720 - 94%, Q 49 - 87% , V 40 - 89%

[sksgill]

Hi,

Took the Gmat on (17th Oct 09) my B'day and it was Diwali as well, a good confluence of stars I thought. It was a gamble which ultimately paid off to some extent. It was my first attempt at an exam that i wanted to take for a long time(almost 3 yrs).

Prep Mtrl

Official Guide 10, 12. Manhattan GMAT SC. One reading of Powerprep critical reasoning Bible. Practised on the questions over here but the stratagems of explanations offered by great guys convinced me every time that I won't get over 650. It can be a bit demotivating if you start thinking that way but trust me GMAT is not as difficult as it appears when you solve questions here.

Time

(Alongwith fulltime job)
1 month focussed prep
1 month with diffused focus (more time spent reading this section than anything else)

Result

720 - 94%
Q 49 - 87%
V 40 - 89%

Learnings

1. Nothing matches the power of practice. If you can practice for the whole 4hr test, multiple times, you'll find better results. While lots of practice helped me, the lack of even a single 4 hr practice session marred my chances of a better score.

2. GMAT Prep Had multiple runs of GMATPrep on different machines. Liked it because it was heavily promoted on these pages and not without reason. Found good use of the s/w because its low investment high return game. 2 months ago when i started the preparation I scored 650 on the GMATPrep. Knew there was a long way to go. Quant was a bigger worry for me because of my lifelong tiff with maths. Primarily I practised maths on it. 2 days before the actual test I scored 50 on Q on GMATPrep. Found that last practise to be a cakewalk, although the questions were all new, and so thought that the real thing would not be similar going by the difficulty of questions on these pages. Infact I was proven wrong because the real thing was a similar cakewalk. Trust me maths was as simple as the GMATPrep is, Verbal was similar but difficult.

3. Conditioning of the mind body soul. I found a lack of concentration during the final stages of preparation because i stopped exercising and doing yoga to spare time for studies and sleep. Once the circle was disturbed and exam collywobbles started frequenting I could not find the rhythm back.

4. Sleeping pill: It was the first time ever that i took it. The night prior to the exam was expected to be tough and I had seen a lot of promotion for the sleeping pill on these pages. Was smiling when i got up after a 10 hr sleep. I knew it was a good beginning.

5. The Tendulkar simile: I practiced to get into the groove like a good player would in the runup for a world cup. Most of the time I took inspiration from Tendulkar (for the uninitiated he is the God of cricket), who inspite of his enormous talent relies heavily on humility and practice. Also on his good days he would play each ball on merit. Again if he knew that the match would be played on a certain pitch he would practice there. So I practiced on GMATPrep most of the time. Before going into the exam I had planned that i'll take questions on their merit and not with one of those set plans of spending 40 minutes on first 15 questions etc. I guess that worked for me. My first 15 Quant questions were over in 25 minutes. That took the pressure off me and I could afford to take my time on tougher questions. Even after that I wasn't stuck on many questions for a long time. I did not have to wildly guess on any question throughout the exam. Considering I'm not good at quant I think it worked very well. Verbal was a different ball game all together. The only reason was that I started getting tired. But still I played every ball on its merit and imagined hitting lovely cover drives like Tendulkar would on a good day. Treat each ball/ question with whatever it deserves. Don't go by the traditional time allocation models.

Will love to take any questions hereon. Apologies for the delay in this debrief. Trust me I owe a lot to these stories.

Some info about me:
Low GPA in BBA. Finished in 2000.
6 yrs experience as an Army Officer (Infantry and Logistics).
6 month Certificate in Management from IIM B (Executive education).
15 months in an Indian IT company as an Associate Manager.
Migrated to Canada last year and am a resruitment specialist with a government program.
Total 8 yrs in different industries at different levels.
Aiming for Richard Ivey, Rotman or Queens in Canada.
Not sure about US schools. Would love Harvard or Wharton though.

Suggestions on apps are most welcome. Especially I want to know if the Low Gpa will hurt my chances a lot. And once again a big thanks to Erin and all of you.

[euwe]

it's just awesome, I very very would like to be "in your shoes"
i've some questions
1. How was your manhatgmat results.(compared to real Gmat)
2. did you have probability, permutation, combination problems on real gmat and if yes, about how many.
thanks for debrief and sucess on your future plans

[sushkan2008]

Congratulations,Mr Gill...great score and debrief.

[Jdez_29]

Congrats and good luck with your applications!!

[sksgill]

Originally Posted by euwe

it's just awesome, I very very would like to be "in your shoes"
i've some questions
1. How was your manhatgmat results.(compared to real Gmat)
2. did you have probability, permutation, combination problems on real gmat and if yes, about how many.

Thanks
Initially i took Manhattan in pauses. There is no way that I could finish the Quant in time. So i would pause in the final questions. Managed 700 on Manhattan GMAT consistently with such pauses. The questions on GMAT are not as lengthy as Manhattan GMAT. I was very well within time on the real thing. I'm not sure if it was the result of Manhattan GMAT practice. Manhattan GMAT's explanations are great but i never had the patience to read all of them. The few that I read were good.

I got 1 probability and 2 PnC questions. They were relatively simple. I could actually count the combinations in one question.