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Hallo GMAT Fam!
My goal of writing this debrief is to introspect over my journey and highlight a few elements that could be valuable to your GMAT journey. I was very happy to have reached a 750 (Q50 and a V42). I went from a V27 to V42, verbal was clearly an area I knew I had to focus and this would have a massive impact on my score – no brainer right! What I dint realise is HOW I could impact the verbal score. While I had spent a major part of a year in the early stages of my preparation tying different strategies with the test taking process and trying to memorise grammar rules, and short cuts I was not really improving. My steep increase at the end was a result of investing a good 3-4 months on understanding the fundamentals and completely focusing on the meaning based approach – an e-GMAT staple. I have to thank the eGMAT team for creating a fantastic product and learning platform that added a lot of value to me at this crucial last stage
Data points – DATA DRIVES THE WORLD!
GMAT official prep scores
Test 1 620 V 28 Q 47
Test 2 660 V 29 Q 50
Experts global, Manhattan tests
Test 3 610 V 28 Q 46
eGMAT Scholarinium tests (80% of question correct verbal)
Test 4 720 V 38 Q 49
I have had pitfalls but along this journey I picked up some valuable lessons. A lot of it included getting up to find the motivation, the trust and the constant faith that it was possible. I really want to give a shout out to DJ from the eGMAT team for all the support and insight he brought to me. To be stuck in the 660 area and believing I could get closer to my target GMAT score, for a major part of the year during my preparation was not easy (and trust me I have had times when my scores dipped below the 600 mark). It makes you question yourself if it is even possible. And in those times what I did really well was to seek advice and help. I found a process that was solid and I knew made sense, and I made the conscious decision to trust in it even if it was counter intuitive at times, and challenging at the others.
The single most important thing a good leader and future business school graduate is ask and utilize the help of experts. You are not expected to know everything but using someone’s knowledge that can prove to be your wealth later.
Here comes the part where I learned so much more beyond the purview of the GMAT -
I want you to know, GMAT can be challenging but it’s not a journey that is impossible, people have done it. As you scroll through the forum you can see so many amazing stories and debriefs which show perseverance and smart working which means you can do it too. Keep pursuing the score you believe you are set upon, take help when you feel the need, build your process, review your progress and finally I can’t emphasis this enough trust that you can do it. GMAT is a journey of perseverance, one to overcome failures and self-doubt. As you could see from my score numbers above, it’s not important what scores you seem to be getting as much as what you are going to do with it to get where you want.
That said when put your heart to it, include several minds to your journey, it is possible. I didn’t think in the beginning achieving 750 would take me more than a year, relentless questioning of myself and prioritizing my choices and building a whole lot of friends to support me through the journey did helped a lot.
Before I tell you about some of the lessons I took home here are some tips to plan your preparation
Useful Tips
1. Start your GMAT preparation with a target score. I can’t emphasis this enough, to be clear what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve the goal.
2. Make a rough plan of how much time commitment you can create per week and stick to it. Tell people about your commitment, this creates an accountability.
3. Have structured and methodical system: Invest into creating a platform for taking all your notes (can be word/excel, notion, Google keep) and progress. I used hand-written notes and I found it more, handy to have them in a digitalized format for easy reference later.
4. Develop your own tools to review, and take the pain to mark the questions you got wrong and find challenging , collect these are gems hat will help you!
5. Make a practice to all the wrong answer choices to understand why they are wrong. This is the only way you can be 100% sure and your accuracy will go up
6. Create a fresh enthusiasm for the GMAT, love it! It is a gym for the mind and going to it each day is more important than going long hours on one single day.
7. Zoom-in and zoom-out to view your preparation constantly: look holistically where you are at and then dive into look where the individual sub sectional abilities are at. You don’t have to fight every battle to win the war. Be realistic and honest with where your weaknesses area. Classify them as content gap or a process gap and work on those fundamental root causes.
8. Do not rush in to test yourself if you have not addressed the key learnings from the previous test. There a limited number of tests and limited amount of your time, put it to the best use. Spend your time to get the understanding right than solving a ton
9. Be aware in the GMAT test you are allowed to get questions wrong; you can make mistakes and use it to your advantage.
10. Keep talking to people, attend webinars on the topic, check out stories of peers on the YouTube channels and maintain your personal journal which tips are useful to you.
11. Develop a 1 minute sense. Over due course of time you will not have to look at your watch or the timer and will have the urge to finish questions faster.
