650 to 760: How Sleep and Walking Meditations Helped

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TL,DR: 650 > 700 > 760 after 572.75 hours of preparation. Helped by lots of sleep, walking meditations, deep reflections, rigorous error reviews, consistent routines, and a commitment to well-being. Target Test Prep for quant. OG for verbal. More resources at the end of this post.

Video debrief with GMAT Club - YouTube link

Background and timeline

Starting point: I have a STEM background with a solid foundation on quant (e.g., SAT Math 790/800, SAT Subject Test Math Level 1: 800/800, SAT Subject Test Math Level 2: 800/800). I'm a non-native English speaker with a not-so-great foundation on verbal (SAT CR: 620/800, TOEFL iBT: 103/120).
- 1st attempt on 12/1/2018: Official score - 650 (Q44, V35, IR4, AWA5.5)

• Q44 = PS50 + DS41. My mock tests showed that I was capable of getting Q48 and Q49. A Q44 was very disappointing to me
• V35 = CR39 + RC34 + SC40. I went to the test center knowing that I was weak at verbal. So a V35 was not bad
• AWA: My official score report said 5 but the ESR showed that I got 5.5/6 lol
• Context: Senior year of undergrad
• Prep time: 127.75 hours over 8 weeks from 9/30/2018 to 11/30/2018

o Verbal: 75.25 hours = 59% of total prep time
o Quant: 27.25 hours = 21% of total prep time
o The rest of my time went into general planning, IR, and AWA
• Mock tests from 2 GMAT Official Practice Exams:

o 10/31/2018: 680 (Q48, V36, IR4)
o 11/24/2018: 650 (Q49, V29, IR4)
• I spent most of my time practicing questions from GMAT Official Guide 2018. I also read some articles from Magoosh, e-GMAT, and GMAT Club forum.
• Mistakes:

o I booked the test at 12:30 pm, which was when I always felt sleepy. Not sure why I even did that
o I managed my time very poorly. I left 5 verbal questions unanswered and 4 quant questions unanswered in the actual test

- 2nd attempt on 3/4/2019: Official score - 700 (Q49, V35, IR7, AWA6)

• Q49 = PS49 + DS50. I used Target Test Prep exclusively and it worked great.
• V35 = CR28 + RC40 + SC36. I prepared with e-GMAT. I learned a few things but saw no improvement. e-GMAT is simply not a good fit for me. Nothing against the platform though. I was much better at managing my time to finish all 36 questions. My CR and SC were way worse than my 1st attempt. I brought down my average RC time to 2:03/q and improved my accuracy tremendously (RC34 to RC40). My only interpretation: As I sped up my processing time for CR and SC, I was much less accurate
• Context: Still senior year of undergrad
• Prep time: 82.5 hours over 9 weeks from 12/30/2018 to 3/2/2019

o Verbal: 30.25 hours = 37% of total prep time
o Quant: 50.5 hours = 61% of total prep time
o The rest of my time went into general planning, approach, IR, and AWA
• Mock tests:

o 1/21/2019 GMAT Club Test: 630 (Q45, V31)
o 1/26/2019 GMAT Club Test: 690 (Q48, V37)
o 3/1/2019 GMAT Club Test: 680 (Q48, V35)
o 3/2/2019 GMAT Club Test: 610 (Q42, V32)

- 3rd attempt on 1/2/2021: Official score - 760 (Q49, V44, IR7, AWA6)

