From 600 to 770(Q51, V44) in 4 months (Lessons learned)

Hi everyone,

I took the GMAT this past week and managed to score 770 (IR 8, AWA 5, Q51, V44).
During my preparation, the debriefs I read here gave me tremendous amount of encouragement, so I just want to take a moment to share my story, hopefully it will help someone in their study as well

1. Background
I am a non-native English speaker, but I am fairly strong in Math except for a few subjects. I have been working in software engineering for the last 5+ years
At the start of this year, I decided that I want to take GMAT. At which point I made plans to take the test in Mid April (14 weeks to prepare, did not want to rush myself too much).

2. Materials used
-- Magoosh GMAT subscription
-- Official Guide
-- Official GMATPrep and Exam Pack 1
-- MGMAT books
-- Kaplan (only tests)

By far the most helpful resource I used is Magoosh. The video lessons are well designed and really covered the fundamentals well with excellent examples. The questions are also excellent and much easier to understand with video explanations (For instance, I don't always find the textual only answers in MGMAT books and OG satisfying). Finally with easy to use UI, I can very quickly construct a list of all the questions that I got wrong and group them by difficulty/question type, this made review much easier near the end (On the other hand doing the same withOG questions, takes a lot more effort).

3. Study plan
I spent the first few weeks mostly on watching the Magoosh videos on grammar and math. Did not do much practice, simply reviewed the fundamentals. Afterwards, I started tackling test questions from various sources until about 2 weeks before the test date. At which point I started going through all the questions that I got wrong earlier, and made sure I can at least get them right once.

In terms of hours, I devoted about an hr each day during the week and 4 hrs on Saturdays for full practice. I decided to leave myself alone on Sundays unless I am really bored and got nothing better to do.

One key lesson here, please make sure you find the right hour to study. Let's just say when I tried working on problems at 11pm after a long work day, I tend not to do nearly as well as say 1pm on Saturdays after a sound sleep the night before.

4. Practice
I took a full-length GMAT practice every weekend for about 3 months. To be honest I think I probably over-did the CAT a bit and I might have been able to accomplish the same result with fewer tests. That said, aside from more practice questions, simply getting yourself familiar with the 3.5 hr test experience is very helpful. All the things you read about mental fatigue, as well its less obvious cousin, eye fatigue, are real. Initially, I would get tired and start to lose patience toward the end of the Verbal section. These are the type of things you will learn to manage better with more practice.

In chronological order (2-3 weeks between 1st and 2nd test, afterwards a week between each):
Magoosh Practice 1 - 600, Q44, V29
Kaplan 1 - 710, Q50,V38
GMAT Prep 1 - 730, Q49, V40
Kaplan 2 - 700, Q49, V37
MGMAT 1 - 690, Q48, V36
MGMAT 2 - 700, Q48, V37
MGMAT 3 - 720, Q48, V40
MGMAT 4 - 710, Q48, V39
GMAT Prep 2 - 760, Q51, V42
Kaplan 3 - 720, Q50, V39
Kaplan 4 - 720, Q49, V40
GMAT Prep 3 - 760, Q50, V42
GMAT Prep 4 - 770, Q51, V42
Actual GMAT - 770, Q51, V44

Interestingly enough, I never broke 720 in Kaplan/MGMAT tests. While I indeed took GMAT prep tests with more preparation, nonetheless I think it is true that the MGMAT and Kaplan tests are both a bit harder than the official ones. Especially Manhattan Quant, I almost always run out of time while doing those, yet on GMAT prep/Official GMAT I usually end up with 15min to spare. So if you are struggling with the practice tests and getting frustrated, just take a deep breath and take solace in the fact that the official tests are very likely to be much easier!

Another thing to note, my score increased dramatically after first 3 weeks of study alone, which is mostly due to the fact that I just need to brush up on some specific topics (Grammar especially). Then it kind of plateaued for 2 months until near the end. Q51 and V40 are indeed tough to cross, as many of your have observed.

Besides practice tests, I also did all the Verbal questions on Magoosh, OG, and various Manhattan books. If you are keeping count, this amounts to 380(OG) + 540(Magoosh) + 480(Practice test) + 200(Error redo) = 1600 Verbal practice problems. While the number may look daunting initially, assume you study 20questions each day you should be able to knock them out within 3 months, definitely manageable effort (Not to mention, I probably over-prepared to some extent).

5. Advices for others
Know yourself and adjust accordingly
Specifically, your strength and weakness. I know very quickly that I do not need to devote much time to Quant in terms of knowledge, but I am very prone to making careless mistakes and hence I need to take extra caution addressing that. On the other hand, I also knew that I got a long way to go in terms of English grammar, so I devoted most of my prep time toward sentence correction. From early practice, I also realized that I struggled mightily with AWA. At work I mostly write emails with bullet points, somehow doing the same thing with words under real-time constraints is a lot more challenging and initially I rarely finished my essays on time. But once I saw the problems, I simply devoted some time to it and the problem can be addressed accordingly. Let's just say after 20+tries, I finally figured out various ways to say "this argument is unconvincing" without spending precious time pondering over the ideal choice of words.

Same thing goes for actual test taking. I know I can do mental math quickly, and hence can devote the extra time toward double checking the answer and reading the question again. Similarly for Verbal, I can save some time during RC because I read fairly quickly. These extra minutes I can instead devote to CR, which I am much weaker at.

Learn from your mistakes
For every question you got wrong, there are at least two things to understand: How come you did not pick the right answer, and how come you picked a wrong answer. In my view, both are equally important. Also, understand clearly why you got a question wrong. Do not just brush off a careless mistake and assume you can get it right next time; instead, examine exactly what step you can undertake to avoid such mistakes in future. In my case, initially I often did not read the question carefully (ie, overlooked the part that x may not be an integer). Once I see such issues a few times, I made sure that I read the question again word by word, after I arrived at an answer. It's perfectly okay to make mistakes early on, as long as you don't repeat the same mistake multiple times

Relax
While GMAT is by no means trivial, it is still finite and very much learnable. Specifically, there are only so many topics/skills that you need to master in order to do well. As long as you are able to learn from your mistakes, it really is just a matter of time before you figure most things out. In my case, there are only so many ways to make a wrong critical reasoning answer and after seeing hundreds of incorrect choices, I eventually developed the feel to know right away that an answer is clearly wrong.

As mentioned previously, while hundreds of questions seem daunting initially, it is still a finite number and with persistent efforts I know I can get to the end, rest is just a matter of time. So be methodical, and more importantly be patient during your study. There is an end and it will be well worth it once you get there.

6. Final words
As many of you have attested, studying for GMAT indeed takes a lot of commitment, especially considering that we all have to juggle this along with work and life. So would definitely suggest making a realistic plan and setting aside sufficient time before undertaking the effort. It is very much beatable, just a matter of time. So be patient, have confidence and soon victory shall be yours!

This has been a humbling, yet rewarding experience
Thanks again to all of you for your encouragement, and I wish all the best of luck in your GMAT conquest