590 to 710 ..through with GMAT ( AWA 4.5)

Congrats Yogesh. Thats a great result. Do post on what you think made the difference the second time around. What changes did you make in your preparation, what additional books did you refer, how many additional hours did you put in etc....

Excellent ! That's an achievement!
We have in common that we have the same 1st score. Our difference is that you could score beyond 700! When was your first attempt`?

That is cool! congrats!

Yogesh: You have done it !!!!

Congrats!!

Thanks for all the wishes!!!

After my first attempt at GMAT in nov I realised that I was lagging very much in verbal. So I decided to concentrate more on verbal. After concentrating on verbal for first three weeks I found my scores improving that acted as a moral booster. Also unlike the earlier test i took 3 weeks leave before the test. This helped me to concentrate only on GMAT and avoid any distractions caused by work.

Few pts on verbal


RC

- Learn to read actively.
- Try to step into authors shoes and guess what the author would say ahead.
- Also after reading the first 1/3rd passage try to determine the scope ,main idea ,purpose and topic of the message. Make a note of this on pad provided. This helps one to be focussed and not loose track.
- For large passages preparing a roadmap of the passage helps. This need not be very complicated. It can be as simple as X is stated in 1st para, Y is stated in second para,x and Y are compared in 3rd para and so on.
- Practice difficult RC's this helps.
- If you you are short on time you can guess but ensure that you get atleast fifty percent right on the final RC.

CR
- Did not work much on CR. Kaplan workshops on CR helped me a lot.
- Also practice the questions posted on this forum

SC

- Manhattan SC book helped me a lot.
- After reading every chapter from this book prepare flash cards noting down the points you learned. Refer to these flashcards often so that SC rules are fresh in your mind.
- Try to solve SC questions mechanically i.e find out the errors in the given answer choice. Most of the times you can easily eliminate 3 on 5.
Out of the other if you can spot an error in one choice select the other as answer. Do not think whether the sentence sounds right or not. Sometimes one's line of thinking does not match with VUE's.

Quant

- Practice as many sums as possible.
- Learn all the basic formulas.
- Focus on quality as well.


General tips
- Solve quant and verbal questions in groups of 37 and 41 respectively. The break up can be ( 23 PS and 14 DS) for qaunt and (13 RC,13 CR,15 SC) for verbal.
- Time all the questions solved
- Try to solve a SC question in 1 minute and aCR 1.5 minute. This will help you to accumulate some extra time for RC.

If you need any help in regards to preparations feel free to pm me and I will respond ASAP.

Cheers
Yogesh

Also forgot to mention one point. You can consider yourself ready for GMAT when you score consistently on any software. The scores may vary on each software but they should not vary much for the same software.

Yogesh:

What were your practise scores other than GMATPrep?

Here are few of my practie scores

Kaplan

CAT 1 630
CAT2 640
CAT 3 630
CAT 4 630

Princeton
CAT 1 720
CAT 2 710

GMAT Prep

CAT 1 770
CAT 2 740

That's it ! ... U did it :D .... Congratulations :D

Where are u thinking to apply? :D

Thinking of applying next year.. This year is too late..
Searching for schools in India , US , UK , singapore or EUROPE.

UK is not too late (LBS for example) and probably INSEAD still on time. Others dont know. In the US maybe Berkeley (January 31st deadline)...

Thanks a lot!!

Great score. If you do not have enough time, don't rush the application. You'd rather wait for the next year.

Yup..waiting for the next year.