• Q49 = PS49 + DS50. My ESR showed that I got 5 questions wrong: 2 questions in the first set and 3 questions in the last set.
• V44 = CR44 + RC40 + SC47. My ESR showed that I got 5 questions wrong: 1 question in the first set and 4 questions in the 3rd set.
• Prep time: 362.5 hours over 42 weeks of studying from 1/19/2020 to 1/1/2021 with a few weeks of no study in between

o Verbal: 239.7 hours = 66.1% of total prep time
o Quant: 97.3 hours = 27% of total prep time
o The rest of my time went into general planning, approach, IR, and AWA
• Mock tests

o 7/10/2020 GMAT Official Practice Test 1 (retake - last attempt 10/31/2018): 710 (Q49, V38)
o 8/14/2020 Veritas Test 1: 650 (Q43, V36)
o 11/8/2020 Veritas Test 2: 600 (Q47, V25)
o 11/14/2020 Veritas Test 3: 710 (Q48, V39)
o 11/28/2020 Veritas Test 4: 710 (Q50, V38)
o 12/27/2020 GMAT Club Test: 690 (Q46, V39)
o 12/29/2020 GMAT Official Practice Test 2 (retake - last attempt 11/24/2018): 760 (Q50, V44, IR7)

In total, I spent 572.75 hours preparing for 3 attempts at the GMAT. The journey cost me about $1,600 in materials and exam fees.

My prep process for the 3rd attempt

Overall story

I decided to ease into my working life in the first 6 months after graduation and then start my preparation for the GMAT. My initial plan was to start studying in Jan 2020 and then take the test in early May 2020. Of course, COVID-19 happened in March 2020 and turned my life upside down. I ended up rescheduling my test a few times: May 2020 > June 2020 > September 2020 > January 2021 (with no fees fortunately because of COVID-19). Feel free to criticize my laziness that dragged my preparation time out to 12 months. I had so much issue with staying motivated that I read "The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg and implemented his habit loop to cultivate my study habits (a quick flowchart here).

Quant

I used Target Test Prep (TTP) exclusively. I started by analyzing my 2 ESRs and then practiced my weak areas in each of the 4 sections:
- Arithmetic: probability, sets & Venn diagrams, permutations, and combinations
- Algebra: functions and sequences
- Geometry: coordinate geometry
- Word problems: work problems
TTP let me choose to either do pre-built chapter tests or create my custom tests. I created custom tests consisting of 2 - 3 of the smaller areas mentioned above. Whenever I got a question wrong, I went into specific lessons in the 'Related tags' section of each question to do more practice questions. This 'Related tags' section was the primary reason why I stuck with TTP for my 3rd attempt.

Verbal

I followed advice from multiple GMAT Club members to identify my own weaknesses and then work hard at improving them. A few key tactics that contributed to my overall improvement:
- Starting in July 2020, I decided to use exclusively official questions with hard difficulty for verbal (sources: GMAT Official Guide 2020 and GMAT OG Verbal Review 2020). Why? After months of studying, I made virtually no progress. I then remembered a question from Tim Ferriss (of whom I am a HUGE fan): What if I did the opposite to conventional wisdom? In my mind at the time, the proper sequence would be to practice easy questions > medium questions > hard questions. I decided to do the exact opposite: hard questions > medium questions > easy questions. The approach made very little sense but it seemed to work. Also, you MUST practice official questions for verbal.
- I spent a ridiculous amount of time reviewing EVERY SINGLE ONE of the OG questions that I attempted. I bookmarked the questions that I got wrong to redo them at a later time (usually at least 2 weeks). I even redid some questions 4 times until I truly understood the right thinking pattern that I needed to go through to crack similar questions.
- I made a list of 16 test taker's vulnerable tendencies and GMAC's attack vectors. I didn't know until 3 weeks prior to test day that the people behind these tests are psychometricians. My literal interpretation: Their job is to attack your psychological vulnerabilities in making decisions (caveat: This MY interpretation with very little knowledge of actual test making activities lol). For example, one tendency was that test takers have a bias towards choices with exact wording from a CR/RC passage. Knowing this, GMAC constantly uses exact words from a passage to create wrong choices that sound soooo relevant. Being a naïve person, whenever I got down to 2 contender choices in a question, I repeatedly latched on a choice that sounded relevant. Dummy! Creating this list and reviewing this list were 2 very critical activities in my preparation process.- I also created a list of tricky entities, segments, and actions related but not the same. I mixed up all of the items in this list one way or another during my practice. Some examples:

