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Last week, I scored 760 (Q49, V47) on my 3rd attempt at the GMAT (2nd this year). I thought I would share an EXTREMELY LONG debrief in the hopes that someone else may benefit from my experience. I certainly did not start from anywhere close to a 760, so my story is proof that anyone can score well with proper preparation.
I have a full time job in which I travel about one week per month. I knew discipline would be key, so I tried to maintain a strict study schedule of 15 or so hours during the week, a full practice test on every Saturday, and test review on Sunday. I squeezed in as much study as possible during travel and tried to compensate where possible.
The only material I used during this 2 month period was the Veritas Prep on-demand online course. Pulling the trigger on spending the money on the course was a difficult decision. I had taken the GMAT the year before after 1.5 months of studying using only a Princeton Review book and the official GMATPrep free resources. I scored a 640. Because I have a few friends who did well on the GMAT and recommended the Veritas Prep course (1 did the classroom, 1 did the online instructor led course) and because I knew I needed more structure in my study methods than I had the previous year, I decided to move forward with Veritas, although I wasn’t willing to pony up for the classroom or online instructor led course.
The course is well-organized and detailed. The materials, which consist of 12 subject-specific course lesson books, 12 practice tests (5 of which are CAT), and a question bank of practice problems, were comprehensive. To me, the most useful parts were the lessons and the plethora of practice problems. I do have some criticisms and other thoughts on the course that I will get into below.
I started from a very low level. I took Veritas’ 1st practice test as a diagnostic test and scored a 570. Considering I had taken the real thing a year before and scored a 640, I was somewhat alarmed. I contacted my friend who had done the course and he reassured me. The Veritas tests are designed to be more challenging than the real thing, and a 570 with no prep isn’t the end of the world. A month, and 3 more practice tests later, I was only scoring 590. I was concerned. My quant score was abysmal and had actually regressed from where I started. I knew coming in that Quant was going to be my biggest hurdle. I have always done fine in quant based coursework, but for some reason I really struggled with GMAT quant. I figured out later that the biggest contributor to my issue was time management, but I will get to that later.
I kept chugging along through the lessons and tried to focus more on homework problems than concepts. I saw improvements in the next few practice tests (640, 640, 660). My verbal had been fairly consistent throughout, so I didn’t focus on it as much as quant. I will share some takeaways I have about that below. Here is my full log of practice tests/actual tests:
Veritas Prep Test 1 8-Aug 570 Q35 V34
Veritas Prep Test 2 16-Aug 610 Q38 V36
Veritas Prep Test 3 29-Aug 560 Q34 V33
Veritas Prep Test 4 11-Sep 590 Q34 V37
Veritas Prep Test 5 19-Sep 640 Q42 V36
Veritas Prep Test 6 26-Sep 640 Q42 V36
Veritas Prep Test 7 3-Oct 660 Q42 V39
Veritas Prep Cat Test 1 6-Oct 710 Q45 V42
GMAT #1 10-Oct 690 Q45 V40
Official GMATPrep Test 1 24-Oct 750 Q49 V42
Official GMATPrep Test2 31-Oct 730 Q47 V44
GMAT #2 6-Nov 760 Q49 V47
The test itself went ok. AWA and IR were typical. I actually like having AWA and IR as a warmup for the meat of the test. I would stress the importance of doing both of these sections during practice tests AT LEAST 75% of the time. I felt pretty good about Quant while I was doing it and actually finished with some time to spare. The Verbal section is where I really started to feel the fatigue of the week leading up to the test. I did fine with a V40, but did not feel like I was in peak form in terms of focus. In retrospect, the fact that Quant was so much easier than the practice tests and that I finished with so much time to spare should have been a bit of a red flag (not that it would’ve mattered). Still, I was pleased with the 690 I saw at the end of the test.
My second round of prep didn’t include any usage of my Veritas course. I had already exhausted the question bank the first time around and I figured concept review wouldn’t really help me at this point. I knew that the only tests I would take in preparation for test 2 were the official GMATPrep tests. I decided to buy the Quant Problem set pack from official GMATPrep to give me plenty of practice questions. The ONLY prep I did over the course of the 3 weeks was problem sets. I did them in 8, 10, and 15 set groups then spent lots of time reviewing my answers – both for correct problems and incorrect problems. I really tried to focus on why I was getting problems wrong and in which areas I was weak. I know many GMAT success stories include the usage of an error log. I did a formal error log on most of my practice tests but I did not do one for practice problems. I want to stress that the review component was definitely a critical success factor for me, but I did not actually keep an error log for reference. I simply plowed through problems and tried to apply what I’d learned from prior mistakes/successes on similar problems.
