I am sure most of you have seen the cliched autobiographical movie in which the protagonist enters the battlefield as a novice fighter, gets beaten up for the entire duration of the movie, and then somehow blows the final punch, knocking his opponent down. As soon as he does this, he falls flat on the ground, with his skull all over the place. The protagonist is exhausted yet victorious. He is almost dead yet his opponent is "absolutely" dead (unless there's a sequel which the protagonist is surely not ready for

).
Well, my GMAT journey is your average war movie, with little less drama. I had a sacred pact with myself that I will write this debrief some day, so here I am!
Before everything, a few thank you(s)bb - I can't thank you enough for creating this forum. GMAT club is a powerhouse of knowledge and support. You are an awesome human and you have no idea how many lives you have positively impacted with this forum.
Bunuel - You are anonymously amazing! I don't know what I would have done without your quant explanations across the forum.
egmat -
e-GMAT is the most comprehensive course for verbal. Thank you for introducing me to the right way of thinking about GMAT verbal. Choosing
e-GMAT was certainly a great decision.
ChiranjeevSingh - Thank you so much for helping me during the final leg of my preparation. Our interaction was short, yet very rewarding.
Magoosh - Thank you for building a great quant foundation which had a huge role to play in my score.
GMATNinja VeritasKarishma - Your explanations for questions are simply brilliant. Thank you so much for writing most of my go-to solutions.
dcummins - Your GMAT story was a great motivating factor during my journey. Thank you so much for not giving up!
GMATBusters - For great periodic quizzes to flex some quantitative muscle.
Apologies if I missed anyone out.
A little backgroundAs compared to most people here, I am younger (and more naïve). I was 19 when I first got subjected to the typical Indian MBA hype. It was 2nd year of my undergrad and life was good, except there was no clarity about one thing, what to do after college. I was constantly sweeping through every opportunity I came across until I realised that I am passionate about one thing, leadership. MBA is a household name so I began researching about various programs, B-schools, rankings, etc. and it all finally boiled down to the fact that I will appear for the CAT (Indian look-a-like of GMAT).
Tryst with CAT (Indian look-a-like of GMAT)I enrolled for a class-room coaching for CAT and diligently studied for around 6 months until I realised that I am actually not motivated by the whole idea of taking the CAT and scoring an admit in a top Indian b-school. All the top B-schools that one can get by appearing for the CAT are amazing but they didn't just strike a chord with me. I wanted an education more international and a class more diversified than one I could potentially get in a top Indian B-school. This was also the time when I came across the Young Leaders Program by ISB (which is basically a deferred admit for the MBA program) and instantly applied for it. I cleared round 1 and for round 2, I was required to send a GMAT score. Due to lack of motivation for CAT and ISB's requirement of GMAT, I dropped out of my coaching classes and rather started focusing on the GMAT.
First attempt- 640 (Q48 V31)I was super-motivated by the idea of pursuing an MBA from ISB because I felt that the school is a great fit for me. I researched about GMAT from head to toe, I ordered the OG, and I came across the
Magoosh premium online course. I was really fascinated by the course particularly because of the 3 months daily plan that
Magoosh offers which is aligned with the course. I purchased the premium course and quickly started viewing all the concept files according to the plan.
I studied for the GMAT whenever I used to get free time in college or at home which included the time for commute, the 10 minute breaks between 2 study periods, the late hours in library, etc. Once I was done with the concept files, I started practicing questions recklessly.
The quant videos in
Magoosh's course were pretty insightful and the focus on learning concepts rather than focusing on formulas helped in developing a sound mindset for the GMAT quant. For verbal, I believe the questions were great and the concepts were well-organized. However, the explanations for practice questions lacked conceptual depth required for the GMAT. For instance, a lot of times, I had to convince myself that an answer choice is "awkward" and should be eliminated in SC without having a sound reason as to why the choice is awkward.
