Gear up!!

There are certain things which you will realise in the actual course of your preparation. But by that time you might have already lost some of your precious time. And that's the precise reason I thought of writing this, so as to keep you guyz from making the same mistakes as I did.

Performance Chart

It can do wonders for your preparation...trust me. It's a simple grid which can have columns for the question number, your answer, right/wrong, a brief description of the concept used (e.g. idioms, modifier, parallelism...for CR it can be Strategy...likewise). I would suggest you to make an excel and get like 50 print-outs with 100 questions per page. You can group them according to section/book. I would prefer a section-wise categorization. Generally you would do 50 questions per session. So at the end of 50 questions you can have an accuracy meter or something. I am sure all of you are creative enough to make such a chart which you can refer back to assess your difficulty areas.

This chart will help you filter out the tougher problems. So in the next round of solving the same problems (Yes!! next round...you have to solve the same questions again till your accuracy level goes up!! Atleast you would like to make sure that you are totally confident in the question types you have in your material).

Click here to download!!

Take a test date

Yes!! Take it. Without a test date you will never actually start respecting the entire thing. It will keep you focussed and up on your toes. Register yourself on the site. Get a date. I made a big calender for myself and stuck it before my study table. And obviously I highlighted the test date with a horrible colour :-D Also I put up stick-ons all around my place (mirrors, refrigirator, with dates on them) It's not getting psyched about it...but it really helps!!

Books!!

This is very important guys. I mean surely you wouldn't want your preparation to be going on a wrong line. Some books aren't just complete in their content. Some don't give you those "tips" which anyone aiming at a good score would want to have. So it finally boils down to having a set of materials rather than having just one book or one study material. But the question remains...which ones??

1. Official Guide is a must have. GO FOR IT!!
You will realise it isn't enough to satiate your thirst for the "750" figure. That's true, atleast for most of us.

2. Kaplan Guide.
CR & RC stuff, which you will not find anywhere else. Very very good book...I dare say, indispensable.

Trust me guys, these two are the only things on which you will have to spend money. Rest all is out here on the web.

But hey!! You still might ask...what about crossing the 750 mark?? So here's the trick. Get yourself KAPLAN 800 and Manhattan Sentence Correction guide. These are great books. Simply great!! I am sure they will add an extra 30 to your score, and that's a lot!!

A detailed list of materials (with links) will follow in a section wise discussion.

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