Resources you can integrate into your preparation
1. eGMAT platform – The good thing about the platform is it is mobile friendly and almost one place for everything, so I did not have worry about maintaining different journals. I will write about why eGMAT added so much value to me in a later section. I think it is worth taking a lot of lessons from what they offer and indeed the claim of being the best SC in the business is justified.
2. Official Guides: I got all the official guides and also ordered the digital version which I found was pretty cool late because I could do timed tests using their OG platform
3. Manhattan Books: If not every book in their series the ‘roadmap’ really lays it all out and makes an easy-to-read story on various topics of the GMAT. This really primed my mind and helped me have a gauge of the experiences people are facing.
4. Tests:
GMAT Official Prep – The first two tests 1&2 are free and other can be purchased. They give a fair indication of your performance however it is difficult to review the answers especially in verbal.
GMAT Club tests – This is valuable since it is close to the actual official prep tests you can purchase but it is absolutely free
Expert Global for their analysis
eGMAT SIGMA mocks – very tough quant but invaluable solutions and analytics, top of the market
Scholarinium from eGMAT – They are not the complete tests but can be used as a replacement for the tests since the provide the metrics, such as time spent and detailed solutions
The Manhattan tests – You get these tests if you buy one the Manhattan books but they are slightly tougher. So, don’t sweat yourself on this.
Here I would suggest you give sufficient time between tests so you can see meaningful change in the results. It doesn’t make chopping trees with the same blunt axe.
5. GMAT Club YouTube channel and eGMAT you tube channel
Brief Background
I work in the Automotive Tech sector whilst developing my start-up in the EdTech space. Surrounded by entrepreneurs I always knew that I wanted to do an MBA which comes from a deep-rooted desire to meet the smartest minds thinking about business and society of the future. My mind and my heart are inclined to see business as tool towards positive change and I see business as the fundamental change to society. This is why I needed my GMAT in the first place.
Lesson1# Having a clarity of why you want to do the GMAT and how you would like to approach it is so crucial for putting in the hard work for the score
In 2018, I decided it was finally time to take action. I enrolled in two part time MBA programs in Vienna. I didn’t have to take GMAT for the application and I got offered a place in both, with scholarship. I mention this because the decision that followed for me was one of a lot of introspection. I had to really understand why I wanted an MBA. I am passionate about communication and building communities and feel there is a great need to re-think co-operation and empower our future generation. Spending time with peers with similar drive would help my chisel my idea and build myself. I decided an in-person MBA in one of the top schools focused on social impact is what I need towards my goal in social impact entrepreneurship. For that I needed a really competitive GMAT score to make my case compelling. With that in mind I turned down both offers and decided to take up my GMAT instead. Because I decided back then that GMAT was going to be crucial to my application, it was clear to me that I had to dedicate the time what I needed to get to the score. So, with the target schools in mind, I had a picture of the GMAT scores I needed to achieve and competing with the highly competitive Indian pool meant this score was going to be a + 30 over the school averages. Having a crystal clarity helped my motivation.
Lesson 2# Its tempting to start cooking as soon as you see some ingredients in the kitchen, but NO! Pause take a breath, may be a couple of days to research and organize your thoughts and then start your preparation.
I started my GMAT journey with extensive research on which materials that I had to use and the tests I had to take. I did not however think about how many hours I needed to dedicate, what where some of the pain points and challenges that people faced, and where I was lacking really from an analysis of my score. My idea back then was a month of preparation. I was so ready to GO. I bought the Manhattan Prep books and the official GMAT Prep books and without wasting any time took my first test. I got a 620, which came as a complete surprise to me and I did not deep dive into why I was making the mistakes. My confidence took a hard hit and was getting challenged and being a native English speaker, my verbal looked really sore.
The mistake I had made at that point was to just focus on rushing into my preparation to fit the time period I had assigned for myself without clearly understanding where I stood and how much time I really needed. I had left a lot of gaps in my research. I had spent way too much time following the wrong strategy to then unlearn and relearn everything. I am talking in specific about SC were previously I was just looking at where I was making mistakes and not making a deep dive to understand why. Focusing on the meaning made more sense to me even if it did not get instant rewards in terms of time taken to answer the questions. I was too focused on get high score fast and get going towards it, I dint spend enough research into my weak points.
Research on the type of support that you really need, the kind of tests/ materials that will fit you and help you, tools (like notion) and how you can set a system up to keep track of all your learning and progress will add a lot of value to you. Pause take a couple of days to do all of this even before start - build your wings before take off.
Lesson 3# Have an open mind to change strategies but remember you need to start with a strategy
I started reading the Manhattan books. Thier ‘roadmaps’ was such a useful tip to carry along and get a wholistic picture of the exam. I would recommend getting this on and spending an afternoon to read through it.
