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1. It may sound cliché, but I
think this is the most important point in the preparation viz. take it easy.
GMAT is very "tuchcha" exam. Everybody from Roorkee is capable
enough of scoring 750 in the exam. But if you will take exam with pressure,
it will knock off 50 points from your score. When I went to write my GMAT, I
went with the aim of scoring 750 (what a fool I was). I was scoring 730+ in
my practice tests and it worked against me. I was so stressed in the exam
that I couldn't even complete the verbal section (can you believe this..in
GMAT!!!). This is particularly important for those who have experience of
IIM-CAT. 2. Best material for the exam is ETS guide with PowerPrep CD (this is downloadable from ETS site for free). Use this guide as the Geeta of GMAT. Many people complain that ETS guide questions are repeated in the PowerPrep CD. Well...that is true but my personal experience is that it is more important to understand the answers (right as well as wrong) of the questions you attempted than doing too many questions without fully understanding the answers. Remember that there is no syllabus you need to complete for GMAT. So do ETS guide one or two times and make sure that you have understood solution of every question. I think this much preparation is enough for GMAT. As Vivek suggested you can use ARCO's as well. Best thing I liked about this software is that you get around 6 CATs in one CD. Other than that you may use Princeton and Kaplan. Kaplan gives you a low score. So don't get disappointed if you got 580 in Kaplan's test. Kaplan's is good for mathematics so ! I think Princeton is better for we desi engineers. I will strongly recommend NOT TO WASTE YOUR TIME AND MONEY ON PETERSON'S AND IMS (even that for GMAT). Besides these you may check out www.testtutor.com, www.score800.com, www.fullbright.org etc. 3. Another thing, which can be
very important, is the Business Week forum. You can subscribe to it free of
cost. You will find all kind of people and some very good suggestions on this
forum. But don't expect people to do your homework for you. If will raise a
question about the format of the GMAT, I am sure you will get such a bashing
that you will not feel like going back to that forum. 4. For all the international
applicants, AWA is very important. So start writing essays right from the
beginning and make sure that you get them reviewed by someone who has taken
the exam. Here I will reiterate that you get it reviewed by some one who has
taken the exam. Reason is that a person might be very good essay writer but
he/she may not be aware of ETS evaluation process so feedback from him/her
might not be very useful for you. ETS likes to see essays in a particular
format, so even if you have written very good essays you may not get good
score in AWA. So make sure that the person evaluating your essay is aware of
that format and he/she is evaluating your essay in that light. 5. Quant section in GMAT is
very "tuchcha" but you need to practice not to make careless
mistakes. Data sufficiency can be a pitfall so practice to be extra cautious
in that. Questions on probability and permutation-combination are very basic
and I am sure that no engineer will have problem with those questions. You
may need to brush-up your concepts of mean and median though. You will find
one or two questions on these concepts in actual GMAT. You may not find any
such question in ETS guide. But knowledge of the definition will do which you
can refer from any 12th class stat. book. 6. In the verbal section, you
will learn to crack critical reasoning problems after some practice. I found
these questions easiest in the verbal section. Fundae of Princeton is best for
critical reasoning. RC questions in the GMAT are very predictable so again
after some practice you will find them very easy. Sentence correction can be
a problem for some (well...It was biggest problem for me). But ETS checks
roughly about 8 types of grammatical errors. So it's not difficult to ace
these questions. For sentence correction I found one strategy very helpful.
Initially I used to enlist all 8 types of grammatical error on the scratch
paper and check every option with this list. This strategy helped me a lot in
improving my performance in sentence correction questions. 7. Last but not the least,
better don't take any tests one or two days before actual GMAT. Just try to
relax!!!! |
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Disclaimer: All ideas
presented here are entirely personal to the author and doesn’t speak of
University of Roorkee or IIT-Roorkee or its Alumni and doesn’t define any
standards for the Alumni to follow. It’s the way in which a person by the
above mentioned name tries to express his interests in the subject under
consideration. For any questions or comments please contact
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