Razind

For an Indian IT applicant, the score of 780 as opposed to one of 720 provides a great differentiator. If you are from any other group it doesnt really matter. You

Guys, I did not get any aid as I belong to the most common applicant group. All Americans and people from other countries who got GMAT scores in excess of 750 got some sort of aid from Ross. Regards Razind

Thanks Guys for the all teh good wishes. I am joing Michigan Ross this fall and am proud to be part of one of my favourite schools. All the best to you all. Regards Razind

GMAT bong and others Advice please.

Three Cheers To score800 :tup: :tup: :tup: 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 [clap]

Thanks guys for the kind words regarding my debrief. Meanwhile I received my scores for AWA and its a 6/6. Thanks

So guys there goes my story.Please go ahead and ask away your doubts and I will do my best to answer them.

Thank you all for your wishes and kind words and please excuse me for the delay in writing this debrief.I wanted to take my time while writing this debrief as I wanted it to be as comprehensive as possible. My only hope while writing this debrief is that this debrief would prove to be as helpful to some aspiring GMATer just as those of Twinsplitter or Tictaktoe and CTG and countless others proved to be for me. First some background I am an Indian engineer with IT background, deputed in US since the past year in a project in the Supply Chain domain. I have attempted to nail the CAT twice in the duration of my career and on both occassions by some strange quirk of fate, I managed to commit hara kiri, not managing to sleep even a second on the nights before the exams. It might have been my intense desperation and nervousness that cause my downfall but once the onsite posting happened, i realised ruefully that appearing for CAT was no longer possible for me given my constant requirements of travel. It was then that one of my friends asked me to look beyond CAT to extend my horizons to the GMAT. The GMAT The GMAT had always been a sort of mystery for me all these years, my first memory of it being a news article on somebody who had managed an 800 in the exam. I remember feeling jealous of that person and thinking to myself that I should do something like that in my life too. Years later when I finally decided to write the exam, my first guide was my friend who had already written the exam and knew where to get all the resources from. It was through him that I was first introduced to Testmagic and Scoretop and Pagalguy and other sites as well as the books one should refer. I soon found out that the GMAT is decidedly partial towards verbal and one cannot master GMAT without mastering the verbal portions. The quant portion is pretty easy and could easily be conquered with disciplined effort, but verbal is a different ball game altogether. It seems difficult to start with, especially for non-natives the nuances take time in mastering. The quant section is usually the strength area of a lot of non natives and verbal prove to be their achilles heel, on the other hand the intrinsic verbal aptitude that natives possess help them sail through this section but they find the quant a bit more difficult. Starting off Having decided to go for the GMAT, starting off the preparations presents the greatest difficulty. Procrastination became my middle name as i kept postponing my preparations. I seriously believe that on such occassions, when your inner urge is not sufficient to wake you from the bliss of complacence, you need someone who can needle you, provoke you and incite you to make that start. In my case one of my college buddies, who has been my mentor through the whole process, was the person who kept pushing me to get over my starting trouble. What also worked for me was that I also had a room-mate who was also serious about the exams and we kept pushing each other through the course of our preps. Once you decide to start off, you start accumulating all the information you can find before you plunge headlong into study. I soon found out that there is deluge of information and material on GMAT in the net, there is so much material that if one planned to complete all good ones, it would take years to go through all of them. But the whole idea is to sift through the information and make the most effective use of these resources to achieve the score that you have in mind.Before devising a plan and schedule for one's preparations, one must realize that each person is unique and one must keep ones strengths and weaknesses in mind while making one's plan. This is where debriefings of the masters help a lot, you can read through some good debriefings and choose one of them representing the closest to what your personal characteristics are. For me the debriefings that really helped were those of twinsplitter, tictactoe and ursula. Twinnsplitter's schintillating effort of 790 is no doubt sensational and so are his inputs and advice, the reason why his debrief has been made a sticky in this site, but I would also advocate the debriefings of tictaktoe and ursula as almost equally valuable. The reason why they might not have been made sticky could be that scores are not in the same range as twinsplitter's but I would certainly argue that the usefulness of their debriefings