730 (m 50 v 38)

[zbl]

found this forum by google. pity that i only discovered this wonderful forum just a few days before my actual gmat. tried my best to absorb whatever's advice that had been posted.

thanks everyone.

[jamesbond007]

Hi ZBL,

Congratulations for getting 730 GMAT score!!! This is a pretty good score. TestMagicians will count you as Club-700 member. Everyone knows the psycological importance of 700 score and you have crossed this hurdle in your way to MBA.

Can you please share your experiences of actual GMAT and also about how did you studied, your strategies, etc.? This may help us, GMAT aspirants, a lot in our preparations!

Regards,
James

[zbl]

frankly speaking, i have no idea what i did right. in fact, i have tried all the test materials books, kaplan, princeton review, barrons, cliff notes, arco and peterson. my opinion is that kaplan is tough, princeton review is weird, barrons is not exactly right and the rest are not worth mentioning.

my personal opinion: i believe that official guide is probably the best.

ps questions: usually, i don't have problems with them. primarily because i can check that my answer is correct

ds questions: i have a bit of difficulty with them. i will solve for the first premise and then go on to the second premise. usually, i think the answer will be the same for both premises (if both are true)

rc questions: i have big problems with them. i find it hard to read on one side and then answer question on the other. usually, i like to have the entire passage on a piece of paper

cr questions: it is a hit and miss. sometimes i can figure out the assumption, sometimes i cannot. for weaken and strength questions, i try to assume all the answers to be true and see which one will affect the conclusion the most

sc questions: i have a bit of problems with these questions. sometimes the answers all seem right. i try to use process of elimination in figuring out which answers are wrong (grammar, tenses)

[jamesbond007]

Hi ZBL,

Thanks for your such a honest and frank reply!
I think people hardly accept about any weakness they have. But your frank opinion makes us comfortable because these are the thoughts shared by more than 95% of GMAT aspirants. And after reading your post and seing your marks (730) every will get encouraged that he can also achieve the same level.

Well, it seems that you had faced lots of problem in verbal section, just like I am facing . But can you please tell us what was your practice test scores? How much among 41 verbal and 37 Maths questions, you used to get correct? Answers to these questions helps us to judge our level of prectice.
I must appriciate your honesty!!

Thanks and Regards,
James

[xmen]

Congrats on ur wonderful score

Could you please post ur practice score and how many question on average
you were getting wrong. It will help us in accessing our preperation.

[thaiva]

Congradt's ZBL on your score and to get it above the magic 700 mark.... remarkable.

Best Wishes..

[zbl]

thanks to everyone for their kind comments.
let's see...

princeton review: 700, 710, 690 -> i seem to get worse with each trial. in addition, i had my computer set to a different regional language, which kind of screwed around with the princeton questions

kaplan: 590, 630, 670. the 4th test was supposed to be a trial test, so i cannot get any results. some of the questions were repeated and there were a whole bunch of ds questions.

unfortunately, i didn't know my exact scores breakdown. what i can say is that my math score is always quite high, with just a few mistakes, around 49-51 area. my problem lies with verbal, from 32 - 38. usually on verbal practice, i got around 10+ questions wrong on average.

here's my strategy
1) spend more time on rc and cr and less on sc questions. sc questions should take about 1 minute or less depending on difficulty. the rest of the time i will spend on rc and cr.
2) for rc, i try to read first line of each paragraph. the rest of the paragraph, i just skim through. then when i go to the questions, i will go back to the passage and look for the answers
3) i am weakest at cr...so i dunno how to advise. i do however believe that with practice, one can become better at finding the assumption

[angels]

Congratulations ZBL.

All the best for your applications.

[aryabatta]

Congrats.