imjimmy

You're right, I meant Manhattan GMAT. All the best for your test.

Yeah, i do! Thanks and good luck for your test.

Actually re-installing the Software GMAT Prep is just a waste of time. You do not need to re-install the software. The only thing you need to do is to remove the exam files that the software creates in the exam directory. After you take an exam the S/W creates 2 files that have the info about the exams and ure responses: One file is with a .log extension and the other is with .xact extension. For ex: When you finish Practise test 1 : the 2 files will be practice test1.log practice test1.xact. So what you need to do is to save these files somewhere and then delete the files from the exam directory. The software is then RESET in that it won't know that you've taken Test1. This is as good as re-installing the software.. So don't waste your time

That's true. I experienced the same too. I have added a list of topics, in the debrief below the grammar links, which i feel are tested the most in GMAT.Good grammar helps in work too. I have been editing speeches of my colleagues for errors such as split infinitives and non-parallel structures. Around 3 months in total. But the preparation was sporadic with periods of low and high intensity of prep according to the work schedule. I think more than the no of months it's the no of hrs that are important.

My practise Scores: GMATPrep 1 :770 (q 50, V 46) GMATPrep 2 :770 (q 50, V 46) Kaplan CAT 1 :670 ( Worthless..stopped after one test) MGMAT CAT1(non-adaptive) :730 ( Q 50 V 44) MGMAT CAT1(Adaptive) :740 ( Q 51 V 43) Scores: REAL GMAT: 770(V: 47 ,Q: 50) I think Kaplan is just a waste of time. Their Verbal is pathetic. GMATPrep is the best and you probably would score same on the real thing. MGMAT CAT Quant is very good. MGMAT CAT's Verbal CR and RC are not that great, but the SC is good. In general you can 20-30 pts more on the real thing than you do on the MGMAT CAT.

Thanks GMAT-HELP As i said in my debrief a lot of us need to thank you too. I have observed you helping out so many people in the forum. I understand the time and patience it takes to write down the solutions to all quant problems that you solve all the time. Most of the test-takers at TM need to thank you for their scores. Keep up your good work!