My strategy at this point was to go through the verbal concepts and my score would significantly improve, given a consistent show in Quant. I was wrong, my verbal score was not getting better and I had no clue why the answers were right or wrong. This really bothered me. I had a choice to make at that point, either to take more tests to refine my time management and test taking skills or go re visit sub-sections and really figure out why I was failing and why I was never sure why the answers were wrong.
At that stage, doing my preparation, I researched again on several portals including GMAT club (which offers a one place for all discussions!) and found out about the eGMAT SC. Being the skeptic that I am, I was willing to experiment and try. So I took a few webinars and tried a few of their free modules which was enough for me to make up my mind that I was going to re-invent my preparation from scratch. It was decision to invest money, time and effort into my new strategy. In retrospect this was a good decision because at that point I was not understanding why my answers were right or wrong and I am pretty sure any more effort would have only been futile. Stay open to stir the direction of your flight, the key lies in curiosity and openness.
Lesson 4# Your environment is as conducive to your score as the preparation itself. Make every effort to involve your environment into your journey
This is all about developing an environment and a community of support and resilience to help you in your journey. What really was a good about my preparation was that I could integrate my preparation into my social life. I often studied in cafes and in shared workspaces and invited friends to study or read a books with me as I prepared for my GMAT. I shared my ‘why’ of why I wanted to do my GMAT and why my MBA with my friends and circle and this really created an environment of people wishing me to study every day. Bringing GMAT into my every day conversations helped me balance my social life creatively. Doing this was so important for me to stay consistent, keep track and bounce off my fears and insecurities with people on a regular basis.
This was the water to my survival in the dangerous hike across the wild. Reading through all the amazing blogs you might keep hearing people say GMAT is not a sprint but a marathon, and it is indeed. It’s a marathon however you can get help, you just should never stop and never give up. Your environment can be your greatest asset in the race, be mindful of it.
Lesson 5# Your enemy is never too strong - Takedown SC by its meaning!
I will start with SC because that was the main reason why I signed up with eGMAT. I had no clue in all my previous tests as is evident from my constant scores of V28 and 29, why my answers were right and wrong. The key problems I had faced was running out of time, which I associated with RC and my test taking strategy. I was not realizing even given the sufficient time of 100s I wasn’t ticking off all the SC questions. I was missing out the fact that there was a conceptual gap there. I was choosing SC based on key identifiers and more importantly not appreciating the beauty behind the structuring of SC questions. The smart people behind crafting the genius SC questions are clearly not interested in knowing you can remember usages or not.
I hated the approach to memorize and eliminate answers based on grammer rules that didn’t make sense to me. And when I found about eGMAT’s meaning based approach. I could so relate this to my own necessity to understand. It just gave me a lot of joy to reason and appreciate the nuances of the language. It gave me an appreciation for the test makers designing the exam and this was something I take with me way out from the purpose of the exam alone. I started to love the SC problems. eGMATs explanation though very time consuming is elaborate, clear and through. The key message here is as well not to be hungry for a quantity rather focus on quality of the learning that you can take away from every single question. Over time for me it started to reflect on the scores in a timed environment. But this took a lot of patience and time.
Hats off to the eGMAT team for pulling off such an excellent SC course. It clearly beats anything else available in the market. One advice however is to take notes and mark your questions that your find tricky. This will really help you later when you want to revisit the concepts. Always focus on the intended meaning from the author. Beat the SC game by finding its secret code.
Lesson 6# Sometimes a blind side on your super strengths can be your greatest weaknesses, listen to what your numbers are telling you!
Coming from a physics and engineering background I love the CR section. I thought CR was one of my strong areas not until I took a careful look at my score results. I always kept reasoning that my low CR score was an effect of rushing through the last questions and running short on time. I was totally wrong in that analysis.
What helped me was to instill a structure to approach the CR questions. This means categorising the type of question, which immediately helped me identify what I need to be looking for and also visualise the assumptions and linkages. CR is all about giving yourself the time on the hard questions and those are the questions were saving the extra 10 seconds will be a huge bonus.
Having a consistent approach helped me increase my accuracy in solving the harder questions. I found the Manhattan book pretty basic to give an overview but however I was using the eGMAT scholarinium platform to isolate my areas of weaknesses. I did realise I had issue on identifying the conclusion in some of the CR questions which is minute thing to realise but solving that helped get those questions periodically. Have a wide eye on your weakness but even wider eye to your strengths.
Lesson 7# Precision is the canon of success – and CR starts with knowing your conclusion first!
