Hello All,
I wanted to share my experience of preparing for the GMAT since I have learned so much from the experiences that have been shared. My total serious preparation period was about 2 months.
Score Percentile
Total 740 97
Quant 50 87
Verbal 40 91
GMAT Prep scores were consistently around 750-760. During the test, I slipped up in time management during the last few questions of verbal and I think that cost me a score of 760. Nonetheless I'm quite happy with the score and won't be retaking the exam.
Preparation notes:
It should be worth pointing out that I cleared one of the toughest entrance exams in the world, the IIT JEE. So apart from being a little out of touch, I was already good at quant before starting any preparation. Also although I'm a non native speaker, my English skills barring Sentence Correction were really at the top. I wasn't aware of this till I took the first GMAT Prep. I took one GMAT Prep per week and used no other mock tests.
I will talk about my preparation strategy below and then touch upon different topics. I hope this is informative enough and can benefit any skill level.
Preparation Strategy:
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of a sound physical and mental condition for GMAT preparation. For about one and half months, I exercised daily, meditated for about 10 mins daily, stuck to a healthy diet and abstained from alcohol. All these habits made it easier for me to follow a strict schedule of study and I never felt overly exhausted during the whole preparation. The other thing was that I had it clear in my head, the exact reasons to leave a cushy oilfield job and pursue an MBA so my priorities were right up there when I was faced with decisions like Should I stay late in the office? Should I attend my boss's barbecue? etc. If possible go on a vacation to clear your head before diving into GMAT preparation. And remember meditation is the key.
Upon my friend's recommendation, I joined
Magoosh. It has a really good UI and lessons are informative enough. Upon Mike McGarry's recommendation on
Magoosh's site, I purchased
OG 2016 and
OG Verbal and Quant Review. The other books, Advanced Quant by Manhattan, LSAT Prep Tests and Nova GMAT Quant were not useful at all.
I sat down and finished Quant and CR and SC sections of
OG 2016 in two weeks. I did this without learning fromany of
Magoosh's lessons. Quant was easy to finish although I did get some wrong when I got to the higher question numbers. I was comfortable with the easy and medium questions of CR and SC but struggled with some of the harder ones.
Next I turned to
Magoosh and started solving the Math questions with a timer, which helped a lot. I watched several lessons on subjects that require critical thinking- Probability, Counting, Number Properties and Sets. For the other topics I relied heavily on timed practice. I followed the lesson on RC and solved
OG questions with like 99% accuracy. I have to add that I read a lot in my spare time, so what
Magoosh's lesson did was make me aware of something called conscious reading. I also followed
Magoosh's lesson on Critical Reasoning which was enough for me to get through the harder questions in
OG and
Magoosh's question bank. The SC lessons in
Magoosh though were really sub par and I relied heavily on my ear to solve SC questions. Armed with this preparation I took GMAT Prep1 and 2 and scored 730 and 750
Next I registered myself on wiley site to access
OG Verbal and Quant review and practiced on mixed sets. This helped me with time management. Meanwhile I had to put in late hours at work during this time. I took GMAT Prep3 and scored a woeful 710. I realized that my focus was hit because of uneven sleep pattern and that when faced with tougher CR and SC questions, I got them completely wrong. Based on the above analysis, I started following a strict time schedule of work,study,gym and sleep to keep me focused. I also invested in
e-GMAT's SC course. I also bought the total Verbal course later but realized that it was probably too much study for GMAT. I completed the whole
e-GMAT SC course and I must say, they have done a commendable job putting it altogether. While Manhattan and
Magoosh rely on formulas and rules for sentence correction,
e-GMAT relies on logic and meaning, which I think is what gets tested on GMAT. So you cannot go wrong with
e-GMAT Sentence correction course. The CR course had some strong points as well, like encouraging pre-thinking to solve the question. But the quality of CR questions was really bad and most of them had ambiguous answers.
So again armed with this preparation, I scored two 760s on GMAT Prep 4 and 5. I got a bit relaxed after this with one week to go till the exam and started searching for bschools and was not focused enough. At this point I realized that I had hit a plateau in my preparation and was wary of my scores dipping because of this. The last GMAT Prep exam I took confirmed my fears when I got a 740. On the real exam two days later, I scored a 740 as well. And as I mentioned earlier, 760 was well within my reach had I not slipped in my time management in the Verbal section.
Lessons from my preparation:
1) Solve GMAT level math problems from
Magoosh and
OG with timer. Also use
GMAT club tests for harder questions.
2) Use
e-GMAT for Verbal SC. Read a lot for RC and pre-think the answer for CR
3) Buy the IR and essay writing tools from mba.com. Those questions should be enough for practice
4) Use only official mock tests. Don't rely on other test prep companies
5) Don't allow yourself to plateau or get relaxed
5) Lastly peak physical and mental condition is a necessity to score really well.
Thank you
close
06 Aug 2016, 01:14
), which pummelled my timing even more. In this commotion, I think I got a few questions wrong, which I could have cleared easily if I was a bit more focused. 
