Ok have finally recovered from my hangover and mass destruction of brain cells over this weekend. Sorry I tried to keep this brief but failed miserably and decided on to err on the side of too much info as opposed to leaving something out.
Background
Took the GMAT 1 year ago and scored a 680. I was not thrilled and for a variety of different reasons I had to put off the test even though I did prepare briefly for another attempt. The best thing that happened to me after my first attempt was to discover the GMAT club. While I have not been the most active member here i.e. not responded to many posts, I did post a lot of questions and checked posts and concepts (esp. verbal) here everyday during my preparation (which started May 25th 2005 for July 30th 2005 test)
Lessons Learned From Previous Un-successful attempt:
1. Improve my speed: In quant I guessed last 2 questions and in verbal I guessed last 4 questions. The reading comp. on question #34 killed me
2. Track Errors: I knew my SC’s were horrible and my RC’s were pretty bad too. CR I was doing well. But I didn’t know where I was screwing up in SC and RC i.e. what types of questions. It was blind attempt to just keep working through
OG and try and improve. I also had fundamental conceptual issues with SC grammar.
3. Allow sufficient time for practice after concepts are solidified: My total prep time last time was 2.5 months (while working full time). It took me about 1.5-2 months to go through all the concepts using
MGMAT strategy guides, Kaplan, and PR. I did not all enough time for practice and jumped to doing a lot of tests.
4.
Reduce careless mistake in Quant: I knew I was capable of 48-50 in Q but always made silly errors in quant like 18/4 = 4 or something stupid in a hurry. Also needed to better track Quant problem areas
5. Never give up. Ever!!
How I Prepped This Time / Recommendations for Prep (Keeping in mind the lessons learned)
SC:
1. This was my MOST problematic area. The biggest challenge here was finding good questions as I had already done
OG SC’s and remembered many answer even after a here. Kaplan and PR SC material SUCKS! That’s when I discovered 1000 SC document which essentially contains ALL SC’s from ETS paper tests and also
OG.
2. I used
Manhattan GMAT (which is necessary but NOT sufficient) for fundamentals. A great compliment to it is “Grammar Smartâ€