I noticed at the later stages in my preparation I was consistently taking 2 mins on all the CR questions quite over the average time and I was missing out on the really hard questions. Trying to find the reason why, I realised that in those wrong questions I was not clear with what the final conclusion in the argument was, especially in those question with one too many.
I had to understand the argument of the passage and how information related to each other. This is a new dimension to approach the CR questions which I was not even aware of before.
Doing that organically required me training myself to think that way and visualising especially helped me reduce my note taking time and ensuring I do not spend more than the maximum time for the tough CR questions. These two point came with being very precise about why I was getting the question wrong. A vague fog of an idea does nothing to the visibility, while precision is your lens into a whole new world of understanding yourself.
Lesson 8# The counter intuitive ideas are ones that break you free from the norm and set a record - RC is a counter-intuitive passage of time
What we generally think of when reading the RC passage is skimming fast through the passage and going quickly to the questions. On the contrary what really helps with the RC passages is reading the passage thoroughly which helps answering the questions easier and faster. And looking at my very own data I was clocking 3-4 mins on reading the passages and the answers took less than a minute to answer.
Keep a keen eye on the structure of the passage and skip all of details. There are roughly 3-4 passages in the test and 5-7 minutes each so give yourself that time to get the accuracy high. Reading articles from areas you are not familiar with would and huge value and also love the passage that you are reading and be very curious. This helped me love RC passages a lot and helped me improve my accuracy with the tough passages. Just like the very first athletes who did the high jump head-first, elevate your RC scores by taking the time to read thoroughly – head first!
Lesson 9# The cross woven nature of ideas and fields is a powerful thing to use to your advantage - Know your IR map and conquer it with CR, RC and Quant
What really helped me with my IR though my score is not really reflective one, is understanding the type of question possible in IR. Taking the IR with every test you take also helps add to the endurance during the test runs. Being aware the IR passages, especially the multiple page question as just another RC and Quant helped me boost my accuracy in the practice tests. Being aware of the type of questions asked saved me some time during the actual test.
I was constantly looking at it as another CR and RC passage or Quant problem and using all of those skill in the IR was actually pretty fun. Use all your cross-woven skills in your IR game.
Lesson 10# 2 second check in life saves you ages - Smiling in Quant is all about the 2 seconds you spend after you answer to recheck what they asked for
I am a natural math lover and I trust my process how I work with numbers. While this may not be the case for everyone my main message is to know that you can afford to make mistakes. You are allowed to make 4-5 mistakes even for a really good score, so make sure you do not spend a lot of time on the few challenging questions. I know how tempting it is to solve that question you are so close to answering correct and that wanting to feel good about it.
But GMAT is adaptive test, and a test you have to perform through and through till the end. It doesn’t help if you spend 5 mins on one question in the middle and rush through questions later. It would really help you to spend a 2 seconds looking at question once you have chosen your answer choice. Especially in the middle of the exam when you are not sure if it was an easy question or a trap. Take a pause check what was asked and check your line of thought. It takes 2 seconds but the effect is so immediate.
Learning to do some of the ratio calculations in your head and substituting values can also help you arrive at the answers quickly. Enjoy the quant ride and don’t fall for the easy question by making a silly error. A two second check is a value adding check.
Before the exam tips
1. Forget about the scores focus on the prep and your strengths, you only want to put out your best performance on the D-Day, so put your focus on that
2. Sleep well to have a fresh mind and be well rested- can’t emphasize this enough, it really does make a difference
3. Take nuts, a couple of chocolates, and some warm water with you.
4. Check-in your ID’s the day before into your bag, masks for the Corona test center
5. Ramp up your brain just a little before going to the test by solving a few quick questions – this really helped me
6. Breathe and smile as much as you can. At the end of the day, it is you and not the test that is valuable. So remember to be thankful and approach your GMAT with a lavish smile.
The eGMAT added Value
1. Meaning Based Approach
2. Mobile friendly learning
3. Integration so notes/ forum/ planning calendar/ progress analytics in one place
4. Impeccable customer support
5. Elaborate answers and focus on understanding
My goal of writing this debrief is to introspect over my journey and highlight a few elements that could be valuable to your GMAT journey. I was very happy to have reached a 750 (Q50 and a V42). I went from a V27 to V42, verbal was clearly an area I knew I had to focus and this would have a massive impact on my score – no brainer right! What I dint realise is HOW I could impact the verbal score. While I had spent a major part of a year in the early stages of my preparation tying different strategies with the test taking process and trying to memorise grammar rules, and short cuts I was not really improving. My steep increase at the end was a result of investing a good 3-4 months on understanding the fundamentals and completely focusing on the meaning based approach – an e-GMAT staple. I have to thank the eGMAT team for creating a fantastic product and learning platform that added a lot of value to me at this crucial last stage
Data points – DATA DRIVES THE WORLD!
