WAG

Got a 5.5 on my AWA, now the GMAT chapter of my application is officially closed

Kaplan: 560, 580 GMAT PREP: 740, 710 POWER PREP: 750, 740 Paper Tests: 680,710,730 Actual: 710

Great job! over 80-80 % will put you in a competitive position for any b-school. Btw, I took the gmat 10 days ago and got an identical breakdown 50/37 but ended up with a 710. I know this is an annoying question but are you sure about 50/37?

Well done! Perserverance pays off!!!

Thanks all I am planning for the fall 06 intake. I haven't decided exactly which schools to apply to, this is my current activity. I plan to apply to no more than 3-4 from the following set: H/W/S, Colombia, Insead, LBS, UVA, NYU Also investigating weather the GMAT is worth a retake or not in the context of my overall application strength...

I am pleased with my overall score though I was expecting something between 40-44 on the Verbal which would have put me in the 750+ bracket. More on that in the “lessons learned” section though. I would like to thank Erin for this excellent online resource and TwinnSplitter & Ursula for their extremely helpful debriefings. Ok, this post is a little detailed but I wanted to give some value back to this forum so here we go! I borrowed & re-engineered one of the common templates on this forum so you can skip directly to the part that is of particular interest to you. The sections are: 1- Background 2- Disclaimer 3- Test Experience (this is divided into several sections) 4- Test Prep: approach, strategy & lessons learned 5- Practice scores Background: 26 years old with 4+ years of IT/Management consulting experience at a large multinational. Work experience in 5 countries during those 4 years, mainly in the Middle East and South Europe. Currently working as an internal consultant for a large Teclo. Disclaimer: As said by those before me on this forum, all people learn differently and what works for some may not work for others so take what you read below as no more than guidelines Ok, let’s get to the real reason your reading this: Test Day Scheduling the test: I never had a particular date in mind but I had a rough idea from this forum and by asking others that typically a good prep consisted of 8-10 weeks of regular study. Of course, I didn’t want to waste 1 hour of study more than I would need to for my desired score, therefore after scoring 750 on powerprep1 during week 3, before even buying the OG, and 740 on powerprep2 in week 4 I went ahead and scheduled the test 2 weeks from then to give me some time to go through OG. I would highly recommend this approach rather than having the”finish the OG” as a milestone – more on that in test prep section. Day before: unfortunately I had the worst possible week at work right before the test. Deadlines and long hours and all, I was pretty exhausted the night before. Didn’t do much practice, maybe just some 10-20 problems as I was getting restless, but mainly focused on AWA as I had not given it much thought. In spite of being exhausted I didn’t get a decent night of sleep and woke up uneasy, maybe I should have taken some of Twinnsplitters NyQuil. The Test: AWA: Nothing too interesting to report here. I got 2 ‘typical’ questions and felt pretty comfortable handling both. Wrote about 5 paragraphs for each. However when I start writing I tend to get too carried away with my ideas and lose track of time, so I set a rule for myself to STOP what I was doing at 10 minutes – wrap up the last idea and start with the conclusion. Leaving enough time to go back to the essay tune it, spice it up a bit with some rhetorical clauses, add some irony to it, and even some humor. Well, I don’t have my score yet so I can’t validate this approach – but it works for me. In general I was feeling much better after this as it got my brain fully lubricated and ready to go for Quants. Break #1: As my test started around noon I was getting pretty hungry so I utilized this break so eat half the chocolate bar and a drink of water. Went to the toilet and barely got back in time! Quant: I want to take this opportunity to disagree with a lot of what I have been reading lately on this forum about Quants getting significantly tougher or “different”. Though the actual GMAT when coupled with test tension may appear tougher it is in fact no more difficult or different than the ‘hard’ questions in OG. Yes there are more probability and statistics questions than you would see in the PowerPrep tests but these are quit elementary in difficulty. They were actually some of the easiest questions on my test, nothing as tough as what you see in this forum. All in all I could solve all the problems here with the exception of 1 question related to number theory which just stomped me! As for timing I only constructed a rough game plan for myself since, especially in Quants, you never know when you get that problem that just eats up your time. And I am particularly stubborn so I cant just skip and move on, though I would highly recommend that to others as its just a bad idea on the GMAT. However,I finished 5 minutes early but at this point was starting to feel a bit tired. My game plan: Minute 50 – question 12 Minute 20 – question 28 Break #2: I had taken a Red bull with me to the test center – just in case. Well as I was getting really tired by this point I decided to guzzle it down and to be extra sure I would be ready to go for Verbal I went to the bathroom and splashed some water on my face. However I don’t know if I would recommend the Red bull. Though it woke me up initially I felt terrible during the