shaq Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 Hello folks, Today I took a stab at GMAT and scored 760 (Q49, V46). I am extremely happy with the result and I want to thank all of the TestMagic forum members who helped me achieve this score. Will post detailed report later.... Regards Shaq Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shanmukh Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 congrat shaq-i know u can- could u please put a brief of u'r prep mode Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DEVIKA Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 Congrats [clap] [clap] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saurabhmalpani Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 I knew it that you will do IT. Good Job! Congrats ..My wishes are with you for your application process. Bbye Saurabh Malpani Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaus Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 Shaq, I was knowing from the beginning when I started seeing ur replies and contacted u first time, also was thinking Shaq was mute for sometime, so must be spearheading for the exam as u said gonna give in Nov end and u did it man hard . :tup: [dance] !!! Please advise me as I have booked for Dec 28 and having lot of headaches and work from Office. I have improved a lot in Verbal in all 3 sections but please enlighten us more about ur GMAT experience in detail. Thanks, Kaus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obelixous Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 great score!!! congrats!!![clap] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ramadass Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 Very good score... congratulations!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thebullfighter Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 i hd 22nov as ur gmat date in mind, thts y got lil worried. hope my message didn't bother u in any way (just 2 days before ur D-day:o) but im exxxxxtremmmmmmmmely happy to hear ur Outstanding score now. way to go bro.:grad: carpe diem!!! indeed. btw, where's th party?:D [clap] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
absoluteyellow Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 Congrats shaq on your awesome score.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adonis Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 Lemme too join the cheerin' party Congrats shaq Do post of ur success story. Cheers adonis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GMAT-HELP Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 Congrats! I knew GMAT would be a slam dunk for Shaq! Good luck with ur apps. Plz post ur test experience in detail when u find time. Thanks, GMAT-HELP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
riteshb Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 What a shock! Didn't I say a few weeks ago that anything less than a 740 would be disappointment? I'm taking my GMAT this Friday so I"ll report on my predictable results. My goal is a 600 so we'll see. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spiderman Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 :D knew all the way that you were gonna crack it .. Congrats Shaq :tup: [clap] !! must be mad at yourself for missing out on the quant ? :p ps: riteshb good luck for your GMAT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psyzygy Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 shaq! congratulations on your excellent score! good luck with your apps! :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fighter Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 hey shaq . Great Score! Please share ur exam experience. Could you please put in your amount of preparation and guidelines for us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smark Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 Great Score. Please share your prep startegy. Smark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaq Posted December 1, 2004 Author Share Posted December 1, 2004 Thank you all for your kind words. I have never been in any other forum where the people are as generous with their praise as with their recommendations. I am truly lucky to have found this support group. Let me introduce myself… Member of the fairer sex, 26 years young. First attempt at GMAT. First language is Malayalam, but have spoken English for over 20 years. Born in the southern most state of India (Kerala). I hold an Electrical and Electronics Engineering degree. Currently working as an IT professional in an automotive industry in Michigan. To summarize my GMAT prep experience.... I started preparing for GMAT in August and had scheduled August 30th to take the exam. I had never heard of this forum then. I had prepared by going through Nova's GMAT prep and some Kaplan materials. Two days before my scheduled date my husband handed me a printout and asked me to read it. It was a copy of Ursula's "Just finished my GMAT test" post. I know that Ursula never intended it to depress anybody but I was in the verge of tears when I finished reading the post. My preparation did not compare to a tenth of her's. I wiped my tears, cancelled my scheduled date (the best 250 dollars I have lost in my whole life) and plunged head first into this forum. Right away I realized that SC was my Achilles heel. Armed with Painless Grammar by Rebecca Elliot