My experiences in the GMAT land!!

It was in May this year that I decided that i have had enough of CAT. I had appeared twice for it with decent preparation and performances in the mocks only to falter on the D-day. Perhaps I was not destined to study in an IIM. Also CAT requires rigorous practice and preparation for around 3 months, time when you tend to neglect your role and responsibility in the organization you are working in. I did not want this to happen in my present job with a leading SCM solution provider. Another thought creeping into my mind was whether it would be prudent to go for a 2-year MBA course after 3 years of work experience especially when I wasn't too interested in career shift. So, basing my decision on a combination of these factors, I decided to give GMAT a shot. The advantages were many. The GMAT scores were valid for 5 years. I could leverage my past work experience better. There were some schools such as ISB offering a 1 year course thus enabling me to save an year. Right or wrong, I decided to go ahead with it.

The first step was to find good books for preparation. I got some idea about the standard books used for GMAT preparation by visiting the forums and searching websites. The Official Guide or OG published by the company that conducts GMAT, I learnt was the most important and indispensable resource you could lay your hands on for GMAT. But it costs a whopping 1800 bucks in India. I, therefore, decided to give the second hand sale markets a try. But it was a worthless effort. The only book available there was the Barrons which is supposedly the worst book you can pick. Crestfallen, I returned home and my GMAT preparation looked in danger of a premature ending. It was then that my brother came to my rescue. He got the OG11 and GMAT 800 from Delhi(Nai Sarak). Also my friend Devan(DD2) shared a lot of GMAT stuff in soft copies from Germany. And thus began my preparation for GMAT.

It was in June that I finally got down to study. I had booked my dates for September 8 and I had 3 months to prepare. But the study material I had, looked grossly inadequate to last for 3 months. There were some more books that I wanted to buy but they were either not available or were too expensive. A friend of mine solved this problem. He had recieved a mail from an unknown guy who deals in selling the photocopies of all the GMAT books. I got in touch with this guy and though he was charging a little high for the photocopies, me and my friend decided to go for it in partnership. Did we have a choice??

I was all set. The project that i was working on was in the development phase. I knew that it would be difficult for me to find time consistently for studies. So I decided to grab all the time that I would get in the future. I decided to use my weekends fully. I started with OG but my roommate, who had already given GMAT, told me this was a bad way to begin. His reasoning was that OG represents the questions which are closest to GMAT both in content and level and so it would be more prudent to use it towards the middle or the end of the preparation. Valid point and so taken!! I started with Princeton Verbal Workbook. Verbal was the area I was mainly worried about.
GMAT generally tests you on 3 parts in Verbal
1. Sentence Correction(SC)
2. Reading Comprehension(RC)
3. Critical Reasoning (CR)
My intent was to mantain 90% accuracy accross the three areas. And in Princeton Verbal i could achieve that. It boosted my confidence tremendously and i felt that perhaps GMAT is just the exam I am naturally good at.
However, Kaplan Verbal Workbook, which I used next, rid me of all such fallacies. I realized that I had a problem on hand and Verbal would prove to be tough nut to crack. SC and CR were the problem areas. I was struggling to get even 80% accuracy in these sections. I completed the Kaplan Verbal Workbook but my accuracy refused to improve.
I picked up OG10 after that. OG10 is an awesome resource for practice. It contains around 300 questions each in SC, CR and RC and covers questions of every type that can be asked in GMAT. No other material gives you as many questions for practice. Even after completing OG10, I was not making much headway in SC and was still getting a number of them wrong.
It was then that I happened to look into http://sentencecorrection.com. And following the questions posted there and the subsequent discussions made me realize how to approach the sentence correction questions. Also I picked up some very important GMAT specific rules here a small example being the difference between the usage of 'such as' and 'like'. Usually at office, in between work, I would look at the questions posted there. To put it mildly, sentencecorrection.com was a big help to me as far as sentence correction was concerned.
And then I laid my hands on Manhattan SC. I had heard a lot about this book but was still sceptical until I opened it. This book is a pure joy for people preparing for GMAT. It is a concise access to all the GMAT specific rules as well as a guide to english grammar in general without getting too much into the technicalities. By this time, I had only 15 days left before I was scheduled to take the test and I had not given a single mock test till now. Also, I had not prepared for Quant and AWA. I decided to take two tests every weekend.
I started with Princeton. Scored 720 and 710 in the tests 3 and 4. Fairly ok but I found something wrong with their scoring pattern. Despite getting just two questions wrong in Quant and too not at the beginning, it used to give me a score of 46. Anyways I moved ahead. I decided that I did not have enough time to delve deep into Quant. So decided would practice a little bit of DS. I found the CAT books suitable for that. In Verbal, I was doing GMAT800 by Kaplan which is the toughest book available for GMAT. Its a nice book but a little too tough especially the RCs and the CRs.
The following weekend I gave a couple of Kaplan tests. My scores- 680 and 650. Decent scores for a Kaplan test. In the last week I decided to do nothing except the Powerprep. I decided to go back to OG10 for the sentence correction questions. In Powerprep, I scored 750 and 720. The PowerPrep is the best resource I found for the Quant questions. Some of the quant question were really good and I was surprised to see them in a GMAT software for GMAT quant is considered to be easy. I would say that the last 15 days should be spent only with PowerPrep and OG. Powerprep for its Quant and OG for its Verbal.
Well finally the day came. I had a restless night and got up quite early. Reached my Test Center one and a half hours before the scheduled time. They made me start early. The test center atmosphere is nice and you feel relaxed when there. The staff is friendly and helpful. I could concentrate well in the AWA and the Quant sections but during the Verbal section, my concentration began to waver. I began thinking about my score. I tried hard to concentrate and finally completed the exam. And then the system asked whether I would like to view my score or cancel the exam. I decided to go for it. I could hear my heart beat while the screen showed "Wait while your scores are processed". And finally it showed up.
770!! Quant-50, Verbal-44. And wasn't I happy.
However I didn't do well on the AWA-4.5.
So this was my GMAT story.
Wish all of you the very best in yours too.