15 min guide to gmat (1)

15 minute GMAT primer Everything you wanted to know about GMAT – but didn’t know

who to ask!

Contents

About CrackVerbal

CrackVerbal- the MBA experts

Why is GMAT so important?

The GMAT test structure

The GMAT scoring &

algorithm

GMAT preparation strategy

The CrackVerbal approach

S-7, 2nd Floor, Gem Plaza Infantry Road

Bangalore 560001 Email: [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

However the “real” reason why you need to take the test is because:

1. B-Schools need to have an objective measure/criteria which will make it uniform across all

countries, universities and GPA systems.

2. GMAT is an important factor in the B-School rankings so for the same reason you would prefer a

school with a higher GMAT score - the schools want a higher GMAT score from you.

3. It is a nice objective number that has a tangible quality to it. It is hard for me to compare work

experience or quality of education. But a GMAT score gives a nice 3-digit number to compare 2

students.

4. Most top Management Consulting companies look at your GMAT score for short-listing. They don’t

divulge the details but ask you to submit the scores during the initial screen process.

Why is GMAT so important?

If we were to go by what the people who set the GMAT test are to say then:

“The GMAT exam is a standardized assessment, delivered in English, that helps business schools assess the qualifications of applicants for advanced study in business and management.” (from MBA.com)

Having said all this remember this in the end:

A good GMAT score cannot guarantee you admission to a top MBA program, but a bad GMAT score can almost guarantee that you will be kept out!

Now for someone sitting half way across the world there is little to differentiate between both these candidates on their ability to handle course work. GMAT serves as the best measure – Candidate A is certainly a clear favorite.

So let us say we have 2 candidates:

Candidate A

Undergraduate: RVCE, Bangalore 69% Work experience: TCS 3.5 years GMAT: 750

Candidate B

Undergraduate: Ramiah, Bangalore 73% Work experience: Infosys 4 years GMAT: 650

CrackVerbal www.crackverbal.com

AWA a.k.a Analytical Writing Ability

A quick piece of advice – DO NOT WORRY ABOUT THIS SECTION.

You are graded on a score between 0 and 6, and this doesn’t go into calculating your final 3-digit

GMAT score.

Most schools don’t bother about what you write – so long as you are able to manage a decent

4.0 or above.

The only thing you need to practice is writing the AWA essays as fast and as painlessly as

possible. The last thing you want to do is get flustered and expend your mental energy before

the “real” test starts.

The New Integrated Reasoning Section

The Integrated Reasoning section of the GMAT exam will consist of 12 questions.

A single graph/data-set may have multiple questions around it.

All answer options for a given question will be shown on the same screen.

As with the rest of the GMAT, even over here you cannot return to an earlier question -

you have to answer each question and move onto the next one.

The last type i.e. the multi-source reasoning will not be of more than 300 words. So

there’s no need to read lengthy passages here.

The answer options themselves will be independent of each other i.e. you cannot take

information from one question onto another. You need to solve each question

independently.

Quant a.k.a. Math

1 hour 15 minutes to solve about 37 math questions spread across Arithmetic, Algebra, and

Geometry.

This is the section where Indians usually feel confident – but don’t end up getting complacent

The GMAT is an adaptive test (more about adaptive testing later) that consists of 3 sections:

The GMAT Test Structure

• Analysis of an argument – 30min

• Integrated Reasoning - 30 min

AWA + IR

• 37 questions

• 75 mins

Quant • 41 questions

• 75 mins

Verbal


CrackVerbal

Success Recipe

Learn first hand form our

students about how to get into

a B-school

You will be given two 7-minute breaks on the test – one each after the AWA and the Quant section. Remember to utilize the breaks wisely.

Use the 1st break as a bio-break. Also hydrate yourself by drinking some water.

Use the 2nd break to eat or drink something. The usual favorites for the break are a bar of chocolate, a banana and/or Red Bull!