• Status quo vs change: Japan has a weak position in international trade ≠ Japan has a weakening position in international trade (analysis: Japan can still be a strong country (#3 as of 2019 I believe) but it's weakening compared to the US and China)
• Action because of X vs belief in X: Deadpool named a bird 'Gold Digger' because of the bird's supposed fondness for eating coins ≠ Deadpool believed that the bird was fond of coins (analysis: He could name the bird as such without believing that it actually likes coins)

- The day before the test, I made sure to do a final review of my 2 lists on 16 test taker's vulnerable tendencies and on tricky entities.

Reading Comprehension (RC)
- I went back and forth between taking notes and not taking notes. I ended up not taking many notes during my practice exams and the actual exam. For each paragraph, I jotted down the overall tone and changes in flow (symbols: (-) for negative tone, (+) for positive tone, (><) for disagree, etc.) and 5 words max to summarize the main purpose of each passage.
- I had a lot of issues with tricky entities (above) and varying attitudes (mild, medium, extreme, etc.). I spent a lot of time reviewing these errors.

Critical Reasoning (CR)
- I reviewed PowerScore GMAT Critical Reasoning Bible 2017
- Read a question first or read a passage first? I went with reading a question first. Reason: I would then read a passage with a more intentional focus on what to do
- My focus of reading a passage: Memorize and internalize (1) the primary conclusion and (2) core reasoning link(s) behind the conclusion
- Visualize a question: Probably because of my bad memory, by the time I finished reading a CR passage, I had already forgotten what a question was about. To fix this, I assigned a character for each question type. These characters truly stuck in my mind and prevented me from forgetting a question

• Strengthen a conclusion questions: Hercules (Walt Disney equivalent of Greek divine hero Heracles). I would imagine that Hercules was looking at an argument with me to strengthen it. If I forgot the purpose of a question for a split second, I would remind myself: "Oh, Hercules is with me on this"
• Weaken a conclusion questions: Ursula (The Little Mermaid)
• Resolve a paradox: Tang Sanzang (Journey to the West)

- I spent a lot of time reviewing the structure, assumptions, weakeners of typical arguments: causation, research experiment, analogy, and an action plan

Sentence Correction (SC)
- My sequence of analyzing errors: S+V agreement > Verb tense > Parallelism > Modifier > Pronoun agreement
- I read an article from GMATNinja on going from great to incredible. Highly recommend!

Keys to success for both quant and verbal

1. Sleep:

I learned about sleep scientist Matt Walker's research through his book 'Why We Sleep' (recommended by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, venture capitalist Kevin Rose, and a few other people) and a few podcast interviews that Matt did with Kevin Rose and longevity physician Peter Attia. A takeaway was that sleeping is the best thing you can do to recharge your brain and consolidate your memory. Throughout the year, I would get 7 hours to 8 hours a night. For 14 days leading up to my test day, I consistently slept between 8.5 hours to 9.5 hours a night (9:30 pm to 6:30 am). That extra hour definitely boosted my cognitive performance.

2. Walking meditations and deep reflections:

I read 2 debrief articles from Marty Murray. He talked about how meditations helped him achieve his 800. After reading Marty's debrief, I decided to follow a similar tactic. I went on a long walk for 2 hours in the city to think about my errors and behavior patterns behind them. I tried to identify root causes of each significant error by asking 'why' multiple times. I intentionally dug deep into my memories to see why I had a certain behavior pattern. For example, in a mock exam in late December 2020, when I read 'a person broke a wire into 2 pieces to form a rectangular and a square,' I immediately assumed that the perimeter of the rectangular must be equal to the perimeter of the square. This was so ridiculous. But I realized that I frequently made similar stupid mistakes.