I did not do too much prep in the week leading up to the test. The last practice test I did was 6 days before the test (refer to table above). I did a thorough review of that test during the day of/day after. Over the next 4 days, I did probably an average of 1.5 hours of problem sets each night after work. I mostly focused on quant but I also did a few verbal sets (usually one set of 3 questions of each type). By that point, I was confident in verbal so I spent 90% of my time on math. I did not do any studying the day before the test. I felt way more relaxed during the days leading up to this test than I did for test 1. Part of the reason for feeling relaxed was having a solid score already under my belt, but some of it was also not killing myself during the last week.
AWA and IR were a breeze. I finished IR faster than I ever have before. The only practice I did for IR was the practice tests and I feel this was sufficient (I got a 7 on both real tests). If you do 6 plus practice tests and do the IR section on each, you will be fine. During the break before quant, I went through my usual routine of bathroom/water/trail mix. My bathroom time doubled as a “psyche-up” opportunity to stare at myself in the mirror and give positive encouragement (lame, I know). I also either did push-ups or jumping jacks to keep the blood flowing – a tip I picked up from this forum. During Quant, I thought I was doing poorly. I encountered a number of Geometry questions – my weakest subject – and found myself making a few more educated guesses than I had in practice tests. The questions didn’t seem extraordinarily difficult (at least, I didn’t think they’d be high level difficulty for someone who was decent at Geometry) so I really thought I’d done poorly. During the break before Verbal, I engaged in my typical bathroom shenanigans although this time I really was on the verge of cracking because of the quant section. I had to tell myself “ok, maybe you didn’t get the quant score you wanted. Put it out of your mind – thinking about it will do you know good moving forward. Go dominate the verbal.” This is a great example of why it’s fruitless to attempt to forecast your score. No good can come of it and you are most likely totally wrong anyway. I felt good on the Verbal – much more fresh and focused than I had felt during the first test. SC was without question my weakest verbal section coming into the test and it didn’t seem all that difficult.
When all was finished and I saw a 760, all I could do was lean back in my chair and laugh. It was beyond my wildest dreams, especially given how I thought I was doing on the quant section.
2. As useful as this forum can be – and I drew on some tips from here – for me, it could become discouraging at times. Keep in mind that THERE ARE MULTIPLE PATHS TO THE TOP and that what works for someone else won’t necessarily work for you. Definitely leverage the wealth of knowledge available here, but don’t let it dishearten you.
3. Do not give up! Unless you’re a prodigy, you will go through plenty of struggles in GMAT prep. You will go through long stretches of weeks where you don’t feel like you are improving. Keep battling! Improvements will be made in big leaps if you put in focused, disciplined work. Just because you plateau for a bit doesn’t mean the results aren’t coming.
4. If you are like me and struggle with quant: my issue wasn’t really conceptual. Certainly, there were concepts I struggled with (Geometry, Combinatorics) but I think focusing mostly on concepts leads to diminishing returns. I had a very difficult time finishing the Quant section on my Veritas practice tests, which is a huge explanation of my early scores in the 30s. Practice doing the homework problems or problems from questions banks WITH A TIMER. Do them in groups of 5-10 and review IMMEDIATELY, making sure you understand why you got them wrong. Get in the habit of moving on after 2.5 minutes. This was REALLY hard for me to do. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do the problems. Fight the urge!
5. It’s hard for me to isolate my jump from mid 600s to consistently low-mid 700s (which happened in the span of a few weeks) to one variable. I found the official GMATPrep quant pack to be very helpful. Veritas was great but I think the math is much harder than what is actually on the test. I think I ended up getting more out of practicing from the GMATPrep questions bank, which is much more similar to the real thing. It helped me master easy/medium questions whereas Veritas is more helpful for trying to master the difficult ones. I can’t say how much Veritas ultimately improved my quant – maybe I would’ve made the improvement after just Veritas and simply needed more time. Tough to say, but I’d say try to master the easy/medium questions.