last 10-12 questions, more on that below. Verbal: Very disappointed about getting a 37 here as I was expecting something closer to 42. This section was no harder than what we have in the OG, with the exception of the Sentence Correction. They are really good at writing these! I had to guess between 2 choices at least half the time and I saw a lot of these questions. Reading Comprehension was always my strong point and I found these texts pretty easy to understand and the questions as always in RC where straight fwd. For those who freak out about Reading Comprehension here are my 2 cents: Read the passage as if you are genuinely interested in woman’s labor movements in 1812 with respect to changes in the urbanization trends of the late 18th century bla bla bla… that’s not an actual topic but you get the point. Read explicitly don’t just skim. Even if it takes 1-2 minutes more this is time you will certainly save on the questions related to the text if you actually understand what you read. Generally the answers to these questions, unless the question says “inferred”, can be directly found in the text – not much analysis required. Critical reasoning where also straight forward, no different than OG – though I don’t recall seeing a lot of these question types. On my particular test I started of strong in this section which was apparent as the questions where getting typically tougher, however somewhere after my 4th RC which ended on question 28 I started feeling terrible. I suppose the infamous Red Bull was wearing off. I was extremely tired at this point, my eyes begging me to shut them for just 2 minutes. I tried to motivate myself, thinking I didn’t get this far to fall asleep in the last 15 minutes. Unfortunately I never recovered from this point, I kept at it though but the questions kept getting easier which made things even bleaker for my motivation. After the test: Anyways, I finished the test and zoomed through the ETS survey. At this point I didn’t know what score to expect. I knew I had performed as usual on the Quants so was expecting a 49 or 50. But had no idea what Verbal was like, on the practice (powerprep & gmatprep) my scores here ranged between 37 and 44, 37 was on my tired days when I did test late at night after work so figured I might have done even worse. 710 - 95%. I wasn’t over the moon, but given my particular circumstance at that point I was certainly relieved. Test Prep, approach, strategy and lessons learned: I started off with Kaplan, they have an excellent software available. Since Kaplan is significantly harder than the “real” thing I highly recommend starting there - as it is the “boot camp” to preparing. A good analogy for Kaplan would be like practicing to run a marathon when the race is for a mile. After a couple weeks with the Kaplan software I did powerprep 1 then started with the OG. Initially I was doing all problems in OG however I found that as I will most likely be on the hard section during the test doing other problems was just inefficient. In total I spent about 3 weeks working between the OG, power prep 2 and gmatprep. All this in parallel with regular use of this great site. In fact you can find all the software along with the excel file that classifies OG problems between easy, medium and hard on this site just use the search feature endlessly. I knew from this site that the GMATPREP & PowerPrep are good indicators of actual performance so I used the milestone approach to decide on the test date – decided that if my first 3 scores where over 740 then I was good to go. Always aim 20-30 points higher than the score you desire to ensure that you can achieve it on the bad days. I recommend this rather than the finish Kaplan, Princton & OG approach I often see on this site. How do you know how much you need to prepare if you don’t know your level or have a target?? In total I would say I spent an average of 10 hours a week working on the GMAT for about 6 weeks. Though the distribution of this effort is skewed as I was closer to 5 hours in week 1 and 15 in week 6. Most of my practice consisted of taking tests or doing timed sets form OG. I would say the key success factors and lessons learned are: - Always practice under timed conditions. Always. Almost anyone can get answers correct with unlimited time. - In Quants pay particular attention to unique outcomes when working on DS problems. Use the rule of 7 – that is; try -2, -1, -1/2, 0, ½, 1 , 2 - Quants certainly improve with practice. - Always plug numbers, its the only way to be sure - In retrospect I probably should have spent some time on grammer once I realized that I was going by instinct on SC and that my Verbal score was dipping. It seems the more I practiced SC the more technically confused I become. - No one writes questions like ETS, the OG mixed with this forum is the best possible resource to prepare for the actual GMAT!! Here are my test prep scores: Week # - Test type – overall/Q/V Started Kaplan Week 1 – Kaplan Diagnostic – 650/41/39 Week 2 – Kaplan CAT 1 – 560/39/31 Week 2 – Kaplan CAT 2 – 510/31/23 (that’s what it said!!) Week 3 – ETS paper code 14 – 670/45/38 Week 3 – ETS paper code 31 – 690/47/38 Week 3 – Powerprep 1 – 750/49/44 Started OG v 10 Week 4 – Kaplan CAT 3 – 580/39/31 Week 4 – Powerprep 2 – 740/49/42 (after 10% of OG) Week 5 – GMATPREP 1 – 740/50/40 Registered for GMAT for Sept 19 Week 6 – GMATPREP 2 – 690/48/37 Week 6 – GMATPREP 3 – 700/49/37 (each time you retake GMATPREP it gives 96% new questions, so enjoy!) Week 6 - Actual GMAT 710/50/37 I hope you find this helpful.