GMAT official prep scores
Test 1 620 V 28 Q 47
Test 2 660 V 29 Q 50
Experts global, Manhattan tests
Test 3 610 V 28 Q 46
eGMAT Scholarinium tests (80% of question correct verbal)
Test 4 720 V 38 Q 49
I have had pitfalls but along this journey I picked up some valuable lessons. A lot of it included getting up to find the motivation, the trust and the constant faith that it was possible. I really want to give a shout out to DJ from the eGMAT team for all the support and insight he brought to me. To be stuck in the 660 area and believing I could get closer to my target GMAT score, for a major part of the year during my preparation was not easy (and trust me I have had times when my scores dipped below the 600 mark). It makes you question yourself if it is even possible. And in those times what I did really well was to seek advice and help. I found a process that was solid and I knew made sense, and I made the conscious decision to trust in it even if it was counter intuitive at times, and challenging at the others.
The single most important thing a good leader and future business school graduate is ask and utilize the help of experts. You are not expected to know everything but using someone’s knowledge that can prove to be your wealth later.
Here comes the part where I learned so much more beyond the purview of the GMAT -
I want you to know, GMAT can be challenging but it’s not a journey that is impossible, people have done it. As you scroll through the forum you can see so many amazing stories and debriefs which show perseverance and smart working which means you can do it too. Keep pursuing the score you believe you are set upon, take help when you feel the need, build your process, review your progress and finally I can’t emphasis this enough trust that you can do it. GMAT is a journey of perseverance, one to overcome failures and self-doubt. As you could see from my score numbers above, it’s not important what scores you seem to be getting as much as what you are going to do with it to get where you want.
That said when put your heart to it, include several minds to your journey, it is possible. I didn’t think in the beginning achieving 750 would take me more than a year, relentless questioning of myself and prioritizing my choices and building a whole lot of friends to support me through the journey did helped a lot.
Before I tell you about some of the lessons I took home here are some tips to plan your preparation
Useful Tips
1. Start your GMAT preparation with a target score. I can’t emphasis this enough, to be clear what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve the goal.
2. Make a rough plan of how much time commitment you can create per week and stick to it. Tell people about your commitment, this creates an accountability.
3. Have structured and methodical system: Invest into creating a platform for taking all your notes (can be word/excel, notion, Google keep) and progress. I used hand-written notes and I found it more, handy to have them in a digitalized format for easy reference later.
4. Develop your own tools to review, and take the pain to mark the questions you got wrong and find challenging , collect these are gems hat will help you!
5. Make a practice to all the wrong answer choices to understand why they are wrong. This is the only way you can be 100% sure and your accuracy will go up
6. Create a fresh enthusiasm for the GMAT, love it! It is a gym for the mind and going to it each day is more important than going long hours on one single day.
7. Zoom-in and zoom-out to view your preparation constantly: look holistically where you are at and then dive into look where the individual sub sectional abilities are at. You don’t have to fight every battle to win the war. Be realistic and honest with where your weaknesses area. Classify them as content gap or a process gap and work on those fundamental root causes.
8. Do not rush in to test yourself if you have not addressed the key learnings from the previous test. There a limited number of tests and limited amount of your time, put it to the best use. Spend your time to get the understanding right than solving a ton
9. Be aware in the GMAT test you are allowed to get questions wrong; you can make mistakes and use it to your advantage.
10. Keep talking to people, attend webinars on the topic, check out stories of peers on the YouTube channels and maintain your personal journal which tips are useful to you.
11. Develop a 1 minute sense. Over due course of time you will not have to look at your watch or the timer and will have the urge to finish questions faster.
Resources you can integrate into your preparation
1. eGMAT platform – The good thing about the platform is it is mobile friendly and almost one place for everything, so I did not have worry about maintaining different journals. I will write about why eGMAT added so much value to me in a later section. I think it is worth taking a lot of lessons from what they offer and indeed the claim of being the best SC in the business is justified.
2. Official Guides: I got all the official guides and also ordered the digital version which I found was pretty cool late because I could do timed tests using their OG platform
3. Manhattan Books: If not every book in their series the ‘roadmap’ really lays it all out and makes an easy-to-read story on various topics of the GMAT. This really primed my mind and helped me have a gauge of the experiences people are facing.
