Madhu Kurien 730 [M - 50, V - 40]
I took my GMAT in October and got a score of 730. I would like to share with you my test preparation and test taking experience.
I am from Bangalore and I have been working with Infosys technologies for the past 7.5 years. I started planning for GMAT from March and was looking for good guidance in this regard. After visiting Princeton Review, Kaplan and TIME in Bangalore I chanced upon Kalyan from Csquare Learnings through one of his students. I found his method of approaching the test very interesting and was convinced that his plan would work well for me.
Kalyan’s approach is to channelize our efforts in the right direction. In GMAT, I learned through experience,how you study matters and not how much you study. I mean you can browse through hundreds of materials on the internet, books and CDs but finally can end up missing out on the basics. With Kalyan at Csqrl this will never happen. He will make sure we have a solid base before we start attacking the test.
The classes started in May and I took the GMAT in August. Even after preparing well and continuously scoring 750+ in the preparatory tests, I was not 100% confident on this day. I did my AWA session very badly and was therefore out of composure when I started attacking the math session. But the performance in AWA session had its impact throughout the math and verbal session as I kept on thinking about how badly I did there.
Not surprisingly I got a score of 540 at the end of it.
I was disappointed to say the least. However I came home and after taking some time to get over the failure, I sat down and wrote the “what went wrong “points. They were:-
1)When you are attempting to answer one question never think of any previous question nor be worried about the questions that might come later.
2)Never get nervous under any circumstance. I kept on repeating “there is always a next chance “
3)Don’t stick around a question for more than 1.5 mins, If you don’t know just skip. (One important lesson from CsquareL). Trust me this works!!
I registered for the next available date for GMAT which was in October (Require minimum 31 days between 2 attempts ).Just brushed through the concepts for the next one month. 2 days before the exam took the final mock test and got a score of 770. The day previous to the exam I tried my best not to think about the exam. Went for a movie and slept early.
On the exam day, I went to the center at 8.30 AM. My test was at 9.30 AM.Got through the AWA session with confidence and then cam to Math. The first question I skipped was 8th and then in the end skipped around 3 questions.I was satisfied with the performance in Math and after the 10 mins break attacked the Verbal part .Here also it was smooth going till around 10th question which I had to skip.
In the end I got a score of 50 in Math and 40 in Verbal and a composite score of 730 ( 97 % ) with 5.0 in AWA.
I thank Csquare team for the excellent guidance and support it has given in my GMAT journey. Also request students to follow his methods and work hard to get a great score!!
