How I KO’d the GMAT (770 – 99th percentile)

"The best luck of all is the luck you make for yourself."
-General Douglas MacArthur

Greetings fellow gmatclubbers.

I took the GMAT on the 26th of July, 2016 and scored a 770 with a Q49, V47, IR 8 and an AWA 5. This is up from a 600 Q37, V35 in my first diagnostic mock.

I owe a large part of my score to the amazing resources found on this site, including the extremely motivational debriefs - especially the ones by bodleyev (https://gmatclub.com/forum/770-q51-v44-r ... 22353.html) and understudy (https://gmatclub.com/forum/570-q30-v38-t ... 84094.html) - and so I felt it would be criminal for me not to give back.

Background:

I am a 19-year-old student pursuing a management and finance course from Mumbai, India.
I have an above average academic record, and a highly above average extra curricular background. I’ve always had a weak quant background and an above average verbal background.
My target school (as of now) is the Indian School of Business, for which I have applied under its Young Leaders Programme.

I prepared for around 3 to 3.5 months, on and off since April. My college is very supportive of students pursuing extra curricular activities and academics beyond the scope of what we’re required to do in our course, so I had the liberty to stay at home and study all day.

Disclaimers:

- I had plenty of free time to study for the test, something a lot of you might not have.
- I started off with an already above-average verbal score of 35. If you're trying to get from V25 to V45, then I think you'll be better served strengthening your basics first and practicing a lot. If youre already at a V34+ in verbal, then the approach I followed is more likely to help you.
- I spent a lot of money on purchasing prep materials.

Here is how I went about preparing:

1. Training Equipment: Resources

In order of usefulness:

i. Manhattan Strategy Guides & Questions
I used the Manhattan Prep Strategy Guide set, and I must say Manhattan material is the best material for GMAT, bar none.
I purchased the Quant Strategy Guides, as well as the SC and RC Guides. The insights and strategies mentioned throughout the books are incredibly helpful. The material is extremely detailed and assumes no prior knowledge, building you up right from your basics.
I also solved a lot of questions from the Manhattan GMAT mobile/tablet questions. It has questions categorized into various difficulty levels, and a really convenient UI.

ii. GMAT Prep Question Pack 1
I think the GP QP 1 is one of the most underutilized and under-rated resources for prep out there. For a neat $30, you get access to over 400 official questions. The questions I found here were the closest to the actual test questions.

iii. GMAT Club Math Book and Questions
I only chanced upon the GMAT Club Math Book (https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-math-book-87417.html) towards the end of my prep, and I rue the fact that I could not go through it multiple times. Not only is it an extremely detailed guide, but the best part is the shortcuts scattered throughout the book, which made me realize I had been doing quant wrong all along.
The PS/DS Question Directory by bb is a godsend. I spent weeks solving over 300 questions off here. The explanations provided by Bunuel are extremely insightful and helped me find out the quickest way to approach questions.
The best part is that one can find questions here from virtually every possible source.

iv. Free e-gmat Resources
I found the questions in e-gmat’s free trial excellent for high level verbal prep. I solved and resolved these questions thrice over the course of my prep, and combing through the solutions provided really helped strengthen my core verbal skills.




2. Working Out: Prep and Practice


Quant

I've seen a lot of people on this forum and even elsewhere assume that Indians are great at quant. While this is true for the majority, sadly I did not fall into that category; I was terrible in quant, starting off with a Q37.

Manhattan Strategy Guides: Disappointed with this score, I carefully went through the Manhattan Quant Strategy Guides over a period of a week, making thorough notes and internalizing every strategy mentioned.
This led my score to shoot up to Q42-44.

The GC Qs Directory is a amazing resource to focus on weak areas. After completing the strategy guides, I solved questions from the GMATClub Question Directory. It is an excellent tool to target your practice to specific areas, difficulty levels etc. I did around 300 questions off there.

Official Questions Finally, I did official questions from OG and Quant Review to get oriented with how the actual test is going to be. I must have done and redone a total of atleast 600 official questions.


Verbal


Manhattan SC is like the holy grail of SC prep. It covers every conceivable topic and every possible error in minute detail. Every question I saw on the test was recognizable because I had done Manhattan SC cover to cover. Going through the book twice and making detialed notes made SC my strongest area in Verbal.


Manhattan RC helped me to imbibe a very useful note taking strategy to attack RC passages. But beyond understanding question types and formulating a basic strategy, your performance in RCs depends majorly on the quantity and quality of practice you do.
I practiced RCs from official sources on a regular basis, but spent only a fraction of my time on it as compared to SC and CR.

The Powerscore CR Bible is what I used to prep for CR, which was my weakest area of the three. The CR Bible is a bit of tenuous read, and I found it a bit too detailed, which got annoying. Nonetheless, if you manage to struggle through the book, you will be very confident and familiar with every question type. Again, beyond familiarity with question types and strategies, only quality practice can help boost your CR skills.

Special mention to e-gmat here; although I did not subscribe to any of its programmes, the free trial itself is excellent. The quality of questions in the ability test is extremely high, and the audio-visual solutions drill the concepts into your mind. I did each of the three SC,RC and CR ability quizzes as well as the Verbal ability quiz multiple times, tracking my progress along the way. The detailed analysis of your performance really helps in being aware of where you need to focus.


3. Throwing the first punches: Mock Tests

My performance in mocks was pretty mediocre.
I got a 600 in my first GMAT Prep diagnostic mock, with a Q37, V35.