4. Tests:
GMAT Official Prep – The first two tests 1&2 are free and other can be purchased. They give a fair indication of your performance however it is difficult to review the answers especially in verbal.
GMAT Club tests – This is valuable since it is close to the actual official prep tests you can purchase but it is absolutely free
Expert Global for their analysis
eGMAT SIGMA mocks – very tough quant but invaluable solutions and analytics, top of the market
Scholarinium from eGMAT – They are not the complete tests but can be used as a replacement for the tests since the provide the metrics, such as time spent and detailed solutions
The Manhattan tests – You get these tests if you buy one the Manhattan books but they are slightly tougher. So, don’t sweat yourself on this.
Here I would suggest you give sufficient time between tests so you can see meaningful change in the results. It doesn’t make chopping trees with the same blunt axe.
5. GMAT Club YouTube channel and eGMAT you tube channel
Brief Background
I work in the Automotive Tech sector whilst developing my start-up in the EdTech space. Surrounded by entrepreneurs I always knew that I wanted to do an MBA which comes from a deep-rooted desire to meet the smartest minds thinking about business and society of the future. My mind and my heart are inclined to see business as tool towards positive change and I see business as the fundamental change to society. This is why I needed my GMAT in the first place.
Lesson1# Having a clarity of why you want to do the GMAT and how you would like to approach it is so crucial for putting in the hard work for the score
In 2018, I decided it was finally time to take action. I enrolled in two part time MBA programs in Vienna. I didn’t have to take GMAT for the application and I got offered a place in both, with scholarship. I mention this because the decision that followed for me was one of a lot of introspection. I had to really understand why I wanted an MBA. I am passionate about communication and building communities and feel there is a great need to re-think co-operation and empower our future generation. Spending time with peers with similar drive would help my chisel my idea and build myself. I decided an in-person MBA in one of the top schools focused on social impact is what I need towards my goal in social impact entrepreneurship. For that I needed a really competitive GMAT score to make my case compelling. With that in mind I turned down both offers and decided to take up my GMAT instead. Because I decided back then that GMAT was going to be crucial to my application, it was clear to me that I had to dedicate the time what I needed to get to the score. So, with the target schools in mind, I had a picture of the GMAT scores I needed to achieve and competing with the highly competitive Indian pool meant this score was going to be a + 30 over the school averages. Having a crystal clarity helped my motivation.
Lesson 2# Its tempting to start cooking as soon as you see some ingredients in the kitchen, but NO! Pause take a breath, may be a couple of days to research and organize your thoughts and then start your preparation.
I started my GMAT journey with extensive research on which materials that I had to use and the tests I had to take. I did not however think about how many hours I needed to dedicate, what where some of the pain points and challenges that people faced, and where I was lacking really from an analysis of my score. My idea back then was a month of preparation. I was so ready to GO. I bought the Manhattan Prep books and the official GMAT Prep books and without wasting any time took my first test. I got a 620, which came as a complete surprise to me and I did not deep dive into why I was making the mistakes. My confidence took a hard hit and was getting challenged and being a native English speaker, my verbal looked really sore.
The mistake I had made at that point was to just focus on rushing into my preparation to fit the time period I had assigned for myself without clearly understanding where I stood and how much time I really needed. I had left a lot of gaps in my research. I had spent way too much time following the wrong strategy to then unlearn and relearn everything. I am talking in specific about SC were previously I was just looking at where I was making mistakes and not making a deep dive to understand why. Focusing on the meaning made more sense to me even if it did not get instant rewards in terms of time taken to answer the questions. I was too focused on get high score fast and get going towards it, I dint spend enough research into my weak points.
Research on the type of support that you really need, the kind of tests/ materials that will fit you and help you, tools (like notion) and how you can set a system up to keep track of all your learning and progress will add a lot of value to you. Pause take a couple of days to do all of this even before start - build your wings before take off.
Lesson 3# Have an open mind to change strategies but remember you need to start with a strategy
I started reading the Manhattan books. Thier ‘roadmaps’ was such a useful tip to carry along and get a wholistic picture of the exam. I would recommend getting this on and spending an afternoon to read through it.
My strategy at this point was to go through the verbal concepts and my score would significantly improve, given a consistent show in Quant. I was wrong, my verbal score was not getting better and I had no clue why the answers were right or wrong. This really bothered me. I had a choice to make at that point, either to take more tests to refine my time management and test taking skills or go re visit sub-sections and really figure out why I was failing and why I was never sure why the answers were wrong.