is second to none. The other notable debriefings that inspired me were CTG and a small but excellent one by Congo. The debriefings of these individuals are not only inspiring but also help one to subconsciously plan out one's own strategy according to areas where one's strengths and weaknessses match those of these masters. For example Twinsplitter, who at 19 yrs of age shows extraordinary maturity in his planning and executions, was already strong in CR and RC portions of verbal since he had already prepared for LSAT. So his methods could work better for people who are stronger in Verbal. On the other hand tictactoe, a non-native with engineering background, provides a lot of tips which would work better for people who are bothered by verbal part. Ursula's sensational debrief provides a methodical and planned approach to nailing the GMAT and her methods have no doubt helped innumerable people to achieve best results even after being out of touch with both the sections or a long time. Thus the moot point is to inclucate those aspects that work from you, from the experiences of the stalwarts. Prep Material After having read the debriefs a number of times, I had devised a plan to nail the GMAT in 3 months.It is a tendency of most people to collect all the resources possible from all sources before embarking on the journey, but it is also necessary not to go for an overkill and devote most of your time to hunt for resources rather than actually use them. There is certainly no limit on the amount of excellent resources available but at one point one has to take a call and decide that one has to stop collecting more and make the best use of what one has.I was afflicted by the same tendency and decided to buy all the resources available in the market and collect all the free ones from the net. These books are no doubt expensive but what worked for me was that the cost was shared by myself and my room-mate As for prep books I bought 1) OG 11 2) Kaplan Math Workbook 3) Kaplan GMAT Guide 4) Princeton GMAT guide 5) Manhattan Sentence Correction 6) Kaplan GMAT 800 At that point I had decided that my preparations should not suffer for lack of material, but in hindsight I would not advocate all the books OG 11 is an absolute necessity and supplemented with the free online OG 10 this should be your starting point into the world of GMAT. It should be also used for constant reference at every point in one's preparation as the standard to be used. Kaplan Math workbook is certainly useful for people with non-engineering or non-quant oriented background, but for others I would not recommend it as being too useful. I personally bought it because Twinsplitter has spoken highly of this book. Kaplan GMAT guide is one of those books which I have mixed feelings about. It is certainly true that the maths questions in Kaplan are the best among all the prep books including OG and they are good practise for the final test. On the other hand the verbal portions leave a lot to be desired and some of the questions are ambiguous and confuse one's understanding. The tests of Kaplan are guaranteed to give you low scores which certainly provide much needed jolt to one's confidence.Why such a jolt is needed is because I believe that even though GMAT is a game of confidence, it is also necessary not to be over-confident. The other tests like Powerprep, Princeton or Manhattan are not representative of the actual hardness of the questions and this coupled with the fact that you might encounter several known questions in the practice tests, can lull you into a sense of false over-confidence which can prove to be your undoing in the real exam. The key is to be confident but also to identify one's weaknesses and work on those. Kaplans tests seriously damage ones confidence but they also test your time management techniques and provoke you to work to improve on these aspects. Princeton's GMAT guide cannot be taken seriously as a guide but its best point is that it treats GMAT in an almost casual manner and inculcates a feeling that GMAT is not all that difficult to crack. Providing shortcuts and tricks,this book is certainly one that you could use for introduction to the world of GMAT, but not really something you use at any point once you are completely into serious preps. Manhattan Sentence Correction is perhaps the best material available in the market today for Sentence Correction and I would recommend it highly to any test taker. Kaplan 800 - I bought this book because it was supposed to have the hardest questions available anywhere, and I would agree that this proved to be very useful in the fag end of my preps. I would agree that it could be useful to a person already in the 700's to elevate his score by a 10-20 points. Other than these the materials most popular in the net are 1000SC 1000CR ( also known as LSAT CR ) 3000RC 2004-09-02_160638_800scoreAWAGuide.pdf ( for AWA ) Headlong Into Preps Once all these material are available its time to stop collecting more and start working on the ones you have.Twisplitter's approach of working one aspect at a time seemed the best suited for myself but each one has to find the method that works best for him/her. Before starting on the preparations in all swing it is necessary to assess one's actual level and one's weaknesses.That is the reason