2nd innings

2nd innings starting .... on the 21st of nov.

gmat!!!!!

hi guys scored 700 ( m50, v34)

dissapointed , taking the test again.

here is the post i wrote for scoretop.com



hi everyone ,

gave gmat a while back and scored 700 . extremely dissapointed.

but first let me provide some background:
i am computer science graduate , indian with a year of work ex .
sufficiently strong in maths and weak in verbal, like most people out here.

i sporadically prepared for about a month and a half with a lot of breaks in between when i had a lot of work. but serious preparation was only for a week .

however i think i had a good test preparation strategy was adequaetly well prepared to score 730+ , just a bad day i guess and as i have benefitted from a lot from posts by people such as jeepers, tianlong and the great arch. i will give a detailed account of what i did, though not a succes story some of you could apply relevant information in your study strategies. but first the text experience while it is still fresh

test experience:

my test was scheduled at 9:00 at the centre in prometric , which i had checked out before to know stuff like where the loo's are and what id's we need to get , earplugs et cetera. and i reached by 8:50 very late and was further delayed by the incessant amount of checking that happens in india . i had to write confidentiality agreement , by write i mean that they actually make you copy out the agreement and sign it below . and a mugshot was taken after which i was shoved in to my cubicle time 9:15, yep they started late.

my awa started with an analysis of an issue for which i wrote an extremely simple though sufficently long essay's as i heard somewhere that length is a factor though not a crucial one, vaguely based on a template developed by this chap called twinnsplitter in testmagic , who is probably one of the greatest minds in the gmat fraternity.

i have always found analysis of an argument simpler because it doesnt require any creativity but rather just the ability to refute some amount , some debating skill do help here. after some rudimentary attacks on things such as staistics and incorrect comparisons i was on my to the heart of the test.

the one thing good that gmat does is start with the awa , as it really calms your nerves down before the real action starts . my math section was far too easy initially though i dont know whether i got any jj's or not as i didnt have time to do the mjj's . in fact it was so easy that i was wondering whether i commited some stupid errors and the difficulty level had nor risen . so i ended up taking extra time . i got 3 probability questions one of which required quite some thought , the details will be put up in the vip forum. one ratio question which i got was more than 8 lines long , almost like a boldfaced cr question and took quite some time to figure out what was needed . in fact probably the reason why i got a 50. by the time the last question came i had 40 secs left , though an easy one i did not possess enough time to mark the right answer. i think it is crucial to finish the test . as i dont think i made any error till that stage.

PS: dont worry mjj will be provided in the vip section.

the verbal !!!!! this is probably the most important section on the gmat and learning from my mistakes could enable you guys to do much better.

1st error : didnt use my break to well , read a lot of tips on what to do in the break and took water , bananas, chocolate and red bull . ended up only having the chocolate, and also met a friend from iit roorkee in teh hallway , that also consumed some time. so in short use your breaks well , if needed just take a leak and come back fast and sit in front of the terminal until time.

in fact when the test started i wasnt quite well prepared for it , it was too sudden . as in most cases my test started with an sc , which in hindsight was quite simple one but i stared at the screen until quite some time until i could figure out what was happening. it was follwed by 3 more sc's and a barrage of critical reasoning questions. my first passage was quite late around the 7th or 8th question and extremely long , in fact all my passages were extremely long , i think one of the passages i got is vaguely mentioned in the vjj's without questions just the gist is mentioned. anyway i spent a lot of time in the initial questions of the verbal section due to lack of concentration and the fact that i was getting extremly irritated with the procter walking around in his heavy and noisy boots. to add to it some toefl guy was talking , i didnt bother to look at to whom , but the guy was talking !!!!!!.
all of this led to the fact that i had only 17 mins left for the last 20 questions and was contemplating cancelling the test , but soldiered on got a simple rc which helped in by time a bit a science passage with 4 questions i think took 2 mins for that followed by some sc's which helped in managing time a bit however i reached the end with 5 questions remaining and 40 seconds on the clock blindly guessed from then on.