At that stage, doing my preparation, I researched again on several portals including GMAT club (which offers a one place for all discussions!) and found out about the eGMAT SC. Being the skeptic that I am, I was willing to experiment and try. So I took a few webinars and tried a few of their free modules which was enough for me to make up my mind that I was going to re-invent my preparation from scratch. It was decision to invest money, time and effort into my new strategy. In retrospect this was a good decision because at that point I was not understanding why my answers were right or wrong and I am pretty sure any more effort would have only been futile. Stay open to stir the direction of your flight, the key lies in curiosity and openness.
Lesson 4# Your environment is as conducive to your score as the preparation itself. Make every effort to involve your environment into your journey
This is all about developing an environment and a community of support and resilience to help you in your journey. What really was a good about my preparation was that I could integrate my preparation into my social life. I often studied in cafes and in shared workspaces and invited friends to study or read a books with me as I prepared for my GMAT. I shared my ‘why’ of why I wanted to do my GMAT and why my MBA with my friends and circle and this really created an environment of people wishing me to study every day. Bringing GMAT into my every day conversations helped me balance my social life creatively. Doing this was so important for me to stay consistent, keep track and bounce off my fears and insecurities with people on a regular basis.
This was the water to my survival in the dangerous hike across the wild. Reading through all the amazing blogs you might keep hearing people say GMAT is not a sprint but a marathon, and it is indeed. It’s a marathon however you can get help, you just should never stop and never give up. Your environment can be your greatest asset in the race, be mindful of it.
Lesson 5# Your enemy is never too strong - Takedown SC by its meaning!
I will start with SC because that was the main reason why I signed up with eGMAT. I had no clue in all my previous tests as is evident from my constant scores of V28 and 29, why my answers were right and wrong. The key problems I had faced was running out of time, which I associated with RC and my test taking strategy. I was not realizing even given the sufficient time of 100s I wasn’t ticking off all the SC questions. I was missing out the fact that there was a conceptual gap there. I was choosing SC based on key identifiers and more importantly not appreciating the beauty behind the structuring of SC questions. The smart people behind crafting the genius SC questions are clearly not interested in knowing you can remember usages or not.
I hated the approach to memorize and eliminate answers based on grammer rules that didn’t make sense to me. And when I found about eGMAT’s meaning based approach. I could so relate this to my own necessity to understand. It just gave me a lot of joy to reason and appreciate the nuances of the language. It gave me an appreciation for the test makers designing the exam and this was something I take with me way out from the purpose of the exam alone. I started to love the SC problems. eGMATs explanation though very time consuming is elaborate, clear and through. The key message here is as well not to be hungry for a quantity rather focus on quality of the learning that you can take away from every single question. Over time for me it started to reflect on the scores in a timed environment. But this took a lot of patience and time.
Hats off to the eGMAT team for pulling off such an excellent SC course. It clearly beats anything else available in the market. One advice however is to take notes and mark your questions that your find tricky. This will really help you later when you want to revisit the concepts. Always focus on the intended meaning from the author. Beat the SC game by finding its secret code.
Lesson 6# Sometimes a blind side on your super strengths can be your greatest weaknesses, listen to what your numbers are telling you!
Coming from a physics and engineering background I love the CR section. I thought CR was one of my strong areas not until I took a careful look at my score results. I always kept reasoning that my low CR score was an effect of rushing through the last questions and running short on time. I was totally wrong in that analysis.
What helped me was to instill a structure to approach the CR questions. This means categorising the type of question, which immediately helped me identify what I need to be looking for and also visualise the assumptions and linkages. CR is all about giving yourself the time on the hard questions and those are the questions were saving the extra 10 seconds will be a huge bonus.
Having a consistent approach helped me increase my accuracy in solving the harder questions. I found the Manhattan book pretty basic to give an overview but however I was using the eGMAT scholarinium platform to isolate my areas of weaknesses. I did realise I had issue on identifying the conclusion in some of the CR questions which is minute thing to realise but solving that helped get those questions periodically. Have a wide eye on your weakness but even wider eye to your strengths.
Lesson 7# Precision is the canon of success – and CR starts with knowing your conclusion first!
I noticed at the later stages in my preparation I was consistently taking 2 mins on all the CR questions quite over the average time and I was missing out on the really hard questions. Trying to find the reason why, I realised that in those wrong questions I was not clear with what the final conclusion in the argument was, especially in those question with one too many.
I had to understand the argument of the passage and how information related to each other. This is a new dimension to approach the CR questions which I was not even aware of before.
