nhedges Posted October 17, 2002 Share Posted October 17, 2002 I haven't contributed much to this forum, for which I apologise, but have found it very useful in preparation. Thanks especially to Erin for making this website a source of great inspiration and many thorough answers to baffling GMAT questions and issues. I took the GMAT today and scored a higher mark than I had expected: Scaled Percentile Q 44 74 V 47 99 TOTAL 730 97 Clearly my verbal is far better than my mathmatical capability. What I really wanted to pass on is that it is possible to score a relatively good score with a lot of practice, hard work and, in some ways most importantly, a clear grasp of good GMAT-answering strategy. To put this in context. My practice test scores were quite low and I haven't done ANY maths since I was 16 (12 years ago). Kaplan Test Scores: - 540,550,560,570 PP Test Scores: 600,700 As you can see my practice tests were far away from what I actually got, which should give other GMAT aspirants reason for. I put my improvement down to a number of things: 1) I totally cracked Verbal by using Official Guide and answering every question in the book. I broke the book up into 41 questions (all of the same type) and went through them answering each set in the 1:15 you're given in the real thing. At first I was getting about 30 questions out of every 41 correct but with practice and understanding the reasoning behind the official answers on ones that I got wrong I got this up to 40-41. Timed practice is hugely important. 2) I realised you don't need to be a maths genius to do acceptably well on the GMAT. A really high percentage of the questions have a trick to them that allows you to answer them quite quickly. Most of the time you simply don't have break the back of the long calculations to get to the right answer. I picked up the right techniques from practice with the [tooltip=Official Guide]OG[/tooltip] and two important Kaplan methods backsolving and number picking. I have to admit though that the maths questions are considerably harder in the real thing than in the [tooltip=Official Guide]OG[/tooltip]. They are about the same difficulty as Kaplan but slightly different. What makes Kaplan questions different is that to me they seem to test fairly obvious maths principles as if they are testing you on a concept you have just learned from a book. The difficult maths questions on the test are not so obviously alligned to well-known principles but are more a test of lateral thinking. [tooltip=Official Guide]OG[/tooltip] does contain this type of lateral question e.g. what is the units digit of (28^7)(31^3)(49^7) but generally they are not as difficult as in the real thing. Take what I say with a pinch of salt as I only acheived 44 on Q! 3) Mental preparation. I tried to think as positively as possible about the test. I convinced myself that I could get a 7** score even though my practice tests didn't really suggest that. Even during the exam when maths was seemingly going badly I told myself not to give up for one second and that I could still do well. In between each section I went outside and stretched, threw water on my face and told myself that I had to do really well on the next section. In practice tests I found it easy to give up on the verbal section but knew that this would be my downfall. In the real thing I went in to the verbal section busting with determination to get full marks and nearly did. Regarding specific test questions; I'm really sorry but I don't think it's appropriate to give these away. Indeed, ETS makes you sign a contract saying that you won't. However, I hope what I have said is of some use and my case will act as encouragement for those who get as disheartened with the GMAT process as I have been at times. Nick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a user Posted October 18, 2002 Share Posted October 18, 2002 Congrats! Your verbal score is lot better then I can dream of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hannah_schatz Posted December 4, 2002 Share Posted December 4, 2002 Would you be willing to sell your used material?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kav Posted December 4, 2002 Share Posted December 4, 2002 Hi there: congrats on the score that you got. Incidently I took my GMAT yesterday, Dec 04 2002 and got a 540. Very low marks. I expected atleast 650. I was wondering if you could send me some comments/thoughts/suggestions. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hannah_schatz Posted December 5, 2002 Share Posted December 5, 2002 Hi kav can you share the comments/thoughts/suggestions that you might receive!!! :-) please Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kav Posted February 6, 2003 Share Posted February 6, 2003 Nick: My email address is - itskav@yahoo.com. Any feedback will be appreciated. Also what kind of preparation timeline one should design to get to a good prep level. Thx Kav Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erin Posted February 6, 2003 Share Posted February 6, 2003 Guys, you can post these questions in a new thread and get more attention. Erin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kav Posted February 10, 2003 Share Posted February 10, 2003 Nick: If you still check the response .... I actually started the official guide as you described above. Instead of attacking the questions section by section, I broke the questions up as a full lenght test, with a timer. It works!!! :-) Although, I was wondering what you meant by : "I broke the book up into 41 questions ->>(all of the same type) what does this mean? and went through ...." Thx and let us know more if you can Kav Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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