I am writing this post as I owe a lot to Manhattan and BTG forums and especially to moderators from both forums:

Little history: Indian guy, engg background appeared for gre in 2004 and scored– 1340 (800q/540v/3.5 awa). Did masters in industrial engg and working in US in one of the fortune 500 companies.

GMAT first attempt: 6 aug 09 650(q49/v31/writing 5)
GMAT second attempt: 15 September 09 720(50/37)

Suggestions and findings:

Sometimes your gmat score depends just upon your luck. I got less in 1st attempt mainly because exam was difficult. Pls believe me. This is true.

Don’t loose focus. Concentrate on your current question. Fu** earlier questions…just ignore everything other than current question

Refer to forums “GMAT Prep Math” and “GMAT Prep vebal” from website http://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/ These 2 forums are awesome and THE must. Mr. Ron Purewal (moderator) is too good. I am ready to treat him for his awesome explanations.

Use official material and 6 tests by Manhattan gmat. I don’t think that guides provided by manhattan are any good. Kaplan has two good books – 1 just for difficult gmat questions and 1 for just verbal section…you should use them

As u can see from my gre awa score, I am not a good writer. I scored meager 3.5 in gmat awa. So if you are in the same bucket, pls practice a lot. My suggestion: share your essays with American guy or may be with Indian Christian guy who is very good at verbal. ( I am not racist.... you can share your essays a guy from any religion as long as he is awesome in English). Point to note: if you screw your writing section then it can affect your mood for rest of the exam!

While practicing, analyze all your wrong questions and keep track of them

You can find a word doc at the location http://www.beatthegmat.com/difficult-gm ... s-t78.html Use it....

One interesting thing…one guy (bhatiagp) from BTG forum pointed that he scored 720(49/41). he took the exam on the same day as i have. So after looking at my score and his score I think that scoring 50 in quant (provided u have 37 in verbal)is equal to scoring 37 in verbal (provided u have 49 in quant)…I mean you should try to score 50 in quant.


Once again ron purewal ki jai ho! BTG and manhattan forums rock! There are some other good forums too…they are good too. But I will prefer these 2!

and pls ignore my verbal mistakes...i am weak in that section!


I will provide more inputs as I remember…

Can you point me to the good source of SC questions.

i guess our stories are very similar. my gmat 1 score was very similar to urs.

anyways, use kaplan books and verbal forum that i have pointed in the main post!. even i was weak in SC and these 2 things helped me...(at least i think so!)