it is advisable to take the first test of Powerprep before you start. I did not do this because I thought I already knew what my weaknesses were. Maths As I started my maths preps I realised that I had grown a bit rusty but soon got into the groove. I attacked maths first because I knew it was my strength and decided that I shold consolidate my strengths before working on my weaker aspects.In order to stir up my dormant brain I used to practise multiplications of two digit and three digit numbers in my mind now and then whenever I got some free time. This helps because it keeps the mind alert and fresh because there is a tendency of the mind to get dull if maths is not practised for some days. I went through entire Maths workbook of Kaplan but did not find questions to be challenging enough. But inspite of not being challenged by the questions I was dismayed to see that I was committing mistakes too. Ursula's excel is one of the best tools to be used in practise tests. By classifying your errors as Concept Errors or Careless Errors one can easily identify the areas in quant which are problem areas and also the usual silly mistakes that one makes. As one gives more and more pratice exams one can be proactively alert for the usual suspects ( silly mistakes ) and prevent these from happening. At the same time practise more and more questions from your problem areas so that you are absolutely confident in them. Verbal CR Critical Reasoning is one area where practising hundreds of questions helps a lot to train one's mind.In my case I pratised OG completely to get a feel of what they expected and subsequently I practised a lot of LSAT stuff.I would second Twinsplitter's suggestion that LSAT is way tougher than GMAT and is the best way to train one's mind.There might be times when one might answer less than half of the questions correctly but as one progresses one starts getting better and better at these. In my case even after I got better I could harldly ever get more than 20 out of 25 correct.It used to hover around 18 and occassional dips and elevations. But the important thing was that I was quick to understand why I made the mistakes because I had got used to their style of thinking. After practsing LSAT for around a month, wounded and bruised but nevertheless stronger, one can start off with the GMAT material and it should seem like a cakewalk. As one practises more one realises that the answer starts striking almost immediately as one reads the question.The key to CR is to read the question stem first and then to read the passage and try to predict the answer before looking at the choices. RC There are different techniques in handling RC as suggested by different people, but the important thing is try out different techniques and adopt that works best for you. Some people might prefer to skim through the passage wheras others prefer to read through the whole passage. Reading togh editorials from WSJ, Economist and other sources are the best ways to spruce up one's RC skills combined with practising the toughest ones from 3000 RC. Kaplan's tough RCs are also useful but one should not be bothered if some of the explanations seem absurd.In my case I used to read the passages carefully and write down key points of each paragraph on a sheet of paper and go back to the passages if I could not recall something. Even if I could recall the answer I would go back just to make sure. It is also important not to practise too much because after a point one starts getting bored with these tough passages and concentration factor is exremely important, one should never let one's attention waver. SC SC is perhaps the problem area of a majority of test takers, especially ones who are not much into reading. While it is true that being a reader helps, it also fallacious to construe that a non-reader cannot do well in SC.Reading the editorials of well known newspapers is a necessary part of verbal preparations, but GMAT SC is more about identifying patterns and this is where practise really helps. Manhattan sentence correction is perhaps the best place to start and regular practice in OG, 1000SC and regular perusal of notes made by Spidey, Sahil and Rohith (all available in the net ) should see anyone through. It is also important to make notes on all the mistakes one made because at the end of the day these notes could be a treasure trove for you. Practise makes one so perfect that one can identify the errors almost by instinct and this saves a lot of valuable time in the exam. Forums. Testmagic is the best forum available in the net and the quality of discussions is umatched. Not only that the user interface is excellent enabling you to search any question in matter of seconds. But what makes testmagic special are people like Erin, 800GMAT, Arjmen, Spiderman, GMAT-HELP, Manish8109 and countless others who are real geniuses and have helped so many people like me to improve in all aspects. Scoretop is pretty good for obtaining material of all sorts and its VIP membership is also very useful for its GMAT sets and JJs. But poor user interface and poor quality of discussions are some problems. There are lot of good people in scoretop too but their nuggets are scattered amongst enormous number of junk posts. Other than that pagalguy.com and GMATclub are good