770 (q49, v47)

[vagabond123]

Hi All,

Took the GMAT and got 770 (q49, v47). I was very happy with my score until someone told me the score may not be good enough for a top 5 US school as my quant is only 49 (88 percentile). Is this true? Do I need to retake the exam?

Anyways, here is my debrief:

Quantitative:

Materials:
1) OG 11, 12
2) Manhattan GMAT quant books

Even though I am an engineer, somehow, I could not get the timing right. Same happened in the actual test. I ran out of time for the last 2-3 questions and maybe that brought my score down. I found the actual quant to be harder than Gprep. Still, I think Gprep is the best way to learn the different quant types.

Verbal:

Materials:
1)Manhattan SC guide
2) OG 11, 12
3) GMAT verbal review

1) IMO, you don't need anything else other than these books. If you do the OG and manhattan SC at least 2 times (reading in detail, including answer explanations), you will get a good hang of the types of questions.
2) For reading comprehension and critical reasoning, I tried to translate the passage to my mother tongue. This helps in understanding what the passage is about. Once you practice this, you will find these questions easier to handle.

Let me know if you have any questions. I hope I don't have to retake the test for the quant score.

Thanks to all the people who contribute to this forum. Hats off to you all ..

[RHYME800]

CONGRETZZZ !!!

RETAKE WITH a score of 770 ???
lollol.

focus the math/stat. courses you have in your undergrad in your apps.

[madhur_ahuja]

Great score .. Congratulations ..

[finsisher]

its one of the best score I have seen in last 1 yr.. you rock.. all the best for your app. no need to retake Gmat..

[Ace-gmat]

many many congratulation ! for apps
thts an awsome score ...
how many days did you spend in preps ?

[raven678]

That's Great score vagabond123. Can you share some more details about your verbal prep. I have taken the exam once and got a poor score in verbal. And i am retaking the exam in a months time. Any additional tips would be useful.

[tania77]

wow great score...share how long you prepared and how many you spent during the weekday and weekend etc.

[vagabond123]

Thanks All.

As for how many days, I spent ~3 months for prep. I tried to do 2-3 hrs daily with some extra time during weekends.

For verbal, the only thing I would suggest is to study official guides and manhattan SC guide. Read a chapter of Manhattan SC, and do the questions for that topic from the official guide. Study the answers, even the ones you got right. After you are done, do the questions once again and try to find out all the errors in all answer choices. The Manhattan guide has a problem matrix at the end which is helpful for this.

For critical reasoning, OG 12 has many questions with bold face and some of the newly added questions are also lengthy, so I guess OG 12 represents the latest types of questions for critical reasoning, so it may help to study from there.

For reading comprehension, just practice a lot. Read everything you can, whenever you can. Try to translate the passage into your own words as you read it. This will help you understand the passage and then answering questions will be easy.

Hope this helps ..

[Crack_it!!]

Hey vegabond123, this is 'jawdrop' score man!!!

Congratulations!!!!!!!!
You have an awesome verbal score and even the quant is good. Wish you loads of luck with apps..

[Roland]

Great score. Good luck on your apps!