gmat786

Thank you for the kind words... I plan to do a part time starting summer of 07 and will be applying to schools in the Chicago vicinity.. dyoh.. the manhattan SC was very helpfull but you got to spend a lot of time practicing...over time you learn to spot the traps and your error rate keeps improving. Hope you make your goal of crossing the 750 mark...make sure you give yourself enough time and practice practice practice...as the nfl advocates...amateurs practice till they get it right...proffesionals practice till they dont get it wrong

Step 1 finally complete… Some background info: Currently work in the transportation industry in the US and have 6 years of work experience. I joined this forum a couple of months back and found this to be one of the best sites to gain a substantial feel for the GMAT. I went through many of the old posts and downloaded a lot of material but unfortunately work got extremely busy and did not have the energy or the time to study in the evenings. It is then that I realized that this busy schedule was going to continue and I had to fix a date to take the test and make best use of any available time. I fixed a date 4 weeks out and set up a plan, 1 -2 hr every evening and as much as possible over the weekend.. The first thing I had to do was evaluate my strengths and weakness. I got the Kaplan CD from the public library and took the diagnostic over the weekend. That was a bummer!!! I scored a 580 and was extremely disappointed. At this point I thought it futile to write the test…but my wife made me look at the bright side of things by pointing out how much opportunity I had to improve…moreover I had already set up my test date. Over the next couple of days I glanced over a lot of posts on the test magic forum and found almost everyone agreeing on 2 must have books 1) the OG and 2) The Manhattan SC. I ordered these two books and also got the number properties from Manhattan (a weak point for me as I did not remember all the high school math concepts). As I waited for the books to arrive I refreshed all important math concepts (from the web…searched on Google for geometry and wrote down formulae etc…) I soon realized that this unstructured off/on studying was not going to help me and I had to focus a lot more. Once I got my books I charted out a plan the first step of which was to cover the OG and the Manhattan SC in the next two weeks. I broke things down and estimated how much needed to be done each day. I realized for the first time how difficult it is to write/prepare for an exam while working (wonder how ill manage a part time mba!!!) I had 3 weeks to go and came across a post on test magic that advised everyone to focus on GMATprep more than anything else… I downloaded this onto my computer and took the first test (scored 680…was happy with the 100 pt improvement but had set a goal to cross the 700 mark). I was making many silly errors on Math and had quite a few SC wrong. It is in this time period that I had the privilege of browsing through Clintonns posts. This is one of the best on test magic (in the modern era!!!) and is a one stop post for anyone with time constraints. Thank you Clintonn for all your help at the right juncture of my preparation.[clap] [clap] [clap] I had two weeks to go and had almost ¾ of the OG remaining and decided to just focus on the last 50 questions in each section. I downloaded a lot of the material from Clintonn’s post. I decided to give this my best shot and took 2 days Tuesday and Thursday off from work. I completed the last part of the OG completed the Manhattan SC and read through a lot of the downloaded matrial from Clintonn. I did the second Gprep test and scored a 740.. was thrilled (but there were some repeats…). In the last week I did the last part of each section on the OG again… revised the clintonn posts and did two more tests and scored a 770 and then a 710 the last being the evening before the exam (I had an evening appointment!!!:mad: ) I revised my mistakes and realized I was making a lot more mistakes when I did the test in the evening…it was too late with less than 24 hours before the test… decided to stick with it and just get the exam done. On test day I got to the center an hour early and was asked if I wanted to start the test. I decided to get this test completed, and stored my stuff in the locker (Gatorade, red bull and some dry fruit..). The test center was a disappointment and the monitor was a CRT (they should invest in flat panels) and the exam proctor kept entering and leaving the room (my computer was next to the door!!!). The AWA was nothing out of the ordinary and used a template I had gone over in the morning … I would recommend at least practicing this once if not more before the real test. I do not have my AWA score so I’m not sure how I did!!! I did not have the time to study for this section (and im not sure how much this counts towards admissions…anyone with insight do reply to this post..). This is a good way to start the test and gets all the nervous energy out of the system Quant started off easy and the first three questions were a breeze..