Doing that organically required me training myself to think that way and visualising especially helped me reduce my note taking time and ensuring I do not spend more than the maximum time for the tough CR questions. These two point came with being very precise about why I was getting the question wrong. A vague fog of an idea does nothing to the visibility, while precision is your lens into a whole new world of understanding yourself.
Lesson 8# The counter intuitive ideas are ones that break you free from the norm and set a record - RC is a counter-intuitive passage of time
What we generally think of when reading the RC passage is skimming fast through the passage and going quickly to the questions. On the contrary what really helps with the RC passages is reading the passage thoroughly which helps answering the questions easier and faster. And looking at my very own data I was clocking 3-4 mins on reading the passages and the answers took less than a minute to answer.
Keep a keen eye on the structure of the passage and skip all of details. There are roughly 3-4 passages in the test and 5-7 minutes each so give yourself that time to get the accuracy high. Reading articles from areas you are not familiar with would and huge value and also love the passage that you are reading and be very curious. This helped me love RC passages a lot and helped me improve my accuracy with the tough passages. Just like the very first athletes who did the high jump head-first, elevate your RC scores by taking the time to read thoroughly – head first!
Lesson 9# The cross woven nature of ideas and fields is a powerful thing to use to your advantage - Know your IR map and conquer it with CR, RC and Quant
What really helped me with my IR though my score is not really reflective one, is understanding the type of question possible in IR. Taking the IR with every test you take also helps add to the endurance during the test runs. Being aware the IR passages, especially the multiple page question as just another RC and Quant helped me boost my accuracy in the practice tests. Being aware of the type of questions asked saved me some time during the actual test.
I was constantly looking at it as another CR and RC passage or Quant problem and using all of those skill in the IR was actually pretty fun. Use all your cross-woven skills in your IR game.
Lesson 10# 2 second check in life saves you ages - Smiling in Quant is all about the 2 seconds you spend after you answer to recheck what they asked for
I am a natural math lover and I trust my process how I work with numbers. While this may not be the case for everyone my main message is to know that you can afford to make mistakes. You are allowed to make 4-5 mistakes even for a really good score, so make sure you do not spend a lot of time on the few challenging questions. I know how tempting it is to solve that question you are so close to answering correct and that wanting to feel good about it.
But GMAT is adaptive test, and a test you have to perform through and through till the end. It doesn’t help if you spend 5 mins on one question in the middle and rush through questions later. It would really help you to spend a 2 seconds looking at question once you have chosen your answer choice. Especially in the middle of the exam when you are not sure if it was an easy question or a trap. Take a pause check what was asked and check your line of thought. It takes 2 seconds but the effect is so immediate.
Learning to do some of the ratio calculations in your head and substituting values can also help you arrive at the answers quickly. Enjoy the quant ride and don’t fall for the easy question by making a silly error. A two second check is a value adding check.
Before the exam tips
1. Forget about the scores focus on the prep and your strengths, you only want to put out your best performance on the D-Day, so put your focus on that
2. Sleep well to have a fresh mind and be well rested- can’t emphasize this enough, it really does make a difference
3. Take nuts, a couple of chocolates, and some warm water with you.
4. Check-in your ID’s the day before into your bag, masks for the Corona test center
5. Ramp up your brain just a little before going to the test by solving a few quick questions – this really helped me
6. Breathe and smile as much as you can. At the end of the day, it is you and not the test that is valuable. So remember to be thankful and approach your GMAT with a lavish smile.
The eGMAT added Value
1. Meaning Based Approach
2. Mobile friendly learning
3. Integration so notes/ forum/ planning calendar/ progress analytics in one place
4. Impeccable customer support
5. Elaborate answers and focus on understanding
09 Jun 2021, 15:59
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Wow, Stanish, that was an impressive turnaround, your thorough post worthy of BB's List of GMAT and Application Mistakes. You made mistakes in the past with your preparation, but you had the discipline to address those shortcomings and the ability to let go of certain hurdles as well (e.g., really tough Quant questions). Credit, too, to the e-GMAT team. I have read two debriefs in the last week that have heaped praises on the structure of the program and its efficacy. It is always beneficial to the community to read about what had worked for a high-scoring member.
Thank you for your contribution, and good luck with the next step in your journey.
- Andrew
Thank you for your contribution, and good luck with the next step in your journey.
- Andrew
09 Jun 2021, 16:03
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Congrats! Awesome first post and first GMAT Score!!! Congratulations!
I see you took the GMAT back in April. What motivated you to post a debrief? What took so long?
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I see you took the GMAT back in April. What motivated you to post a debrief? What took so long?
Posted from my mobile device