However, I practiced for almost 3 months majorly using
Magoosh question bank for both, quant and verbal. I revised concepts only if I attempted a question related to that concept wrongly. I did not maintain an
error log and I used to shrug most of my errors of as "silly mistakes" I took various mock tests with scores ranging from 640 in diagnostic test from Manhattan to 690 in GMAT prep mocks 1 and 2. I kind of tried to convince myself that my test-day would rather be a good day and I would get 700 or above.
I was super anxious before and during the test. I read all the articles ever written on test anxiety and I was overwhelmed with information. I was caffeinated during the test and I was intolerable to the slightest of distractions whatsoever (I never practiced for the test in an environment with the slightest of sound). Net result, I messed up my test and scored as much as I did in my diagnostic test. I put all the blame mostly on 2 factors- test anxiety and subpar verbal preparation.
Second attempt- 650 (Q49 V30)This time, I focused totally on verbal. As soon as I got home from the test centre, I purchased the verbal live prep course from
E-gmat. I started doing all the concept and application files asap. I quickly noticed something. My verbal preparation during the first attempt lacked massively in one aspect- focus on meaning. As soon as I started focusing on meaning, a lot of things across the 3 sections started making sense. I was finally able to realise why I was faltering on harder questions. I was finally able to stop cutting options for “awkwardness”, something that I was never able to accurately define. I started focusing on my comprehension rather than my timing in RC. I started identifying conclusion, premises, etc. on CR.
So basically I was on the right direction and I was pretty confident about it. I scored >90 percentile numerous times on the
E-gmat ability quizzes. In the mocks, I was mostly scoring in the low 700s. I started spending time on all the questions I did and I started focusing majorly on official questions. However, there were 2 sneaky mistakes that I made:-
1. I still did not prepare an
error log.
2. I did not review mocks in the way I should have. All I did was review the questions I incorrectly attempted. I did not pay any attention to the sections I was faltering in, to my timing strategy, to structurizing my approach for attempting questions, and to formulating a guessing strategy.
On the test day, I was confident about my concepts, yet directionless about the way I would attempt the test. The quant section went unexpectedly. I spent way too much time on the first 20 questions and by the end of the test, I had to do 3 questions in a minute. I never struggled with timing in quant until my test day. Despite all this, I was fairly confident that my quant score would be decent, if not good. Now that I think of it, my quant time-crunch was mostly because I did something that I never did during my mocks- I tried to get every question right rather than guessing the harder ones. I spent some 5 minutes each on 2 questions.
For verbal, to be honest, I thought that it went alright. First time in my life was I not struggling for time in verbal. Again, I attempted it in a way that I never did in any of the mocks. I did not cross-check any answers, I did not have an eye for subtleties, and my average time for the first 20 questions was around 1 minute 20 secs.
I was totally expecting a score between 690 and 720 until I saw a 650. I was heartbroken. I didn’t have any clue about what I did wrong. After all, my concepts were in place. The main mistake was the way I took the test, described above.
Third attempt- 590 (Q47 V25) By now, there are not a lot of mistakes left to be made. However, I somehow found another mistake and experimented with it. I was intrigued by the idea that the first 10 questions determine one's score in GMAT. After analysing my ESRs of the prior attempts and after knowing that I did almost 50% questions wrong in the set of 1st 10 questions, I was fairly convinced that this is the reason why my score dropped. By this time, my undergrad was done and I started working so I studied for a few months without any change in my strategy, then took a week's leave, and then appeared for the test.
I was super cautious about the first 10 questions in both the sections. I was totally gasping for time in the last 10 questions. I got almost 70-80% questions wrong in the last set of 10 questions in both, verbal and quant.
Mistakes during this attempt:-
1. Overly focusing on the first 10 questions.
2. STILL not preparing an
error log.
Final showdown- 760 (Q49 V44) (GMAT online)I knew that something was wrong in my preparation all this while and it certainly didn't have to do a lot with my conceptual knowledge. It was something else. It was the way I prepared. This realization made all the difference. What I did post this realization is:-
1. I prepared a fudging
error log finally and followed it religiously.
