750 (Q50, V40, IR 6, AWA 6) - Personal insights

Hey guys! GMATClub had been a great help to me throughout my preparation so I thought I'll share my experience as well in case anyone benefits from it

ABOUT ME

• 1. Pursued bachelor in business with a major in Finance at university
• 2. Used to be really good at maths in school but hadn't done any maths for about 4+ years at the time of GMAT prep, so felt quite out of touch
• 3. Good English proficiency – did IB in high school
• 4. Was working full-time during the preparation of the exam so only had time to study after work and on weekends

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EXAM PREP

• Time taken to prep for GMAT: ~4 months of dedicated prep. I had started reviewing some material a few months before that but it was quite sparse and irregular. I had initially booked my exam for the end of December 2021, but was traveling back home so couldn't study as much as I had wanted, so I ended up rescheduling it to 30 January 2022.
  
• Resources used:
  
  • 1. Manhattan books (just glanced through, didn't really use much lol)
  • 2. TargetTestPrep (TTP) (only used the $1 subscription for 1 week)
  • 3. Official Guides
  • 4. Practice Tests (Official tests + Manhattan free test)
  • 5. GMATClub posts
• General Advice:
  
  • 1. Don't just "do" questions and move on. For questions you are doubtful and the questions you get wrong, very carefully read the answer explanations to understand the basics and the approach to solving.
  • 2. Focus on the foundations! For both quant and verbal (especially SC), it's very important to develop a strong understanding of the basic concepts. Spend a good amount of time at this part to be able to score well.
  • 3. Do all the official questions from GMAC's study guide and definitely take your practice tests 1 month before your final exam.
  • 4. Practice your questions using the physical whiteboard cuz it takes some time to get used to that and erasing
  • 5. Use GMATClub to understand whatever questions you don't understand, there are answers and explanations to literally all the gmat questions on this forum
  • 6. I didn't do this earlier, but I think it would have definitely helped - use the timer on gmatclub and answer questions here - it will automatically allow you to save your errorlog so you can revisit it later + give you a better idea of your timing as well.
  • 7. I would personally suggest anyone just starting their GMAT practice first to go through the official guide, and attempt around 10-20 questions from each category. This would allow you to understand the type of questions that are asked and the type of knowledge you need. After this start working on learning the foundations and then come back to the official guides to do the questions.
  • 8. The official practice kit gives quite a few guides for learning concepts required for both quant and verbal. They are quite concise and useful for revision purposes.
  • 9. Definitely use the GMATclub's quant and verbal books for learning! Have attached them with my post for easy access
• Quant:
  You can get a lot of questions wrong and still do well. So remember to really brush up on your basics, so you don't mess up on the easy questions in quant.
  
  
  • 1. Problem-Solving: Same advice also goes for DS
    
    • a. Learn the concepts well, focus on the tips and tricks for certain topics like numbers, factorials, remainders, etc. When I first started doing questions, I had no idea how could someone solve some of those estimation questions or weird "how many factors are there" questions. Eventually, I realized, there are shortcuts and basic tips you can learn to learn these things and score well.
    • b. Be very very careful of trap choices. I always used to do silly mistakes in school but the stakes were much lower back then haha. I realized I was making similar mistakes now and it would hurt my score a lot. I started being very mindful of the question and what is being asked. Always double-check small things like is it the radius or the diameter? Miles or km? % change or absolute number? etc
    • c. For quant, I used TTP to review the basics, I skipped through a fair bit of topics that were easy or didn't involve much formulas or tricks. As I went through the TTP lessons, I took notes and revisited these notes the week before my exam. The GMATClub quant book was also a huge help on the quant basics and formulas.
    • d. Understand how estimation works, memorize a few numbers like squares and cubes, pi, etc, learn basic formulas (eg. permutation, combination, quadratic formula, etc)
    
    
  • 2. Data-Sufficiency: I hated these questions when I first started. I barely ever got them right and had a hard time deciding how to determine whether the information was enough or not.
    
    
    • a. I came to love DS eventually because I realized I could make calculation errors but it would (usually) not matter much.
    • b. Always focus on the conditions and potential ranges (eg. 0<x<1 or negatives or large positives or primes etc)
    • c. If you get 2 different answers for that statement, move on - that statement itself is not possible.
    • d. Some questions might seem like they cant be solved, but often can be. Eg. If they are asking for the % change, you may not need all the numbers.
    • e. Don't just jump to conclusions based on "what seems to be the answer". Always work on DS as though you are solving the questions, you wil most likely not need to solve them fully, but usually, 75% working is needed to understand which statement(s) are enough.
• Verbal:
  
  
  1. Sentence Correction: I definitely overestimated my abilities before I had started preparing for the exam lol. The English we know and speak in general can be fairly grammatically flawed. In GMAT, we need to really focus on our grammar to score well in the Sentence Correction section.
  
  
  • a. I had started with doing the OG questions, but I soon figured that I had no idea what I was doing and why I was picking an answer choice over another.
    
  • b. A lot of things "sound" right to the ear but are grammatically incorrect, so it's very important to focus on building the foundations to improve your score in this section. I would definitely suggest spending a good amount of time reviewing the grammar basics and sentence formation basics. I believe Manhattan books do a good job at it, but I relied largely on TTP's explanations for the grammar parts. I went through all their lessons in 2-3 days and took notes as I learned (my notes were very concise and just to the point so it didn't take me too long on making the notes or revisiting them later)
  • c. After I was done with learning the foundations, I went to my Official guide to do the questions. The key with this is to keep track of all the questions that you were doubtful of and check the answer explanations for those. Suppose you were confused between options A and D, really focus on the answer explanations for why one option is better suited than the other.
  • PS. One of the other things I put a large emphasis on was parallelism in the sentences, it really helped me to answer a lot of SC questions.
  
