775 GMAT FE Debrief

Hello everyone,

I took the GMAT on March 26 and I'm thrilled to share that I got my official score of 775(Q90 V90 DI85) today after a routine security screening!

Besides the official mocks GMAT Club was the only resource that I've used so I wanted to share my journey in case it helps others.

This was actually my third attempt. On my first try, after a month of prep and 4 official mocks, I scored a 675. I was disappointed because I knew I had the potential to do better. Determined to improve before the Round 2 deadlines, I took it again—only to land the exact same score: 675. While my Verbal and DI percentiles were strong (98th and 99th), my Quant score pulled my total down significantly.

For both attempts, I followed the same order: Verbal → DI → Break → Quant. I had assumed I was strong in Quant, so I thought this order made sense. But during my second attempt, I felt like I messed up Verbal and DI, which threw me off emotionally. By the time I got to Quant, I was so distracted I probably missed some of the easier questions since I realized towards the middle when the questions started getting noticeably easier.

I accepted that 675 still is a decent score, I didn’t plan on retaking it and didn’t study at all for three months. Then, due to personal reasons, I ended up not applying to my target schools in R2. That’s when my boyfriend encouraged me to take one more shot since he believed I could do much better if I managed my focus and emotions better during the test.

I was reluctant since I only had 10 days to prepare. But he reminded me that I had already built a strong foundation and just needed to sharpen up. So I agreed and booked the test.

How I prepped in 10 days:

Since it was my third attempt, I only had the last official mock left so I wanted to save it and take it two days before the exam. I used GMAT Club tests instead. I finished all full-lenght mocks plus the remaining tests for Quant, Verbal, and DI- there are quite a lot of them. I spent as much time going back to error log and analyzing my mistake as actually solving the tests. I'd read explanations on the forum and sometimes, especially for Verbal, asked ChatGPT to walk me through the logic of how to approach certain question types. That ended being a game-changer since my biggest issue with Verbal was overthinking. Rather than trying to fix how I think, I changed my approach. I focused on detaching my personal opinion entirely and quickly walk through the logic behind the question like I did using ChatGPT.

I did not have much problem with Quant, I was already doing around 86 and 90 in practice tests. I tried practicing staying calm througout the test, especially after hard questions, since it led me doing silly mistakes. Same for DI, I solved the practice tests and analyzed my mistakes.

I have taken the official mock 6 three days before the exam and did 795(Q90 V90 DI88) which was a great surprise to me. I managed my anxiety pretty well and stayed calm throughout the test and used the new Verbal technique I've been practicing. After the practice test, I went through all of the questions, including the ones that I got right and analyzed how I got them right.

I retook the official mock 6 the day before my exam. I was really nervous and did 735. It was a bummer but also a reminder of how managing my anxiety makes or breaks my experience.

Test day:

My exam was scheduled for 10:00. I woke up, took a walk and had breakfast and was ready at my desk at 9:45. I was a bit worried since I was taking the exam at my boyfriend's apartment which is kind of an unfamiliar environment for me compared to my own room and his office room had no door, we had to put a shower curtain up.

The room situation ended up being fine but my proctor (in my opinion) had some issues with his computer but kept claiming that the issue was with my computer or my connection that my footage kept being cut off. He made me restart my computer 5 times and asked if I had another computer. I took my boyfriend's computer and downloaded the secure browser and GoTo quickly but the issue persisted. I was really nervous by that point because it has been 45 minutes past my scheduled time and I had a flight to catch after my exam. He made me restart the new computer many times including the time he made me force quit "camera" and he could not see me afterwards (lol). After an hour, he changed his computer and the issue went away and I was able to start my exam around 11:00.

I started with Verbal, the first few minutes my heart was beating so fast that I had to reread the question multiple times to even understand what it was about. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath after that and managed to calm myself down. I pretty much did what I practied. I went straight into DI and did my best there too even though I struggled a lot. Some of the questions were nothing like I've seen in practice tests but I kept going. I did not have enough time for the last question so I had to guess that one. I took a break after DI, ate some cookies and continued with Quant. I was feeling pretty bad because I though I messed up DI and Verbal again since the questions were really hard. But I stayed calm. Quant was really easy compared to other sections that I had enough time at the end to go over almost all questions. I did not change any since I could not find any silly mistake. At the end of the exams I was expecting a score around 695 and was very (happily) surprised when I saw 775 on the screen.

Post exam:

I got an email saying my exam is going under a routine security review and I should be able to receive my scores in 20 days but I received them today, 5 days after my exam. I'm very glad that I've retaken the exam and very excited to apply for my target schools (deferred M7 and Yale Silver Scholars) in this round!!