too. Sentencecorrection.com is something I used for searching Erin's posts, believe me they are the best there is.While using forums one should make it a point not to just fill the forum with posts, but post them when you feel you have some positive suggestions or some genuine doubts. Though paucity of time did not allow me to contribute as enthusiastically as I wished to, I tried my best not to post uselessly. I believe there are always people like GMAT-HELP, manish or 800GMAT whose posts are like nuggets of gold,they dont post unnecessarily that is the reason they are so respected in these forums. Scheduling the exam. After a month's preparation one would be able to assess how one stands in the general scheme of things. At this point it is necessary to schedule the exam because, without doubt, it provides a focus to your preparations. It could be after 2 months or later. If you feel at anytime that you wouldnt be able to make it by then, there is always the option to postpone the exam. The first month of preparation always tends to be hapazhard but after the date is set there is a sense of urgency that is necessary. Though some people might decide to schedule the exam when they feel they are ready, this may not be advisable since this inevitably leads to procrastination. It is important to schedule the date only after careful consideration because both too little and too much of preparations can be harmful. If you feel your preparation is not sufficient then postponing the exam is an option but too much of preparations can lead to burnout which is beyond redemption. The date should be planned in such a way that one can reach one's peak around that time. Balancing Work and studies Most of us who give the exam have to shuffle the studies with the work, work that can get hectic at times. Motivation can vacillate on various occassions especially when one has to study after a tough day's work or when one is just not getting things correct in the tests. There are times also when one is flush with confidence on one day only to fall to depressing lows the next day. These are normal stages that any test taker has to go through. What can sustain you though these periods is the courage of your convictions and a strong urge to do well. While selecting a place to study it is always beneficial to chose a place where one would encounter the least disturbance,in my case I used to go back to my office by around 7 and not a soul would i ever encounter. It is necessary to commit at least two hours everyday, whatever be the case and to devote maximum time during the weekends. The best way to spruce oneself up when one gets demotivated is to read the debriefings of the greats and to inspire oneself to be like them, to think of the beautiful victory that comes at the end of it all. Practice exams Contrary to the tradition, my first exam was PP1 and i gave this exam after I was done with OG11. There are some questions from OG11 (most of teh questions in PP1 are common to OG10). I managed a 750 in this one and that gave me a confidence that continued till the end. My other scores were GMATPREP1 -770 GMATPREP2 -760 Kaplan1-650 Kaplan2-590 ( This one almost shattered me ) kaplan3-640 GMATPREP1 (after reinstalling) -770 GMATPREP2 (after reinstalling) -760 GMATPREP1 (after again reinstalling) -760 Powerprep2 ( 2 days before the exam ) 770 My GMAT - First Blood I had scheduled my exam on the 17th of July, but due to work pressure I decided to postpone it to Aug 3, I felt I had clicked the appropriate buttons, but apparently I blundered and the exam did not actually get rescheduled. I realised my blunder only on 15th morning when I was just cross checking to make sure. Shocked and taken completely off guard, I decided to go for the exam. But I went with a negative attitude for the exam, having already decided in my mind that I would not perform well since I had so much material untouched. It proved to be a self realizing prophecy and I ran short of time in both verbal and maths and ended up scoring, what was possibly my worst score if I discounted the Kaplan fiascos. I immediately rescheduled it for the 17th of August as I thought that a one month gap was necessary. I am still not sure about this aspect. For me the 720 brought about a serious dip in confidence but it was also a time for serious introspection,,what went wrong ? How could I correct that ? One thing I was confident of was that I could never go lower. I realised my weakness was in managing time and I proceeded to give all the remaining practise tests in 1 hr instead of the customary 1 hr 15 mins. This really helped me pick up speed especially in verbal. A serious problem I had noted was that I found the quant section so easy that I could mechanically do the problems while my mind kept wandering. This resulted in silly mistakes which I had to avoid at any cost. Around August first week I reached a burnout stage, no longer did I want to lock myself in my room while the world was enjoying the bright summer days. I did only GMAT sets during this time and GMATPREP too, and these were more than sufficient as they are very representative of the actual tests. Finally 2 days before the final exam I gave the second Powerprep and got a 770 which boosted me no end. On the penultimate day I looked through all my mistakes once again and