My GMAT Journey: from 490 to 700 ! (Q49, V36)

very helpful

Congrats Mishari!!

Thank you. This post has been added to the Best GMAT Stories - Period collection.

great post.. can you please throw your insights on how to improve verbal score...

Wow, your story should be a sticky for retakers...

Super awesome. Thanks for the inspiration.

congratulations, thats really good story. in which school u did ur MBA?

Great Story....congrats!

Thanks so much! This is very helpful!

Great Story Mishari, thanks for sharing!

Not that I was put down, but I was truly surprised by the difficulty of test.

I'm not a native English speaker, but I managed good scores on the American SAT back when I was in Highschool. Plus I did my Engineering Degree in England. So naturally I assumed I can smoke this test without putting much effort in it... BIG MISTAKE. I actually traveled to do it in another city cause the one done in my city is only done once a week and I wanted to do it immediately. I stayed at my friends place, we went out every night, I did not prepare, I had a flat tire on my way to the test center (Hertz fault really), and surprise surprise 460!!! I was gutted!!

So here we go, this time, rolling my sleeves up & planning to put in the work.

However, I have to say im a bit worried about being too late for admission to good schools. I'm a full time employee and only 2 weeks ago realized I would have an opening this summer as I leave my job in 2 months (on good terms ), so I'm trying to rush the exam in order to have enough time to apply. Which is kinda the reason I traveled to take the test ASAP.

I tried to enroll in an actual class-type course, but that would take too long, and by the time its finished all the top school's deadlines would've passed. So I'm in for a couple of weeks of late nights with online courses, prep books and of course the GMATCLUB.

I'll be seeing you guys around

Great story Mishari, I am planning to start my preparation in a month and looking for the right strategies. This was a really helpful post.

first congrats for scoring a very good score. I am panicked with my sc strategy, i am always confuse to start with which error i mean in sentence correction question first whether to look for sub-verb agreement error or sub-pronoun agreement error or parallelism error or word order error, i want to know the step wise procedure or a method to go on for sc questions like first in a sentence correction question look for particular error and then move on to another error like that so please help me in this task

Hey guys, its me again,

I took the GMAT for the 2nd time yesterday, and regardless of my almost non-existant preparations for it for the 2nd time I still feel awful. I scored 620, and I was hoping for 700.

What I have to say is that the (Official GMAT Guide) and the (GMAT Prep Program) are both way way below the actual level of the test!! I was answering questions on those two correctly without even putting pen to paper, it is very different in the actual test. So those preparing for the taking the test beware and pay attention, its not enough. & those who got good scores please help, do you recommend a specific program like (Kaplan or Manhattan) or anything else? We do not have actual class courses in my city and even if we did, it would be hard for me to attend because I work full time (a bit of overtime as well).

Awesome comeback Misari.
Your strategies have also been nicely thought out.

I have started my GMAT journey last month and this post is extremely inspirational.
Thanks to posts like yours and of course the GMAT Club, am able to really pack the punch in my prep

Thanks for the direction. Very motivating. I am going to be practicing till i hit a score i shoot for and then take my GMAT. I dont want to expect any miracles and be taught the hard way. Thanks for taking the time Bro.

Kudos
Sri

What a brilliant debrief and believe me when I say this your debrief deserves to be in the best GMAT stories. You've so brilliantly summarized all the main points and best of all have outlined books that really help and are sufficient to get a good score instead of giving a page full of books and a 3 month debrief.

Really helpful. Thanks

great debrief, congrats!