• Why? I had an urge to be efficient
• Why? I was afraid that if I didn't try my best to find shortcuts, I would not have enough time
• Why? Well I wasn't confident in my precision
• Why? Many people have told me so
• Why? Who? My 6th-grade math teacher said that I could never be successful in math

I was so surprised to get to that 5th answer. But if you give your mind 2 hours to think and wander, it will lead you to surprising places. As I found out, I was deeply insecure about my quantitative capabilities because of a comment from my 6th-grade math teacher (in 2010). Her hurtful comment from 10 years ago was guiding my behavior pattern. The only danger? I wasn't even aware of it.
For your reference, below is a list of my discoveries:

• I have a tendency to impose my worldview and act like a hammer looking for nails. For example, when I see a 3-set question, I will immediately impose my formula. In many cases, GMAT tweaks a question so that I cannot apply my original formula. But I don't realize it. In other words, my subconscious mind ignores that nuance.
• I am so inflexible and rigid that I sometimes do not listen to my own logic
• I still carry around my insecurities. I feel so strongly about proving to others that I am capable of doing math and think logically. Therefore, I have a huge urge to find shortcuts in doing quant questions so that I can complete these questions faster than others
• At the same time, I doubt that I am capable. Therefore, I repeatedly read a question twice even when that is totally redundant. I don't trust myself enough to read a question once and go on with my calculation. There are times that I doubt myself even after I applied property logical steps in finding out a solution
• My self-doubt is much worse in verbal. Specifically, I ALWAYS read RC passages and CR passages twice. I only realized this pattern when I walked away from my desk and reflected on how I approached RC and CR.

The harder part was then to figure out how to resolve these inner conflicts and patterns that were preventing me from getting a good GMAT score. Even before reading Marty's article, I have always been a regular meditator. After my walking meditation, I came home and found meditations on self-love, self-acceptance, and self-compassion. I use a free meditation app called Insight Timer. A few meditations that I went through are Remembering Trust (Sarah Blondin) and Loving and Listening to Yourself (Sara Blondin).
I know that this sounds really freaky. But it worked for me. Before all of these walking meditations and reflections, my verbal practice scores were V39 (11/14 - Veritas test 3), V38 (11/28 - Veritas test 4), and V39 (12/27 - GMAT Club test 8). After 2 days of hours of walking meditations and reflections, I got a V44 (12/29 - GMAT official starter kit exam 2) and a V44 on the actual test (1/2/2021). 2 distinct differences that I found in myself: I was more relaxed while I faced verbal questions. I trusted myself more to read each CR and RC passage only once. My mind opened up to comprehend each RC passage and CR argument with greater clarity. After seeing the great impact of a better mentality on my performance, I tried to create a visual image for each mindset that I want to trigger.
- Verbal: "Observe a dragon. Hug it. Then let it go." When I read an RC passage, I treat it with curiosity, awe, and respect, similar to how I would to a dragon. Then I try to respond to a question with care, kindness, and precision similar to how I would hug a dragon. Then let it go to move on to the next dragon (aka the next GMAT question). Source of inspiration: Inheritance (2011 novel by Christopher Paolini)
- Quant: "Proceed with care and precision of a Tesla mechanic." I try to open my mind to observe each quant problem like a Tesla mechanic. I proceed to solve each quant problem with as much care and precision as fixing a Tesla car to ensure the safety of its driver. Source of inspiration: I love Tesla lol
I hope you get the idea. My tactic is to create a mental reference for me to quickly come back to as needed during the GMAT.
I approached verbal questions with more curiosity, confidence, and clarity than ever before.