I then did all the 6 Manhattan mock tests. My scores were:

GMAT Prep #7 Completed 06/07/2016 Score: 690
CAT EXAM #6 Completed 06/28/2016 Score: 720
CAT EXAM #5 Completed 06/26/2016 Score: 680
CAT EXAM #4 Completed 06/02/2016 Score: 680
CAT EXAM #3 Completed 05/23/2016 Score: 690
CAT EXAM #2 Completed 05/14/2016 Score: 410 (Only Quant)
CAT EXAM #1 Completed 05/06/2016 Score: 660

The last one was a shocker and shattered any semblance of confidence I had. I focused on quant for the next few weeks.
The Manhattan mocks give you an insane level of analysis once you're done taking them. This really helped me realise where I was weak and what I needed to focus on.

Note: Manhattan mocks are WAY tougher than the actual test.
They're good to practice pacing and to prime yourself for test conditions but they don't accurately relfect your score.

Two weeks before my exam date, I did the 2 GMAT Prep mocks getting scores of:

730 (Q49, V40)
770 (Q49, V47)



4. Warm Up: The Last Few Weeks

The last few weeks in the run-up to the test were spent having wild orgies with official questions and GC questions.
I was screwed in every conceivable way by the GC 700 level questions, which are the toughest I’ve seen. Despite getting 60% of them wrong, solving around a 100 of these questions helped me solidify concepts

I did and redid official questions from the three sources I mentioned earlier until I knew the solutions to each one. This helped me be extremely familiar with the questions I saw on test day, which didn’t seem new or intimidating anymore.

I also dedicated a couple of days analysing all the 300 or so questions I’d gotten wrong, THIS IS A MUST to ensure you don’t make the same mistakes again.



5. Knockout! : The Test Day

My test was scheduled for 23rd July, Saturday, but due to a technical issue I could not take the test that day. I returned home dejected but determined to reschedule as soon as possible. I spent the next few days going over my errors.
I managed to call customer care on Monday and reschedule for Tuesday morning.

I reached the centre in Marine Lines, Mumbai 15 minutes before my scheduled time, since I knew the test would not start on time (that’s just how things work in India). I was armed with a packet of biscuits and a can of Redbull to consume during the three 8 minute breaks.

My test began at 9.15.

AWA/IR

I had never taken these two sections seriously. The only thing I did for AWA was to go through chineseburned ‘s AWA template and look at a few samples. I'd solved around 25 IR questions from the OG.

The AWA went reasonably well, I didn’t sweat it much.

One IR set got me particularly confused and I skipped at least 2 questions i.e. just randomly selected answers and moved ahead. This gave me extra time to get the other sets right, a strategy I think really helped.

Update: I got an 5 (out of 6) in the AWA.

Quant

I blazed through the first 12 questions. They seemed deceptively easy and I was freaking out thinking I missed something. I spent 3 minutes on the 11th question trying to find out the secret loophole I thought I was missing. There was nothing; the questions were really just that easy (to me).
I think it was somewhere around the 20th question where I started to realise things were getting trickier. There was some coordinate geometry questions and a few probability (not combinatorics) questions.

I was slightly pressed for time by the time I reached the last 7 questions. I skipped around 2 or 3 questions between q30-q37. I finished with 2 minutes to spare.

Verbal

I felt like Bradley Cooper from Limitless all throughout the Verbal question. The answers seemed painfully obvious.
The SC questions seemed childish; I spent around 40 seconds on average attempting each SC question. The RC passages were not terribly nuanced either; I was particularly terrible at medical/scientific RC passages yet luckily I don’t think I came across a single one. I spent the most time on CR questions. I noticed that the CR questions followed patterns of reasoning similar to those I’d seen in other official questions.
I finished with 5 minutes to spare. By the time I was done, I knew that I’d either have messed up and gotten a 50%ile score, or Id aced it and would get a 99%ile.

After I was done, I was forced to fill out what seemed at the time like an endless survey. I hammered through, filling all my details, my heart in my mouth.
Finally, I clicked through to my score.

IR - 8 - 92%ile

Quant – 49 – 77%ile
Verbal – 47 – 99%ile

Overall – 770 – 99%ile

I cannot describe the feeling I saw when the 770 popped up on the screen. I raised my shaking hand and completed the formalities in a daze. The centre manager, who was in awe himself, gave me a bad printout and sent me on my way.

I left the centre and rode into the darkness.



Epilogue

The three months spent preparing for the GMAT has been one of the most intense and intellectually stimulating phases of my life. I always wondered whether it was worth the time I gave it, and I can safely say now that it was.



General Tips

- Use only the best materials, don’t cheap out.
- Mocks are only superficially reflective of the actual test; GMAT Prep tests are the only authentic ones.
- Make sure to examine and internalise the strategies, solutions you come across.
- Know your errors and weak points. Resolve all wrong questions.
- Be realistic with your targets. So if you decide to go all out and target a 760, do realise that your time may be better spent otherwise.

In conclusion, it doesn’t matter where you started from as long as you get to where you want to be. I hope this post helps you knockout the GMAT.
All the best.

(I will update this debrief with my AWA score as soon as I get it and other details as soon as I think of them.)

Please do hit that kudos button if you found this post helpful


Update: I've been getting a lot of queries regarding Verbal prep specifically, so I wrote a slightly more detailed rundown of how I went about verbal here: https://gmatclub.com/forum/verbal-prep- ... 35019.html