770 (50Q 45V) in Six Weeks, and w/ <$350! First Try, Detailed Overview

Hi all, happy to share my score report here with all of you! The score reports really helped shape my preparation for the GMAT so I thought I'd give back and share my experiences on what was helpful and what was not so much.

1. Background

Who this may be primarily be helpful for:

Native english speakers (I hardly prepared for verbal, so I can't help there) with a decent math background (I minored in math in college). Those who want to self-prep - I took no courses for preparation. Tips on being economical in their preparation strategy.

About me

I am a recent graduate from a little ivy, graduating with a 3.7 GPA in economics. I am joining a T2 consulting firm in the fall, and wanted to take the GMAT over the summer break to get it over with, especially since it is a very common path to attend b-school after a few years in consulting. I spent a lot of my summer traveling and spending time with family, but I set aside 6 weeks to buckle down hard on the GMAT. My goal was to score at least the average of the top schools, around 730, and any higher would be icing on the cake. I still didn't want to lose my life to the GMAT. I studied approx. 3 hours a day, 6 days a week. A bit more for the week leading up to the test itself. So maybe I spent a total of 120 hours preparing for the exam.

2. Materials Used & Total Costs

In my entire GMAT journey, I managed to spend less than 400$. All my test prep materials were new, and purchased before the six weeks that I had set aside for preparation.
GMAT 2020 OG ($60, amazon)
Manhattan Prep 6th Ed. ($35, got lucky on ebay)
GMAT Test ($250)

I didn't end up using any online materials besides the CATs provided with the MGMAT books, the free GMAT CATs, one free Veritas CAT, and the various free materials provided on GMATClub, including their one free Quant CAT.

3. Diagnostic Test & Assessing Strategy

I went in completely blind for the GMAT on day one, as the guides had suggested, and took the first free GMAT Prep test. I scored a 730 (Q46 V44 IR8), but this is definitely an overestimate. I took number of breaks, including breaks within sections. My quant score is especially inflated because I looked up the answers to a few hard questions that were irking me to no end. I don't recall taking any breaks with verbal or looking up any answers so I believe that is my natural score. Though I found verbal and IR relatively straightforward (still requiring a lot of brainpower but nothing crazy difficult), quant was definitely a time crunch. Despite that, this was definitely promising for a high future score.

I clearly had some massive holes in quant. Even though I have a decent math background, there were many areas where I just didn't know how to tackle a problem. Further, data sufficiency questions were completely foreign to me, so that was an area that I would have to particularly target. (I would later learn that the key to data sufficiency, after learning DS strategies, is understanding the fundamentals behind the problem itself, the problem is just a wrapper for testing your knowledge).

4. Preparation Strategy

Clearly, I wanted to focus on quant, as my verbal score was already in the 95th+ percentile. To fill in the gaps in my quant knowledge, I would first need to build my base of understanding, then work on everything else, including testing strategies, working on DS, and time crunch.

Building a Knowledge Base (Fundamentals)

So my first two weeks were exclusively focused on working through the MGMAT quant books, and finding weaknesses in my knowledge. I wrote down on cue cards the concepts that I didn't know and would review those every so often. I kept a running error log for all the practice problems at the end of each chapter and reviewed those to understand where I went wrong. MGMAT was crucial in my getting the 50Q. It helps you understand the fundamental concepts that the GMAT quant is testing for and teaches you key properties. I struggled particularly with number properties and especially geometry, so I paid most attention to those sections.

After those two weeks working through MGMAT, I just needed reps. Now here's one area where my advice differs from that of MGMAT and a lot of other people here on the forums. MGMAT recommends that after each section, you should work through problems in the OG that correspond to the section. I think that once you;ve built a base of knowledge, it is much more important to be able to look at a question and work through the process of identifying the question, forming a strategy, and answering the question, than reinforcing the knowledge you should already have learned. So, after these two weeks, I just worked through the OG sequentially, first through the main book then through the quant book. I took questions in chunks of 10-20 at a time, and kept an error log of things that I got wrong. I probably got around 20-25% of questions wrong on both DS and PS. In my error log, I differentiated between stupid mistakes and knowledge gaps, and retackled those questions accordingly. It was important to do that, since both types of mistakes are insidious in their own ways and need to be dealt with differently. (e.g. going back to MGMAT for the latter, and learning more about the concept at hand).