3. Rigorous error reviews:

The approach is to review, review again, review another time, and review once more! Knowing that I put 345 hours in preparing for the verbal section, you probably wondered: "What question banks have this guy exhausted?" The answer would surprise you. As I mentioned, from July 2020, I practiced exclusively hard questions from the 2 OG books. By the end, I ALMOST finished all the hard RC, SC, and CR questions in GMAT Official Guide 2020 and GMAT OG Verbal Review 2020. I didn't even touch a single question with easy or medium difficulty. I'd recommend reviewing and redoing questions that you get wrong twice or even three times in separate weeks. I went through a similar approach for quant using Target Test Prep questions

4. Consistent routines:

I tried to maintain healthy routines for myself throughout the year, but especially during the last 4 weeks. During my non-working days, I always made sure to study from 8:00 am - 9:05 am (mirroring the 65-min duration of a verbal section), take an 8-min break (use the bathroom 3 jumping jack push-ups, 2 sips of water, and half a banana), study for 62 min, repeat an 8-min break, and study again for 60 min. I took the last 2 weeks off of work (12/19/2020 - 1/1/2021) to focus on getting my routines together. In the last 2 days prior to the test, I even wore the exact same shirts, pants, and shoes to and followed this schedule from 8:00 am - 12:00 pm. The goal was to have no surprise to how my brain was supposed to function with that schedule and how my body was supposed to feel in my clothes.

5. Nutrition and well-being:

In addition to sleeping well (#1), I meditate every day for about 10 min in the morning to gain mental clarity, become less reactive, and word towards a more respond-able state of mind. I also exercise 3 times a week and go for a run once or twice a week.
I never drink any coffee. I also follow a 16-8 intermittent fasting diet (Essentially: no breakfast, first meal at noon, last bite before 8:00 pm). However, from 8:00 am to noon (my test time), I wasn't sure if operating on water only would be optimal. So I tested a few variations of calorie intake. For test day, I prepared (1) a cup of herbal tea and (2) a banana. I ended up drinking all my tea and abandoned my banana to make time for some much-needed deep breathing (more below). If people are curious, the tea is Four Sigmatic Mushroom Lion's Mane Elixir. Lion's mane is a mushroom known to be a natural nootropic. This tea is completely caffeine free.

Test day

The day before: My attitude towards the actual test day is similar to Lebron James's attitude towards an important NBA game. I scripted my pre-game rituals and followed them down to a tee. The night before the test day, I spent some time sitting down and visualizing myself at the test center. You can find more about this visualization technique in this article on Dr. Michael Gervais. Marty Murray also used this technique before his successful attempt at an 800. Since I would take my 3rd GMAT attempt at the same test center that I took my first 2 tests, I knew exactly what to expect. I visualized myself walking to the testing center, checking-in, going through verbal, crushing quant, and so on. I even imagined potential challenges (getting lost in a CR argument, getting stuck between 2 SC choices, etc.) and how I would react to them. By practicing this visualization technique, I gave my brain a heads-up for the following day. On the actual test day, I felt like I was just acting out a replay of a movie that I already saw. My brain was a lot more at ease and got more energy to tackle the actual challenge: the GMAT questions themselves.

Test day: Since I booked an 8:00 am slot for my in-person exam, I got up at 6:30 am. I felt that my sleep wasn't great the prior night. I definitely had some anxiety despite all my efforts to meditate before bed. Nevertheless, I followed my scripted routines: 24 push-ups, 10 kettlebell swings, a 13-min meditation. I made my lion's mane tea, got changed, and left my apartment. After I got to the test center, I made sure to use the bathroom, drank 2 sips of my tea, practiced 1 CR question, and took a few deep breaths.

Coming into the test room, I asked for a few tissues in anticipation that my hands would get sweaty in stressful moments. I went with the order Verbal > Quant > IR > AWA.

Verbal: I followed my mindset to 'observe a dragon, hug it, and let it go.' In the first 5 questions, I got a really tricky SC question that took me a while. But my first time marker (start q15), I was 1 min behind. After that, I got 2 additional CR passages that took me a while to go through. By the 2nd time marker (start q25), I was already 3 min behind. As a result, I sporadically guessed the next few questions (q27 and q30) to catch up on time and finished my test right on time.

Break one: As planned, I used the bathroom, did 3 jumping jack push-ups, and then took a few deep and slow breaths to calm my mind. I drank 2 sips of my tea. Then I went back to the test room.

