600 to 770 gmat-debrief-770-q50-v45. Attention deficiency ESR attached

GMAT Debrief: - 600 (Q42 to V31) to 770 (Q50, V45)

These are my 2 cents to the awesome community that has helped me on every tiny step. This specifically is for people who like me suffer from attention deficiency, are suckers for short term rewards and are masters in procrastination.

Edit: EDIT

I am attaching both my ESRs on PM requests. I am open to consulting over phone (time permitting). Recent interactions with members has led me to believe that individual understanding of a particular person works the best when sharing experiences/strategies. I have been really away from the forum, 1st year can be crazy. To everyone trying to reach out, my email id is in my score report, send me an email.

The 600 shock:

- I started my preparation for GMAT in April of 2015. My primary source for reference material was second-hand advice from friends who had taken the exam recently and had scored about 640-50. I purchased the full course from Economist and finished it, took their mocks, aalong with other free once from Manhatten and gmatPrep. I got acquainted with gmat club fairly late, about 2 weeks before my first exam and it was way too late. The course from Economist was not really something one can use to aim beyond a 650, also some emotional turbulence did the job of icing on the cake. On 25th of September I came out with a score of 600 utterly disgusted with myself.

Reboot and Restart:

- I decided to give GMAT again in January in heat of the moment, however when things settled down the procrastinator in me took over and I rescheduled GMAT about 4 times before taking it on September 15th. In this whole journey my toughest challenge was self-discipline. I am way too erratic with my schedules, master procrastinator and suffer from attention deficiency. As I write this about 13 tabs are open on browser (Just to make the point). I was casually looking around to solve this issue and my first instinct was to join a classroom course that will enforce the discipline part at least. However, after attending few trial classes in 2 to 3 institute it was apparent for me that this was not something I was looking for. They were doing nothing to build my intuitive reasoning ability and I had learnt the hard way that depending on few crafty hacks will only take me so far.

Study Partners

: So I accidentally found someone looking for a study partner in my area on gmat club. We got acquainted and he shared his collection of Manhattan books with me. I started with CR and liked it , However when I tried the Manhattan quant guides I found them just too boring. With my research I finally decided that I would buy the egmat online self-learning course for both Quant and Verbal in April of 2016. That probably was the best decision I made in my gmat journey. Along with this a friend of mine referred another friend of hers as a study partner. Since she was fairly new to gmat I took up the role of teaching and that really helped in focus on the concepts and saved me from “Oh I know this" trap as I had to explain the rationality of my learning and thought process to her. I would surely recommend this exercise to anyone who has time and resource for this.

Quant Prep :

i) My initial resource was emgat course, I liked the structure and also the quick results. It made me focus on one thing that switching from one resource to other.
ii) As I was ok in quant apart from making many silly errors, the manhatten books just seemed too easy. The eGmat course however really tried to insult my intelligence and ground me from lesson 1.
iii) After going through the course, I went through the gmatClub maths book and the Manhatten guides.
iv) Then I switched to the egmat Scholarium and took quant tests there. The questions are way tougher than actual exam and motivate you keep improving. However, you might find it difficult to solve them within 2 minutes but it is a great exercise.
v) The emgat questions were great but their solutions are almost always take the straight path so you might not get acquainted with quick tricks like looking at answer choices etc. So it is important to always think if you could be smarter than them.
vi) Then I switched to EXAM pack 1 to practice from the official resources. The official questions were slightly different from other resource as they always tried to hack into usual tendencies and lure into making a very tempting assumption than make you think of complex solutions.
vii) The last step was to look through my mistakes and make a list of the errors that I was making.

Verbal :

SC
i) The rave reviews of eGmat SC course were not unfounded. I started from there and practiced the concepts in Scholarium. I was ok with my grammar but had no clue of the principles and reasons on which these question were framed. In 2 months I improved my accuracy from 45 % to 83 %. Later I also referred to notes from good Samaritans in gmat club.

CR

ii) I studied CR from the Manhattan guide and it was good enough. I practiced the concepts in Scholarium. The understanding of the basic framework helped me and with time I did get stumped in few question which taught me few nuances of CR.
RC

iii) I did not make any strategy for strategy, did not even take notes. I enjoy reading new information so it was rather the most fun part of the whole gmat learning. I would often go back and google the topics and phenomena I encountered during RC. I loved RC and in the end it loved me back 

Looking back I did realise something about CR and RC. As non-native speakers most of the time the topics are far away from our comfort zone. Evolution of Jazz and America, The view points of the tea party or the business practices of 17th century traders are not really something we encounter every day. The single most important factor to excel in RC and CR was to have genuine interest in the topics being discussed. I recommended a very unusual method of doing this to some of my friends that seems to work. Try this channel crash course , this is an example one on US history https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E9WU9T ... 3eG7ObzO7s
This is fun and interesting and there are similar once on economics, world history and philosophy. This not only helps in getting one acquainted with the terms but also makes one familiar with how to understand complex ideas in a fun way.

I am sucker for short term rewards and cannot keep myself motivated without seeing some sort of measurable change in the output.If you have similar issues use things that show instant results. eGmat is good option for that.

Tests

:
After everything in the last month I had decided to work with official sources and bought the question pack 1 from mba.com. This helped me get acquainted with the pattern and usual traps of the GMAT. I also gave 4 new official exams from exam pack 1 and exam pack 2 as I had exhausted the free once in my last attempt. My score were EP1 730 and 760 EP2 710 and 700. I also took tests from 800score (came with egmat but not good) and gmat club (again with egmat package but were awesome. The most important thing was to adjust my pace and learn when to let go of a question. I realized that I was always screwing up my exam in last quarter which was also shown in ESR of my first attempt. I worked extra hard on fixing this.

Other Factors:

I was advised by my dad to keep a healthy body and mind to excel at any test. Since Gym was too boring I started playing badminton, Meditated using the headspace app and ate healthy specially increased my protein intake. I used a lot of coffee during studies and used red bull during exams to give me focus. (Don’t do this directly in the exam).
Apart from this I tried to reduce entropy during the exam. I bought a similar scratch pad and same pen along with same kind of ear plugs to use during tests (ask me where). Religiously followed break timings and never paused.

Test Day:

I had booked the same center as last year, and by luck I also got the exact same seat in the corner. They already had my fingerprints so it took very less time to get going. The first section was fairly automated. In the break I ate 2 bananas, half of my chocolate bar and a sip of red Bull, and I was good to go. I felt quant to be fairly easy but full of traps. By the time I reached the end of the exam I had 2 very difficult questions and I guessed on both of them probably got lucky. I repeated the same for next break verbal felt way more difficult in lot of questions I was stuck with 2 choices especially with SC sometimes costing me too much time. In the middle of the exam I thought I was not really doing well and have screwed this section. However, I kept powering through and recovered my timing in RC.
Honestly I was expecting a 700 or 710 and I was damn surprised to see 770 flash on the screen. Then came the clock that said the scores would automatically cancel if I did not accept them. When I did the scores went away. The centre did not have a functioning printer. So I had ask the Procter to check again if I saw the scores correctly. I do cherish my score but can not discount the fact that probably between a 740 and 770 is a lot of luck.

Bottom Line::

Self Diagnostic and finding solutions that suit your individual needs are very important tools to a decent score. Feel free to PM/ respond if you have a specefic question.