720 first attempt 48Q 40V

hey BSD ! cool score ..congratz

a query though ..

I always thought gmat prep was power prep !!
Which is the one we D/L from mba.com and how do we get a hold of the other ?

Thanks grad_mba

I downloaded it on BitTorrent, I suspect Powerprep is an older version of GmatPrep. Several questions in Powerprep were directly out of the OG.

Hey congratulation! Cheers

Here's the promised post about preparation.

After investigating top business schools, I realized that I needed a 700+ score to have any assured chances of getting into the Ultra Elite schools. Since I had recently quit my job I decided not to pick up any new roles till I had finished the GMAT. I also realized that aiming for 750+ is probably not worthwhile, given that I can only survive for a month or so without any income, however 700-750 was realistic.

I got the following books :
Barrons (a really old edition borrowed from a friend)
Kaplan 800
McGraw Hill
Princeton Review
OG 11th Edition
OG Maths (Green one)
OG Verbal (Purple one)

This was all BEFORE I discovered the Gmat club. After discovering the GMAT club, I got the following :
-All the notes from "sergey_is_cool" (thanks sergey they were extremely useful).
-A software called GMatter.

Initially, I found the maths very easy. The first 100 or so questions in the OG were not even worth doing. The data sufficiency questions were slightly trickier since it is easy to make silly errors in those.

The CR and RC were so so, but I was absolutely hopeless at sentence correction. I knew I had to improve in several areas if I were to achieve a 700+ score.

A note to any aspiring GMAT taker. You do not have to be very smart to be good at GMAT. I would consider myself in the 70th percentile as far as general intelligence is concerned. I only did 3 things that helped me get a good score : practice, practice and more practice.

I worked though Barrons (which is not the best book IMHO). Then I worked through Kaplan 800. It is a surprisingly useful book, when compared to all the other rubbish that Kaplan has produced. My first trial test on a Kaplan CAT was 590 which I thought was utter rubbish.

Then finally I worked through the OGs . I must have gone through 4000+ questions in the first month, and by about the 3rd of that month, I started recognizing sentence correction patterns. Generally an elimination strategy works really well.
I also found marking SC questions that I got incorrect initially, then reading the grammatical concept behind it and then revisiting the question and trying to solve it correctly in 2 weeks time, very useful.

I was doing all this work on my laptop. Two weeks into my preparation, my laptop got stolen. That was the absolute low point of my preparation. I lost a lot of preparation material that I had conjured. I was extremely unmotivated to do the test, thereafter. But thanks to encouragement of my friends and people on this forum, I persevered.

Then I ran through the OGs and eventually took the GmatPrep test 1. Scored 680. Close but no cigar. This was the first time that I took the test simulating real conditions (i.e. 9am start , full AWAs , only 5 minute breaks). This was when it occurred to me that GMAT is as much a test of mental endurance as it is of your Maths and verbal abilities.

Being a programmer and an avid runner, mental marathons are not new to me, so I was able to get used to a 3.5 hour test fairly quickly and did all my future CATs in "full" mode. Those who are not used to staring at the screen and providing focused concentration at a long stretch, better get used to doing so before taking the test.

After the first GmatPrep test, I discovered that my biggest problems lay in Sentence correction and Data sufficiency. This was strange to me, as by this time I was able to answer 80% of SC's correctly on average, while practicing from books.

I realized that taking the test while looking at the computer screen is different from doing the same question from a book. For some reason, I am more "comfortable" reading out of a book. For this reason, GMatter software was invaluable, since it helped me run through an enormous number of verbal question on the screen.

By this time I was actively participating in the forum as well. Then with 2 weeks left to go for the test, I decided to do GmatPrep2. I scored 710 in that. I knew I was close to being ready. The next few days I just did CATs and eventually scored 740 in GmatPrep1. This was just one week before the actual test. Of course I knew that my actual ability was a little less, since I could identify several questions especially in the Verbal section straight from the OG.

I knew that I was nearly there. The last week was spent just relaxing, posting on the forum and just reading up on some of the really advanced concepts (like modulus maths, probabilities and combinatorics). Although, I did not need to utilize any of these concepts on the test, because I did not do the maths part of the test quite so well (refer to my earlier posts for details on that).

What happened after that can be found on my earlier post about today .

Excellent !... Congrats & thanks for the debriefing :D

All the GMATClub is here

Thanks fig, much appreciate your help on several Maths concepts over the last few weeks.

Great score! A 40 on the verbal is excellent. I know how you feel about the math. I too scored below all my practice tests. However, a 48 certainly nothing to be ashamed about. Just work a bit more and you'll rock the GRE.

Thanks Baer,

You are one of the many members whose experiences I have learnt from.

The Princeton course also accepts GMAT scores. However they do not provide any 'concrete' data on what kind of score they require if one were to do GMAT instead of GRE.

I do not intend to take the GRE. In fact I have had a gutful of standardised tests. I want a change in careers, I want to learn about Hedge funds, Financial Econometrics and Algorithmic trading. I feel like I am wasting my time doing this Sentence correction and data sufficiency business. Revision of Differential Equations and Linear Algebra will be far more useful to me in my future endeavors.

You can understand why I am disappointed with a 48Q. I pride myself in my Quantitative abilities, but I wont be able to reflect this accurately on any of my applications based on this score .

Congratulations bsd_lover!! It's nice to see a club member get a super score. Your participation in the forums was great to watch (I should know cos thats all that I do these days ). And I'm sure it was of immense help to others who were participating at the same time.

I am not sure if Q48 is viewed as good or average but IMO if your job requires you to use quant-related skills or if you have taken any quant-related courses earlier then I think you should be fine even if your Q48 might appear average to Princeton. Just bring it out in your apps .

Hi Vikramjit,

I have some earlier correspondence with Princeton, who suggest that I do some Maths papers part time of my own accord, since I have been out of academia and in the workforce for so long (7+ years). I will try and contact them again (this time with my score) and ask them if its still best to just do the Maths papers.


Thanks for your support

grate. congrats. you missed few Qts. verbal is perfect. you are 750+ candidate.

I also heard that Princeton's MS finance is really strong.
goodluck.

h

Hi Himalayan,

Thanks for all your help / interesting discussions on the quant forum. I hope to continue participating, although I wont take the GMAT again. Looking forward to hearing about your own GMAT experience (presuming that you havent already taken the test).

Congrats man...
You have got really a good score. Verbal 40, wow....I wish I could get 40 in verbal.
Good luck for the application process.

Thanks heaps vshaunk,

I am sure that with your intelligence (evidenced by many in the maths forum), you will have no difficulty crossing the verbal hurdle with some more practice.

Here's to your own GMAT experience story .

cpngrats on the awesome score.

it is great to hear someone else mention that they do better "on paper" compared to the computer screen. i thought i was crazy... there is just something about being able to mark up a sentance on a piece of paper or scribble on a graph etc.

Thanks anonymouse,

There is some evidence to suggest that the new generation, which has grown up with computers, is more used to reading from a screen than it is to reading from paper based sources. It just goes to show that we are perhaps rather old.

Good luck with your own preparation. Do try out GMatter ,it helps ...

i have this problem ..

hit rate at RC/CR reading from paper 80-90%
hit rate at RC/CR reading from comp .screen : 40-50%