Hi everyone!
I just finished my exam on Friday night and wanted to share my experience with this community since it’s helped me so much with my studies. Thanks so much to everyone in this forum, especially Erin and Ursula for their tireless devotion to helping others. Here’s my small contribution:
Background and Study Strategy
This is the first and only time I took the exam. I am not a native English speaker, but I have studied several languages. I went to a specialized Math high school, but did not take any Math courses in college. I have not had to use much of my math skills for my profession over the past 5 years. (Does this sound like a logic riddle yet? :D)
To prepare, I studied for 5-10 hours a day for a little less than two months. A lot of it was just practicing endurance. I started by reading through the Kaplan and PR materials, and took notes on all the concepts I was rusty on so that I could have a customized reference guide. I completed all the drills on the Kaplan CD and took a practice exam as well all the exams on the PR CD.
(Note: while it may appear that the PR CD has multiple drills and CAT’s, they are actually all from the same question bank. In other words, if you finish a drill, you may no longer be able to do the CAT since PR uses the same questions for both and the software knows that you’ve seen the Q’s in the drill. I realized this too late, and had to reinstall the software so that I could have use the CAT to practice timing.)
I used Ursula’s answer grid, an Excel spreadsheet you can find by searching the forums, to record my answers, and more importantly, to identify my mistakes and weak areas. I modified the sheet to include a timer function so that Excel could automatically show me time remaining each time I put in an answer. With 3 weeks to go, I started breaking into the Official Guide and practicing my weak areas. I also did the first PP test to get a benchmark. Each time I did the [tooltip=Official Guide]OG[/tooltip] questions (which I attacked in 80 minute blocks as Ursula suggested), I made sure to read the explanations carefully to get into the ETS mindset. This was extremely helpful: whereas I started off finding the CR impossible to get through, I was breezing through them by my final study week. At this point, I also downloaded the practice LSAT exam from the ETS website for additional CR questions. I had also been weak with RC, but found my groove once I practiced enough questions.
Another note on the study materials: I tried hard to adapt to the Kaplan method of skimming passages the first time around, but found this virtually useless as I found myself rereading the passage the second time around to extract the tone or details. My advice is that if you’re already reading at a comfortable pace and can answer the questions with one thorough but slower reading, stick with that instead of trying the Kaplan method. I only read at about 300 words a minute but did fine with the exam timing because I learned to pace myself with the other areas. I was averaging about 3-4 minutes for reading a passage, and 8-9 minutes for reading + answering 6-7 questions. One thing I did do was take notes on the passages. While I didn’t always refer back to them, I found that the act of writing down main ideas and details helped me retain more information.
Towards the end of my practice, I went back to my spreadsheet and reviewed every question I got wrong. (I had also kept a log of really difficult questions I had come across in this forum). I studied pretty hard during the final week, but made sure to get lots of exercise and rest. And I stayed well-hydrated! The night before the exam, I stopped studying at 6; I indulged in the season premiere of the OC and did some yoga. My exam was at 4:30 the following day, so I slept in, took the morning to practice another AWA, and then strolled to the test center with a large coffee in hand.
Test Day:
I got to the test center early and took my time to get into the right mindset. I did a couple of stretches in the waiting room, and this seemed to have helped get the blood flowing into my brain. Once in the test room, I took my time setting up my workspace: creating a grid for eliminating answers for multiple choice questions, drawing vertical lines on another sheet for my DS questions, and writing down time estimates on another sheet. I found this “dashboard” setup to be very helpful in getting me organized. Once I felt ready, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and hit “Begin”…
AWA:
Pretty straightforward questions, but I was thrown off because the argument question came first. In all my practice exams, I’d started with the issue question, so I had to readjust my gears a bit when this came up. This may not matter to you as much, but it’s something worth noting so you minimize the amount of surprises you have on test day. I had to take a couple of minutes to get back on track.
Math:
Was still a little shaken up from the AWA, but did my best to focus on the Math. Questions were pretty basic throughout the exam with the exception of a bizarre number theory question that sucked up a lot of my time. I’d historically been able to breeze through DS questions, so I thought that it would be ok to spend more time on this PS question. I spent over 4 minutes on it and never did figure it out, and got in trouble with time for the last two questions. Overall, one basic Permutation question, lots of number theory, one mixture problem. As you can tell my from my score, I must’ve gotten a question wrong early on, so don’t use my experience to gauge the type of questions you may encounter.
Verbal:
Came back from my break having tried my best to expel any doubts I had from the math section. I started with some SC’s which I breezed through. As I mentioned, I’m not a native speaker, but I think this worked to my advantage for SC as I’d been forced to learn grammar rules properly. I also took Latin in high school, and I think having to memorize how to decline nouns and conjugate verbs helped a lot. Got a science RC early on which didn’t make much sense to me, but I approached it methodically by taking notes and eliminating answer choices.
Got two boldface questions in the end, but didn’t’ have too much trouble with them. They were much easier than the ones I've come across in this forum.
Overall, I seemed to have gotten a disproportionate amount of SC’s. As you can tell my from score, I think this worked to my advantage J.
After I finished the Verbal, I skipped through all of the survey questions since I was eager to get my score and I knew that the answers were optional. I had thought a bit about canceling my score since I felt I had done so poorly with the Math section, but curiosity won over my other urges.
I was plesantly surprised about my score, and thrilled to have broken the 700 barrier! My breakdown was particularly interesting:
720 96% (Q47 81%, V42 96%)
During practice, I had consistently scored very high on the math sections, and done less well with verbal. I must’ve overcompensated for this during my studies. I also think it had very much to do with how shaken up I was after my AWA’s.
My study materials:
Kaplan for Math
Kaplan 800
PR for Verbal
GMAT + practice exams
OG
PP
ETS official retired tests
Arco for AWA
LSAT sample test for CR and RC
PR Hard Math
This forum!!! I am so grateful for having found Ursula’s answer grid.
I used the CD’s for drills and timing.
FYI, I’d also tried Barrons, Petersons, and ARCO, but didn’t find them particular helpful since the questions were either out of scope, too difficult, too hard when compared with PowerPrep.
Unfortunately, I uninstalled the testing software before I wrote this so I can’t’ tell you my exact exam scores, but I started with about a 570 on a Kaplan CAT, and got anywhere from a 650 - 750 during practice exams my final week. With my answer grid, I discovered my greatest weakness: my wrong answers consistently came in blocks. I felt that I had achieved a decent grasp of the material, so my scores directly correlated with how well I could focus on each question. If I spent too long on a particular question and got flustered, I woudl get the next 2-3 questions wrong because I lost focus. This theory proved correct during my exam.
In summary, I urge you to study diligently: hone your strengths, find and fix your weak areas, and sharpen those pencils! And don't forget to breathe. :)
I hope this will be helpful for you as you continue in your studies. Best of luck, and I’ll see you in school next year!
RemPeter