6. Save the GMATPrep tests and question bank (if you’re so inclined to purchase – in my eyes a deal at $30) for last, if you can.
7. Give yourself the time to succeed. I needed ~3 months (with a full week break and 2 weeks of lighter studying towards the end) and 2 tests to peak.
8. Don’t give yourself a ceiling. The improvements will come when you least expect it (as it did for me after getting 690 on test 1).
9. Do enough practice tests. Don’t measure yourself too closely against the practice tests, rather learn from them.
10. For Verbal: I truly don’t know the biggest driver of my score was. The Veritas course was helpful with verbal strategy – particularly with SC and RC. It was my strength throughout, but I still made huge strides late in the game. Much of that was through the strategies I got from Veritas. CR was always my best subject, although I kept improving simply by plowing through problems identifying mistakes. Also, for CR, contrary to what others may think, I found it helpful to jot down premises and conclusions on my notepad. It definitely made me take longer on CR questions but I did better when I was more organized. RC went from a weakness to a strength quickly - Veritas has great RC strategies.
My preparation:
I started my preparation in August and set a test date of October 10th, thinking 8-9 weeks would be a good time frame for getting enough studying in before the test. I booked my test date at the outset of studying because I felt like it was important to have a hard deadline on the calendar. I didn’t want to leave myself any excuse to shirk on studying.I have a full time job in which I travel about one week per month. I knew discipline would be key, so I tried to maintain a strict study schedule of 15 or so hours during the week, a full practice test on every Saturday, and test review on Sunday. I squeezed in as much study as possible during travel and tried to compensate where possible.
The only material I used during this 2 month period was the Veritas Prep on-demand online course. Pulling the trigger on spending the money on the course was a difficult decision. I had taken the GMAT the year before after 1.5 months of studying using only a Princeton Review book and the official GMATPrep free resources. I scored a 640. Because I have a few friends who did well on the GMAT and recommended the Veritas Prep course (1 did the classroom, 1 did the online instructor led course) and because I knew I needed more structure in my study methods than I had the previous year, I decided to move forward with Veritas, although I wasn’t willing to pony up for the classroom or online instructor led course.
The course is well-organized and detailed. The materials, which consist of 12 subject-specific course lesson books, 12 practice tests (5 of which are CAT), and a question bank of practice problems, were comprehensive. To me, the most useful parts were the lessons and the plethora of practice problems. I do have some criticisms and other thoughts on the course that I will get into below.
I started from a very low level. I took Veritas’ 1st practice test as a diagnostic test and scored a 570. Considering I had taken the real thing a year before and scored a 640, I was somewhat alarmed. I contacted my friend who had done the course and he reassured me. The Veritas tests are designed to be more challenging than the real thing, and a 570 with no prep isn’t the end of the world. A month, and 3 more practice tests later, I was only scoring 590. I was concerned. My quant score was abysmal and had actually regressed from where I started. I knew coming in that Quant was going to be my biggest hurdle. I have always done fine in quant based coursework, but for some reason I really struggled with GMAT quant. I figured out later that the biggest contributor to my issue was time management, but I will get to that later.
