ej20

Hi everyone, I am very relieved to be done with the GMAT...took it on Monday. I have a number of materials that I used during my prep that I am hoping to sell. Mostly, I just want to get rid of them, so I will sell them for cheap. If you are interested in anything, please email erinjoy22@yahoo.com. Books: - Entire Set of Veritas Prep Course Material Books - $50 & shipping The set consists of books broken down by subject and question type and contains over 1400 pages of material. I found the Veritas materials to be very comprehensive, and you can only access them if you take a class. I have written over most of the problems in the lessonbooks, but the subject lessons are largely untouched. Furthermore, there are 4 diagnostic tests which are in perfect condition. The course cost $1400, so I would be wiling sell these for $50 plus whatever shipping costs. - Official Guide (11th edition) - $7 & shipping I have written in about a 1/4 of this book. - Nova's GMAT Course - $10 & shipping Only about 10 pages in this book have been written in. It includes the original CD. - 2005 Kaplan 800 - $7 & shipping About a 1/4 of this book has been written in.

I took the test at the beginning of this week and didn't really have a problem with it. One thing to maybe think about: I was one of the first people to come in the morning (my exam was at 9 am) for my time slot. They let me start a bit early, so my breaks didn't really coincide with the rest of the people in my room. Because of this, I might have had an easier time getting the proctor's attention. The clock does continue running during your break, but both of the long breaks (after AWA and Quant) are 10 minutes, so it should be more than enough time to eat something, clear your mind, and go back in there. Don't stress over this.

I think that the previous statement about the big commercial prep companies definitely does apply. They just seem to teach you strategies and not a comprehensive way to attack the test. Unfortunately, I think your experience will also vary with your instructor a lot too. I took the Veritas Prep class. My instructor was extremely smart and helpful. He spent time making packets of challenge problems with us and would go over the logic behind the hardest problems. The course itself was good because it forced me to study but I could see it having been different with a different instructor. I have seen other people say both negative and positive things about Veritas, but I think their approach is pretty comprehensive. You also spend a lot more time in class than Princeton and Kaplan. I think a lot of it is getting to a comfortable point with most of the question types and then really focusing on a couple weaknesses. I used Manhattan GMAT's book to strengthen my sentence correction and number property skills. I really liked their books, so it would not surprise me if their classes were also good. Good luck with the studying.

I just took the GMAT this morning. I got a 760! My breakdowns were as follows: overall percentile - 99%, Q - 49 (90%), & V - 44 (97%). I'm really ecstatic about this. Test experience: Got there about an hour before it started. People at the check in were nice enough, but I thought they could've been a bit more friendly. Poor guy in front of me wasn't a US citizen and didn't bring his passport, so they told him he had 2.5 hours to get back with it or else they be able to allow him to take the test...I actually knew about this because I had read a post regarding a similar experience and brought my passport with even though I am a US citizen (overkill, I know). They let me into the testing room about a half hour before I was supposed to take my exam, so I was the first person in my particular room. I started the AWA, and I didn't love the essays that I was given, but I didn't draw on a blank on them either. Wrote both according the template I had practiced a few times (probably did 3 of both types). On both essays, I pretty much stopped writing content for the last 4-5 minutes to edit the essay...I tend to type of think so fast that I'll leave out words, so needed to guard against this. Took the entire 30 minutes on each. Took a break, went to the bathroom, ate a yummy granola bar, drank some water, and returned to computer with a good 4 minutes to spare. My math got reasonably difficult fairly soon off. To be honest, the entire math section, I really wasn't feeling like I was doing great. I didn't feel like I was tanking it, but I didn't expect to get the raw score I got . I felt like there were more DS than PS but this is probably just because I find those more difficult. Had a number of number property DS problem which weren't ridiculously hard, but I always second guess myself on. I also had a three circle Venn Diagram problem which I don't think I got right. I reviewed these types of problems before the test, but for some reason I couldn't get the answer to match the choices...picked the one that looked best making some modifications to how I was working the problem. Also had an arithmetic sequence problem which was pretty hard about 4 questions into the test. I made the mistake which seems typical of me is I took too long on one question in the middle and thus had to rush at the end. I got some questions toward the end which I thought were pretty easy and worried me that I wasn't doing as well as I hoped. Maybe these were experimental? I took another break and ate again. I read that women particularly get low blood sugar during a test like this, so it is important to eat between sections. I also find it helpful to clear my head a bit. The verbal started off with a bunch of sentence corrections. I really focused on these the days before the test, so I felt decently about my performance on these type throughout the exam, although I did start getting some pretty challenging ones towards the end. I had 3 RC passages, the first and last were pretty short. I thought 2 of them were a decent amount harder than what I had seen previously. But, I did almost no practice of RC since I have typically been pretty good at these types of sections. My critical reasoning were all ok with the exception of 2 or so that took me awhile to reason through. I usually finish the verbal section with 10-15 minutes remaining, and I finished up right at the end this time. So all in all, I'm thrilled with the score. I actually wasn't expecting it to be that high when I was waiting for the report, but that might just be me being pessimistic, who knows. My Practice: I did the Veritas Prep class, which consists of 3 hour classes twice a week for 7 weeks. My instructor was really smart and cool...I enjoyed the class. During the class, I attended all but one sessions and kept up with the homework on the weekends (doing two lessonbooks depending on the subject could take anywhere from 4-8 hours). Really didn't do anything other than class materials during those seven weeks. I took the test 2.5 weeks after my Veritas class was over. I revisited my Veritas materials to pull out key points and strategies but didn't look over any of the problems again really. At that point, I had never been on testmagic, but my instructor had told us about it at the beginning of the course. I started coming on here to check solutions to problems that I couldn't figure out. I continued to use the site for that purpose but also started reading through the threads of problems that I had the most difficulty with (Number property DS, SC, etc.) I also got some great suggestions here, like TwinSplitter's post which cited the Manhattan GMAT book as the best for SC. I focused primarily on improving my SC and DS in the past two weeks. I felt pretty confident about RC and CR so I didn't do much of them. Did a decent amount of the hard problems posted on testmagic for PS. I didn't study like crazy during the work week because I have pretty long hours at my job. In fact probably only studied 2 times (for 2 hours) during the work weeks and then would do 5-8 hours a day on the weekends. Going into the test, I felt like I should've done more problems from the official guide. I did all the SC problems, maybe 1/3 of the CR, and maybe 1/3 of the PS. Got stressed out towards the end of my prep and felt it was better to pull back than to go nuts. In the end, it didn't matter. I have always been decent at math, but as I've cited, I struggled with the number property questions...I think I raised my quant score significantly by doing the GMAT Prep tests a number of times. I only took the full ones each once. But I probably ran through the quant section an additional two times per test. I did get repeat questions, but I went through and wrote down the ones I got wrong and carefully figured out not only how to get the right answer but the logic to do so. Practice Scores: GMAT Prep 1: 670 Q-41 V-41 GMAT Prep 2: 670 Q-45 V-37 Kaplan: 690 Q-42 V-42 As I said, I did the Math section a number of times...I was pretty much honest in that if I saw a question I knew I had answered wrong, I clicked a wrong answer, or I took the time to do out the work for ones I knew I had previously gotten right. Those raw scores ranged from 46-50. You can see that my practice scores are quite a bit lower than my regular score. The first GMAT prep I took before I did any studying whatsoever. The second one, I took about 2 weeks before the test, and I freaked out when I got that score because I was shooting for a 730-740. My friend talked me out of freaking out, and this is when I backed off my plan to study ever single night before the test and just tried to calm down about the whole thing. Work was really stressing me out the day I took that second GMAT Prep test, so that might have contributed to the lower score. Kaplan is hard to evaluate, but I saw a lot of people who were scoring in the 500's on Kaplan and got very respectiable actual GMAT scores, so I was encouraged by that when I took it a week before the test. --- Anyway, this is a really long post, I think I got out all the nerves I surpressed to take the test. My advice is to try to be as calm as possible going into the thing and not worry about problems/sections you can't change. Thanks for all the help from this forum!

