My GMAT Journey finally concluded yesterday, with a score of 760 (Q50,V44)
The journey was long, arduous (and confusing). I know I could not have done it without the advice, motivations and inspiration from the GMAT club posts, and I hope this post too will encourage someone
A bit of background: I am a female applicant, from India. I have a business studies background. I am currently in the e-Commerce Industry, and am looking to get in to the top schools. Work-ex of 3.5 years, decent GPA, and tons of extra curricular and volunteering activities. I knew I needed a 720-750 to be reasonable competitive.
I started my GMAT Prep around 2021 Feb month end/March beginning. I took up
Magoosh subscription, and had downloaded the
OG books. It was 2 months of intense prep, followed by mock tests (from MBA.com). Now, here is where it gets weird. All my mocks were comfortably above 700, say about 720-730. So I was fairly confident and had booked an online exam for May 27th.
My online exam was such a disaster, I do not think I can even put it in words. I genuinely feel like I was blackout drunk/drugged, I don't remember anything from the exam after the first 10 questions. I truly feel that online exam is much much harder than the offline one. The questions felt long and wordy, in Verbal. In Quant the ramp up was super fast: I think I got the first 4/5 right, and I felt like I was getting Q51 level questions from the 7th question onwards. This led me into a panic mode where I pretty much blindly marked 5 questions in a row (between Question 13-20). Anyway, I knew at the end of Q, that I was scr*wed, and this affected my Verbal as well. "I am anyway not going to get a 700, so why bother", was the kind of attitude I had in V. Anyway, exam got done, landed a 640 (Q44, V37). This was lower than even my cold mock, in which I got a 690.
I came out of the room I was writing the exam in, and almost cried, because I still had no clue what had happened in the exam. Took 2 days off, and then figured a game plan. I knew it was not a question of skills, since my mocks were fairly decent. I realised that maybe some very deep conceptual understanding was missing, especially for number properties etc. And then, I probably made the best decision in my GMAT journey, which I probably should have done earlier: Took up
Target Test Prep!! In fact, I wrote to Scott, told him my situation, and explained that I wanted to meet R1 deadlines, so "do you think 1 month of
TTP would work?". He was so kind, told me go for it and stay strong. And thus began my journey through Math.
TTP absolutely drives the basics into your head, so much so, that your mind kind of performs, even if you blank out (Does that make sense?). A lot of things, such as DS for ratios, Work-rate problems etc., you can pretty much solve without even thinking. Even the verbal model is excellent, and goes over and beyond what is needed. SC is pretty much god-level on
TTP. CR too has some interesting approaches etc., but CR can be cracked only with tons of practice questions! (And, they did not have RC at the time when I prepped, so I used GMATclub for that). Scott even helped me get a 1 week extension, since I did not want to take up another whole month's subscription (Thank you!!)
Then I gave my second attempt on July 5th, in offline mode. This was much better, I was aiming for about a 700, but got a 690 (Q48, V 39). It was so close, but not close enough. And at this point too I knew what had gone wrong. The thing with using
TTP is, you will learn all the concepts, but the questions even on the hardest level are not too complicated. Now of course, in no way should it be expected that someone should be spoon-fed, but I realised that some of the harder questions on the exam, I did not even know the approach to, even though I technically knew the basic concepts for the questions.
And, thus began my last attempt prep (mostly because my parents were sick of me being locked up in my room, hahaha). I started doing
Manhattan prep and
OG advanced books, which have some VERY hard questions. It is intimidating at first, but eventually, I got the hang of it. I also did mocks: 2 with veritas prep, got 720-Q51 V42 (same score and split both times)! I also did
Manhattan Prep Mock, got a 730 (Q51, V40), and a Princeton prep test 2 days before my exam on August 4th: Got a 780, with Q51, V47. This is the highest score I have seen on my mocks, but did not read too much into it since it was very very different from the 720/730 I got 1 week ago.
Another important thing I started doing during this last month was meditation. After 2 attempts, I realised that I was just becoming very flustered and panicky when things did not go as smooth as expected. I did slow breathing, slept with a red light, and almost always had incense lit in my room. I am not too sure how many people would take this seriously, but A LOT of your performance depends purely on how confident/nervous/calm you are. You could know all the concepts in the world, but you could still blank out and freak out when you are hit with 2 hard questions.
So, I took my last test on August 4th, to get a whopping 760 (Q50, V44). Funny thing is, even in this test, I got hit with some really hard Q questions around the 23-27 questions, but I kept slow breathing, and kept telling myself, "It is a good thing that the algo is checking Q51 level questions, because that means you are at Q50"
(I was right!).
Key takeaways from my journey: -TAKE UP TTP!!: Especially if you do not come from a STEM background, you will not remember a lot of the basics and
TTP is an excellent choice to have a consolidated overview. Also, no shade intended, but I genuinely feel that the other pre companies out there don't even hold a candle to
TTP.
-Solve 700 level questions: Honestly, there is no work around to getting a 750+, except solving the hardest questions on GMAT club. You can find PDFs of most older versions of popular publications, so download those, and solve them religiously.
-Do whatever it takes for you to remain calm in the exam hall: The most important tip I can give. We spend so much time and money on getting the skills, but do not work on the mental state. Figure out what will help you remain calm in the exam, and do that.
-If you know that you can do better, always go for a re-attempt. It is not a question of ego, since once you hit that dream score, no one will ever ask you oh, how many attempts did it take you. Even if they do, you can always answer whatever you like, because they cant cross check
That is all, from my end. I would be more than happy to address any questions, and suggestions
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04 Aug 2021, 21:04