I kept chugging along through the lessons and tried to focus more on homework problems than concepts. I saw improvements in the next few practice tests (640, 640, 660). My verbal had been fairly consistent throughout, so I didn’t focus on it as much as quant. I will share some takeaways I have about that below. Here is my full log of practice tests/actual tests:
Veritas Prep Test 1 8-Aug 570 Q35 V34
Veritas Prep Test 2 16-Aug 610 Q38 V36
Veritas Prep Test 3 29-Aug 560 Q34 V33
Veritas Prep Test 4 11-Sep 590 Q34 V37
Veritas Prep Test 5 19-Sep 640 Q42 V36
Veritas Prep Test 6 26-Sep 640 Q42 V36
Veritas Prep Test 7 3-Oct 660 Q42 V39
Veritas Prep Cat Test 1 6-Oct 710 Q45 V42
GMAT #1 10-Oct 690 Q45 V40
Official GMATPrep Test 1 24-Oct 750 Q49 V42
Official GMATPrep Test2 31-Oct 730 Q47 V44
GMAT #2 6-Nov 760 Q49 V47
Test #1
I did A LOT of prep in my last week leading up to the test (with exception of the day before). The last 2 practice tests were 1 week out and 4 days out from test day, respectively. Looking back, the amount of prep I crammed in the last week probably didn’t help me much for GMAT #1 – I definitely was not fresh on test day – but probably was a huge contributor to the success I had on GMAT #2. I wouldn’t advise cramming this much into your last week of prep. On test day, I was pretty nervous. I had an early afternoon exam time scheduled. In retrospect, this was a mistake due to having to wait around all morning anxiously. My second GMAT was the early morning exam time and that was WAY better for me – you may be different. Unless you’re really not a morning person, I would suggest taking the test as early as possible.The test itself went ok. AWA and IR were typical. I actually like having AWA and IR as a warmup for the meat of the test. I would stress the importance of doing both of these sections during practice tests AT LEAST 75% of the time. I felt pretty good about Quant while I was doing it and actually finished with some time to spare. The Verbal section is where I really started to feel the fatigue of the week leading up to the test. I did fine with a V40, but did not feel like I was in peak form in terms of focus. In retrospect, the fact that Quant was so much easier than the practice tests and that I finished with so much time to spare should have been a bit of a red flag (not that it would’ve mattered). Still, I was pleased with the 690 I saw at the end of the test.
Preparation for Test #2
For the week after test 2, I deliberated whether I should take the GMAT again. On the one hand, 690 is a solid score, especially considering where I had started and scored previously. On the other hand, I really felt like I was starting to “figure it out” and that the pieces were just starting to fall in place from a test taking perspective. I did no prep/studying during that week and did not think about the GMAT at all. At the end of the week, I decided to register again to take the test on a date about 3 weeks out. Ultimately, I thought the downside (registration fee, time lost to work on apps) was small - I still had plenty of time to work on my school applications for Round 2 – and the upside was big.My second round of prep didn’t include any usage of my Veritas course. I had already exhausted the question bank the first time around and I figured concept review wouldn’t really help me at this point. I knew that the only tests I would take in preparation for test 2 were the official GMATPrep tests. I decided to buy the Quant Problem set pack from official GMATPrep to give me plenty of practice questions. The ONLY prep I did over the course of the 3 weeks was problem sets. I did them in 8, 10, and 15 set groups then spent lots of time reviewing my answers – both for correct problems and incorrect problems. I really tried to focus on why I was getting problems wrong and in which areas I was weak. I know many GMAT success stories include the usage of an error log. I did a formal error log on most of my practice tests but I did not do one for practice problems. I want to stress that the review component was definitely a critical success factor for me, but I did not actually keep an error log for reference. I simply plowed through problems and tried to apply what I’d learned from prior mistakes/successes on similar problems.
I did not do too much prep in the week leading up to the test. The last practice test I did was 6 days before the test (refer to table above). I did a thorough review of that test during the day of/day after. Over the next 4 days, I did probably an average of 1.5 hours of problem sets each night after work. I mostly focused on quant but I also did a few verbal sets (usually one set of 3 questions of each type). By that point, I was confident in verbal so I spent 90% of my time on math. I did not do any studying the day before the test. I felt way more relaxed during the days leading up to this test than I did for test 1. Part of the reason for feeling relaxed was having a solid score already under my belt, but some of it was also not killing myself during the last week.
