700 (Q49 V36) I am happy

[gmatlove]

Hi All

G-day is over for me and it is over for good. It has been an ardous journey with business trip, two postponements and infinite distractions. Could have done much better but I think I have enough ammo in rest of my app. to get some interview calls.

My sincere thanks to one and all here. Must mention a few; Ursula, Spiderman, Arjmen, 800Bob, PiyushT / Ticktacktoe, Twinsplitter GMATHELP, Manish and of course Erin. I must also thank GREMAT, MydreamGMAT, GSchmillinsky for some great posts and last minute suggestions. This does not mean that the rest of you are not important. Each and every post on this forum (more than two worded ones....I agree ones ) have been useful.

Am off to have a nice dinner with my lovely wife, who was feeling a bit neglected in the past couple of weeks and of course finally bring to an end to an affair..my love (I meant GMATlove)

Be back soon for a full debrief and of course some interesting questions from today's exam.

Love GL

Practice scores quick view:

GMATPREP1: 680
GMATPREP2: 750
MGMAT1: 690
MGMAT2: 700
MGMAT3: 710
PP1: 760
PP2: 750


Actual GMAT: 700 (Q49 V36) Verbal unusually low Rest later

[Erin]

Congrats on a great score!

[King Kong]

Congratulations buddy. We are scoremates!!! Good luck with your applications.

[chatru]

Gongratulation My friend!!!! You hit the 700th floor.wonder starts from here ...I amsure you have just enough time to work on your application.My G-Day is on 23rd of sep ...
Any last minutes suggestin you would like to share from
the perspective of : AWA/MA/VE....
your insight will be appreciated ....

Thanks
Chatru

[GREMAT]

Well done, buddy, I knew you`d make it!!!
I am very happy for you.
I am very interested in your debriefing, please tell us if the quant was tough.
Good luck!

[Cloudnineast]

Congratulations gmatlove...I was indeed wondering about your debrief...hey chatru, is it possible your G-day is on Oct 23rd?

[gmatlove]

Background: I am a technology manager in a startup company. Have one Indian and two American degrees. Now aiming for the third one. My first brush with GMAT was in 2004. I was sitting in a pub with my mate and we decided to do something with our lives other than earning a comfortable salary and leading a meaningless existence. In three weeks time, I was taking the GMAT, brash and overconfident, came back with an embarrasing 610. That did not deter me from applying to my favourite school HBS and they did call me for an interview. HBS ultimately dinged me but I had made up my mind that this is the way forward. Anyway two years later, I feel that I am ready for another go.

GMAT Preparation:

Materials consulted: Rating

1. OG-10 : Good material; confusing layout and easy quant
2. OG-11 : Phenomenal improvement from OG10 and the bible
3. Indian students would know about IIT guides. I am an IITian and I remembered ML Khanna IIT Mathematics from my JE days. I bought that from India. It is an overkill but gives good insight into Permutations and Combinations and Probability. Other good books are Hall and Knight; Bernard and Child etc, I did not use these. The problem is that the GMAT scores are going up and up thanks to lots of smart people out there especially from India and China, in order to compete with the fresh graduates, one has to blow away the dust a little bit
4. GMAT sets: Another must have for practice. Downloaded from Scoretop
5. Manhattan GMAT Sentence Correction and Online tests: Excellent stuff; integrated to OG11
6. Old Powerprep software
7. Kaplan 800 and GMAT guide

There was no shortage of materials and guides; All that was needed was to chain myself to one place for a couple of hours everyday and practice

GET THESE RIGHT IF YOU CAN!

1. PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE
2. IDENTIFYING YOUR WEAK SPOTS
3. GETTING THE RIGHT STUDY MATERIAL
4. BELIEVE IN YOUR ABILITIES TO SCORE HIGH
5. DO NOT SHY AWAY FROM YOUR WEAKNESSES
6. GET HELP AND HELP OUT ATTITUDE ON TM

I believe that a score above 700 is within reach of anyone who has basic math and english skills and is ready to grind away relentlessly at the task. There may be bright people who do not need that much work, but ultimately what matters is how much you score. So please take this notion out of your mind that a high score is not reachable. It can be frustrating when you see a question, have that queasy feeling that it is from your weak spot and then get flustered. I had a tough time with inequalities and absolute values in Data sufficiency. If you see my posts, I have been focussing on this area for the past few days.

I would like to share all my materials with you and will be hosting them on a website one of these days.


My 3 week run-up to GMAT:

Week 3: One Quant and One Verbal Set followed by analysis and reinforcements in between from Manhattan GMAT Sentence Corrections

Week 2: One Quant and One Verbal Set per day

Week 1: 4 full Tests and three days of revision of concepts and weak areas

Penultimate day: One full test in the evening

I do not believe in watching a movie or chilling out the day before an exam...I am on fire the day before and the fire lasts a few days even after the test. Everybody is different I guess...

The G-Day experience:

Reached the center well in advance. The staff was friendly. Biometrics is everywhere in GMAT. To go for a wee, you need to scan your index finger.
My experience no different from others, the note pads (basically laminated white sheets with a check pattern bound in 10 pages booklets of A4 size; erasable black markers from STAEDTLER which is all over you by the end of the test). Anyway no complaints here, I felt that this should present no problems to anyone.

IMPORTANT: THERE IS A 10 MINUTE BREAK BETWEEN SESSIONS AND NOT 5

Argument: It was about price of citrus fruits going up crazy and the editor blaming the farmers for price fixing without rhyme or reason

Issue: Retraining of redundant workers, who is responsible for them? Workers, Governments or the employers?

Quant: Started off easy, Got stuck at number 4. It was a right angled triangle with two sides adding up to 12 and the hypotenuse equal to 10. I had to find the area. The numbers were not adding nicely There were no major shockers, one permutation problem which was hard and one simple probability. There were some hardcore geometry problems. I will post them in some time. Anyway, I had to rush through at the end 4 questions in 6 minutes and this could have done a great deal of harm.

Verbal: Lots of SC and CR along with 4 RCs. One RC in every 10 questions approximately. One bold face CR which was quite easy. There was lot of testing on parallelism, Use of like / that and good old idioms. I did not believe my verbal score first. It was appalling.

The final: All those irritating questions which I skipped and my heart raced in anticipation to see the scores. I had earplugs on (supplied by Pearson) and I could hear the pounding. Saw my score....phew I had finally made it to the 700 mark well literally my foot in the door.


Please ask me any questions or email me at GMATLOVEATGMAILDOTCOM. I will be happy to send you study material and any advice or help. I hope to lurk on TM atleast till the end of my applications. I guess I will be incredibly busy for the next couple of months with eulogizing myself

Apologies if the information presented is sketchy. I had to get it out asap.

Once again, if you are still reading this, if you are struggling to score high, there is a very specific reason for that, it is not your innate abilities or intellect, it is a weak area that can be rectified by marshalling resources into that area. It does not matter, whether you are a native speaker or not, all of us make tons of mistakes in everyday language. GMAT has a specific set of concepts which can be mastered. I obviously did not do a great job at it but I am sure you can if you set your mind on it.

love and peace

GL

[Gmatters]

gr8 debrief!...
congrats!...and do share those math questions with us!...

[GMAT-HELP]

Congrats! Good luck with ur apps!

[mydreamGMAT]

Thats called falling in Love....We all are so proud of you.....You have actually done a amazing JOB.....keep up the good work....Looking forward to read about ur acceptance to HBSCheers and Good Luck for appsGOD BLESS