the morning of the D-Day I revised using some notes and flash cards that I had compiled from the net. G-DAY Escape To Victory Sleeping well on the night before the exam is a really crucial factor for success in the examination, and following Twinsplitters advice I had stocked some Nyquil for emergency situations. But I had conditioned myself to sleep early for some days and so I went off to sleep without any issues. Had a good 8 hours of sleep and that was half the battle won for me, looking back at my history of sleep deprival on nights when it really mattered. My exam was scheduled at 3 o clock - a timing I had to take because I couldnt get the morning slot, but I guess the timing also worked for me. While your brain might be fresh in the morning, it is also a bit lethargic and taking it in the afternoon perhaps provides some time to really warm up the brain before going for the real thing. I am sure that it works differently for different people and it is upto you to choose the timing most appropriate for you. I reached the center ( Pearson Center in Berwyn PA ) with ample time to spare and the music that I had played in my car had relaxed me almost completely. The man at the reception was one of the friendliest I have ever seen and he gave me some pep talk that helped ease the remaining tension. AWA was easy and I got some nice topics and punched away 5-6 paragraphs for each of them following the template provided by tictaktoe with some modifications. The first one hour is the time to rev up ones engines annd get ready for the final assault. Out I came and the receptionist said - 1/3rd done 2/3rd to go and gave me a reassuring smile. I shared some joke with him and then moved out, emptied my bladders and washed my eyes with some water. Munched down a bar of chocolate and drank some water and went back in. Maths started with a tough one but I was able to get the solution confidently and for the next twenty questions, the toughness kept increasing, I could feel it. Around the 21st question I got a weird data interpretation problem which I solved without much ado. Thereafter I got easier questions and I somehow felt alarmed by the decrease in the hardness level. But I knew I was doing nothing wrong so far, and had even managed to catch some tricky ones, so I continued to feel confident. After the maths I went out and went through the same motions. This time instead of chocolate I guzzled a full can of Red Bull and felt my stomach become full. Therefater I went back and gave the verbal exam in spectacular state of concentration. I faced no problems whatsoever in any question except for a couple which I marked wrongly even though I was fully aware that the other choice was more likely to be correct. But other than that I had a smooth sailing.However I did not encounter any bold face during the entire exam and this left me puzzled and concerned. Even in my last fiasco I had got a BF around the 8th question. As I filled up the questionnaire , I was imagining what my score would be. The figure that came to my mind was 750-760 but suddenly a the fear of notching a 710 quickened my heart beat. Finally I clicked on the button and waited for what seemed like a lifetime. When it came up I was dumbstuck for a few seconds. The results were as follows Q51 (99 percentile) V46 (99 percentile) Total 780 (99 percentile) This was my highest score ever and it could not have come at a better time. This was perhaps the happiest day of my life. I quicly left the room, thanked the receptionist profusely and rushed out of the building to call all my well wishers, Victory was swwet after such a long struggle. Looking Back Looking back I would say that to achieve such a dream score one needs ones share of luck but luck can only make a difference of 10-20 points maximum. The rest depends on one's preparation and dedication, for even luck shines on those who are prepared to make the best use of it. One needn't be a genius to nail the GMAT, hard work and a methodical approach are what counts in the end. Just like an athlete who spends countless hours in loneliness practising harder and harder for that one moment of glory in the olympics, so also a GMATer has to spend a large amount of time locked in rooms away from friends, away from the pleasures of life. What can sustain him during those lonely hours is just the dream of the day of glory and the satisfaction of a job well done. GMAt is an exam that demands one's complete dedication. During the period of preparation one would have to take the call countless times, on whether one wants to party out with friends or to lock oneslf up on Friday nights and keep practising. There are lots of sacrifices to be made, lot of pleasures to be shun but one should not do it because one has to but because one wants to.The genius Ursula once again gets it just right when she says that one should never view the GMAT as a problem that stands in the way of your getting your MBA, it is in fact an opportunity to show off your stuff to the world. When one realises this ,one does not look at the preparations with dread but with excitement, and would enjoy the journey as much as one would enjoy the destination. GMAT is a journey, lonesome and distressful at times, enjoyable and exciting at others, but at the end of it all lies glory and victory.

