Hi!
My debrief comes with a delay, I took the GMAT on january, but here goes anyway!
A little bit of my background: I am an industrial engineer, so did not have major issues in the quant part.
Practice CATs- GMATPrep Default Exam Pack 1 - 700 (Q49 - V37)
- GMATPrep Default Exam Pack 2 - 700 (Q48 - V38)
- Veritas Prep Free Exam - 680 (Q47 - V37)
- Kaplan Free Exam - 720
- GMAT Club Practice Tests
- GMATPrep Exam Pack 1 - 730 (Q49 - V40)
- GMATPrep Exam Pack 2 - 740 (Q49 - V41)
Courses and Materials Used-
Official Guide 2016
- Quantitative Review 2016
- Verbal Review 2016
- ExamPAL course
-
e-GMAT Verbal course
- GMAT Club Math Book
- Various math posts from
BunuelHow I studiedI started studying without knowing that much about the GMAT. A friend who had taken it told me to buy the Official Guides and start with that. So I did and started by reading the OGs and solving their excersises. I did this for a couple of weeks. But in the meantime, while I was surfing through the internet looking for more material and practice exams, I found GMAT Club. After reading differents posts and debriefs I realized that I was not approaching my GMAT preparation in the right way. I needed to elaborate a study plan and look for other materials and courses, as the theory in the OGs is not very thorough. So, my plan consisted at first in doing an online course, while in the meantime continue practising with the OGs, and after the course doing some practice exams to see what scores I got and in what areas I was still weak.
After researhing through the internet, I stumbled upon the ExamPAL course, which offered a free one week trial. So I signed up and starting taking it. I found its approach pretty interesting, and after a couple of days they offered a discount, so I ended up buying the course. I did it entirely, while in parallel doing the daily GMAT suggested questions and on weekends continued with the
OG. I pretty much liked the course (something good: it included the GMAT Prep Exam Pack1, that contains two extra exams), but the felt that the Sentence Correction part was aimed more at native speakers, which I am not, so didnt I find it so good. After finishing the course I took the two free GMAT Prep exams, scoring 700 on both. Next, I analyzed the results to find which were my weakest areas, and, surprise, Sentence Correction was the one in which I did worse.
So, then, I started reasearching for good material and courses for Sentence Correction, and I found
e-GMAT, whose reviews pointed it out as to have the best verbal course for non-natives. So I bought the verbal course, and took only the Sentence Correction part as I didnt have enough time to do the rest as my GMAT appointment was approaching. I found it to be an excellet course, it teaches the fundamentals in a very understanding way. Another great thing about the course is that it included all the GMAT Club practice tests.
Then I continued practicing hard, doing as many practice exams as I could, and I noticed that I had significantly improved in the Sentence Correction questions. While I continued practicing, I looked at the math topics in which I was not doing well, such as combinatorics and ratios, and so studied those concepts from some of
Bunuel's excellent posts. For the AWA, I used a template I found here in GMAT Club:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/how-to-get-6-0-awa-my-guide-64327.html, and used this compilation of AWAs and its answers to practice:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/awa-compilations-109-analysis-of-argument-essays-86274.html#p646843. For IR, I practiced mailny with the online question bank included in the
OG.
On the last four days before the exam, I focused mainly on going through theory and concepts.
This whole journey took about 3 and a half months
Test dayI had the GMAT scheduled for a friday morning. I did not do anything different on that day, just got to bed early the night before so as to get a good sleep. I did what I normally do: took a bath and had breakfast, which included a coffee and some toasts. I got to the test center about 30 minutes early.
I was a bit nervous before starting the exam, but once I was engaged in it, it all went away. The AWA was nothing unusual, just what you'd expect. The IR questions seemed a bit easier than what I had practiced. For the quant section, I tried to relax so as not rush in the first questions. I ended up reaching the last 6 questions with only 6 minutes, but thankfully I managed to finish them all in time. For the Verbal section, I had normally finished 20+ minutes ahead of time, so I tried to slow down my pace and take more time for each question. I finished about 10 minutes ahead.
When I got my score I was relieved and very surprised, as I had not got a score that high in the practice exams.
I owe this forum a lot for all the help I got from it, so I would more than happy to help and anwer any question.
I wish all of you good luck in your GMAT!