10 Days to go - Averaging at 7xx in practice tests

I never thought a practice test can bring so much joy and uplift your spirits so much until yesterday. I took a MGMAT practice test yesterday and scored a 730 (Q49 V41). When the score popped in the screen i said "woow". Although i'm really happy, i'm pretty nervous too as now i've raised the bar and my personal expectation is higher now!!! With 10 more days to go I am, simply put, pretty nervous and curious. I haven't finished reviewing the test yet but from the results i can say that although i made the same number of mistakes as last time (when i scored a 700), I got a lot of 700-800 level question correct and did not get more than 3 questions wrong back to back. This might be the reason why the score went higher than last time. This strenghtens the long held theory about GMAT that its not the number of questions you get right but the level of questions you get wrong which affects your score.

So I have finally entered the final round of preparations. This week I'll continue the practice drill as last week and will also review the questions from the Error log towards the end of the week. I have some word problem topics that i need to re-review from the MGMAT book. So hopefully this week I'll have lunch with some word problems!!! Sounds like fun, isn't it. Hope its worth the effort!!

Nothing more to shout about. Will try to update my status later this week. Till then peace out everybody!!

Random Update - 3 weeks into preps

After 3 weeks of prep, yesterday i took a Practice test. I took the 6th MGMAT practice test and scored a 700 (Q49 V35). I was actually surprised with my quant score as the questions were very tough. After the test i realized that questions 2 to 12 were all 700-800 level questions and managed a hit rate of 8/12. Pretty cool, isn't it. But I was actually stuck on some questions and took a long time to crack them. Verbal was not bad so to speak. But CR questions were really ambiguous. I thought some of them didn't make any sense, may be i need some more practice.

With that good score to motivate my spirits i'm moving on to the 4th week of preparation. This is the final week of review according to my plan. I have lots to complete this week - Manhattan word translation guide, Kaplan Verbal Work book and the EZ solutions book. From next week on my practice drill starts, so i got to finish up with the studying part this week.

P.S. The long week end was amazing. A good relief from all the preps. saturday i went to a water park to cool my heels and Sunday i had lots of fun bowling and playing 8-ball with my friends.

Its always exciting to see a 7XX score!!!

I was getting worried of not seeing a 700 score in my prep transcript before my test day. But thank God i made it happen. Last week i took 2 practice tests. One Power prep and one MGMAT.

Last friday i took my second powerprep, not too bad. I scored a 670 (Q44, V 36). But i think i could have done better. To my surprise i made some really silly, in fact stupid, mistakes in Quant that i could've avoided them to raise my score to a 680. But thats what i did and after revising i promised myself to be careful next time. sigh!! Sunday afterternoon, i took another practice test - Manhattan GMAT CAT 5. I decided to be very careful and took my sweet time to finish the first 10 ques. Once i saw that time was sprinting away, i started accelerating and at times i saw questions which i knew for sure were typical MGMAT like - involves lot of steps and calculation. So i moved on with calculated guesses. After the Quant section i felt i had done pretty well. I turned on my rice cooker with some rice for dinner, drank some green tea and got back into business with the Verbal section.

I was relatively comfortable with the verbal section. The first RC was one subject which actually interested me - one with a cell wall enzyme and that sort. Wow another tip - Be interested in what you read. Its helps in answering ques and you'll get to learn something new. Timing was spot on and when i finished the section, the clock was still counting down - 2:45... 2:44... 2:43.... When i clicked on the view report i was so happy; there it was a nice sweet number - 700 (Q47, V39). I broke my previous record on quant and on verbal!!! yeah!!! (Does this sound like a debrief?? well cant help it i am excited!!)

With hardly 10 days to go i hope to keep up the steady improvement. This week for the first time i'm going to spend 2 days reading for the AWA. I have never touched this section, but i guess bloggers can afford that!!! :) I got to look up some templetes for the essays and note some significant events that i can point out in the essays.

This weeks plans - Study essay templetes, Take the Knewton's free Prep test, Finish the PS and DS questions from OG 11 and practice some RC!!!

(Any comments/suggestions from my esteemed readers would be greatly appreciated!! )

Its not a 700 but close.....

I was happy yesterday when i completed my 4th MGMAT Cat. I scored a 670 (Q46, V35) which is my highest score yet. Now i feel that i can actually crack the monster.

Again this time, the quant section was very lengthy and to be honest i had to pause the timer as there was now way one could have solved some of the problems in 2mins. But, the experience was wothwhile. Silly errors were limited this time as expected after taking more than 7 CATs. There were a few questions in Combinations and probability that chock me. Two things that i learnt and had applied were plugging in numbers and backsolving. Infact these techniques saved me a lot of time when dealing with complicated word problems and VICs.