I ended up working through every question in the OG (both quant and verbal) and supplemental quant guide. I got 95% of RC questions correct, 85% CR questions correct and 75% of SC questions correct, the last of which improved over time as I learned more SC strategies and tricks. Overall, I worked pretty intuitively both for quant and verbal. Some tips I learned for each: For DS, work very methodically. Often I'd get questions wrong because I didn't do the methodical process of checking A then checking B, then if neither suff, then checking A&B. Taking fewer shortcuts on DS saved me from a large number of wrong answers. For RC, even as a native speaker I have some trouble keeping all the ideas in my head. So I just write down the main ideas of each paragraph as I read, and just the act of actively reading like that helped sort out my ideas. For CR, I simply wrote down the objective of the question, e.g. strengthen, and read the content of the question with that in mind.

Practice Tests

I took practice tests every now and then to assess my progress.

(Week 1)GMAT Prep: 730 (46Q 44V)
(Week 3)MGMAT 1: 660 (42Q, V38)
(Week 4)MGMAT 2: 640 (44Q, V34)
(Week 4)Veritas Prep 1: 670 (43Q, 39V)
(Week 5)MGMAT 3: 690 (45Q, 38V)
(Week 5)MGMAT 4: 680 (46Q, 37V)
(Week 6)GMATClub Quant CAT: 50Q
(Week 6)MGMAT 5: 690 (45Q, 38V)
(Week 6)GMAT Prep: 760 (50Q, 42V)

I freaked out when my first MGMAT was so much lower than my GMAT prep score from only a couple weeks before, especially as I had just done all that quant preparation. I later learned that MGMAT quant is miles harder than GMAT quant, and so that isn't too much cause for alarm. I was happy to have had a steady progression of quant throughout my MGMAT tests, eventually levelling out at 45/46Q. Also note that my scores for the verbal sections on the third-party prep sites were much lower than for the official prep materials. Either I (still) don't have a proper understanding of verbal, or (my opinion) the verbal prep materials just don't capture the same quality or spirit of the official GMAT verbal questions.

5. Test Day & Lead-Up

The day before the test I didn't do very much. Reviewed my cue cards, did a couple of medium-level quant questions. Went to sleep early (9pm) for my 11am exam time. On exam day, I didn't bring a sweater, only a bottle of water, my ID, and my hopes and dreams. They are very rigorous in inspecting your person, so make sure not to bring anything extraneous for test day at all. They even take a scan of your palm veins, so unfortunately your identical twin can't take the test for you (if you've taken it before already). This has been covered to death, so I have nothing new to add. Except! When you return from your optional break and the administrator logs back into the terminal for you to recommence, the test begins automatically, so if you return with 4 minutes remaining on your break, you don't get the remaining 4 to chill and collect your thoughts.

My testing order was AWA, IR, Q, V. AWA is pretty trivial for me even without preparation, I've written a lot of essays. IR was actually harder than expected, I thought I completely messed up this one tricky question that felt more like a tough LSAT logic puzzle than a GMAT q. I was surprised to have gotten the IR8. Quant wasn't any harder than GMAT Prep tests, luckily I only had a couple of combinatorics and tough geometry questions. I felt super locked in when it came to verbal, and the results showed.

Of course, as the title says, 770 ended up flashing on my screen. Full breakdown: 50Q 45V 8IR 6AWA.

Concluding Thoughts

Reading back on this, I'm not sure I provided many helpful tips. I think a general strength of mine is nakedly assessing my own performance. People try to hide from their weaknesses, but here I tried my hardest at every step to identify them and tackle them. Please comment if you have any questions, and I'd be happy to help with any particular section. My actual test was a bit ago and so not everything is fresh on my mind.

Am I satisfied with the 770? Honestly, I'm not. I have the bad habit of over-thinking and over-researching. There are so many stories of rejections with 770 and maybe a 780+ would "wow" admissions even more. Though I know that the GMAT is only a small part of the application, I can't help but feel that if I retook and performed better that I would be in a much better spot for b-school apps down the road, despite what most articles, forum posts, etc say. For some, a 770 is fulfilling, but please know that this is not the case for all.

The marginal effort to improve my score 10/20 points would be pretty monumental. I would most likely need to improve my quant to 51, which would require a more formalized approach to tackling quant, and spending a lot more money accessing and working through 700+ level questions. I would also have to improve my verbal past 47, but to attain a v45 I probably already only scored 3-5 questions wrong. Having the tools to get those last few questions right would require a lot more attention to verbal, and I would probably have to return to fundamentals and work through the MGMAT verbal materials.

Anyway, I may retake a couple years down the line, but who knows what the future holds. Please comment if I can help with any questions you may have.

Regards.