Verbal a.k.a English

The test is split into 3 areas:

Sentence Correction: A sentence, which is either partly or fully

underlined, is provided to you as the “question”. You will have the

select the answer choice that removes the error (if any) in the

original sentence.

Critical Reasoning: An argument is given to you in the form of a

paragraph, and you would be asked to analyze/critique it. Such as

“Which of the following would most weaken the argument given

above?”

Reading Comprehension: A passage would be provided and about

3-4 questions will be asked based on it. This passage can be on

any topic (usually dry ones like social science) and will be

between 1 and 3 paragraphs long.


CrackVerbal Scratchpad

To help you simulate your preparations as

close to the GMAT Test

The GMAT Scoring Algorithm

The GMAT is scored on a scale from 200 to 800, based on only the Quant and Verbal sections. Along with this you will also get your AWA score, which is scored out of 6.0. Since scores are distributed along a bell curve there are very few on either end of the spectrum – usual scores are in the 400-700 score range. The global average GMAT score is 540 – and a “good” GMAT score for top schools is considered above 700. As mentioned earlier, you don’t need to worry on the AWA score. You will be given separate "raw scores" for the Quant and Verbal sections. You will be given a 2-digit score out of 51 (though theoretically it is 60). A raw score above 50 in quant and a score above 40 in verbal is considered exceptional. Here is how a typical GMAT score will look like: 700 Q49 V36 AWA - 5.5. This means the person got a scaled score of 700 which consisted of a Quant score

of 49 (out of 51) and a Verbal score of 36 (out of 51). There is also additional information that he got an AWA rating of 5.5 (out of 6.0).

Here are a few of scores with their split (note: these are *actual* student scores at CrackVerbal!)

Neeraj 770 (Q50, V44)

Raviraj 750 (Q50 V42)

Rahul 740 (Q50 V40)

Neha 730 (Q49 V40)

Sanat 700 (Q49 V38)

Jyoti 710 (Q48 V40)

Shardul 710 (Q46 V42)

Prashant 700 (Q51 V34)

Ganesh 690 (Q48 V38)

Apratim 680 (Q49 V34)

Please understand that scores depend on how well you are doing *relative* to others on the test, and also the nature of the adaptive algorithm (more on that in the next page). What this means is that these scores don't directly correspond to getting a certain number of questions right or wrong. So it is impossible to say how much to score if you get (say) 5 questions wrong, or (say) 10 questions wrong. Let us now try to understand how the GMAT CAT (Computer Adaptive Test) works. Not so much for “beating” the system but to better appreciate how the scoring works.

Theoretically, you won't get the same set of questions as the guy sitting next to you (albeit a few overlapping questions). After the first few questions that are selected at random, each subsequent question will be based on how you did on the earlier questions. If you're getting more questions right, the algorithm gives you harder problems. If you're not, the test will start throwing easier questions at you.


(1) For given RAW scores what would be the corresponding scores?

Here is a nice little table to compute your scaled scores, given that you have Q and V raw scores:

Remember that GMAT looks for your expertise across areas. Which means if you make similar mistakes in the same subject area your overall scaled score will be lower than another person who uniformly distributes his mistakes in all the subject area? For example you can have 2 candidates with same Q+V scores (say Q50 V40) but with different scaled scores – either 740 or 750.

(2) Apart from the number of mistakes, and the position of those mistakes, is there are any other factor which impacts the scores?

Q+V Raw Score | Scaled Score 48-50 400 49-51 420 51-53 430 52-54 440 54-56 450 55-57 460 56-58 470 59-60 480 61-62 490 62-63 500 62-63 510 62-64 520 63-64 530 65-66 540 66-67 550 67-69 560 68-71 570 69-72 580 70-72 590 71-73 600 72-75 610

Q+V Raw Score | Scaled Score 73-76 620 74-77 630 75-78 640 76-79 650 78-81 660 79-81 670 81-83 680 81-83 690 82-86 700 84-86 710 85-87 720 87-90 730 89-90 740 90-91 750 92-93 760 94-96 770 96-98 780 97-100 790 100-101 800


Frequency of the mistakes: If

you get questions wrong one after the other; you are in greater risk than if you distribute your mistakes over a range. For example, let’s say, from questions 21 to 30 there are 2 candidates X and Y and their frequency of mistakes is: X marks the wrong answers for questions 22, 26 and 29, while Y marks the wrong ones for 23,24,25. Then Y would be penalized heavier than X.

