750 (Q48 V45) in first attempt, my thoughts and experiences

Hi all,

I will give a brief background about myself before I talk about my preparations. I am 37, father of a 7 year old who demands a lot of my time, and in the IT industry for the last 13 years, a job that takes up 10-11 hours of each of my weekday. Any interaction I had with academics or any preparation for tests such as GMAT was 8 years back.

The decision to take GMAT was quite spontaneous as I realized it was time to plan my next career move before it is too late. Around April I started giving it some serious thought and by the end of April I made up my mind to take up the challenge. First thing I did was book a test date (dumb move some might say). I booked it for the 15th of July giving me roughly 2.5 months of preparation time. Thereafter I took a diagnostic test to see my current level of preparedness. Needless to say the result was scary. I ended with a score of 590 - don't remember the exact splits but definitely not worth talking about. For a moment I felt if I had acted in haste by booking a test date before starting any preparation.

I had OG 2016 with me, and felt that was enough for starters. I worked through the entire OG 2016 in the next 2 weeks carefully analyzing each type of question. I am not someone who takes exhaustive notes, so most of the information is usually stored in some corner of my brain for future retrieval - a dangerous ploy sometimes. At the same time I also bought the mock test series of Kaplan and Manhattan GMAT to get enough practice under exam conditions. Once I was done going through the OG, I took the first test of Manhattan. I scored a 630 (Q42 V34 and IR3.1). I realized I had plenty of work to do in all sections to hit a respectable score so I searched online for resources.

I came across the Quant course offered by Target Test Prep. I noticed they had a neat plan of letting me try out for 5 days for $1, enough time to make out the worthiness of a course. I took the trial and found the course to be absolutely fantastic and therefore I signed up for the next 2 months. I took the monthly plan which cost $99 per month, a plan that suited me because I needed only 2 months of access. The Target Test Prep is a very well designed course that covers all the topics tested on GMAT exhaustively and also has a great number of practice questions at Easy, Medium and Hard levels of difficulty to test your understanding of the concepts. It is definitely worth a look-in for anyone trying to score big in Quant.

For verbal I relied on the Powerscore GMAT Critical Reasoning Bible and Manhattan Sentence Correction Guide. Other than that I found GMAT Club to be a great source of questions and some of the explanations posted, especially for Sentence correction questions really helped a lot.

I spent the next 4 weeks going through the Target Test Prep modules diligently and working through the practice problem sets. I did two readings of the Powerscore GMAT Critical Reasoning Bible and was hooked to GMAT Club for practice questions on CR and Sentence Correction.

I spent 2 hours on average every weekday for preparation and 8-10 hours every weekend. It was a grueling time and often difficult with a 7 year old vying for my attention. By the mid of June I felt it was time to take 2 mocks every week while carrying on with the brushing up of fundamentals. I also purchased Official Mock test 3 & 4, for additional practice before D-day, on top of 1 & 2 which are provided free.

I have listed below the series of scores I got on the Mocks in order leading up to the Big day to give you an idea of how I progressed.

Mock 1 - 660 (Q45 V35 IR5.2)
Mock 2 - 670 (Q47 V35 IR3)
Mock 3 - 640 (Q44 V34 IR7.3)
Mock 4 - 680 (Q43 V40 IR6)
Mock 5 - 630 (Q40 V36 IR4.5)
Mock 6 - 720 (Q49 V40 IR8)
Mock 7 - 710 (Q49 V39 IR5)
Mock 8 - 740 (Q47 V45 IR4.5)
Official Mock 1 - 710 (Q48 V40 IR5)
Official Mock 2 - 760 (Q50 V44 IR3)
Official Mock 3 - 740 (Q50 V40 IR5)
Official Mock 4 - 780 (Q50 V49 IR8)

I was pleased with the last effort taken before the D-day and hoped a repeat. On D-day I did nothing great, only ensured I reached the test centre on time. I took the test in the order of QA, VA, IR and AWA. I was nervous for the first 20 minutes and made a couple of blunders. Nevertheless instead of dwelling on the mistakes I kept telling myself to concentrate on the remaining questions and not think too early about the final result. I was pretty sure I had tanked it because of the first 20 minutes until I was pleasantly surprised by the final score on screen

750 - Q48 V45 IR 5

I am quite average in academics and was able to achieve this score with practice and by making full use of all resources available. One advice in Verbal, especially in SC, I would like to share is, it makes sense to grasp the meaning of the sentence first and work from there rather than jump straight into the rules of grammar. Best of luck to all future test takers and hope this post helps. If you have specific questions feel free to ask.

Regards,
Murty.