and Princeton's Grammar Smart, I decided to attack the enemy. These books helped me get up to speed on the grammatical jargon that most GMAT books use to explain their answers (e.g. pronoun antecedent etc). Every time an SC question was posted in the forum I would do extensive research on the concepts underlying the questions. Most frequented sites were Bartleby, one stop English ... to name a few. This helped to ingrain these concepts in my brain. On the side I started working with [tooltip=Official Guide]OG[/tooltip], GMAT Plus, Kaplan’s 2004 Edition, Kaplan’s Home study Book, Kaplan’s Lesson Book & Kaplan GMAT 800. Kaplan was great for quant as it had some very tricky DS questions and I share everybody else’s opinion that for Verbal prep, [tooltip=Official Guide]OG[/tooltip] is the best. I covered all exercises and questions in all of the above mentioned books in 2 months and 3 weeks. I scheduled the GMAT for Nov 30th (just one week prior) and mind you I had not taken a single full fledged exam till then. The last week, I concentrated on giving exams and working 8 hours a day in 2 blocks of four hours each. I wanted to build the stamina needed to concentrate for the four hour exam. These are the results of the tests. Kaplan Diag. 710 Kaplan CAT1 640 Kaplan CAT2 620 Kaplan CAT3 640 Power Prep CAT1 760 Power Prep CAT2 770 Real GMAT 760 Q49 V46 I found the Kaplan Verbal especially the CRs and RCs to be convoluted and difficult to comprehend. I didn’t write a single essay to practice for AWA. An aspect of my prep that I regret is that I didn’t practice as many RCs as I should have. I used to get a healthy dose of all the other types from Testmagic. I do believe that my lack of preparation on RC affected my verbal score to some extent. On G-Day…. Essays: The essay topics were good. I wrote 5 paragraphs on both. I used Erin’s template for Analysis of issue. Can be found at http://www.www.urch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11608 I wrote a simple template of my own for Analysis of argument which I used. I completed both essays with seven minutes to spare. Waiting for AWA results …. Quant: Only one word would describe it. :mad: Horrible!:yuck:(not enough smilies in the world to describe my exact sentiment)I don’t know what hit me. I was getting the vaguest questions in DS. All word problems and I think my brain just refused to work at some point. The first ten questions were ok (not great, just ok) I double checked all my calculations (just in case to avoid careless error). From 11th question onwards it was just nightmare….All the questions were word problems involving mean, median, range... Etc (No SD). I got one probability question that was very simple. (Hint: code generation). I have a theory on how ETS provides questions: If you get a mean/median problem wrong they give you more of the same. Similarly I got a weird question on DS about water pumps (which I am sure I got wrong) and lo and behold there were two more questions on water pumps. Just a theory, I might be wrong. I was very relieved to see the quant section come to a close. I finished it with just three minutes to spare. Verbal: I found the verbal section relatively simple. The SCs were straight forward and you could pick out the correct choices unambiguously. The RCs were simple and easy to comprehend. Among the Crs I found two that I thought was tricky. But looking at my score break down, I now realize they couldn’t have been that simple especially the RCs. I might have misunderstood at least a couple subtle points. I completed the section with 7 minutes to spare. Thank you … Transyt7 – thank you for keeping me on my toes. I really appreciate all your help and support. Really excited to see how well you do in your exam. Gmat168 - My partner in crime (or gmat). I know you are superstitious, so I don’t have a clue as to when your G-Day is. But I am sure your are going to ace it. SaurabhMalpani – Your words of encouragement really helped. Hope you do very well on your GMAT. Alien04 - I enjoyed sharing verbal tips with you. I really admire your dedication and enthusiasm to learn. It will carry you a long way. Bullfighter - you are the man! You have single handedly made the GMAT forum very entertaining. You have lots of energy and it radiates in everything you do. At the pace you are going (and improving) you will be more than prepared to face the real thing. (I didn’t see your PM until after my exam so it didn’t bother me at all. I was very touched by your concern) Kaus – Thank you sir for your kind words. I am glad to hear that you are improving in verbal. Keep it up. Dec 28th right? Just maintain your cool and take each question as it comes. Good luck! Riteshb – your words of encouragement and your confidence in my ability did wonders for me. I would read your posts whenever I felt down or depressed. It really helped. Thank you. Good luck for your GMAT. (Show them who is the boss) Spiderman – Yes, quant was hellish. I don’t know how I managed to get 49. Somebody up there loves me. You, sir, are a genius. I would suggest that you apply your faculties and come up with a solution for world hunger or something. I am truly honored to have known you. Erin – Your generous and selfless efforts in maintaining and running this forum are very commendable. I do not think that I could have done it without this forum. Thank you so very much! SuM, sankp, GMAT-HELP, noney08, post2ashish, malegria, shanmukh, boksana, vingmat…. (Please pardon me if I missed someone’s name) thank you all for making this the great forum that it is. I could go on and on… Finally some tips… 1. Utilize the 5min breaks. I had brought coffee (it helps me concentrate better – caffeine addict:p ) in a thermos and some snacks and put it in the locker. It revitalized me before each section. 