Failing to answer questions: If

there is anything more terrible than getting a question wrong, it is leaving a question unanswered. You can roughly take 10 points away from your GMAT score for each question you leave unanswered! You rather mark blindly than not answer at all.

Experimental Questions: Roughly

1/3rd of all questions you will solve on the GMAT (9 in Quant and 10 in Verbal) will not go towards your final GMAT score. What GMAT is doing by asking you these question is simply “build” a database for itself to ask future test takers. Now if luck is on your side and you make mistakes *only* on the experimental questions then you can even expect a full score despite making mistakes!

Verbal Quant

# mistakes score # mistakes score

0-1 51 0-2 51

2-4 47 3-5 50

5-7 42 6-10 49

8-13 37 11-14 48

You will have to understand that the test algorithm is trying to determine your ability level, so it is almost certain that you'll see questions that are too hard for you. That's perfectly okay! Remember that it's possible to get a 700 (92nd percentile score) and answer more than a quarter of the questions on the entire test wrong. Of course, this means you'll be answering difficult questions right and missing only the even more difficult questions. It is a myth that you need to have a very high accuracy to do well on the GMAT!

Remember the following:

• You cannot “beat” the system but knowing it better will help you optimize your approach. This is

especially true when you are taking practice tests and want to know why you got a particular score.

• Remember that there are only 4 ways in which you can score well (or poorly):

– Number of mistakes you made in the overall test

– Number of experimental questions you got right/wrong

– Position of mistakes i.e. towards the start or towards the end

– Frequency of mistakes in a row

– Questions left un-attempted in the end

• Questions are not “easy” or “hard” by themselves but “easy” or “hard” for the test-taker at a given

level. So a 750-level test-taker will find even the most difficult question that a 450-scorer faces as

“easy”. Similarly the 450-scorer will find even the easiest question that a 750-scorer faces as

“difficult”.

• Questions cannot get progressively harder till you end up making a mistake. Infact GMAT will try to

put you on the 40-60 zone i.e. there is a 40% to 60% probability that you make a mistake on that

question.

It might look as if it is “easier” to score higher on Quant than on Verbal since typically Indians score above 45 in Quant while they struggle to hit the 40 mark in Verbal.

However remember that the algorithm works different for these 2 sections!

For each question you get wrong on Verbal you are more severely penalized than quant. An optimistic way of looking at it is Verbal is also the area where you can improve the most (and fastest!)


However, it is possible for very high scores (read as “very few mistakes”) to show with a fair degree of accuracy what the association between mistakes and RAW scores. The following data are fairly representative:

GMAT Preparation Strategy

Rule 1: Brute Force Approach a.k.a “RS Agarwal approach”

This is when students start blindly ssolving questions without either aanalyzing them properly OR taking arain check to see the difficulty level q of questions.

The particular book in question is a c classic example of this approach. If you are learning a concept such as “Area of rectangle” then you will be given a question “Length = 5, Breadth = 7, Area =?”. After that you will have another question “Length = 3, Area = 12, Breadth =?”. And another one that will ask “Length = ?, Area = 10, Breadth =2”. And so on. Get the drift?

The point here is it is an absolute waste of time to solve 10,000 questions of this sort as you end up learning NOTHING. GMAT claimed once that it spends about $2000 PER QUESTION. Considering the tons of questions they make that is a pretty huge spend. A major area where it goes is in the quality of the questions – getting it vetted by expert pscyhometricians.

Our approach at CrackVerbal is based on solving only high quality questions which correctly reflect the GMAT standards.

