Perseverance Pays: 740, Q 51, V 38 (overall 98 percentle)

[score800]

Just back from my centre... Scored 740... Definitely happy with my performance and proud of my perseverance. Will take my good wifey out for a lavish dinner for having put up with my studies

My journey for gmat began 2 years back in September 2004. I started with Kaplan, Princeton and OG-10 th edition. Prepared for 3 weeks and answered the exam..scored 670... I totally underestimated the exam and was totally unaware of such treasures as testmagic and scoretop.
I was totally shattered... Decided against applying that year as I had only 3 years of exp.

Forgot about gmat for the next 12 months, escapist that I am. Totally avoided thinking about an MBA or GMAT. In September 2005, decided to appear for the exam again. Discovered testmagic, scoretop, 1000sc, cr and rc. Devoted some time towards these materials... re-did og-10 and answered the exam in october after 8-9 weeks of preperation. Scored 700. Shattered again, as I was expecting at least 720-730. Applied to a couple of my dream colleges, by trying to differentiating myself from the Indian + IT profile by using a weird reasoning to apply for an mba. Got rejected from all colleges.

Escapist tendencies crept in again... Forgot abt gmat and a mba for 8-9 months. Meanwhile, I used to talk to my friends... motivating them to think about an mba... of course because of the bright career prospects that awaited on completion... Managed to convince a bloke named Razind to take the exam... he went on and scored 780.

This high IQ bloke and my ever charming wifey (her motivating factor to push me was ofcourse some additional dollars to spend in macy's and nordstorm) started pushing me for one final attempt. Initially, I pushed them back... mainly because I had answered "CAT" a number of times followed by 2 gmat attempts. So, that enthu and motivation to prepare again was missing.
The place where I work now (in US), has a college which offers 100% scholarship for exceptional candidates... Work experience (Indian IT profile) and extra curriculars wise, I thought I was right up there to be compared for this scholarship, but not in terms of my gmat score... I knew I needed to belong to the top 1-2% to even be considered.

Decided to devote a solid 40 days for preps... I wanted a minimum of 730-740 to get a real shot for the scholarship..

This is what I did. I knew I was already in the 700 club, I had to jump 30-40 points from here.... which was my minimum target

Quant

1. OG-11
2. Scoretop Mjjs
2. Quant from various tests

Must have devoted not more than 30 hours for Quant

Verbal (the pain part for me- devoted 90 hours)

1. CR: First 5 days of only LSAT CR, followed by OG-11-CR and ocassionally some CR from Testmagic (Total of 7 days)

2. RC: Days 8-12 only LSAT RC, followed by OG-11-RC and ocassionally some CR from Testmagic (Total of 7 days)

3. SC: Days 15-20 ... manhattan sc coupled with og-10 sc
Next 2 days-Referred Spidey, Sahils and Rohits notes. Solved around 250 questions from 1000sc for additional practice

Days 22-30 - Quant

Days 30-40 - Full Length Scoretop sets + gmatprep + powerprep + revision


AWA: Already had a template.. Just tweaked this


Test Day:

Scheduled the test for a Monday, so that I had the weekend priot to that for final touches... though the final touches mainly involved watching the new Shahrukh blockbuster "Don"

Test Centre: Test centre was amazing. Both my previous attempts were in India. The difference in quality was percecitble... I would advise anyone with an opportunity to answer the exam in US, to consider that option.
I was also ecstatic to get 10 mt breaks between sections. I had mentally just prepared for 5 mts of rushed up activities (mainly eating)

AWA -: Was a breeze. Plugged in the points between the template. Felt confident and ready to tackle Quant... my strong point

1st Break: Big chunk of Lindt (chocolate) + water + bannana

Quant: First 4 questios were a breeze. Must have completed them in 2 mts. Then the hard ones started tumbling out of the closet. At around question 13, misread a question... ended up wasting aroud 10 mts on this. Re-read a question to smile at my foolishness and moved on. I was 100% confident about all my quant answers. A scaled score of 51 does do justice TO that confidence. Strong advise here: Solve all Scoretop Mjjs for at least 1-2 months. This will give you good confidence and that x factor to move from 49-50 to 51

2nd Break: Gulped down a red bull, some almonds and a chocolate cookie

Verbal: I knew this was the make or break section.. Two SC's, a CR then a RC. Questions were of gmatprep/powerprep standard. Think there was a 50-50 guess on a rc... Then some more SCs and CRS. Follwed by a RC. By this time, I had reached question 18... wih 38 minutes to go. I was not confident about all the answers (explains the 38 scaled score)... there were some questions in which I could eliminate 3 choices but not the fourth.. Trudged along unhappily... expecting the worst.. Got a Bold Faced CR arounf question 26... Then again 2 RCs and some CRs and SCs at the end..

