Hello Nerds - So the tips below are best for those who have a good handle on quant and need to improve Verbal to achieve the desired score.

Tip 1: What to Study

I read the GMAT Club Math Book and some random tips on GMAT Verbal to understand what GMAT is all about and dived right into the OG 2020 Diagnostic Test from the official guide. At the of the test there is an Interpretive Guide that will help you rate your skills as - Excellent, Above Average, Average or Below Average for each section of Quant and Verbal.

This will define where you need to put in the most effort. eg: My problem-solving part was Excellent however Data Sufficiency part was Above Average so it was clear for me what to practice and what not to.

Post this i used following material:

Theory:
1) Quant: GMAT Club Math Book v3 -- Free Download from GMAT Club and the theory in Official Guide.
2) Verbal:

SC: Video Lectures from a friend (they do help a lot since my English was as good as any IIT Engineer), Manhatten SC Guide.
CR: I never read any theory, however towards very end of my prep I did refer to "Comprehensive Critical Reasoning Guide" ( free download from GMAT Club)
RC: No Study Material, my trick was taking down notes as i read RC which drastically helped me increase my score.

Practice:
1) OG 2020
2) OG Quantitative Review 2020
3) OG Verbal Review 2020
4) OG 2019
5) OG 13th Edition
6) LSAT Papers (got them from a friend) - Very helpful for CR and RC. They have very long RC and hence my style of taking notes in RC helped me really pace up. Since these were very long passage, it made GMAT ones look easy.

Tip 2: Persistence is the Key.

Me and my wife (she got 740) had prepared an excel dashboard where we used to clock the number of hours we study every day. In this way there was healthy competition between us and soon we saw that the week we put in 35 hours+ and stayed consistent in terms of our study we scored very well.
This helped us push ourself to clock in those hours even though we were sleepy or had too much work on our plate. I have attached my dashboard with the post here.

Dashboard = Discipline. And it will definitely add a lot of value if you are not taking any formal classes like us.

Tip 3: Sunday is Test Day.

Every Sunday, right from the week we started studying till the time we gave the test we gave a test. Every Sunday. I only bought the official mocks all 6 of them. Gave 1st week in 1st week and got 710. The i used the rest 5 sparesly so as not to overuse them. My target score was 750. So i only booked my GMAT Test after I had scored 730+ consistently in 3 official mocks.

For the Sundays when I was not using official mocks, i used free test of e-GMAT, Veritas, Manhattan etc. I never invested money in buying a test series since they do not match the GMAT Test Experience. So use these free ones for practice but always fall back on official mocks for benchmarking.

Tip 4: Time Management

One advantage of giving test every Sunday is you get used to the time management. Its like driving F1 car on the same track for 40 laps. You can close your eyes and take the turns. You get a feeling when to pace up, when to skip and so on.

For Quant : Skip if you spend more than 3 mins on any question. Q51 allows you to do 2 - 3 question wrong and Q 50 allows you to do 6 questions wrong. There is a very heavy penalty for not completing the test. So I kept my target Q51. For 1st difficult question, I used to spend 3 mins or so and then guess if I cant solve. For 2nd difficult question I used to spend 2.5 mins or so. Beyond that if test gets hard, i skipped at 2 mins sharp. I used to check every 10 questions that I am within 20 mins for 10 questions each.

Key in quant is to reach the end of the test with sufficient time. If you do not attempt or guess a lot of the last questions, your score will dive down. So always skip if you spend 2+ mins and then you will always find very easy questions as you move on.

For Vebal:

Time Management is key again. I used BB's post and this helped me a lot. https://gmatclub.com/forum/timing-strat ... 06035.html

Tip 5: Analysis of tests

Unleash your engineer. I made a lot of analysis on test. Use data to show your areas of strength and weakness. If you see my sheet attached here you will understand what i mean by this.

Also Error Logs will help too.


That's all for today. Feel free to buzz me if you need more tips or study material and best of luck to everyone.

Here is the video debrief

very impressive. thanks for the post this is encouraging. wish you both all the best for future

Impressive ..
Thank you for posting .. Its really motivating ..
_________________

Congratulations, LRS2021, on a fine self-preparation performance, and congratulations to your wife for that 740 as well. I have to ask, did the two of you ever bounce ideas off each other during the process, or was this strictly a friendly competition? Did you use the same resources, for instance, or did you each have your own copies of the OGs? I think all the tips are sound and are broadly applicable, even if engineers might appreciate the shoutout. (I at least have the nerd part covered, I think.)

Good luck to both of you on the next step in your journey.

- Andrew

Hello Andrew - We used the exact same resources. Though I am very sure my wife would have geeked out and referred a few more resources behind my back !

We mostly used soft copied / pdf of books so we used our own laptop. We bought our own offical mock tests though.

But when we used to review Mock Tests on Sunday, I used to connect my laptop to a 55 inch TV screen and we used to go throw them together.

I have to say that this sort of dual/duel study method is the first I have seen in a debrief, although I have only been hanging around in the forum for a few years. I like the idea of the tag team review. It is hard to ignore a 55 inch GMAT™ question, even if we are talking diagonals. Out of curiosity, were the two of you missing a lot of the same questions, or did you each have your areas of weakness or expertise? (I am picturing a playful roll of the eyes and an accompanying, You missed that?) Especially since your scores came out so close to each other, I am trying to picture these review sessions, the tug-of-war or the cooperation that would allow each of you to gain insight into how to reach that next level of performance.

Thank you for your earlier response.

- Andrew

Congratulations LRS2021 on 750!

All the best for the next phase!

No Our areas of strengths were completely different. My CR and Quant were decent. My wife was damm good at SC and RC. I guess that helped us tutor / mentor each other in our areas of weakness. I aced RC only bcos of her and BB's time management tips.

Also, Today I will be doing a live stream on Youtube with GMAT Club to discuss the strategy in detail. So those of you who found this debrief useful pls join us to clarify more doubts.

Link to Join : https://youtu.be/EJgH5GreJ9s


[/quote]
I have to say that this sort of dual/duel study method is the first I have seen in a debrief, although I have only been hanging around in the forum for a few years. I like the idea of the tag team review. It is hard to ignore a 55 inch GMAT™ question, even if we are talking diagonals. Out of curiosity, were the two of you missing a lot of the same questions, or did you each have your areas of weakness or expertise? (I am picturing a playful roll of the eyes and an accompanying, You missed that?) Especially since your scores came out so close to each other, I am trying to picture these review sessions, the tug-of-war or the cooperation that would allow each of you to gain insight into how to reach that next level of performance.

Thank you for your earlier response.

- Andrew[/quote]

Congratulations to both of you! Quite the accomplishment. Really learned some new ways to control the verbal section.

Also, can you share the link to LSAT RC and CR questions that you have mentioned in your debrief interview?

Thanks in advance

Thank you folks for joining in yesterday. Evan was superb moderator and I hope we did pass down everything we could.

And I guess we hit the 1 hour 30 mins mark. So i am waiting for the hate mails on it !

Also my wife highjacked the entire live stream, much like what she has done to me in real life !