Rule 2: Not taking enough tests early on – wasting GMATPrep questions.

GMAT is more a test of your mental stamina than anything else. Don’t lull yourself into complacency by looking at incorrect measures. For 9example one metric that most

people throw – and one that we absolutely hate – is % of questions correct! All this means precious little until you are able to build your mental stamina to endure a 4-hour battle (that is the duration of the test end to end). It is like sprinting short distances in order to prepare for a marathon – it won’t work! Ensure your study plan has enough tests – starting from right NOW!

We encourage students to come to our center to take simulated tests at our lab, which is equipped with more than 30+ computer-based tests. We even you a ScratchPad similar to the one you get on the real test.

Rule 3: Consistency and not Contingency – relying only on weekends.

This is not a battle that can be fought on 14-hour weekends and 0-hour weekdays. If you think your day job is just too demanding for you to focus during the week then reconsider shifting your decision to take the GMAT (and ultimately pushing your decision to do an MBA). This is a test match and not a 20-20 game!

We have heard enough software engineers crib about how they never get time. At the same time we have seen our own students who have studied diligently for 2-3 months, putting in about 2 hours on weekdays and about 10 hours on weekends, and who scored

very high on the GMAT. It is all a question of will-power.

Ensure you get your customized study plan from us. The plan dovetails with what we teach in the class so we will ensure you stay focused on the plan till the date of your test.

Rule 4: Trusting “online advice” and solving questions other than the “official” source

It has been shown that if you

study for more than the optimal

preparation time, your scores will

actually start going down! This is

because unlike tests such as IAS,

IIT-JEE etc this is not a test of

memory but a test of how

intelligently you can apply your

knowledge. The most important

key is to not pick the wrong books,

wrong questions, and still worse –

the wrong advice. At CrackVerbal

we understand that you are taking

the test after making some

personal and professional

sacrifices. We will ensure we will

keep you on the straight and

narrow throughout the preparation

so you are never lost.


Avoid the following 4 cardinal sins:

This is the reason we don’t claim to have our own questions. It is impossible for any test prep company to even come close to the GMAT standards of question making. However we do provide (and solve) almost all known official questions in our class and homework.

Which books to refer?

You have probably realized by now. Only

the official sources!

Official Guide ed. 10, 11, 12,13 (if you have

already done 1 version of the OG and are

looking at fresh meat from the other version

then read our blog here:

http://www.crackverbal.com/whats-new-

in-the-gmat-official-guide-13th-edition)

Official Guide Verbal Workbook ed.1,2

CrackVerbal Advance Document (all

GMATPrep questions which we have

created by taking the test multiple times)

Practice on forums such as pagalguy.com,

beatthegmat.com, urch.com, gmatclub.com,

manhattangmat.com (please provide us

your id so we can answer your queries

there)

What are the rules to remember while you take the mock tests?

A Total of 14 tests to be taken over 3 months.

Always take it with the AWA Section.

No mobile/No Internet while in the “test-zone”.

Consider taking it at the CrackVerbal center.

Take it at the same time as the actual test.

Eat and Do exactly what you would on the test

day.


The Official Guide to GMAT

Review

The closest thing to the actual GMAT exam, prescribed by the

GMAC

Beyond the MBA hype

A must read bestseller for

those planning to do an

MBA/ or even thinking about

it!

Given free to all our students.

Phase 1: Foundation:

This is the time you need to

ensure you understand the

“enemy well” and focus on the

right approach to solving

questions. If you end up having

the wrong approach then practice

will only make things worse. You

will end up becoming better at

“being bad”. This means if you

have an accuracy of 40% you will

just get better at solving questions

at 40% accuracy (not 25% - not

50% - just precisely 40%!!).

Phase 2: Application:

In this phase you take the

“game” to the next level by trying

to focus on the higher level of

difficulty as well as the more

difficult to grasp concepts. This

is also a good time to up the

tempo in quant. You should be

able to accurately pinpoint the

areas of weakness and work on

them. For example you should

be able to say “I am weak in

questions on Standard

Deviation” or “I am not confident

when there is a pronoun

ambiguity in SC”.

