Hello everyone,
I am an Indian male working in a multinational IT consulting firm with a 3 and a half years of experience.I have average graduation and high school grades but a differentiating working experience in IT firm. I am working in research and development department of my firm, dealing with multiple major foreign banks and financial institutions at the same time. So I think I can count on this working experience while applying to Bschools.
It was start of 2016 when I thought of taking GMAT and apply to MBA schools. I started my GMAT preparation somewhere around July 2016. Though I had no idea of GMAT test pattern, I knew it has a verbal , quant, IR and AWA section. Starting with the verbal and in particular,
SC. After completing SC , I completed RC then CR then IR , I did not know that IR is not that crucial for the test to get a good score and spent 20 days studying IR,I was just kept studying everything without a proper plan and strategy. I used following books for respective sections.
Sentence Correction : Manhattan SC.
Reading Comprehension :
Manhattan RC.
Critical Reasoning : Manhattan CR.
Data Sufficiency : Veritas DS book.
Problem Solving :
Manhattan Books.
Solved all verbal, quant questions from
OG 2016 ,
OG Verbal review ,
OG quantitative review, Gmat prep free questions Gmat prep QP1, Veritas Prep free questions (Vebral and quant). My accuracy while solving these questions was near to 80%.
My targeted BSchools are as follows
ISB -17
NUS -17
Nanyang MBA -17
INSEAD singapore -17
(I am not planning to apply for any BSchool in USA)
I studied for like two and a half month. Then I decided to book a date and take the exam on 3rd of September 2016. The most important thing , which I later realized is that mock tests should be given before you book a test date. I took 10 days off from office before test day to prepare for the test, and just a week before test took a Manhattan mock test, next day took gmat prep mock as well.
Following are my test results
MGMAT1: 600 V32 Q42
GMAT Prep Mock1 : 630 V28 Q50
I was a bit shocked to see such results since I though solving the
OG questions with 80% accuracy means you can do very well in the test. I once thought of postponing the test but it was less than a week and I would not have got the refund at that time. So decided to go on with the test.
Before two days of test I practiced writing AWA essays and did pretty good in those.
So on the test day I was feeling a bit confident and took the exam normally .
I got 670 Q49 Verbal 31, IR 5, AWA 5 in my first attempt. It was kind of expected result given my preparation and scores in mocks.
Now with this low score and having a IT background , I believe I don't stand a chance in any of the Bschools mentioned above. So I planned to take the test again and apply in second or third rounds of these Bschools.
After that I took a 15 days break and started my preparation all over again.
What I learned from my first experience.
Not to spend time on IR.
Focus on verbal as much as possible.
Practice some tough quant questions.
I solved all the material all over again. Plus I searched questions on Gmat club forum and solved almost each and every question. Meanwhile , I had to travel a lot due to official purposes and thus could not take the any mock test in 2 months. I later in November took 5
MGMAT tests and 2 Gmat Prep Mock tests, and 1 Veritas Prep free test.
Following are my scores
MGMAT2 620 Q 45 V 31
MGMAT3 670 Q 42 V 37
MGMAT4 630 Q 43 V 33
MGMAT5 670 Q 45 V 36
MGMAT6 700 Q 46 V 39
Veritas 1 680 Q 49 V 35
Gmatprep 1 700 Q50 V35
GmatPrep 2 740 Q50 V41
Looking at this results I believed I have improved my verbal scores. I was less bothered about low quant score in
MGMAT, becuase I knew the questions on quant in
MGMAT are tougher than those in actual GMAT.
I booked test again on 3rd December 2016. I thought after getting a decent score , I can dedicate all my time to essays and application.
I was quite confident that my score will be above 700 this time.
But guys I took the test and got a terrible
660 Q 50 V 29 IR 4 in my second attempt. I was not able to control my frustration when I saw the score. Now I am totally clueless about what to do next. Highly demotivated and tired with GMAT. All my plans related to applications and preparation are now worthless. I had reserved month of December for writing essays and working on applications. I am looking very much at getting admission in classes starting next year (in 2017).
Updating my GMAT ESR for verbal :
CR : Score 37, Percentile 76
SC : Score 30, Percentile 57
RC : Score 18, Percentile 21
I am able to figure out from above scores that I did badly in RC and in SC I did way poorer than what I did in mocks.
I need some serious advices from seniors and GMAT achievers in this forum about retake or anything
.
Regards
Onkar Mehakarkar