Finished with: V: 47 99 percentile Q: 50 95 percentile Total: 770 -99 percentile Thanks to all you wonderful people on the forum. Even though i did not post much over here i did look at posts regularly. Here’s my Story: TEST EXPERIENCE: Quant: Overall nothing unexpected even though I had never seen any question before. The difficulty level was similar to GMAT Prep with similar concepts being tested. There was a uniform mixture on all topics, a lot of emphasis on number theory, but there was nothing from Probability/Combinations. Was very disappointed with my performance in quant, since I always thought getting a perfect score would be no problem here Made a calculation mistake in the 3rd question(simple percentage) and got that one wrong. Realized my mistake as soon as I looked into the scratch pad after clicking confirm. Thereafter I lost my cool since the first 5 questions is quant are very very important. I think I made another mistake around the 14th question .And even though after that I got most questions correct, 51 was pretty much ruled out. Verbal I was confident in verbal because my I had never scored below 45 in any GMAT prep that I took. I made a crucial mistake while managing my time;I finished 13 minutes early! I think because of the disastrous quant section I was hurrying through the verbal section. I don’t usually look at the time. But during the end I realized, to my horror, that I had 24 minutes left for last 6 questions! So please manage your time very carefully. Anyway the test content was pretty much on expected lines. I would say that the SC’s were very easy, easier compared to those in the GMATPrep.All the wrong choices were clear and could be eliminated easily. Towards the middle there were a couple of more involved SCs but they were still manageable in under a minute and a half. The CR’s were slightly harder and longer than those in GMATPrep. CR is my strong point so I did not bother too much here. Got one BF CR in the early 30’s. There were 2 CR’s with 2 speaker question stimuli, one on assumption that the 2nd speaker makes and the other on strengthening the 2nd speaker’s argument. The biggest disconnect w.r.t prep material IMO was in the RC’s. The first RC passage that I got around the 6th question mark was routine stuff with 3 question, then around 16th question I got another RC which had some tricky inference questions. Around the 28th Question there was this obtuse RC with 85-95 lines with 4 extremely tricky inference questions. The last RC was in the mid 30’s, a short passage but with tricky questions. In GMAT prep I had observed that atleast 2 of the 4 RC’s would be very simple. In the real test, however, only the first RC was easy. Special note on GMATPrep S/W: Please practice extensively on this software. I can’t emphasize more on how similar it is to the real thing. It’s not for nothing that people end up with almost the same score in the real test as they do in the GMAT Prep. In fact I too got a 770,770, 780 and 790 in the 4 GMAT Preps that I gave.(Last 2 had repetitions) It’s not only the interface, even the questions in the real test look to be testing very similar concepts to those in GMATprep. Furthermore you can analyze you score trends in GMATprep and deduce the importance or the lack thereof of the first few questions in each section. And because there are no experimental section in the GMATPrep the difficulty level is straightforward from easy to hard. PREPARATION SOURCES/STRATEGY: Quant: Sources: OG, Manhattan CATs and GMATPrep. After the official materials I would say stuff from ManhattanReview is the closest to the real thing. I refer to the Manhattan CATs and to the challenge problem archive.Recently they have added 6 newComputer Adaptive tests. However,please be careful since some of the questions in the Manhattan CATs were much harder and longer than those in the actual test. GMATPrep again is a very good resource.It has a huge question bank. You can take the test 3-4 times with very few repeats. The great things about this forum are the tremendous participation of the people and the huge archive of past discussions. It’s really amazing but you will find that almost every single question you encounter in prep material has been discussed here at some time in any one of the thousands of threads online. So while you prep if you are stuck on any question you just need to search here. There are many quant experts: GMAT_HELP, Arjmen, Manish8109 and more. You will also find multiple methods to solve questions which would help inculcate certain key concepts. Another thing I feel is that to excel in the quant in the GMAT you do not need to be from a tech background or a math expert who has done stuff like Advanced calculus. Almost all of the questions in the GMAT can be solved intuitively or by thinking methodically. You are almost never required to memorize an arcane formula and apply it. The only ability that you need to have is to be able to count :) . Most of the harder GMAT questions have some trick such as: A DS question-Two equations with 2 variables, however, after solving the equation become a single equation with 2 variables,rendering the question unsolvable. Most of these patterns become obvious and intuitive once you do sufficient practice. Verbal Refer to only Official stuff from Test-makers. Stay away from Kaplan, Princeton and the like. After the OG the best prep sources are 1000 SC, 1000 CR and 1000 RC docs. Manhattan Verbal is only good for SC. For most of the non-native speakers, like me, a significant proportion of the prep time goes in the preparation of verbal. Mastering verbal on the GMAT takes time and practice. As you work more the inherent patterns in the questions began to reveal themselves. I always believe in quality instead of quantity. If you spend an hr doing a test, spend two hours analyzing it. Understand why other options are wrong and why the right answer choice is correct. Remember there is ONLY ONE correct choice. The right answer is always clear and Unambiguous. Even the hardest GMAT questions that you encounter will have only one clear winner; the wrong answer choices, even though close, will have fundamental flaws that render them incorrect. The testmakers do have some common ways of creating incorrect answer choices. The onus is on you to discern the pattern and apply it to other questions. SC Sources: OG, 1000 SC, Manhattan Online Question bank and Manhattan CATs. This is the part in the verbal where you can improve the most. At the beginning it appears to be most intimidating however with time it seems to be the easiest and most predictable. I think 2 extremely potent weapons for tackling this section are: OG and the 1000 SC doc. I highly recommend in-depth perusal of all the explanations of sentences given in the OG. In fact the explanations for the SC alone are reason enough to buy the OG 11th edition. Along with the verbal review, the OG 11 has close to 260 questions explained in depth. In all these questions almost all rules that are tested in the SC are explained by the testmakers. The explanations are amazing to say the least. Once you understand these rules it becomes a simple matter of applying them. Curiously SC just becomes like mathematics after a pt. You just have to know the rules and apply them. And as you practice more your brain gets better and faster at identifying patterns in the sentences. Once finished with the OG. It’s a