2. Remember to go to the bathroom before the exam starts:doh: . I am sure my essay reviewer is going to wonder why all my sentences are urgent, short and curt.:D ha ha! 3. Take one question at a time. If you think you screwed up quant don’t let it affect your spirit. Verbal is a whole new section and with the right attitude you can ace it. 4. Get to the test center at least half hour before scheduled time. Take a walk around and familiarize yourself with the surroundings. 5. Practice doing math questions using a blunt pencil and just 6 pages of paper. That’s all folks. If any of you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact me. I will be happy to help. I will keep you posted about my application process. Regards Shaq 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spiderman Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 Absolutely Wonderful Post !!! No words to describe how happy I am for you after reading your post. I better leave it at that :). ps: Ursula, emv and now Shaq - my list of women i admire the most on TM keeps growing :) ps2: Wanted to write more but seriously out of words !! Yo Kerala !!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuM Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 Wonderful post. Congratulations on your excellent score and all the best. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spiderman Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 Shaq, If my memory serves me well. when you just started out on TM, you had a question for someone in one of the SC threads in SC forum asking how he/she gets all the SC questions correct. and about a month or so later someone asked you the same question, right ? was trying to search for those two posts ......... wanted to revisit those posts. ps: I hope I am not mistaken here .. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuZZ Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 Great Performance. Good to learn a few things about the shaq.......miles away from NBA :) Please recommend how we can prepare better for Median, Mode kind of stuff besides regular fundamentals. Also, would be nice to find more about your CR preparation. Best wishes for future endeavors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gsbawa Posted December 2, 2004 Share Posted December 2, 2004 what a post! phew! shaq, best of luck with your apps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smark Posted December 2, 2004 Share Posted December 2, 2004 Thanks for sharing your experience Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gmat168 Posted December 2, 2004 Share Posted December 2, 2004 I don't know how I missed this post...all I can say is congrats, but like a lot of people here, I think I expected such a great score from you! I want to be optimistic in that we'll still see you around the boards, if not answering GMAT ?'s, but just to update us on what your plans are. I think that's one part of the forums which is missing on really building a better sense of community...people sorta disappear after their GMAT! Enough sentimentality from me I guess. ;) :tup: :grad: :tup: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thebullfighter Posted December 2, 2004 Share Posted December 2, 2004 Member of the fairer sex, 26 years young. First attempt at GMAT. First language is Malayalam, but have spoken English for over 20 years. Born in the southern most state of India (Kerala). [clap]India rules. ps. if im not mistaken i clearly remember calling u Bro. once or twice for helping me wth those P & C Qs.:D i din't knew u were a female(or even tht u r a indian). u & spidy are th only ones whom i hav called bro. here on TM.(u also:o). so if u allow i would call u Sis. in future(though nt sure hw spidy would react to that:p) I have a theory on how ETS provides questions: If you get a mean/median problem wrong they give you more of the same. Just a theory, I might be wrong. makes sense. I will try to get th best of this. ie. will answer 1-2 such Qs(my comfort zones) wrong intentionally, & then will get a lot of em'.:p (ppl just kiddin.) Finally some tips… 1. Utilize the 5min breaks. I had brought coffee.. 2. Remember to go to the bathroom before the exam starts.. 3. Take one question at a time. If you think you screwed up quant don’t let it affect your spirit. Verbal is a whole new section and with the right attitude you can ace it. 4. Get to the test center at least half hour before scheduled time. Take a walk around and familiarize yourself with the surroundings. thanx a lot for th tips. some real nice ones. especially th last one. really liked it. absorb th energy, feel & connect to th surroundings type thingi. really liked it. Thank you … Thank u sis. Thank u. th inspiration for all tht im doing right now comes directly from u two. in the end. would just say two words. GREAT POST. GREAT POST.[clap] some more. Best of luck for everythin tht u do in future. Bull. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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