Anatomy of a 780

Anatomy of a 780 (Q50, V47) courtesy Scoretop

I hadn’t planned to write a debriefing. But some of my friends here on ScoreTop seem to think that such a summary might be useful’so here it is. Fair warning, this is a long one.

I’ve never been much for standardized tests. I can’t say why. My marks in school (all 20 years of it) were fine, but my various board scores, while sufficient, were never particularly impressive. Frankly, standardized tests scare me. They scared me then and they scare me now. Why? I think that it has to do with what seems to be their essentially arbitrary and judgmental nature on the part of these exams. I suppose they may be necessary. Still, there?’s something elemental about the exclusionary purpose of the entrance exam that bothers me on a visceral level. The point is that, in approaching the GMAT, as in most everything else, fear is bad. Fear makes people do all kinds of stupid things. Regardless of my attitudes and opinions in this regard, I had to confront these demons, in their territory, and find a way to neutralize them. I did this through my interaction with all of you here on ScoreTop.  So, whatever you?’ve got to do, be it meditation or exercise or baking cookies or knitting socks or posting verbal A&E for 20 GMAT Sets, find a way to manage your fear.

GMAT 790 – the GUY who got

This is great stuff….

As I said when discussing my PP1 results, I only got around 65% of these right on my first test. By the time of the test, I averaged 1 wrong out of every 100 questions. Here’s how I improved so much:First thing I did was buy Manhattan GMAT’s Sentence Correction Guide. While it’s true that, as everyone says, OG is the bible for practicing verbal, I would say that this book is the bible for learning the rules of SC. This book is so comprehensive it’s amazing. I cannot emphasize enough what an important role this book played in achieving my score. Also, the friend I told you about who got a 750 without studying did actually spend a couple of days studying. The only thing he studied was this book, and as a result his verbal score jumped from 40 on PP1 to 44 on the actual GMAT.

GMAT game plan

Wonder why I missed this site before. There are some candid insights and some plans, and I badly need one. Gmattutor.com has a game plan section with a few GMAT prep strategies. I don’t know which one is best for the 800 score I’m aiming at.

The Website says “Spend at least five hours reviewing the information on this website. The areas you will want to focus on most are the Math Basics page, the Idiom List, the Special Reports, and the Miscellaneous Tips & Tricks pages.”

Let me aim for taking the GMAT by mid July, which is approximately 100 days from now. That would give me 15 weekends and 14 work weeks (70 days). Say I give one hour a day on work days plus 3 hours on weekends. I’ll have 115 hours till G Day.

So maybe the 100 hour plan works well for me, Excerpt,

GMAT Math – DOs and DONTs

Gmathacks.com has an interesting post on GMAT math. You have to score 100% in this section to get an 800.

A list of things you DONT need to study for GMAT,

What may be most important to your study plan is what is not on the list. No combinations, probability, standard deviation, or absolute value. No surface area of a cylinder, compound interest formula, or functions.  

A list of 10 important GMAT topics that you have to MASTER