good idea to look at the 1000 SC doc. You can then practice on applying all the rules that you learnt while working on the OG and also increase your speed and accuracy. Be sure to keep an error log. Record the time, progress and accuracy rate diligently. For questions that you do not understand or for which you do not agree with the OA please search on wikigrammar.com. Almost all the SC’s in the 1000 SC doc are discussed there. Manhattan SC’s: The SC questions in Manhattan Online question bank as well as their Online CAT’s are very good. These questions are very representative. In fact they are harder than the real thing. However the explanations are superb and would help strengthen the concepts. I would also recommend looking a grammar text/grammar websites in case you are not able to understand a particular grammar point in the OG or if you need more details about a concept. I used the following and was easily able to get most of my doubts cleared: ON-LINE GRAMMAR RESOURCES Towson University's Online Writing Support: All the content in one place with very good exercises. The Parts of Speech - A simplified guide to grammar. You can start from here for basic concepts which you do not understand. Guide to Grammar & Writing – The most comprehensive grammar website on the internet.The following are some of the topics most tested on GMAT SC's: Verbals(Participles,Infinitives and Gerunds); Sentence Fragments,run ons and comma splices ; Sub-ordinate relative clauses; Relative pronouns; Absolute phrases, Participle Phrases and Appositives; Parallelism for the following elements - series, coordinating conjunctions, comparisons and correlative conjunctions. In Particular parallelism across correlative conjunctions( both..and, not only...but also, neither...nor etc) is heavily tested. Make sure that you know all these grammatical concepts by referring to the above grammar links for theory and the OG for examples. CR: Sources: OG, 1000 CR and LSAT Official Tests. Most of my preparation of CR was from working on LSAT material. I do agree that the LSAT material is harder than anything you will ever encounter in the GMAT. And also GMAT CR is just a subset of LSAT LR. There are many question types which appear in the LSAT but will never do so on the GMAT. All these facts notwithstanding, LSAT CR’s are still a valuable source for practice. It does require a lot of effort to go through some of these questions simply because they are hard. In the beginning you might answer only 60-70% of the questions in a section correctly but after some time you should be able to reach a 85%+ accuracy rate. The reward for this practice is that after you have done so the GMAT CR’s start to appear extremely simple. In fact the answers will start to strike immediately as soon as you finish reading the argument in GMAT. For official LSAT tests I would recommend either one of the books: 10 More actual official LSAT tests or the Next 10 LSAT tests. Both books are published by law services. RC: Sources: OG, 3000 RC doc and LSAT Official Tests. For some reason RC is neglected by most testakers. I would say RC’s are extremely important to your overall score and time-management in the test. Consider the proportion of time slice that you allocate to an RC in a verbal CAT. Also consider what a dense passage with tricky questions can do to your confidence and time management in the middle of the test. A practice of reading reputed publications such as the Economist and WSJ obviously helps in RC but is not necessary. Heavy practice is required to increase accuracy and speed. The 3000 RC doc is a good source. Again I would recommend the LSAT Official Prep material here. The advice for the CR applies here too. As expected the LSAT passages are denser and longer than those in GMAT. The difficulty stems from the fact that many of these passages are based on excessively rhetorical content such as humanities or philosophy. But working on these passages will force you to become better at remembering stuff that you read and you’ll also become much better at elimination of wrong answers since the LSAT answer choices will all be very close. If you do well in Verbal on the GMAT be prepared for tricky RC inference questions with generic question stems similar to the following: "Which of the following best describes the role of the 2nd paragraph as a whole in the passage" "The scholars mentioned in the highlighted text would most probably agree with which of the following" "The author most likely holds which of the following opinion about the sociological historical studies of women" " The common theory proposed by the scholars would be most analogous to which of the following" “ Which of the following if true would most weaken the claim made by the scientists in the last paragraph” Most of these questions will have abstract answer choices meant to confuse the test-taker. You need to zero down on the author’s intent and then use POE aggressively. BENCHMARKING: Scores: GMATPrep 1 :770 (q 50, V 46) GMATPrep 2 :770 (q 50, V 46) GMATPrep 3(reinstall) :780 (q 51, v 46) GMATPrep 4(MANY REPEATS) :790 (q 51, v 49) Kaplan CAT 1 :670 ( Worthless..stopped after one test) MGMAT CAT1(non-adaptive) :730 ( Q 50 V 44) MGMAT CAT1(Adaptive) :740 ( Q 51 V 43) LEARNINGS: Start using Google Notebook right now! Keep a log of all the valuable insights that you get all over the net in so many of the excellent forums. Just Note down everything in the online notebook so that you don’t forget. In the end you will have a comprehensive list of useful nuggets which can be reviewed online in the last few days before the test. And the best part is you can access it anywhere. Keep a track of posts made by Erin and 800Bob both on Testmagic.( Erin if you read this- a special thanks to you for all your wonderful explanations on some twisted grammatical concepts on the GMAT SC. The posts in the FAQ are superb. Thanks so much). Some of Erin’s posts that explain certain subtle grammar points are like veritable pots of gold! Practise your timing. Just keep a track of how much time you take to complete each question. Use the Timing Grid Excel sheet. It’s very important to be aware of how much time you take on a bunch of questions. Time yourself even while you do the OG. Awareness of timing will adapt your brain to think quicker. Aim to finish most of your CATs in 65-70 minutes rather than the allotted 75. This will ensure that you won’t run out of time on the test day.Final Words Think of GMAT as an opportunity and NEVER as an obstacle for doing your MBA. Preparation for the GMAT, while sometimes tiresome, has considerable benefits. It will help you develop skills that help later in life: in B-school and beyond. GMAT is not inherently hard and just requires a planned and dedicated effort. The test is very balanced and is not geared to favour anyone with specific demographics or with specific abilities. Low proficiency in English will not necessarily preclude you from cracking the GMAT verbal. Similarly the fact that you may be from a non-mathematical background will not prevent you from getting a perfect score in the quant part. Take my case: I am not a native speaker of English and even with careless mistakes still managed to get a 47 in Verbal.On the flip side, I am from a tech background and fancy myself at quant, yet I fell short of getting a 51 in a quant. So go ahead and crack the test. If I can do well, so can you!