in hindsight i would say the pivotal factor would be my lack of time management , and i think it is very important to give a lot of times tests . i totally agree with TIANLONG in this . and also a lot of time is wasted in just acquiring information rather than studying. i spent a lot fo time just getting hold of info but didnt study much . not beneficial .

ill give my test preparation strategy which was quite strong in another debrief , and i seriously feel that some of you could benefit from it .

my practice test scores are as shown below :

pp2 : 710 , started with this some 3 months back at one of these training centres no prep, no idea even about the time required in the test.
gmatprep1 : 720 , before prep

princeton review : 690, 720, 720, 730 ; all during prep

kaplan : 600 . wierd huh , extremely demoralising didnt study for 2 days after that. good review though.

ims diagnostic test: 710 , a training centre in india

gmatprep2 : 710 "after prep , but before starting og"

powerprep1 : 780 " after doing math and part of sc from og, no rc and cr though . so slightly skewed

apart from this i did 2 gmat sets set 20 and 19 and i arch's explanations were spot on, you seriously rock dude . and read the oct vjj . didnt get time to do the questions.did some mjj about 10 but was frustrated with wrong answers and explanations and didnt do any more .

so in conclusion my score is ok . not good and would want to take it again but am still undecided . it would be great if i could get some suggestions and opinions , needless to say i am extremely confused.

my prep startegy and debrief is yet to come , stay tuned......

ps: its nice to part of the 700CLUB , sounds better than vip , what do you think.

so finally a day left

gmats on the 26th ... having been chilling since yesterday , more because of a lack of will power than need ..... however have to switch back on from right now and till teh next 24 hours if i want somethign repectable . will hopefully stop studying tom at this time but till then ... its asss kicking time

gmat day after tom

hi everyone gmat is day after tom , and right now i am just chillign trying to revise the stuff i have done and steering clear away from new stuff ... and there is just so much to do , thats its phenomenally hard to keep track off , dunno what i will do ... awa has been neglected , and in fact havent even formulated a template . whereas rc has never been studied . done a bit of sentence correction but not something to be proud off , and copius amounts of math (because its easy), but still errors in the tough data sufficiency problems continue to happen . guess there is no magic mantra to banish errors from mathematics .

cr which i thought was my forte apparently is not . and has been neglected a little bit too much. at this point of time , i can only hope for the best and hope that i get a score which doesnt embaress me at least .

signing off ..

ps good or bad will post information about my score

wassup guys long time no post

just wanted to inform you guys that 3 days left and prep is underway and no postponement has happened , and neither can happen .

so now all we can do is wait and watch whether i smash it or get smashed

12 days left

wassup dudes , only 12 days left , so rather than pissing you off with ramblings of my non existant prep . i shal regale you with my ambitins .

today i plan to cover a lot of material , primarily becuase the last few days i have just been going out a lot for instance i went for coffee at 11:30 in the night and again for breakfast at 6:30 in the morning .

to do : og 11 math portion , complete , ims stuff , og 11 diagnostic , manhattan sc

14 days left..

hi guys i dont remember when i posted last but whatever the teraget it has not been achieved .

today i am exclusively focussing in math , even though i am quite string at it , in a bid to remove the backlog which has been plaquing me for a number of days .

to do :
gmat 800 math portion , very little left should take an hour.
ims probability and other misc , revision of all formulae.
manhattan sc guide (planngin to read this since a number of days , not succeding do or die today)
parralellism/ comparison sc from og 10 .

not in the least bit ambitious , very much possible i might add . let see how i fare .

gmat surfaces again!!!!

hi guys long time no post , primarily beacause i was abstracted from my studies to a large degree hence , didnt feel the need to procrastinate and start blogging .

since the time for hitting the books has returned , the need for blogging resurfaces.

i have 16 days until gmat now , and will maintain a log of what i have done each day and what more i plan to do the same day, to track my progress and also castigate myself on the shoddy and meagre amount of work done .

so day 1:

8th october:

done 40 pages of sentence correction theory from petersons ultimate gmat guide about 2hrs .

to do:

gmat 800 , math portion and ims probability , math section test.
manhattan sentence correction theory read.