(I double checked my answers and then did it the third time before I hit accept!!!) the 4th question was really tough…unlike any that I had seen before and I spent about 3 minutes on this and decided it was better to guess (whenever you do make an occasional guess just think that the problem was one of those being tested and don’t get bogged down!!!) From this point on the test got harder and harder and I this level was certainly higher than the OG (slightly tougher and taking more time to solve…) The saving grace here was the MJJ notes that Clintonn posted… I saw around 3 similar questions on the test…make sure you do those two documents at least twice ( I could only glance through the document but even that helps as when you encounter a problem that you’ve seen before you are in a better frame of mind!!!). I had 6 minutes for the last two problems the 36th being a geometry one that needed some computation time… I decided to go for it and was left with just 2 minutes for the last q… this was one of the ones on MJJ and I had remembered the answer (definitely no time to solve so thank you Clintonn). At the end of quant I did not have as good feeling as I had when I was doing the gmat prep software (the thought of having to cancel scores crosses my mind)…I took the optional 10 min break used the rest room and decided that it was better to get a good feel for the whole test and stepped in to do the Verbal part… (you will be fingerprinted every time you leave or enter the test). When i entered back the administrator walked me back to the computer... It is then that i got really nervous!!! She tried logging into the computer and it failed... she tried again and it failed again.. SHe then stepped out of the room and came back... I was just hoping that i not overshoot the allocated break time..She eventually got it right (dont know how someone could not remember a password if that was all she has been doing for the last 2 hours i was in the room...) Verbal was similar to the GMAT prep… I actually saw 2 same SC questions from the GMATprep tests. I had 4 RC passages. 1 was really long and abstract the others were quite all right (even easier than the OG). CR was slightly tougher than I have experienced. Overall, by the time I hit Q39 I thought I need to cancel my scores.. It is then that I got a boldface CR…I had read in one of the posts that you get a BF question when you are doing well (It took me long to figure out what a BF is!!!). I spent 3 minutes on this question and am not sure if I got it right… This is one set of questions that you should practice if you want something higher than the 720. The last was Q a SC that was similar to one of those i had seen before.. Finally got to the background questionnaire!!! Many questions are auto-filled from what you answer on mba.com so make sure you fill it out in the website as the last thing that you want to do after having completed the marathon is to answer a further set of questions… I hit report the scores and then the computer went blank for a time that felt like eternity… I had my fingers crossed and my eyes closed…Then popped the score and I was really relieved… I knew I was not in the best frame of mind in that evening but am very happy with my score Tips for those with little time for this exam: 1) Give yourself at least 6 weeks to prepare. The test is all about familiarity... In the first 2 weeks get done with all the OG material you can get your hands on. 2) Do a GMAT prep test and assess your strengths/weakness… Don’t get discouraged whatever your score.. You now know how much time you need to prepare.. 3) Set up your test date based on the time above…Get an appointment for the time of day you are most comfortable with… This is important and is different for everyone (I violated this rule) 4) Do as many hard math MJJ problems.. For SC use Manhattan SC and practice all the OG questions and do the 1000 SC questions (I did not have the time to do that) Also keep reading articles in the economist etc to make RC passages easy. For RC always read critically and concentration is key (Deep breathing/ meditation twice a day highly recommended…) 5) Do as many GMAT prep tests as you can… I did not do the load/reload but am told that they produce new set of questions… This is a good simulator of the test… Don’t rely too much on how much you score but focus on what you are getting wrong...Dont waste time on other software while they may be good to test your basic skills they are not usefull in getting a feel for the GMAT question pool. 6) Finally attitude to the test is important… It starts with a good diet (my good wife took care of that), exercise (nothing major just let the O2 flow through), and stay positive in the test… You will encounter many hard problems but always remember that some very hard problems are probably just test problems and you can afford to get over 10 wrong in quant and still get a great score (verbal the error rate is to be minimized anything higher than 8 wrong gets your score lower than 40…don’t hold me accountable to this but that’s what I got out of the scaling system)… Overall this is a minor component of the admission process and though important definitely not worth obsessing over (yes it is easier to say that when youre doneJ).. Let me know if i could be of any help to anyone on this forum...