Suresh Tata 740 [M50 V39]
Dear friends:
I would like share my personal experience with the exam. Although my verbal score is not great, I am sure this would help some of you.
Before coming to Csquare:
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I have been preparing for a long time (almost a year). Tried out various things includingone-on-one course from Princeton. None showed me theright direction. I am good at Quant from the beginning. My weak areas are RC and CR.None of the course helped me on these. The only thing I finally was told –that the onlyway to improve RC and CR is:
a) To do more and more practice
b) To improve my reading speed and comprehension abilities
As you know, this is a HARD way and it is not an easy thing to do thousands of questions hoping to improve in RC and CR and similarly developing the reading habits (reading newspapers and books). Can't develop such things overnight.
Moreover, none of these gave me a confidence that I can get 700 on GMAT.
Around 2 months back: -
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I was lucky to know about Csquare Learnings from one of Kalyan's students. After joining Csquare, my approach to attack the exam is altogether changed.
One thing I slowly started realizing is: Direction is very important for this exam. I got this needed direction @ CSquare. There is definitely a structured way of attacking CR and RC questions.
Key to this exam in my opinion is:-
For Verbal (OG 10, OG 11 and GMAT prep tests are enough):-
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1) SC - Need to just follow rules that were mentioned in the class @ csqrl. Going anything beyond these rules will only impact the score negatively. I have found almost all questions on actual GMAT are crackable by applying these rules and you can definitely complete each SC question under 45 sec. Please be ready to skip SCs on actual exam and definitely keep the SCs under 45 sec (from the beginning of the exam till the end). Otherwise, you will definitely be short of time.
2) RC - need to 100% follow FIRE approach given by CsquareL. Give importance to analyzing the passages rather than giving importance to doing more and more passages. Analysis is the KEY. Analyze each question and each choice for traps even though you got the answer right. One thing I learnt over time: Most of these passages follow the same basic patterns; even the questions are also framed using the same set of finite patterns.
3) CRs - I found the CR questions relatively harder on the exam. Last 2 choices are always tricky. By following the proper elimination strategy, we can reduce the no.of mistakes. While reading the argument, look for the basic skeleton and keep your full focus on conclusion.
Exam approach for Verbal:
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The exam approach should be tuned based on the relative importance - RC>CR>SC. Try to get passages pakka.
For Quant:-
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OG 10,11 and 12 is enough to score 50. Nothing else is required. Be careful on easy questions on the exam. Each of these easy ones has a trick in it. While practising the questions, always look for easier ways of solving the questions rather than the HARD way. Hope this helps.
All the best for your preparations.
Thanks,
Suresh