Quant: With a goal of getting Q51, I was determined to not skip any of the first 10 questions. Then, as life always does, right on q3, I got a very tricky geometry question that I couldn't solve after 3 min. Hence I had to skip this question. I was honestly so disappointed that I lost balance a little. Then the journey smoothed out a little. By my first time marker (start of q15), I was right on time so I felt a little better. Then around q21 and q24, I got tricky questions that took me a long time to solve. For one coordinate geometry question, I even reversed the slope formula and had to spend an additional 45 sec to redo that calculation. I got a lot more stressed out and my hands started to get sweaty. Even though I already put the tissues under my right hand, my sweats seeped right through the tissues and erased the calculation that I was doing. It was a literal mess. By my second time marker (start of q25), I was behind by 4 min. Then I intentionally sped up the next few questions: I took somewhat educated guesses on 2 DS questions (approximately q26 and q28). Towards the end, q30 was a very complicated PS question that I simply took a wild guess. I completed quant in disbelief. I couldn't comprehend how I could perform so poorly.

Break two: Again, I went to the bathroom, did 3 jumping jack push-ups, and did some mindful breathing. After that, I went for 2 more sips of my tea. I planned to eat a banana to get some energy. But I realized that my heart was still beating very fast. I was so angry at myself that I had a minor headache. As a result, instead of eating my banana, I spent 90 seconds on some slow and deep breathing.

IR: I came back to the testing room and realized that I had another 63 seconds of my break. I did more deep breathing and gathered my thoughts. There were some difficult questions that I had to guess. In the end, I finished right on time.

AWA: It wasn't a crazy prompt. I followed my game plan to jot down 3 attack points and write my essay. I finished with no time to spare.

Then, a screen popped up with a 760. I literally couldn't believe in my eyes. I accepted the score as fast as I could. When I left the test center, I literally took the printed unofficial score report out to see under sunlight to make sure that I didn't read it wrong. Q49, V44, IR7, a total of 760!

A few additional observations after the fact

My ESR indicated that all my verbal guesses and quant guesses were wrong. I honestly wish that luck was a little bit more on my side lol. All joking aside though, my ESR showed that my feelings were very much aligned with my actual performance.
Quantitative reasoning is a very perishable skill. If you don't use it, you lose it. In reality, I never touch many parts of arithmetic, algebra, or geometry on a day to day basis. The 175 hours that I invested in quant simply brought me back to where I started (Q49 on the 2nd mock on 11/24/2018 to Q49 on my 3rd attempt).

If you read this far, thank you! I shared all these details to add proper context and give you specific tactics that you may be able to use yourself. It was an extremely challenging journey for me but it was all worth it in the end. Feel free to ask any questions and I'll try my best to answer. GMAT Club has been a great source of support throughout this journey!

Recommended resources

- GMAT Club Forum for detailed explanations and inspiring stories!
- Tests: GMAT Club Tests, Veritas Prep Practice Tests, and 2 Official GMAT Practice Tests
- Quant: Target Test Prep Quant Course. The platform is great. I already gave a review after my 2nd attempt. ScottTargetTestPrep and JeffTargetTestPrep are super responsive too!
- Verbal:

• PowerScore GMAT Critical Reasoning Bible 2017
• GMAT Official Guide 2020
• GMAT OG Verbal Review 2020
• GMATNinja - Charles Bibilos: How to improve from great to incredible on SC, video on Parallelism and Meaning, video on pronouns, and his various explanations on tough verbal questions
• MartyTargetTestPrep articles: 780 debrief, 800 via Meditation, Telling the Difference in a Trap Choice and the Correct Answer, Seeing What You Have to See

- Laminated GMAT test simulation booklet and STAEDTLER Lumograph Non-Permanent Wet Erase Marker Pen (from Amazon)
- Tool: OneNote is much better than Word in my opinion
- Helpful books that are not directly about the GMAT:

• The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg (2012)
• Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker, Ph.D. (2017)