakers on television. Understand the meaning when tense words such as had, have , has etc are used in sentence. Think how the sentence will work if it was deprived of this words. When you start doing this exercise on anything that you listen or read your grammar and overall English is bound to improve.
Preparation Duration:
I feel that this factor would vary from person to person. Many test takers say that they prepared for 6 weeks, 3 months, 4 months etc and even mention total number of hours. But I feel this is not the only preparation that helped them. Imagine can working from scratch (No Knowledge of English and Math whatsoever) for 4months and scoring above 700 is possible? I doubt.
Various factors such as your born and brought up, your subjects during your higher studies and many such things play important role in your preparation.
So a person should objectively analyze where he stands in both Math and verbal and then decide study plan and duration required.
Each person is different and the time he will require to get ready for he test is bound to be different.
Comparison Of GMAT with Indain Common Entrance test (CAT):
Test takers from India must be having good knowledge about CAT. As mentioned before many people say that GMAT is easier compared to CAT. Even I thought this and you know what result I got when I took that test with that approach.
Now I feel that both test are almost of same difficulty. The main difference I find is that CAT a paper based test and GMAT is a computer adaptive test.
CAT paper based: Here consider math paper. We have say 25 math problem given at same time. Generally from this 25 around 14 ro 15 are quite straight forward. While 10 to 12 are like really complex and which require time to solve. Imagine a test taker who is reasonably prepared for the test encounter first 5 problem from the group of these 10 difficult questions. What will be his mental state even when he get a easy question after failing to solve the first 5 questions. The first 5 question might break his confidence and the overall performance on the test might be affected.
Whereas GMAT gives you a easy question when you are not able to solve a difficult question, so people feel confident that they are able to solve the question. But in background the software is judging your capability and will be placing you in respective percentile.
Even in CAT if you are able to get 9 to 10 (without any negative marks ) problems correct you percentile is between 80 to 90. say a score of (47 to 49 on GMAT) .
When you reach in 95 percentile or more you have to solve atleat 14 to 15 problems without error and similarly on GMAT to get 50 or 51 scaled score you have to solve the problems of same difficulty level that you face in CAT. I don't anymore find Quant section of both exam any different.
The only thing good with GMAT Math is that it doesn't make you lose confidence while CAT can break your confidence even when you have prepared for years.
I don’t think my self capable of commenting on the verbal section as I feel I learned verbal while preparing for GMAT and thank this test for helping me in this.
It’s a really long debrief and I guess many people would have left in middle. But I got inspiration and hope by reading such debriefs of other people on this forum so I wanted give back in same way so that few people who really need such debriefs to inspire themselves can use this one along with others'.
Below are the names of various test taker's debrief that helped me during my weak and bad time. I thank you guys for being so sincere and open while sharing your experiences.
TATUM
TBAY
KILL GMAT
TUSHAR84
KROVVIDY
URSULA
And so many others (above are the name which I remember).
Once again thank you guys. You are doing a great job here.
And all the best.
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2009 June 28th, 02:09 PM
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