350 --> 700 Q47 V39 - IR 7 AWA (6?)

Congratulations, jkolachi! Holy crap, I didn't really know your whole story until just now. It's been a ton of fun interacting with you here on GMAT Club, but I had no idea that you'd been through so much.

The "750 on my first try!" stories are popular around here, and they're perfectly awesome, but THIS story is the real deal. It's really what this f*#!ing test is all about: getting punched in the mouth -- hard -- and fighting like mad night after night after night to get better. You earned every single point of this the hard way, and I have endless respect for what you've accomplished.

Let us know where you land for business school! You've been a wonderful presence here in this community over the past few months -- keep coming to our verbal chats when you need a laugh.

Keep in touch, and good luck with your applications!

Congrats! Great to be reading a great success story. A 300/350-point improvement is basically as amazing of an improvement story as it gets.

congrats on a great score jkolachi. Your hard work has paid off.

Congratulations mate. This is like a rags to riches story to savour. Amazing effort!
Best of Luck with your applications now. I hope you get into the schools of your choice Cheers!


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Awesome! Congratulations Jkolachi..inspirational debrief.
Warriorguy,Stonecold and you are very helpful,you guys are life savers.

First Congrats! Second...THANK YOU sooo much for this! I got a 390 on my first exam and I plan on taking it again. I really needed to see this message today because I have been seriously doubting myself.

Congratulations!!

Your debrief is such a motivation . Consistent hard work does pays off.

The part where you have shared how you improved your RC score by reading science books on heavy topics will be helpful for me. Even I am an avid reader but when it comes to RC I usually select the second best answer and do the question wrong. I will now implement your strategy and will work on it.

Good Luck!

These are the books I read. Strange New Worlds this book is a mind blower. You learn about how star dust particles form into planets and eventually into galaxies....

Excerpt from the three books:

Great Essays by Martin Gardner "Biologists have long sought to understand which genes and what kinds of changes in their sequences are responsible for the evolution of morphological diversity. Here, I outline eight principles derived from molecular and evolutionary developmental biology and review recent studies of species divergence that have led to a genetic theory of morphological evolution, which states that (1) form evolves largely by altering the expression of functionally conserved proteins, and (2) such changes largely occur through mutations in the cis-regulatory sequences of pleiotropic developmental regulatory loci and of the target genes within the vast networks they control."

Origin of Species "I have now recapitulated the .. facts and considerations which have thoroughly convinced me that species have been modified, during a long course of descent. This has been effected chiefly through the natural selection of numerous successive, slight, favourable variations; aided in an important manner by the inherited effects of the use and disuse of parts; and in an unimportant manner, that is in relation to adaptive structures, whether past or present, by the direct action of external conditions, and by variations which seem to us in our ignorance to arise spontaneously."

Strange New Worlds " Since faint planets are hard to see next to bright stars, astronomers have had to come up with clever ways to unveil them. The Doppler technique—using spectral line shifts to trace the subtle dance of stars as planets tug on them—has been the most successful in the first fifteen years. But two other methods have also reached maturity—and are paying off handsomely. Both depend on finding chance alignments of celestial objects through brightness changes of stars. The first technique exploits a remarkable property of gravity that Albert Einstein discovered: its ability to bend light, thus to magnify..."


Text this dense forces you to pay attention at a much higher level than you would reading the newspaper. You have no choice but to force yourself to reread and read between the lines to understand the text on paper.... Initially I would lose concentration for 5 seconds and would realize that the text I was reading made absolutely no sense so I would go back and start from the beginning. This helped me break my bad reading habits. I learned to focus on a higher level. I also just constantly asked myself, why is the author saying this? Where is he leading? Why is he taking me through this maze and whats his intention? Often I would realize at the end but after a while I started to pick up on the idea quickly. For example there would be one sentence that would be the main point like "Variations in bigger genera of species tend be larger than smaller genera...." Then there would be 20-30 pages of discussion about Big vs Small genera and at the end the point would be stated that Bigger genera are bigger because they tend to dominate in their natural habitat and have advantages so they consequently they are more common compared with smaller ones...

Same thing with the Strange New worlds book, the author would mention for example discovery of a new technique i.e. the Doppler technique at the beginning of the chapter and then go on and on about how the old technique had accuracy issues and how scientist spend decades after decades trying to create newer more accurate instruments and eventually come back to the Doppler technique and how it allowed scientist to make more accurate estimates which eventually led to the discovery of a certain type of planets...... This trains you to keep focus for long periods of time and not get lost in the details....

2201neha Lnstnbass4 SMD sarbjeetsingh777 hazelnut Good luck with RC!

Congratulations, inspiring debrief. Good luck with applications

Jkolachi ! Have been hearing about you on the chat . Someone mentioned you got a 700 and everyone was so happy for you this is like the one of the most legendary debriefs I have ever read .. and like most of the other folks wanting to crack the f*** out of this exam your story is super inspirational !! I can totally relate to some of the stuff you've mentioned like your experience with RC, and love the fact that you started reading dense material to cope with the difficult passages and increase your accuracy !! Who does that ? Mind blown ! Like GMATNINJA mentioned above this is the real deal ! RESPECT !!!

I'm so glad I'm on Gmat club and to be able to read such an inspirational story fantastic mate ! Good luck with your applications and hope you get the business school of your choice . All the best

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Thank you so much jkolachi for detailing the books for RC preparation. I think I will start with Great Essays.

I get nervous whenever I encounter a RC passage that deals with finance/economy topic. Do you have any book suggestions on this topic too?

2201neha I have a business backgeround so didn't find the business RCs that difficult. But if you want to read some tough business material than definitely check out Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, and also feel free to check out Maynard Kayne's books. They are great books.

Also check out Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan & Fooled by Randomness. Thomas Pikety's Capital, Thomas Friedman The World is Flat. Anything by Milton Friedman. You can also just read the business section of NY Times or WSJ.

Good luck!

Congratulations buddy !!!

Wow this post has actually inspired me , I'm giving my gmat in months end , this could be of real motivation .. thanks


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Congratulations mate! I started around December too, haven't been able to reach 700 yet. How much were you scoring towards the end of your prep in GMAT mocks?


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Already a lot of people there congratulating you! But here I am, again!
As axelpuri mentioned above, everyone is happy for you, and believe me this is not superficial happiness!


Thanks for the debrief man! I was waiting for it!
Its nice to read a debrief- especially when you have seen someone grow. Its like having watched a live match, reading about it in a newspaper the next day. This feeling cannot be explained
You have summed up everything. And RC surely was a great improvement-your determination, persistence, and hard work paid off. You are "few" of those guys I look up to if I feel low.
Thanks for everything.
All the best for the applications. I would like to know where you land. Keep us posted.
And don't leave gmat club, please?

Jko: GMAT


Edit: (I know some sentences are not perfect SC, but will leave them that way-because I am too excited to think )

Congratulations my friend.
You deserve every ounce of that score.

The fortitude and grit you have shown after your first attempt is estimable.
If your essays are half as novel,erudite and esoteric as your chatroom comments then I have no doubts that you ARE gonna get into your dream program.


To everyone who visits this page and reads this debrief => Going from 350 to 700 is 10x times more arduous and byzantine then from say 650 to 750.
We all have so much to learn from this guy.


Cheers
Stone Cold

I agree completely!


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