The verbal was not bad at all. Thanks to Manhattan GMAT's SC guide, i have managed to bring my strick rate up on the SC. RCs turned out to be unpredictable. I usually manage to nail the easy ones but a tough RC can throw me off balance. The solution is simply - practice which i'm planning to do this week. I am going to do 4 RCs everyday of this week, hopefully that should take care of the RC section. Since i've exhausted all my CR questions from the Official guides, i'm going to rely on the CR questions posted in various forums like BTG.

With exactly 3 more weeks of prep left, I am going shift to top gear more from this week. This week would involve redoing all the questions that i got wrong from the OG. I'm glad i made an error log containing the questions that i got wrong while practice. So this week's to-do list would be:
* CR question bank from MGMAT
* 4 RCs everyday from OG
* GMATFocus test 3
* MGMAT CAT 5

Yet another 650 but this time its from MGMAT

Another 650 post.. I know its getting really boring to read my posts of me nagging over my scores but unfortunately i dont have anything better from my GMAT world. So here we go again..

I am scared of the Manhattan GMAT CAT exams. Period. Not only are they very lengthy and tough they are low scoring as well. Their quant especially is gruesome. But hey I'm fine with it. The motivation that i have is once you've faced the devil you probably wont be scared of the dark!!! I seriously hope the GMAT is not as tough and lengthy as this one. After the quant section yesterday i was so exhausted that i had to take my supper before beginning the verbal. One word of caution - never do this. Take the CATs completely before taking such breaks.

What i noticed this time was that the number of mistakes was more than the number in my previous MGMAT cat, but i managed to answer a lot of 700-800 level questions and i guess this brought my score in the 650 ball park. Else i would have been slapped with a 540!!.

Another 3 weeks to go for the G-day. Although i have exhausted all the verbal questions in the OG and the OG-Verbal book, i plan to revisit them in the next couple of weeks. My error logs is also getting in a lot of entries and by this week end i'm planning to give them a second shot.
I seriously dont want another 650 thrown at me. This week i'm determined to go thro' hell to get that sweet 7xx score!! Lets see how it goes.

This week is no different from last week with regards to prep -another mixed workout. Planning to take either the Knewton practice test or the last GMATFocus test. Haven't decided yet. And i'll wrap up this week with another MGMAT on Sunday. Will update with my progress.. Till then peace out!!!

MGMAT CAT 1 - Time to reflect on my plan

After a week of prep, combining both Quant and Verbal and practicing the questions by timing them (using the practice grid), i gave my Manhattan GMAT CAT1. One improvement that i found with my preparation, was my timing. I could finish the quant and the verbal section in the allotted 75 mins. Eventhough MGMAT test questions are more calculation oriented i had enough time, and when i finished my verbal section i had 3 mins to go!!! One point to my timing methodology.... yeahhhhh..

But not all was great!!! My score was again down, huh. Although i had expected to see my scores in the 600 range, i managed only a 580!!! I blame this on my Verbal ability. I scored a 42 in my quant and could have scored more if i had used the correct method for 4 of the questions. So these being concept errors i'm happy that i had a chance to learn more. I learned the table matrix method for solving over-lapping set problems and understood one princple that a number can be either +ve or -ve or even Zero for DS questions. I never thought about the Zero part!!! Two good entries into my flash cards. Careless errors are less this time revealing my concentration in the problem. Thats good.

Verbal is my weakness, Period. I understand that if my verbal score, which was 28 :(, was as good as my quant score (42) then my score would have atleast lingered in the upper 600 range if not 700!! The solution is simple. I'll focus on Verbal for the entire week.

Thanks to the beatthegmat forum again for providing me the most valuable resources on verbal. I managed to download various study notes and flash cards from various people (thank you so much and sorry i'm not good with names, to credit). I have planned to complete the SC prep this week using the Manhattan SC guide and all the notes/strategies that i've downloaded.

Short term goal (this week):
* Finish Manhattan GMAT SC guide
* Review all the study aides downloaded
* Practice (timed of course) 41 questions everyday (15 SC, 13-14 CR and 4 RC passages) and review all answers.

Long term Goals:
* Improve on Verbal section - A score of 30-35 in the next MGMAT CAT would reflect improvement.

So thats my plan for the week. Please comment or email me in case you have any suggestions/advice/question/comment.

Hopefully my next CAT would lead me into the 600 range, where i would feel more comfortable.