This article has been contributed by a regular TGite, Sindhoor, who has scored 760 in GMAT and through this article he wants to share his experience with us.
Sindhoor is a Mechanical Engineer graduate from the Vellore Institute Of Technology, Vellore. After graduating he took up a job with Tata Consultancy Services and has been with them for the last 3 years. He also involves himself in the day to day activities of his family businesses and he is an active volunteer at PETA,Madras Crocodile Bank and the Give Life Foundation. Loves football and is an avid fan of Liverpool Football Club. His ultimate goal in life is to use the power of Information technology to better the lives of India’s rural communities.
Books Required:
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1. Official Guide for GMAT Review 12 edition (Here in referred to as OG12). (This contains questions of quant and verbal)
2. Official Guide for GMAT Verbal Review (here in referred to as OGVerbal) . (This contains questions of only verbal)
Believe me these two books are enough for you to get a good GMAT score. These books contain retired GMAT questions, i.e these contain real GMAT questions that used to appear may be a year ago. There is no book that can beat these two books. Please don’t even touch other books. There is no need to. The books by Kaplan,Manhattan, Princeton etc, contain questions that are either tougher or easier than the questions that appear in the actual exam. They don’t truly represent the actual difficulty level of the real GMAT questions. Why do we need to touch them when we have loads and loads of questions released by GMAC themselves?
You start your preparation by taking the diagnostic test that is there in the opening pages of “OG12″. This will tell you how good you are in each subsection of the GMAT even before you start preparing. After this you would know where to concentrate during your preparation. Start preparing for the section you are weakest in and then proceed to your stronger sections.
Verbal Section contains three sub sections: Reading Comprehension (RC), Sentence Correction (SC) and Critical Reasoning (CR).
For CR and RC there are no rules. No one can teach you these sections, you master these by practise. Please don’t read any books which tell you how to tackle these two sections , they will only confuse you more. Do the questions pertaining to RC and CR from OG12 and OGVerbal. If you get any question wrong go to the last pages where you have excellent explanations, which will help you understand the logic behind the answers better. Slowly you will improve in these sections. Practise makes perfect.
Now the danger section for many Indians: SC.
SC has one advantage though: It has rules( unlike other two) which when followed can help you tackle SC better. I used to get 6/10 questions correct in SC when I started my preparation, by the end of my preparation I consistently got 8/10 correct.
To start preparing for SC do the first 30 questions form OG12. This will give you a fair idea about how the SC questions are.
Then go through these two amazing materials on sentence correction:
Manhattan SC review: http://totalgadha.com/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=4415
GMAT Flash Cards: http://totalgadha.com/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=4415
After going through these two materials, do the rest of the questions from OG12 and OGVerbal. Analyse the questions you get wrong and keep improving.
After OG12 and OGVerbal you would need some additional practise. Luckily there is a set called 1000 series. The set contains three documents:
- 1000 SC (Containing 1000 SC questions)
- 1000 CR (Containing 1000 CR questions)
- 1000 RC (Containing 1000 RC questions)
Download these from the TG GMAT Verbal resources section.
Remember that these are only for additional practise, there is obviously no need to complete all the 3000 questions. Complete both OG12 and OGVerbal and only then start doing the 1000 series and do how much you can. Just 2 weeks before the exam stop doing these questions and start revising OG12 and OGVerbal. I am recommending 1000 series because these are questions that were part of the actual GMAT few years ago.
This is all for Verbal Preparation people. I also want to share that when I gave the first GMAT prep test – the one you receive from GMAC on registering – I scored only a 650 with a very low score in Verbal. It’s only through practise that I racked up my score to 760. Practise hard and you will get a great score.
All the Best
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