I say A by POE. Problem with b: who is proclaiming? Problem with d: the use of "for" is incorrect

C. If the state law typically supercedes local ordinances then this is the only case where the campaign can be misleading because voters would assume that the campaign is attempting to make state laws more strict. Notice, the voters dont know that "The petition advocates a state law banning smoking in most retail establishments and in government offices that are open to the public." This is a tough CR, the answer did not stand out - I came to my choice mainly by using POE. ESeraph where did you find this CR?

How do your gmatprep compare with powerprep? I have taken 2 powerprep and 1 gmatprep and all 3 scores where the same so I would have to say, until I do gmatprep 2, that the scoring is at least as accurate as powerprep

Canis Lupus, sorry to hear of your experience - with a 680 and strong app your good to go for most places though. Can you elaborate on how the Q was "different"? Was it because you had not prepared std deviations & perm.and prob q's or where they significantly different? The issue with such problems is that the OG doesn't offer much exposure to the type of Q's you can expect. Can you give an idea what they where like? (i.e DS or PS? etc..)

Guys - I have read extensivly on this forum that the gmatprep is more difficult than powerprep and therefore compensates with more lenient scoring, essentially your powerprep & gmatprep scores should be close. what did you guys score on power prep?

Congrats tmhandle - thats a great score! Did you get alot of Perm/Comb (as everyone seems to be) and if so where they significantly difficult?

Guys, how did you find the PowerPrep scoring? I had 4 mistakes on Q & got a 49, also 4 on V & got a 44

business_knowledge1, I have not yet done my GMAT so maybe my adivce is flawed. However, I think you are going about it all the wrong way. How do you know that you need a year of preparation if I dont know you current level?? I would suggest: 1- Set a target score based on where you want to go for B-school. Set realistic targets since the GMAT is only 1 of SEVERAL criteria. 2- Get quickly familiar with the test (1-2 weeks max) using kaplan, princton or OG. 3- Give a diagnostic/ assessment test such as the Kaplan Diagnostic or even PP1. I beleive both are very good predictors. 4- Based on your score in step 3 and your ambitions in step 1 you can determine the gap and set up an appropriatly targeted study plan to address your weak areas. 5- I think preparing for the GMAT at 2-3 hours a day for over 8-10 weeks will cause burn-out & reduce interest. Too much material is generally redundant, and eventually can be confusing. In my opinion, stick to one book (Kaplan/princton) & the holy OG, along with test magic you should be set. Good luck.

Answer is A: 1- Z is closer to 10 than it is to X: This indicates that if Z is less than 10 then the greatest X can be is 7 - making Z 9. In this case (10+7)/2 = 8.5 which Z is greater than. Try other numbers and you will find this holds. 2- Z=5X Here we can take the least possible value for X, in this case 1. This makes Z = 5, but (1+10)/2 = 5.5 However if we take X as 2, this would make Z 10 which is greater than (10+2)/2. So this gives inconsistant results.