Phase 3: Practice:

The Americans have a phrase

for it. They call it the “home

run”. This is when you make the

final lunge towards getting that

near-perfect GMAT score.

Ensure that by this time you are

working on the crossing your t’s

and dotting your i’s! And yes –

plenty of carbs before the final

run – in the form of full-length

test!


Practice

Application

Foundation

3 Step Study Plan

CrackVerbal 3 month study process

About CrackVerbal


CrackVerbal was founded in

2006 and since then has catered

to hundreds of students aspiring

for an MBA from top business

schools around the world.

We are the undisputed experts in

GMAT Verbal! We will leave no

stone untouched – covering all

advanced topics in GMAT Verbal

that need to be understand in

order to score high on the test.

Our total classroom instruction

time *just* for Verbal is almost

double that of any other institute!

We attract exceptional GMAT

tutors (minimum eligibility 760)

including MBA graduates from

top programs such as ISB,

Oxford, and IIM-A PGPX. All

instructors undergo an intensive

audition and training program

before they actually teach in the

classroom.

Our curriculum and teaching

methodology are continuously

revised, reflecting the changing

pattern of the actual GMAT test

each year. We do so by

understanding what works best

for students who go on to score

high on the GMAT – the 750+

scores, and use the same

techniques in our class. Our

strategies are personalized so

we get into the mind of the test-

taker to see not only why the

right answer is so, but also why

the wrong answer isn’t. Our

powerful workshops shops can

give you a score boost of upto

50 points in a single session!

1. Attend Advanced verbal classes.

2. Attend Quant workshops.

3. Solve from our advance documents.

4. Take 4 to 6 tests

1. Take a diagnostic test

2. Create personal study plan.

3. Attend Verbal workshop

4. Solve from OG

5. Start Quant basics

1. Attend online doubt solving classes

2. Focus on work areas.

3. Take at least 1 to 2 tests per week

Foundation Application Practice

Week 1 to 4

Week 5 to 8

Week 9 to 12

CrackVerbal Study

Guides

A collection of 5 guides for

Quants and Verbal to help

you gain that extra edge

on the GMAT!

What to expect from the class?

• Delivery mechanism – Teaching stuff you cannot learn from a

“book”.

• Exceptional Faculty Quality – MBAs and Professionals who teach

out of passion.

• Support System that goes beyond the classroom, and keeps you

on the straight and narrow.

What we expect from you?

• Taking the diagnostic test as soon as possible. This is a MUST to

start the course. If possible take it at our center.

• Schedule a private counseling session so we can provide you

your personalized GMAT plan.

• Solve all homework questions before coming for the next session.

• Ensure you get all the material, get added to our online group,

and participate in all our online/offline sessions.

Visit www.crackverbal.com or call us on +9008166800 or +9008177800 today and learn how to improve your GMAT score.


From our Founder: Arun Jagannathan

Arun has coached and mentored

over 4000 students, teaching at

major test prep companies in

India such as IMS, Career

Launcher, Kaplan, and Princeton

Review.

Arun is active on forums such as

Pagalguy.com (member since

2003, and one of the official MBA

consultants), and

Beatthegmat.com

He has also been part of the

technology sector working in

various companies such as

Wipro, Sapient, and CA. In the

last role, he headed the delivery

of the consulting division at a

CRM product-based company.

His highest score on the

GMAT is 780 (Q51, V46).

http://www.crackverbal.com/

DISCLAIMER: GMAT® is a registered trademark of the Graduate Management Admission Council™ (GMAC). GMAC does not endorse, nor is it affiliated in any way with the owner or any content of this document.

S-7, 2nd Floor, Gem Plaza Infantry Road

Bangalore 560001

[email protected]


mailto:[email protected]

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15 min guide to gmat (1)