If n and p are integers, is p>0? ST1: n + 1 > 0 ST2: np > 0

If zy ST1: z ST2: y>0

If '&' denotes one of the two arithmetic operations, addition or multiplication, and if k is an integer, what is the value of 3 & k? ST1: 2 & k = 3 ST2: 1 & 0 = k

I got 36 as well... Kind of nerdy but for me on distance problems I just always write out the formula D=rt because it helps me keep organized as to what I am doing. Here you just need to find the number of gallons you expend by driving in the city and on the highway (10 / 25 + 50/40 = 33 / 20) So then 60 total miles divided by the number of gallons (33/20) is about 36

I did a little bit more qualitatively... If there are equal numbers of cheese and fruit on each platter, that means you can two general types of platters: 1) two cheese and two fruits or 2) one cheese and one fruit So the number of possibilities to of these are: 1) There's only 2 types of fruit available so the possibilities would be the number of ways to arrange 6 cheeses into 2: so it's a combination 6! / (2!*4!) = 15 2) The number of ways to arrange 6 cheeses and 2 fruits into platters with one cheese and one fruit is simply : 2*6 = 12 SO: 15 + 12 = 27 I think this is the correct way to get the answer

Another one to do... "If w + x 0" ST1: x + y ST2: y

Hi all, I'm about a week out from my GMAT and feeling ok about the whole thing...no longer freaking out like last week. I have seen a couple people post on here that they took Nyquil the night before the test to help them sleep. I usually have a very hard time sleeping the night before anything important to me, so I was curious how much people took and if doing so made them feel groggy at all. Thanks, EJ

Hi could someone help explain the solution of this DS question to me? "Are the positive integer p and q both greater than n?" ST1: p - q is greater than n ST2: q is greater than p

Hi everyone, My GMAT test is scheduled for 2 weeks from tomorrow. Today, I took the second GMAT Power Prep test and scored a 670 (45Q, 37V). I took the first GMAT power prep before I started any prep at all and also got a 670 (41q 41v). So you can see that somehow I managed improve quant and decrease my verbal. Interesting because I have always thought of the CR and RC as my strengths. I did feel pretty distracted during the end of the test during the verbal and was thinking about other things although I did not have a problem with time at all during this portion. I took a Veritas prep course over the past 6 weeks and just finished that. During the class, I have kept up with the homework on the weekends but have dont very few practice tests (just did one only quant to gadge where I was with that). My goal is pretty seriously a 720 or above and feel like I will be pretty disapointed with anything below / will retake anything under a 700. I am wondering what people's advice is for me (other than to obviously review verbal more than I was planning and take more practice tests) with regard to my study plan for the last two weeks before the test. I am planning on basically putting in a couple hours every night after work and doing practice tests on the weekend. I was thinking about rescheduling, but I feel like I should just take the test and I can always retake in a month or two if the score is not adequate since I have already put these weeks into studying. Do you think I should postpone? Sorry for the long post. I appreciate any thoughts or advice. Thank you, EJ