Hi Tyro, There is certainly no harm in being ambitious, but let me assure you that a score would never be sufficient to give you that wow factor, especially in top schools that you have mentioned. A score would certainly help you in the 5-15 ranked schools, provided you have a great application, but the top schools are looking for something really special. If you have something else to show then you could do so but a score of 780 vis a vis a 740 is not going to be the difference between getting Stanford or not. Having scored 780 last week I believe I can comment on what the score really means. Thanks

Hi Tyro, There is certainly no harm in being ambitious, but let me assure you that a score would never be sufficient to give you that wow factor, especially in top schools that you have mentioned. A score would certainly help you in the 5-15 ranked schools, provided you have a great application, but the top schools are looking for something really special. If you have something else to show then you could do so but a score of 780 vis a vis a 740 is not going to be the difference between getting Stanford or not. Having scored 780 last week I believe I can comment on what the score really means. Thanks

Hi, I am pleased to let you all know that I have managed to slam 780 in GMAT today. It was a long struggle and I had notched a 720 last month in half baked attempt. However I had a strong belief that I was capable of better things and I have finally managed to redeem myself. I would like to thank Testmagic which was instrumental in enabling me to prove myself. I will write a detailed debrief sometime tomorrow.

I feel that the answer should be D 1) In case the side is equal to the radius it can never be a sqaure since the monor arc would constitue 60 degrees. 2) Similarly if the monor arc is 45 it cannot be a sqaure. For the diagram to be a square each of the minor arcs must constitute 90 degrees.

Q1: Researchers have announced that the magnetic fields emitted by one manufacturer’s security surveillance system, of which type there are 200,000 worldwide, can interfere with pacemakers and that this interaction can bring on missed or irregular heartbeats, nausea, breathlessness, dizziness, and even fainting. of which type there are 200,000 worldwide, can interfere with pacemakers and that of which, worldwide, there are 200,000 of that type, and which can interfere with pacemakers, and of which type there are 200,000 worldwide, they can interfere with pacemakers and 200,000 of which type exist worldwide, interfering with pacemakers, and 200,000 of that type existing worldwide and can interfere with pacemakers, andAnswer: Q2: Researchers agreed that the study of new treatments for heart attack patients was extremely important but more research was needed to determine that balloon angioplasty preceded with ultrasound was or was not any better for heart attack patients than the balloon procedure by itself. more research was needed to determine that balloon angioplasty preceded with ultrasound was or was not any better for heart attack patients than more research was needed for determining whether or not balloon angioplasty preceded by ultrasound is any better for heart attack patients than is that more research was needed to determine whether balloon angioplasty preceded by ultrasound is any better for heart attack patients than that more research was needed to determine that balloon angioplasty preceded with ultrasound was any better for heart attack patients than that more research was needed for determining that balloon angioplasty preceded by ultrasound is or is not any better for heart attack patients than is

1) A total of 100 customers purchased books at a certain bookstore last week. If these customers purchased a total of 200 books, how many of the customers purchased only 1 book each? (1) None of the customers purchased more than 3 books. (2) 20 of the customers purchased only 2 books each. 2) Is x > 5 ? (1) x2 > 25 (2) 2x + 7 > 0

Q33: Favorable Unfavorable Not Sure Candidate M 40 20 40 N 30 35 35 The table above shows the results of a survey of 100 voters each responded “favorable” or “unfavorable” or “not sure” when asked about their impressions of candidate M and of candidate N. What was the number of voters who responded “favorable” for both candidates? (1) The number of voters who did not respond “favorable” for either candidate was 40. (2) The number of voters who responded “unfavorable” for both candidates was 10.