Finished both sections with 2 mts to spare... Planned the exam well.
Answered some silly questions and clicked on "Report Scores" with hands joined, as if in prayer... asking God for a good score. Screen lighted up with 740...

I was happy. Happy that 40 days of effort was not wasted, happy that my perseverance finally paif off.

Here, I would like to state some important observations, mainly from my experience

1. Perseverance pays.. It does... Hang in there and some day the results will come... Never lose hope

2. I am an average bloke... Average on IQ, but I think I am very high on EQ. This myth of mine may one day shatter when Pearson or ETS comes up with a standardised test for EQ. Point, I am trying to drive here is that a high score on this exam is achievable... What is required is
methodical, dedicated, planned effort....A clutter of grey cells can be a substitue for this...but what do you do in case you dont have that clutter... study hard in a planned, methodical manner... with a goal in mind...

3. Finally, go for ur goals... dont be happy with a 2nd hand honda accord when you can drive a new merc


My practise scores:

Practice scores
1. 09/10 - GMATPrep1 - 740 (51, 38)
Verbal: RC- 8R, 5W. SC-11R, 5W, CR-11R, 1W

2. 9/17 - GmatPrep2 - 730 (49, 40)
Verbal: rc- 11R, 3W. SC-12R, 4R, CR-9R, 2W
3. Powerprep 1 - 770 (51, 42)
RC: 8, 2
cr: 7, 1
sc: 10, 2

4. GMAT SET 21 - 730 (approx)
Q: 35C, 2W
V: sc-12r, 4w, rc: 10R, 4W,, CR: 8R, 3W

5. GMAT SET 22 - 750 (approx)
Q: 33C, 4W
V: sc: 15c, 1w, cr: 9c, 2r, rc: 11c, 3w

6. GMAT SET 23 - 770 (approx)
Q: 36C, 1W
V; 8C, 1W, CR: 13C, 5R, RC: 13C, 1W

7. gmat set 24 - 750 (APPROX)
Q: 36R, 1W
v: sc- 14r, 2w, CR: 9R, 2R, RC: 10R, 4R
8. GMAT SET 26 - 790 (approx)
Q: 37 R
V: 37R, 4W, 1SC, 2CR and 1 RC wrong
9. New GMATPREP - 750 (cd)
Q: 50
V: 40, sc-11r, 5w, cr-10r, 1w, RC-11R, 3W
10. New GMATPREP - 750 (cd)
Q: 50
V: 41, RC-11R, 3W, CR-8R, 4W, SC-12R, 4W

Chalo, c u guys in one of the b-schools
SCORE800 (just 60 short )

[skarya]

congratulations!!

You really deserve that scholarship...

Best of luck.

regards,
skarya

[mydreamGMAT]

Man am I feeling Bad for that "60 short"....ITS A GRTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT Score...wish u loads and loads of luck.......I am a HR person so I can vouch that ur EQ is as important as ur IQ.....may be u can sell urself to some B Schools based on that......BTW How was DON...hope SRK has done some justice to Big BGood Luck for appsGod bless

[Razind]

Three Cheers To score800

Hats off to his amazing perseverance and determination to succeed that eventually fetched him rich dividends.

I believe that his story would serve as a lesson to any prospective GMAtter that one would always get what one deserves if one tries hard enough.

Thanks again to this dude for inspiring me all the way and if I could return the favour, I would consider myself honoured.

Once again hearty congratulations

[Student_01]

Congratulations dude!

Impressive story! It takes quite a perseverance to achieve what you have achieved given the kind of setbacks you had. (I am sure this is no news to you). Keep it up!

Hey, quick question regarding your advice that we solve MJJ questions: Could you please elaborate on this, and explain how did you go about solving the MJJ questions? I am not a member of scoretop, but from whatever the MJJ questions that I have seen on this forum, solving those questions was not a satisfying experience. Rather, it was a very frustrating one because of the poorly reconstructed questions with wrong or no answer choices. I would appreciate if you could advise us on that.

Regards,
Student_01

[score800]

Scoretop Mjj is critical... Register in the vip forum and solve the current month's and previous month's questions. The format is pretty good now. The discussion link to the each question is present after the question. The answer will be present there and its pretty conclusive....
It used to be haphazard but its totally worth the $30 for a month.

[charu_mulye]

Congratulations Score800 !!
Although not aware of your history, I knew that you would score high.
Perseverance and patience both paid rich dividends in the end..

[mar2]

score800,

Your story really inspires me!!!! It makes me want to study even harder for my GMAT exam........ Congrats and all the best for your application!!

[nagar]

Congratulations Score800 for ur amazing score!

[nagar]

Congratulations Score800 for ur amazing score!