I just came back from my center and I am still shaking in disbelief. The past 2 months have been crazy and I wouldn't be here without the support from this wonderful community.

Well, a little background about myself, I am working at EY as a consultant for the past 2 years. And I first started my preparation for GMAT in February 2018, I attended classes by CrackVerbal in Bangalore for 3 months and I gave my first shot on August 1.
I had been scoring in the range on 650-680 in my mocks, but I kept hoping that somehow I would be able to cross the 700 mark on the D-day ( wishful thinking ). During my first attempt, I realized a quite of few things; you are not allowed to wear a watch in the exam ( I am so used to wearing a watch all the time, I was taken aback a little, specially because we have to track the 8 min break), and you have to scan after your break is over and many other things as such.
Anyhow, during the first break, I exceeded the break time and lost 3 mins in verbal ( I was mentally screaming at myself at this point! ), and eventually ran out of time towards the end of the verbal section, guessed quite a few questions and I ended up with a 650 ( Q48, V31, IR6, AWA6). I was totally devastated as I realized I would be missing my R1 applications and I was in a fix to re-take the GMAT again or prepare for other MBA exams for Indian B-schools. After bawling my eyes out for hours, my mum and dad convinced me to give it another shot since I had already put in the time and effort. And right after my attempt I had my tickets to go meet my aunt in Hyderabad, and she knew somebody at ISB. So she asked me to go and visit ISB as this would help motivate me to do better. The campus was so beautiful and I fell in love with everything about that place, and I just knew I had to give my best shot again.

Now I work as an EWM (Extended warehouse management) consultant for a US based Client, and our project was going live in the first week of September and go on for 2 months, which meant I would be on weird shifts, working weekends, well, basically I could see my dream of achieving a 700 score drift away since I would not get enough time to prepare and work on my weak areas. I got my ESR and spoke to my mentors at CrackVerbal, and since I had exhausted my GMATprep mocks, I purchased the Manhattan Mocks.
And I had points to get a month of GMAT club tests. The first few weeks of August were difficult as I was not sure where to start again, but slowly I picked up pace and started solving questions everyday.

Most important thing I learnt from my first attempt -
Just maintaining an Error log is not enough, careful introspection of each question is extremely important. So I had a wonderful excel where on one sheet I could enter the Answer key, and on the main sheet I would solve and get to know how much time did I spend on the question and was it correct or not etc. Very fancy stuff, but all I did was solve questions in the first attempt. I have this problem where if I don't solve questions I feel that I have wasted my day, it's weird but this made me postpone analyzing my mistakes till it was too late.
This leads to your weak areas remaining your weak areas, and hence a stagnated score. So the second time around, I started with my old error logs. I went question by question ( mostly were OG and QR and VR questions), copied the question on my browser, got the link to gmatclub and solved it with the timer. I would then analyse the concept tested and move on.

Well, my go-live started and I was starting to panic as my first mock from Veritas (end of august) was a 670, and I was not happy. Plus I was not understanding when to book my slot as there were very few dates available in Bangalore. Eventually I booked my slot for October 5, as the slots were filling up fast and I didn't want to delay it more.

I was working from 2:30 pm to 11:30 pm so I got the mornings to study. I made it a habit to solve the RC's by workout. That was the first thing I did every morning, and solve every variety of question on this forum. I started solving all the questions Bunuel posted and looked around for posts which had GMATNinja 's explanations, I couldn't have done it without the help of this wonderful forum. My mocks were in the range of 680-730 during September.

Fast-forward to 3 days before to the exam, and I catch a terrible cold. At this point I can't even imagine re-scheduling and paying another 18k Rupees. I tell myself, it doesn't matter, just go ahead and not let stuffy nose bother you ( It unfortunately did bother me towards the end).
Well, I came out the exam hall shaking, not believing I managed to get a 700 ( Q47, V38), all thanks to you guys.

Though I do have a concern, in my first attempt I got a 6 in IR and for some reason today I got a 3 ( actually not some reason, my stuffy annoying nose was the reason). I was wondering how will this affect my applications? I knew I wasn't doing great in IR but I didn't expect a score as low as 3. Will my past record of 6 help me in any way? Please let me know, I am worried about my IR.

Sorry about the super long post and thanks to all of you again!

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“Going in one more round when you don't think you can, that's what makes all the difference in your life.”

Many Congratulations Sreyoshi007, and all the best for your applications.
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The few, the fearless !

Thanks

GMATNinja Thank you so much and I can't explain how helpful all your posts and YouTube videos were to my preparation.
I will definitely keep you posted on where I end up
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Please press Kudos if this helped

“Going in one more round when you don't think you can, that's what makes all the difference in your life.”