BREAKING THROUGH THE 700 BARRIER...FROM 650 TO 730

First of all, I must say that I have aced many competitive exams but have never experienced an exam like the GMAT. It’s not as difficult as my engineering entrance since the questions on the test are relatively simple from a technical standpoint; it is not as tedious to prepare for as the GRE (which I aced long back); yet it’s more difficult to ace. This exam challenged me in ways that I had not imagined, but in the process it has taught me a lot of valuable lessons, which I am sure, will help me later on.

My name is Madhu and I am an electrical engineer by profession. I have worked in US for the last 6 years. I have a Master’s degree and have been a straight A student throughout my career. However, I stumbled in my first attempt and scored a dismal 640 (Q50, V28) in March. Then I took the GMAT again last week and was able to improve my score to 730 (Q50, V39). The last 3 months have been an enlightening experience for me; and I am sharing what worked for me. Hopefully this will help you.

First Attempt: Stuck with Stagnant Verbal score

Like most Indians, I am good in quant. So acing the quant portion was not very challenging. I read through the entire MGMAT series in 1 week, and was mostly done with it in about 10 days. I learned a few things from their number properties book. My boyfriend gifted me Kaplan 800 (he was pretending to be caring!!). This was ok but not as challenging. With all this prep, I was easily able to hit 49. I then discovered this forum and looked at questions from GMAT club tests in the quant forum. They were more challenging than MGMAT and Kaplan 800 and probably provided a final push towards 50.

Verbal was a totally different story. I had read horror stories about GMAT verbal, so most of my time during the first attempt was focused on GMAT verbal. I had each and every reputable book on my shelf including Wren and Martin Grammar, Doing Grammar, MGMAT book set, Veritas books, and Powerscore SC and CR. Yet I failed miserably on Verbal. Here are some of the reasons of my failure.

1: Referred to multiple sources: GMAT is unlike research where you refer to multiple sources to get better. For GMAT, learning the same things from multiple books is a downside. It only confuses you and downs your confidence. The funny thing is that you don’t realize this while reading the book because as you are reading the book, you feel as if you are learning new terminologies. This realization happens when you take your mock scores and when you have to revise a concept. Imagine, revising Verb-ing modifiers from MGMAT, Powescore, and Doing Grammar, with each one providing slightly different information and analysis.

2: Lack of strategy: Hard work is necessary but not sufficient condition for acing the GMAT. You need to have a strategy to continuously improve on the GMAT. I did a lot of hard work but did not invest my time strategically.

3: Focused on quantity rather than quality: I practiced too many problems the first time without spending as much time revising. Also I practiced from un-official sources, which at times had contradicting answers. Because of this I made the same mistake multiple times and remained confused in Verbal. I used to memorize all these grammatical rules, but in the end I think I mixed them all up and could not differentiate between the rules that I had to keep in mind versus the superfluous ones.

4: Confidence and attitude: My target score in GMAT was 710+. However, I was barely getting 680-690 in my mock exams. Hence, my confidence in the actual exam was a bit shaky. This probably led to my doing worse than I would have done otherwise.

Second attempt: Acing the Verbal

Right after the first attempt, I knew that I would be taking the GMAT again. The failure made me more determined to succeed. At the same time it told me that I needed a slightly different approach. So I reached out to my classmate who had scored 740 (thanks to FB). He recommended e-gmat. He said that it helped him and asked me to give it a try. I did their free trial and was quite impressed by the content and approach they had taken and purchased the course. Their approach is very logical, kind of like a divide and rule strategy. The course teaches a concept and make sure that you ace it. After a bunch of concepts it teaches a process to answer GMAT problems through a special concept called application file. This helped me a lot in SC and CR and gave me a lot of confidence to do well in Verbal. In addition to e-GMAT there were other things that helped me improve. I also purchased the GMATClub SC book for idioms. I liked how certain idiomatic usages have been explained – whether vs. if, use of despite/in spite of vs. use of although/though/even though.

1: Created a detailed plan: I created a plan in which I focused on and aced one verbal section at one time. I put this plan in excel. I spent 4+ hrs creating this plan. My boss once told me “A good plan has 2 qualities; it is detailed to working style, and it assumes that you work only 60% of the time”. I kept his advice in mind and I can tell you that it made a huge difference in the quality of execution. I have provided plan template. It’s not fancy but a simple modification of one of the calendar templates available from Microsoft excel.

2: Proper reviews: I spent at least 15 minutes on every question that I got incorrect. My goal was to try and understand why I got this question incorrect. I had 3 categories

a.Did I make a careless mistake?
b.Did I do the question incorrect because I was not aware of the concept (mostly idioms)?
c.Did I not answer the question properly (process issue)?

I would then focus on the pertinent things such that I do not repeat that mistake. Since, I had a lot of free time in my plan, I was able to focus time on revisions and I think that it really helped.
In addition to reviewing incorrect questions, I also reviewed questions that I answered correctly. During the review, I revised the process that I used to approach each question. This helped me find stuff that might have missed when I attempted the questions in the first place.

3: Revisions: I revised all the concepts multiple times, even the quant ones. I also revised the GMAT Club problems that I got wrong during the first attempt. For Verbal, I focused mostly on e-GMAT. I revised during lunch time, dinner time, etc. Since e-GMAT is audio visual based, I could revise even when cooking. I also re-read the entire powerscore CR book.

4: Took GMATPrep multiple times in the end: GMATPrep is probably the most accurate representation of the actual exam. Hence, I wanted to practice all the questions from it. Therefore, I took the verbal exam multiple times. Towards the end I also found a document on GMAT club that had a lot of the GMATPrep problems. I could not use it as much but I would recommend that people who still have time use it.

My takeaways

I learned a lot from my experience of preparing and taking the GMAT.

1. Keep your cool throughout - not only through the actual exam but also through the preparation. GMAT is a test of endurance. The syllabus is not tough, but it is something that you cannot answer if you are nervous and tensed up.
2.Careful planning and strategizing is important. Just knowing the final goal is not enough. One should set meaningful interim goals. This serves two-fold purpose – aids in preparation and boosts confidence.
3.Focus on GMATClub tests for final push from Q48-49 to Q50-51.
4.When it comes to practicing and revising, quality is better than quantity.
5.Practice only from official sources and trusted sources.

PS: I could not upload the plan. If you need it, PM me.