660 (q 48 v 32)

[kriskrush]

Well, not much to say. I started my preparation from scratch 2 months ago.
Used Kaplan Verbal workbook and Kaplan800. These were very good for strategies.

I had taken GRE some 5 years back and have been doing mathematical and logical programming for work, so always believed Quants should not be a problem. But, I was surprised. First, I was making lots of silly mistakes, which I brought it under control. Then was struggling with DS and word problems, taking lots of time, which I improved but not completely.

For verbal, spent lots of time on Kaplan strategies and OG 11 and OG verbal. Was 67% good at SC, 80+% in CR and 80+% in RC. So though I should be ok.

On verbal, I think I scored lower than what I expected. I was getting around 34-38 on practise.

For practise used:
OG 11, OG verbal and quant workbook, Kaplan Verbal workbook, Kaplan 800 and occasionally forums - Testmagic and Scoretop

800score (only 2 tests) - math was too time consuming, verbal too easy

All the following tests in the week before the test:

GMAT Sets 2,3,13,14,25,30 (Got around 5-12 wrong in quants and 8-11 wrong in verbal)

GMATPrep 1, 2 (640 - 46, 38 and 640 - 48, 32) (dont remember the split well)
Reinstalled GMATPrep 1,2 (710, 700)

I didn't take any other test.


On the test day:

Test center was good. I panicked at the very sight of plastic scratch pad and marker pen, but it wasn't that bad. But had problem with the desktop as I was uncomfortable placing computer mouse and the scratch pad on the same right side, I had practised all this while with a laptop.

The test started - AWA was easy:
Topics were easy. I didn't use templates but just went with the flow of though and composed a decent essay.


Took a short break and started quants. Nothing surprising here, problems very much like what we see in the GMAT sets. Around 20th question, I was running short of time, so guessed 5 questions that I thought I will take lots of time to solve. At the end, had enough time for the last few questions and finished with 30 secs left.


Took a short break again and started verbal. I felt the SC were tricky, apparently that explains my low score with my weakness in SC. RC passages were easy to read but I felt some 40% of the RC questions were tricky. Phrases used in the questions referred to something in passage, hence took time to interpret the question. CR were easy, I was able to easily exclude the wrong choices.

Thats it. It really "calculates" the score, took almost 1 minute before it displayed the score.

On my background and plan: I came to US in Fall 2001 for MS in mech and aero. Doing research and analysis in air traffic management systems at work. I'm looking to move back close to home, India, maybe Singapore. So looking for schools outside US. And planning to apply in 2008.

I haven't done much research on schools in Asia. So not sure if I have to take GMAT again but I will do much better next time.

[gmatnov12]

Congrats!!! ; Nice de-brief ,how did you improve in RC's ?

[kriskrush]

thanks.
In RC, there are not that many sentences and the passages are mostly self contained.
While doing RC, I read back to myself and related one sentence to the other as I moved through the passage. At the end, I paused a moment to put them together. I re-read the passages in case they were difficult to understand, it saved a lot of time while taking questions and re-reading passage, when needed, took only few extra seconds.