I was working as portfolio manager at client location with good income (thanks to fx rates), nice work-life balance and opportunities to steadily rise within the organisation. This feel good situation had made me complacent and the plan to join business school had gone on back-burner. My journey for GMAT started when I got to know that one of my ex-colleague was joining IIM-A. It's not that his joining IIM-A was causing me heartburn but it was the realisation that I had forgotten my own goal and aspiration!
After discussing with my better half we decided that it's now or never. With her support and some motivation I took the dust off old
OG, which I had purchased way back in 2009. The dipstick test showed little bit better results than I had 4 years ago. This was good omen for me to do the research on study plans, prep materials, prep-courses, etc. My search ended with GMAT Club; It's a one stop shop that covers range of topics related to GMAT, prep material, essays, schools and most valuable of all - personal experiences and expert comments for every problem.
After doing 1 month of free-wheeling studies I gave first GMAT prep test and results were disastrous. I realised that necessary rigour and discipline will not be achieved unless I book my GMAT date. I gave myself 3 months and followed rigorous schedule, attempted good number of mock tests and completed the online study material available. For me,
MGMAT material worked the best. It had all the books that covered basics as well as advanced methodologies to solve different types of problems. Sentence correction module and flash cards in particular was one of the best I have come across. I also downloaded some good you tube videos related to overall GMAT strategy, probability, sentence correction and data sufficiency. By the end of 3 months, I had spent average 4 hours on week days and 12 hours on weekends on prep and attempted around 12 mock tests during this period. Keeping notes and reviweing them helped in improveming the test scores, which ranged from 640 to 690. 2 days prior to the exam I refreshed the GMAT prep test module and gave one last test. I got 730, though happy about the sudden increase in score, I was cautious of the fact that I had attempted many of these questions earlier. I recommend that one should not exhaust GMAT prep tests and space it properly.
On the exam day, I woke-up early and reached exam center 30 min before time. AWA was relatively easy but IR was tough (lucky that many schools are not using this score yet). 10 min break was good to regroup my thoughts and was hoping that Quant would finish better. I was able to finish quant section 3 minutes before time. A good indicator that I have made too many hasty choices or I am having a dream run. I decided to pace verbal section better and completed the last questions 5 seconds before the finish time. What came after that was rude shock, I had score paltry 600 !!!! Entire 4 months effort yielded nothing but failure. I was devastated to say the least and realised that I am not cut out for GMAT or MBA. I put all the books back on the shelf and got back to my normal routine. My wife went through many blogs and shared many instances where people have recovered from this kind of failure. After reading few experiences and also getting clarity on how schools treat GMAT reattempts, I pushed myself for 2nd attempt.
I was at loss on where to start as I had exhausted all the resources such as free mock tests and
OG questions. I spent 1 week analysing all the test results topic by topic and realised that it's not the quantity but quality that matters. Going back to basics, I spent time doing all the exercises on
MGMAT material and gave more time on reviwing the mistakes I was making. I purchased the 6 mock test from
MGMAT and only attempted those during the 8 week period. During the 2nd attempt, I ensured that no mock test were repeated, tests were given at same time as that on the real exam day and spent more time reviewing and correcting the errors. Setting up realistic goal on GMAT score also helped on focussing on questions with appropriate difficulty level. On the exam day, I took the exam
11 am and avoided any change in daily schedule. AWA was similar to last time and went fine. In IR, I didn't attempt all questions but ensured that I worked out the correct answers for the ones I attempted. Paced quant section much better than last time and continued the caution in verbal section. This time I got more respectable score of 660, which gave me a fighting chance to apply for some reputed programs in India.
Will share my journey from fighting chance score to school of my dream in the next part.