680 GMAT (45Q 38V) - Finally - Crazy Ride

[donkey_man_88]

Hey Everyone,

First, I'd like to say that I'm finally done with the GMAT. I took the test on Thursday, October 29th and scored a 680 (45Q 38V AWA 6.0). Now, for those of you who have been on these forums for a while, you'll know that 2 years ago I scored a 600 (45Q 28V). I was pretty upset because I scored way below my average practice test scores. Now, most people detail how they study and what works and whatever. I realized that you have to beware of a lot of things. I've gone through almost every GMAT book that you could think of. If you want to avoid common pitfalls, please continue to read.

The most frustrating part of this whole ordeal was that I couldn't replicate my practice test scores. I think there are a lot of reasons why. I've listed a few below:

1) When going through practice questions, I didn't time every question. Also, I only learned one way to solve a problem. Plugging in numbers and back-solving should be last resort methods. A major issue that I have with certain test prep companies is that they promote this crap as if it's going to save you. It may help some people, but if you truly want to do well and have a good understanding of the material, you have to know the concepts inside and out.

2) Sentence Correction is very different from the sentences that you see in your practice material. Well, it is and it isn't. I always did well in sentence correction during practice tests. I thought most of them were a joke. During the real test, the questions can be very tricky. I also learned that you have to learn Sentence Correction from people who know English very well. I think these forums are great, but I realized that a lot of people give bad advice. For example, they state that one question may be wrong because of a modifier error, but really it's a pronoun that made it wrong, and the modifier error is a just a different way of writing the sentence. Please take the advice with a grain of salt. If you have to pick up books on English grammar, then please do so. For me, I hired a tutor. The tutor corrected a lot of the things that I thought were correct. This totally changed my ability to do well on SC during the real exam.

3) Using material that doesn't help. There's a lot of material out there, but some of it is absolute crap. Again, not to bash the test prep companies, but some of the questions are so old and easy, the questions don't come close to replicating the actual exam. If there is anything that is a must, then you have to get the OG 12th edition, and the Verbal and Quant guides as well. Also, going through the GMAT Prep Software is an amazing idea. I realized that after the new 12th edition came out that there are more questions that come up that I haven't seen before. Go through these tests as much as you can.

4) Pacing. This is extremely important. It doesn't matter if you can get the first 20 correct if you only have 10 minutes to solve the rest of the problems. Do not neglect this aspect of your test taking strategy.

5) If something doesn't work for you, move on. You have to find the things that work for you. A lot of tutors and instructors have told me to relax a few days before the exam. They have also said, "don't do any questions the day of the exam, you won't do well." Well, I have to say that I don't agree with that. The first two times that I took my exam, I did just that. Honestly, I didn't feel that the material was fresh in my mind. Even though I am sure that this works for a lot of people, it didn't work for me. This time around, I studied very hard even until the day of the exam. The day of my exam, I woke up early to exercise, did about 20 quant and 20 verbal questions, and recited all of the formulas for quant strategies in verbal until my exam was over. I knew that if I didn't, I may have gotten a very tough problem that would have given me a difficult time.

6) Concentrating too much on one particular topic. As you can see, I didn't improve my Quant, but I was actually scoring at a higher level during the exam. I received a few tough questions that took up some time. If I would have managed my time, I would have gotten a 47-48. Basically, this refers to #4 (Pacing). A lot of people worry about one particular area, but don't lose sight on the goal. Doing well on both will really help your application.

7) Changing my routine and/or getting nervous. This one is tough because almost any deviation can be a change in someone's routine. Also, getting nervous is natural and maybe very difficult to control. For me, I didn't make myself nervous, but my mind knew it was taking an exam. For me, I worked very hard on controlling my emotions and being calm and poised. I cannot state how important this is. If you get flustered or upset, then your ability to think through the questions goes down the tubes. You really have to psyche yourself to take this test. You cannot relent at all. If you think you can sit back and count sheep, then you won't go far. Of course there are some who can pick their toe nails while taking this test, but how many people are really like that? Think about the number of people who take this exam each month and the number of people who post a score of 700+. It may seem like a lot, but there are sooooo many people who do not even know what a GMAT forum is.

I'm not going to go through a lot of the strategy because it would be too lengthy. If you need additional guidance, you can send a PM to me. Here are a few more things before I sign off:

1) Do not neglect Reading Comprehension or Critical Reasoning. Most people do well with these two from the start. Don't be fooled on the test day though. Some of these can be really tough, especially after writing two essays and going through some difficult quant questions. The best way to attack each is to come up with a plan of attack every time you see these questions. reading comprehension is very difficult in this respect because strategies differ so much. I personally love taking notes. This helped me tremendously. It's not just notes in the traditional sense, but notes for certain parts of the passage. For example, I always jotted down a few words on the side that were separate from my main paragraph notes. These notes were specifically to describe what the function of the paragraph does. If you get a question that asks to describe how the 2nd paragraph compares to the 3rd, you don't have to waste a lot of time re-reading the passage. Also, I decided to be more proactive with words that linked one thought to the next, and decided to analyze tough concepts before moving on. If I didn't understand one part, moving on to the next would be pointless, especially if the next part is predicated on the first. For Critical Reasoning, aside from the techniques available, I noticed that some questions feel as if there aren't any correct choices. Everyone gets to that point in which he or she notices a critical reasoning question that just seems very difficult. In this case, I knew that I had to look into the causal reasoning more and develop my own assumptions. After I thoroughly analyzed the premise, assumption, and conclusion, I moved on to the answer choices. Some of these maybe different in one word. One word can determine whether you get a question right. Not only are these tough, but you may also see answer choices that are neutral that really have the most impact because some questions don't have to be flawless, but they have to be the best of the options available.

