530 to 730 (q50, v38) GMAT DONE! Anyone Can Do It!!!

The last 4 months have been like a roller coaster for me. As a non native, I was really concerned when Donald Trump was elected President of the United States (and I know that I was not the only one!). A lot of his talk seemed focused on keeping out non Americans and since I wanted to get my MBA from a top10 US school, I thought my plans might be derailed. After watching his behavior and everything that happened in response, there is no way to predict what will happen next but I am not letting that uncertainly keep me from my future plans. At the very least, it looks like applications were down this past year (some of my competition must have decided not to apply), so maybe they will make the same decision not to apply this year (and then my chances of getting in will improve!)

I took my gmat yesterday morning and needed a day to celebrate because I was so excited with the results. I started studying in late November and I first took a practice test because many experts said to do so. For that first test I scored 530, which I was okay with because I was not good at certain subjects (re. sentence corrections and data sufficiency).

Since I wanted to score a coveted 7-- after that first practice test, I decided to reach out to a few companies that list their services here. One of them tried so hard to sell me their super-expensive tutoring that it made me feel like I was reading emails from a Nigerian prince trying to get my bank numbers. The cost of just 2 hours of their tutoring was ridiculous (and most of what I saw on their website is teaching that I found in the posts here for free). For the price of 4 hours of their ‘tutoring’ I was able to get:

-my fee to take the actual gmat
-3 months of empowergmat
-all official practice tests
-all manhattan practice tests
-OG 2017

It was not even a debate in my mind. I followed the empower 3 month study plan to the letter and the resulting score speaks for itself. The team at empower was super helpful. Every time I reached out, Brian, Stacy, Rich and Max answered all of my questions in less than a day. After I emailed them today, they also set me up with an applications consultant who is giving me a free consultation on my round 1 applications.

I also want to give a special shout out to all of the experts and moderators here – seeing so many responses to all of the questions that were asked provided far more insight than you probably know.

A coworker of mine who is also studying for the gmat asked for any advice, so I will tell you all what I told him:

1. Take notes on every question. Once I started doing that consistently, I was able to cut out all of the mistakes.
2. Learn how to properly consider questions. The gmat writers write their questions in a very specific way. They leave hints that you can follow to answer the question. Look for those hints!!!
3. The OG is not quite inline with the actual gmat, but some of the questions are pretty close. I saw a bunch of DS today that reminded me of questions from the OG.
4. Take the entire practice mock test every time. You need to learn to work, take notes, et al. when you are tired because that happens when you take the real gmat.
5.Make sure to have the right snacks when you take your breaks. Rich said the brain needs fuel to work properly and he’s right!

Best of luck everyone!