gautam17 wrote:
ABOUT MYSELF- 31 yrs old ,male, Indian, doctor in the army, alumnus of Armed Forces Medical College, India.
I beat the GMAT in my second attempt on 31 may 13 with 720 Q48 V41 94 %tile, was beaten blue and black by GMAT on 31 January 13 and scored 570 Q39 V30 but didn't bother to remember the percentile. I Was hoping for some divine intervention and it came on 27 Feb when I was blessed with a baby girl. The world that I knew changed overnight, those who have a young kid at home will understand. I did some introspection, pulled up my socks, booked a date for GMAT and started studying in earnest. I bought verbal live add on from e-GMAT and quant portion of Gmatprepnow, both incredible resources, especially for working professional. I could only study for 45 to 60 mins a day, so I prepared my own strategy based on e-GMAT strategy sessions and followed it .Finished verbal first and then concentrated on quant.
My RESOURCES
VERBAL-1 ) e-GMAT online and verbal add-on.
2) Official guide 12,13 ,verbal guide 2 and Question pack 1(by far the best official question bank)
3) Grockit (got it free with e-GMAT)
QUANT- 1)OG 12,13 and Question pack 1
2) MGMAT strategy guides
3) GMATPREPNOW (pretty good video lessons and solved examples)
4) GMAT CLUB TESTS(free with e-GMAT, best source to develop intuition about common GMAT traps)
WHAT I DID THIS TIME
1) Understanding the GMAT- you require a different kind of mind set to conquer the GMAT so know the rules of the game. An article by STACY KOPRINCE of MGMAT titled "IN IT TO WIN IT" did the trick for me.
2)TIMING-IF you want to know why your timing sucks search articles by CHRIS BERMAN of MGMAT .I found only three articles written by him, all three are gems.
3) WHAT I DID ABOUT MY TIMING
a) Read the article regarding timing by STACEY
b) Joined the strategy 2 session of e-GMAT and understood the concept of TAKT TIME and started implementing them in my mocks.
c) A good video regarding timing is available on MGMAT website in THURSDAYS WITH RON, prepared a list of strengths and weaknesses and decided my game plan in case i was behind my timing strategy.
d) Went through a similar video in GMATPREPNOW.
4) HITTING THE WALL AND GOING BEYOND IT-I was stuck in 650 to 670 range, here is what I did to reach 700.
a)SENTENCE CORRECTION- practiced the e-GMAT sentence correction method diligently, the method is not a secret and its accurate but takes a lot of time to master so I combined this method with the sentence correction method taught by RON of MGMAT and it worked wonders for me.
b) CRITICAL REASONONG-practised PRETHINKING and NEGATION TEST as taught by RAJAT of e-GMAT and the right answers suddenly started jumping out of the options.
C ) READING COMPREHENSION-follwed the e-gmat process took time to understand the passage and map tha passage rest was easy.
d)QUANT- Went through all the videos of GMATPREPNOW,Brent has done a really incredible job. MY accuracy in coordinate geometry improved from 20% to 90%, became more confident in other areas such as probability, combinatorics, word problems.
e) my biggest improvement in quant came from adopting strategies such as backsolving, substitution, use of smart numbers and from a strategy discussed by STACEY in her article "ROLE OF CONFUSION IN GMAT PREPARATION" followed it like a religion ,stayed a long time with a questions, didn't look at the answers till i had come up with my own answers.Again a slow but powerful method.
5)EMOTIONAL INTENSITY-I knew that to get the most out of my limited study time I had to be in a peak state of mind so I experimented with many emotions like curiosity ,confidence, agrression, excitement. Curiosity worked for me during preparation and confidence helped me conquer GMAT.
6) PRACTICED CONFIDENCE- How did I do that? Solved questions topic wise, easy questions first, smashed them out of the park carried the confidence to medium and hard level questions and smashed them. IF I had to study a topic that I didn't like , I first studied a topic that I enjoyed and carried the enthusiasm to the topic i didn't like. I also practiced confidence in random guessing during my mock tests (bottomline don't worry about those ten questions you are getting wrong anyways, guess and move on confidently).
FOR THOSE WHO BELEIVE IN LOVE AND LUCK....Had tremendous support from my wife during the preparation and since my daughter was born I was really happy, nothing in the world could change it. Though I was spending sleepless nights and was studying for a little while I was very very happy (kids do that to you I guess). And in India we also believe the daughters bring a lot of luck so I was pretty well covered there.
NOT including my mock scores of MGMAT and gmatprep as I gave them multiple times and scores are highly inflated.
FINALLY, HUGE THANKS TO ALL THE TEACHERS- SHRADDHA,PAYAL,STACEY, RAJAT,RON ,BRENT,CHRIS BERMAN AND ALL THE COMMUNITY MEMBERS WHOSE SUCCESS STORIES HAVE INSPIRED ME.