Dude, Aim higher. 730+ atleast is what you should be looking at with the prep hrs you mentioned. And take a diagnostic ; you probably would end up in the higher 600's,if not more, without prep. Don't undersell yourself.

Which version of the sheet do you use. The one that i do works perfectly for the features that you mentioned. The only cvaeat is that the clock resets after an hr. That is something that needs to be changed in the code of the sheet.

Congrats on the awesome score. A rocking debrief too! How do you search the archive? Any search also returns only 100 results at the most. So for ex: if i search for posts of 800bob, there are only 100 results. Is there any way to get around this. The search only returns results which are a few months old at most.

Great score and an excellent debrief.. I like the somewhat humorous vein in your writing. What's ure strategy for this one. Do you make a grid of ABCDE for all answers before you start the test - or is it wise to write ABCDE for each question as it comes and then use POE instead of writing the entire thing for 41 questions before.

That's a great score. Especially a rocking Verbal score. 51 in verbal is just awesome! How about sharing your accuracy rates in Sets, GMATPRep or any other CATs you took. IT will be also interesting to know the level of SC's CR and RC you got in verbal. Were these significantly hard than the last 1/3 of the questions in OG?

CTG, Please comment on the desired acccuracy levels while doing the sets for both Quant and verbal. Since the sets cannot be used to get a scaled score, it's not easy to judge the performance. As for myself, i have only done the first 5 sets or so. however i am not doing well.. i get about 5-6 incorrect in verbal and same incorrect questions in quant. How much should i look to improve.. What do you think about the timing. Should the sets be attempted in lesser than the alloted time. Thanks.

That's crazy. Univs always change with actual score. How many of us can predict the test scores accurately.

Geeky, What should be the accuracy rates in the sets? Is the Quant in sets 1-20 TOO EASY--compared to real gMAT? I am doing the first few sets and still get about 5-6 wrong in quant. Are the later sets (from 21-31) more important.

Geeky, What should be the accuracy rates in the sets? Is the Quant in sets 1-20 TOO EASY--compared to real gMAT? I am doing the first few sets and still get about 5-6 wrong in quant. Are the later sets (from 21-31) more important.

Not at all.Actually this helps a lot.. Thanks for taking out your time. I hope that's true. I know that i will only be able to put up a good application by the 2nd round deadlines. I know if i hurry up to submit my application by R1, it might only be 60% of what it might have been given more time. One last thing...Is it disadvantageous for people who are over-represented in the application pool(IT people) to apply in the 2nd round coz i have heards that in R2 schools look to increase thier diversity viz a viz R1.

So does this imply that applying in the 2nd round results in significantly lower admit chances.

Congrats on your great score Thanks for the debrief. . Do you think this is true for Quant section as well.. Then is it true that the last 50 DS and Last 50 PS questions in OG11 represent the actual GMAT level.. Just asking this coz i found these OG questions hard. BUt everyone says that OG11 is way to easy w.r.t actual GMAT.

it's D. It's a simple case of proportion and numbers.

CLintonn, How's your prep.. What's your accuracy rate on the sets.. What did you score on your GMAT prep... DO you find the sets useful..

I have given 2 PR tests..Maths is too easy and the verbal is different. The questions are poorly researched. (Rc's have ambiguous answers..CR quality is pathetic) It's a pity we have to do with sub-standard practise sources in the absence of authentic practise material. I would recommend PP tests. But these should be taken before the OG. GMAT prep is ofcourse the last.

PV has never comitted that the GMATPrep Scoring Algo = Real GMAT's scoring algo. So go figure. I don't think the real GMAT would be so leniant. Otherwise people would not have got the low verbal scores they are getting.

The answer has to be C. B is close but is incorrect. Geekybiz can you plz tell us the source of this question. If it's the GMAT sets what is the set no and Q no. Which sets are you talking about the scoretop sets or those of the blogger. In my copy of the sets the OA is B. However B is surely incorrect.

Thanks Guys. OA is "A" For those who are interested, this is a question from one of the preptests of LSAT in 1998.