2) Sentence Correction!!! If you have to buy one book and one book only, you should buy the new Manhattan Gmat Sentence Correction Guide. This book isn't perfect, but it has a lot of things that I didn't realize were in there. In order to do really well in SC, you have to constantly attack SC questions. You have to look at the beginning of the sentence, the end, and all of the elements in a sentence. For example, when looking at whether a sentence is trying to correct Subject-verb agreement, pronouns, modifiers, etc., you have to see all parts of the sentence. This is important because I realized that there are some sentences that may seem wrong, but after reviewing the grammatical rules, you notice why certain questions are right and/or wrong. One example that I like is that the GMAT likes to trick people with the subjunctive, especially when using the word "each." Each usually signifies a singular verb, but if preceded by the command subjunctive, be wary because it's going to be a verb without an "s." As I mentioned earlier, please be careful when doing practice questions and talking about these with other people. A great example of this is the 1000SCs. There are a ton of errors in there. The easiest one to point out is #1. For the longest time, I couldn't figure out why I was wrong. It turns out that the stupid sheet is wrong. If you don't believe me, you can see #1 in the OG 12th edition. They have different answers. I don't know about you, but I think the OG 12th edition wins this battle.

Below are some ratings for GMAT materials that I used:

OG12th Edition - Solid. Math problems are okay. The DS quesitons are pretty good, but PS are still lacking. The verbal questions here are much better. You can see this in the critical reasoning section.
OG Verbal 2nd Edition - Great source for additional verbal questions.
Manhattan GMAT Materials - good books if you need to refresh. Take the tests and materials with a grain of salt. The algorithm is not the same. With this said, the math in these tests is really not that far off from the real thing. If you are doing really well in the beginning, you'll be surprised at how fast the real gmat problems become more diffiult.
Veritas Prep - Good quant guides. I think Project GMAT is pretty good too. I know a lot of people don't like it, but I found it very helpful. Verbal guides are good too, but they borrow a lot of their questions from different sources.
Kaplan - Kaplan basic material is not that great. Some of the more difficult questions are decent. I think the tests are okay, but not sure why people don't do well on them. I never scored below a 700 in Kaplan. I do have a huge caveat with Kaplan though: The SC questions stink. If you are doing well with Kaplan, please brush up on SC. I think they do a terrible job on SC (JMO).
Princeton Review - I've only gone through a few materials, but never really thought that they were worth it. Definitely better than nothing, but I don't think the questions are difficult enough to satisfy the average test taker.
GMAT Club - I didn't use the verbal tests, but the math tests are great. If you can do well there, then you should be fine.
800score - I did 3 problems before realizing that I was not happy with the quality of these questions.
bellcurves.com - not many people use bellcurves, but they actually take questions from a lot of different sources. I think the verbal questions are sub-par, but the math questions are really good. The CAT quizzes are pretty cool too. If you need a boost in math, then this is your place. If you need to work on Verbal, then I would go elsewhere.
GMAT Hacks - good starter "book," but I think he misses the boat on some really difficult problems. I know he's helped "a lot" of people and he has his own blog about strategy, but I didn't think it was good enough to get me to a 48+ in Quant. Definitely solid though.
Barron's - I'm upset that I even tried to look at this book. This was really bad. I think this takes the cake on bad material. It's not that the concepts that they proposed in the book are bad, it's the structure of the questions. Definitely not GMAT worthy.
Peterson's - Hmmm, I don't know what to say about this one. Sometimes you can get decent math questions, but then other times the questions are terrible. The Verbal questions are really bad. In fact, I found faulty reasoning in more than one of the critical reasoning questions. Also, some of the SC questions concentrate on grammatical issues that are not tested on the GMAT.
Knewton - I haven't used their material, so I don't know.

There are other books, such as Manhattan Review, etc., but I didn't bother to use those.

Anyway, I wanted to write this down because I want to give a lot of test takers hope. Remember, this has been something that I've gone through for 2 years. There was a lot of off and on. Overall, I probably spent 5 months in total studying (all exams combined). Also, I went through a lot of down time. I went from a 28 in verbal, to a 38 in verbal. I probably could have done better if I didn't rush at the end. If you are down on yourself, keep it up because it can be done. I used to read posts like the one that I'm writing, and I used to say, "RIIIGHT, I just can't make a jump like that in my verbal score. This dude must be on crack." If you take the time to work on it, it will pay off.

I wish everyone the best. This is my last post related to the GMAT (I hope).

-Donkey

[abhishek_750]

Congo Dude!!

And a very comprehensive post 2!

Good Luck with your apps!

[gotit]

Thanks for the detailed debriefing and congratulations on the great score! I've been preparing for a while and I agree with all your comments. Good luck with your application.....of course after a big celebration!