I beat the GMAT in my second attempt on 31 may 13 with 720 Q48 V41 94 %tile, was beaten blue and black by GMAT on 31 January 13 and scored 570 Q39 V30 but didn't bother to remember the percentile. I Was hoping for some divine intervention and it came on 27 Feb when I was blessed with a baby girl. The world that I knew changed overnight, those who have a young kid at home will understand. I did some introspection, pulled up my socks, booked a date for GMAT and started studying in earnest. I bought verbal live add on from e-GMAT and quant portion of Gmatprepnow, both incredible resources, especially for working professional. I could only study for 45 to 60 mins a day, so I prepared my own strategy based on e-GMAT strategy sessions and followed it .Finished verbal first and then concentrated on quant.
My RESOURCES
VERBAL-1 ) e-GMAT online and verbal add-on.
2) Official guide 12,13 ,verbal guide 2 and Question pack 1(by far the best official question bank)
3) Grockit (got it free with e-GMAT)
QUANT- 1)OG 12,13 and Question pack 1
2) MGMAT strategy guides
3) GMATPREPNOW (pretty good video lessons and solved examples)
4) GMAT CLUB TESTS(free with e-GMAT, best source to develop intuition about common GMAT traps)
WHAT I DID THIS TIME
1) Understanding the GMAT- you require a different kind of mind set to conquer the GMAT so know the rules of the game. An article by STACY KOPRINCE of MGMAT titled "IN IT TO WIN IT" did the trick for me.
2)TIMING-IF you want to know why your timing sucks search articles by CHRIS BERMAN of MGMAT .I found only three articles written by him, all three are gems.
3) WHAT I DID ABOUT MY TIMING
a) Read the article regarding timing by STACEY
b) Joined the strategy 2 session of e-GMAT and understood the concept of TAKT TIME and started implementing them in my mocks.
c) A good video regarding timing is available on MGMAT website in THURSDAYS WITH RON, prepared a list of strengths and weaknesses and decided my game plan in case i was behind my timing strategy.
d) Went through a similar video in GMATPREPNOW.
4) HITTING THE WALL AND GOING BEYOND IT-I was stuck in 650 to 670 range, here is what I did to reach 700.
a)SENTENCE CORRECTION- practiced the e-GMAT sentence correction method diligently, the method is not a secret and its accurate but takes a lot of time to master so I combined this method with the sentence correction method taught by RON of MGMAT and it worked wonders for me.
b) CRITICAL REASONONG-practised PRETHINKING and NEGATION TEST as taught by RAJAT of e-GMAT and the right answers suddenly started jumping out of the options.
C ) READING COMPREHENSION-follwed the e-gmat process took time to understand the passage and map tha passage rest was easy.
d)QUANT- Went through all the videos of GMATPREPNOW,Brent has done a really incredible job. MY accuracy in coordinate geometry improved from 20% to 90%, became more confident in other areas such as probability, combinatorics, word problems.
e) my biggest improvement in quant came from adopting strategies such as backsolving, substitution, use of smart numbers and from a strategy discussed by STACEY in her article "ROLE OF CONFUSION IN GMAT PREPARATION" followed it like a religion ,stayed a long time with a questions, didn't look at the answers till i had come up with my own answers.Again a slow but powerful method.
5)EMOTIONAL INTENSITY-I knew that to get the most out of my limited study time I had to be in a peak state of mind so I experimented with many emotions like curiosity ,confidence, agrression, excitement. Curiosity worked for me during preparation and confidence helped me conquer GMAT.
6) PRACTICED CONFIDENCE- How did I do that? Solved questions topic wise, easy questions first, smashed them out of the park carried the confidence to medium and hard level questions and smashed them. IF I had to study a topic that I didn't like , I first studied a topic that I enjoyed and carried the enthusiasm to the topic i didn't like. I also practiced confidence in random guessing during my mock tests (bottomline don't worry about those ten questions you are getting wrong anyways, guess and move on confidently).
FOR THOSE WHO BELEIVE IN LOVE AND LUCK....Had tremendous support from my wife during the preparation and since my daughter was born I was really happy, nothing in the world could change it. Though I was spending sleepless nights and was studying for a little while I was very very happy (kids do that to you I guess). And in India we also believe the daughters bring a lot of luck so I was pretty well covered there.
NOT including my mock scores of MGMAT and gmatprep as I gave them multiple times and scores are highly inflated.
FINALLY, HUGE THANKS TO ALL THE TEACHERS- SHRADDHA,PAYAL,STACEY, RAJAT,RON ,BRENT,CHRIS BERMAN AND ALL THE COMMUNITY MEMBERS WHOSE SUCCESS STORIES HAVE INSPIRED ME.
That's very inspirational. Wish you all the best for your application process.