Test #2
My test was on a Friday @ 8:00 am, so I took the day off from work. In the week leading up to the test, I woke up by 6:00am every day (usual wake up of 7:00 am) to get used to being up early and getting my mind going. I got to the test center around 7:30 and ended up waiting until 8:30 before being admitted into the test center. That hour was unnerving but I tried to stay relaxed by repeating positive/confident mantras in my mind. I thought a 730 was an achievable goal if I brought my A game – I kept telling myself I was going to get a 730.AWA and IR were a breeze. I finished IR faster than I ever have before. The only practice I did for IR was the practice tests and I feel this was sufficient (I got a 7 on both real tests). If you do 6 plus practice tests and do the IR section on each, you will be fine. During the break before quant, I went through my usual routine of bathroom/water/trail mix. My bathroom time doubled as a “psyche-up” opportunity to stare at myself in the mirror and give positive encouragement (lame, I know). I also either did push-ups or jumping jacks to keep the blood flowing – a tip I picked up from this forum. During Quant, I thought I was doing poorly. I encountered a number of Geometry questions – my weakest subject – and found myself making a few more educated guesses than I had in practice tests. The questions didn’t seem extraordinarily difficult (at least, I didn’t think they’d be high level difficulty for someone who was decent at Geometry) so I really thought I’d done poorly. During the break before Verbal, I engaged in my typical bathroom shenanigans although this time I really was on the verge of cracking because of the quant section. I had to tell myself “ok, maybe you didn’t get the quant score you wanted. Put it out of your mind – thinking about it will do you know good moving forward. Go dominate the verbal.” This is a great example of why it’s fruitless to attempt to forecast your score. No good can come of it and you are most likely totally wrong anyway. I felt good on the Verbal – much more fresh and focused than I had felt during the first test. SC was without question my weakest verbal section coming into the test and it didn’t seem all that difficult.
When all was finished and I saw a 760, all I could do was lean back in my chair and laugh. It was beyond my wildest dreams, especially given how I thought I was doing on the quant section.
Key Takeaways:
1. For me, having a support system of great friends who had been through the experience and really wanted to help me was HUGE. I leaned on them a ton when it came to strategy, tips, and encouragement. A month in when I was struggling, they helped me put things in perspective and keep grinding. It really made all the difference for me.2. As useful as this forum can be – and I drew on some tips from here – for me, it could become discouraging at times. Keep in mind that THERE ARE MULTIPLE PATHS TO THE TOP and that what works for someone else won’t necessarily work for you. Definitely leverage the wealth of knowledge available here, but don’t let it dishearten you.
3. Do not give up! Unless you’re a prodigy, you will go through plenty of struggles in GMAT prep. You will go through long stretches of weeks where you don’t feel like you are improving. Keep battling! Improvements will be made in big leaps if you put in focused, disciplined work. Just because you plateau for a bit doesn’t mean the results aren’t coming.
4. If you are like me and struggle with quant: my issue wasn’t really conceptual. Certainly, there were concepts I struggled with (Geometry, Combinatorics) but I think focusing mostly on concepts leads to diminishing returns. I had a very difficult time finishing the Quant section on my Veritas practice tests, which is a huge explanation of my early scores in the 30s. Practice doing the homework problems or problems from questions banks WITH A TIMER. Do them in groups of 5-10 and review IMMEDIATELY, making sure you understand why you got them wrong. Get in the habit of moving on after 2.5 minutes. This was REALLY hard for me to do. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do the problems. Fight the urge!
5. It’s hard for me to isolate my jump from mid 600s to consistently low-mid 700s (which happened in the span of a few weeks) to one variable. I found the official GMATPrep quant pack to be very helpful. Veritas was great but I think the math is much harder than what is actually on the test. I think I ended up getting more out of practicing from the GMATPrep questions bank, which is much more similar to the real thing. It helped me master easy/medium questions whereas Veritas is more helpful for trying to master the difficult ones. I can’t say how much Veritas ultimately improved my quant – maybe I would’ve made the improvement after just Veritas and simply needed more time. Tough to say, but I’d say try to master the easy/medium questions.
6. Save the GMATPrep tests and question bank (if you’re so inclined to purchase – in my eyes a deal at $30) for last, if you can.
7. Give yourself the time to succeed. I needed ~3 months (with a full week break and 2 weeks of lighter studying towards the end) and 2 tests to peak.
8. Don’t give yourself a ceiling. The improvements will come when you least expect it (as it did for me after getting 690 on test 1).
9. Do enough practice tests. Don’t measure yourself too closely against the practice tests, rather learn from them.
10. For Verbal: I truly don’t know the biggest driver of my score was. The Veritas course was helpful with verbal strategy – particularly with SC and RC. It was my strength throughout, but I still made huge strides late in the game. Much of that was through the strategies I got from Veritas. CR was always my best subject, although I kept improving simply by plowing through problems identifying mistakes. Also, for CR, contrary to what others may think, I found it helpful to jot down premises and conclusions on my notepad. It definitely made me take longer on CR questions but I did better when I was more organized. RC went from a weakness to a strength quickly - Veritas has great RC strategies.
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