  
  • 2. Reading Comprehension: Active reading and understanding the GIST of the passage is VERY important.
    
    • a. It's okay to not understand each and every detail of the passage, if you feel yourself zoning out, just move to the next sentence. One sentence will not affect your overall understanding of the passage
    • b. I tried the "only read the first few lines and last lines" advice but that didn't work for me.
    • c. I actually struggled quite a bit with RC in the starting but eventually having the correct reading strategy and note-taking strategy improved my scores a lot.
    • d. I followed the following structure for my note-taking: (will post in comments, not allowed to add URLs here)
    • e. I would stop for 3-5 seconds after every para to restate the purpose/point of that particular paragraph. What is this paragraph telling me? Why is it here? What was the main idea conveyed?
    • f. When answering the questions, don't jump to the answers just because you know it, always go back to the paragraph and verify it. This helps to avoid the trap choices.
    
    
  • 3. Critical Reasoning: For some reason, I found it to be the easiest section, yet I was scoring very poorly on it. I realised that I wasn't paying much attention to the arguments and was jumping to conclusions as soon as I saw the answer choices.
    
    
    • a. It really helped me to take quick notes on the arguments (mainly to create the cause-and-effect relationships, understanding what led to what, timelines, etc)
    • b. The answers can be quite tricky, so I used the negation strategy to help me out - if this werent true, will the question still hold? eg. for assumption questions - ask yourself if this statement is not true, would the argument still hold true?
    • c. Imp: Clearly identify the conclusion of the argument. It will also help to distinguish between the argument and the premise
    • d. Understand whether the answer choices affect the argument's conclusion or the premise
• AWA: Spent maybe about 3 hours in total to prepare for this. Only studied this the week before the exam.
  
  • 1. Used the template from TTP
  • 2. I found the structure to be very similar to the literature essays I used to write in high school so it was not as daunting
  • 3. Just did one practice AWA 2 days before the exam
  • 4. On the day of the exam, I read the excerpt and spent about 5 mins thinking about the points that I want to write and then went about writing
  
  This doc highlights the structure I used + the example essay I had done before the exam (will post in comments, not allowed to add URLs here)
  
• Integrated Reasoning: Totally YOLO-ed it
  
• Practice Tests:
  I used the 2 free official practice tests and 1 free practice test from the manhattan website. I actually didn't attempt the IR and AWA on the practice tests and used to skip those and just work on verbal and quant sections. Practice tests really helped me understand the time pressure, watch the clock while attempting questions, use the online whiteboard, and practice with my physical whiteboard.
  
  I only took the practice tests the month before my actual exam.
  
  
  • 1. Official Test 1 (1 Jan): 690 - Q49 V34
  • 2. Official Test 2 (9 Jan): 660 - Q47 V35
  • 3. Official Test 2 (Repeat) (23 Jan): 730 - Q49 V40
  • 4. Manhatten Test: 630 (25 Jan) - Q45 V32
  • 5. Official Test 1 (Repeat) (29 Jan): 750 - Q50 V41
  
  I know a lot of people say re-taking the same official test is not useful because you have seen those questions before so it's not properly indicative. While it is true to a certain extent, I would say it is still a really good practice. You get to revisit some of the questions you did previously and if you do better this time around, you will probably see a lot of new questions as well. I took my last practice test the night before my exam and literally got the same score on my actual exam the next day.
  
  Manhattan's test was definitely a lot harder for me than the official tests and I felt pretty scared after getting my scores on it. So I would say if you are using any other tests besides the official one's just use them as a practice without thinking too much about the score you get on them because they are not very indicative of the final exams.

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EXAM ITSELF

Exam anxiety: It was my first important exam after over 2.5 years so I was fairly anxious about it. I felt like I didn't know how to get into the exam headspace. I kept reminding myself that this exam is not the end-all and be-all because I can always cancel this score and give it again if I don't get a good score. This helped me calm my nerves quite a bit. Also, as a person, I mostly focus on the task at hand rather than the outcome, so I think that helped me focus on writing my exam rather than worrying about the score once the exam had started.


Just before the exam: For some reason, I totally missed out on reading the instructions for prep needed before the exam. There are a few things that need to be done especially – downloading the secure browser + having physical identity proof.

My proctor was quite nice and helped me through these steps so it wasn't too bad but still it kind of puts you in a panicky mode right before the exam, which isnt the best. So I would definitely suggest everyone to go through the link beforehand so you don't end up like me: (will post in comments, not allowed to add URLs here)

I had logged in more than 15 minutes earlier and had cleared all my surroundings, unplugged the monitor on my desk, cleaned my whiteboard, and kept a (clear) bottle of water near me.

Experience with the online exam: Once you hit start on your exam, you will be asked to join a zoom call where your proctor will ask you a few questions, walk you through the rules, inspect your room and surroundings, etc. Your mic and camera will be on throughout the exam (even during the breaks). There was one point when the answer didn't get registered, so my protector had to help restart the exam, but it was probably because my internet was being a little choppy on the day.

Overall, my exam itself was quite smooth and it definitely felt like a proper exam given you are being recorded the whole time an invigilator is keeping an eye out.


Post-exam: Once you complete your exam you get to see your results right away for a few minutes. It shows the total score + individual breakdown of Quant, Verbal, and IR (AWA score is not shown at this point). Once you exit that window, you wont be able to see your score again until the official scores are available (mine came through in about a day).
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That's pretty much all I could think of, but if anyone has any questions, feel free to comment or drop me a message and I will try my best to answer

Goodluck everyone with your exam!