2. I finally started focusing as much on test taking as on concepts.
3. I finally started identifying my pain areas and formulating a guessing strategy.
4. I finally started focusing more on easy and medium level questions rather than the harder questions.
5. I finally promised myself that I will practice my answering strategy in mocks and DO NOT change it suddenly while taking the test. (this is harder than it sounds)
6. This focus on everything else, beyond the conceptual knowledge, that is important to get a good score was a game-changer for me.
My preparation was divided into 3 parts (in chronological order):-
1. Revise every verbal concept individually and then practice questions related to it until the concept is perfected (2.5 months)- I followed the streak method described by dcummins for this. Once a concept is revised, my target was to have a streak of 10 correct answers for easy official questions, followed by medium and hard ones. If I failed in a streak, I would start all over again.
2. Revise all quant concepts from GMAT club handbook and do questions (20 days)- Since my goal was to maintain my quant score rather than increase it, I did not put in a lot of effort on quant. I quickly revised all the concepts and practiced questions, with focus on the conceptual application rather than getting the correct answer.
3. Focus solely, deeply, and purely on test taking (the game-changer) (30 days)- This phase involved taking and "rightly" analysing mocks (took 2 veritas prep mocks; scored 710 in both(with V37)), periodically revising the
error log, working on concepts that were identified as pain areas but not going over-the-board with such concepts, practicing meditation to ease test anxiety, and doing a fair amount of harder questions for concepts that I identified as strengths.
Now, here comes the interesting part. As I was preparing for the GMAT, mostly in my office's cafeteria, the reign of COVID-19 started and soon, work-from-home started (blessing me with more time for the GMAT). I had already taken a month's leave (June to July) to prepare for the GMAT. As soon as my leaves started, my preparation began in full-swing. On the third day of my leaves, I took a private tutoring session from
ChiranjeevSingh. The session was extremely helpful in fine-tuning my approach to answer questions in what turned out to be the final leg of my preparation.
Initially, I scheduled my GMAT online date on 26th June and another test centre version on July 4 (last day of my official leaves) just in case I don't get a satisfactory score in the online version. However, after I came across the update from GMAC that one can retake the online test with physical whiteboard if they take the on-screen whiteboard version before 10th June, I was intrigued by the idea of taking an official test on 9th June and treating it as an official mock. I booked the date almost 12 hours before my exam start time. It was an impulsive decision but I was fairly confident about my preparation this time.
Due to test anxiety, I only slept for 1 hour the night before my test scheduled early in the morning. The online test went smoothly, except that I had to wait for almost an hour before the proctor started my test. Unlike popular opinion, the verbal section seemed easier to me as compared to the other verbal sets I have attempted in official mocks. It almost felt as if I was doing something wrong all along, and therefore receiving easier questions (veritas tests surely threw harder verbal questions at me). I resisted the urge to overthink and continued the test. I wasn't too worried about the score since I put the idea in my subconscious mind that this attempt is nothing more than a mock. The idea, along with the familiarity of a homely environment, most definitely improved my performance. I wasn't expecting for anything more than a 720 (with a Q50 and V35-37).
2 days later, as I woke up, I saw an email from official GMAT mentioning that my score is uploaded on my profile. Within a fraction of a second, I viewed my score and saw a 760. I cross-checked it a gazillion times, and finally, after 10 minutes, I put myself together and hit my bed hard, whispering "you did it". Before I could realise, a few tears streamed down my face. 3 years to this one moment. It was a feeling of content rather than joy. It was a feeling of breathing more comfortably rather than being on top of the world. It was a beautiful feeling, one that can't be traded for a million dollars. In that moment, I pat my back for believing in myself and sticking along for almost 3 years, all for this one beautiful feeling of being exhausted, yet victorious!