Hi everyone,
So I recently took my GMAT online exam and got my scores on 3rd Sep, 2020. My exam date was 30th of August. The score was 780(Q50, V47).
So first a little background info about me:I am an engineering background graduate and I completed my bachelors this year only. Just started working a month ago.
My GMAT journey was neither too short nor too long. It was 6 months end to end. There was a break of nearly 2 months in between(due to corona lockdowns I slacked off a bit).
So all in all it was about 3-4 months of focused prep.
I bought the GMATprep official mocks 3&4.
Other than these I earned a free subscription to Veritas Mocks by posting on some forum.(There was this offer going on).
I didn't buy any other prep courses or mocks.
My story is not one of these marketable ones where a miracle happens in a few months and everything changes. This was a continuous process.
The Prep:After getting to know about GMAT in last week of January, I started reading about the exam and the exam pattern. When I first read about the pattern and question types, I thought this is an easy exam and I can easily get a good score(730 or something). So I just solved a few questions and I thought I was all set to go. So I planned to a take a Veritas Mock. I took my first mock around 7-10 feb.
Guess what... It wasn't that easy( I scored a 680 or 670).
I was bad in verbal(CR was OK, SC was all guesswork) . My method to solve SC was to either choose what sounds best or make a guess?.
But when I reviewed my quant mistakes, I felt like I could solve all those questions and I just made silly mistakes(missed the small catches).
So with my ego hurt, I decided to take another mock and prove to myself that I can at least score good in quant.
But again I fell into the same trap and made the same mistakes and scored a Q47 and verbal was maybe V35.
I again took a mock and you can guess the results?. I don't give up that easily?.
Now with my confidence and ego all demolished, I made a final attempt to satisfy my ego and searched for the hardest GMAT quant questions. I got the link to GMATclub list and I thought let's solve this get the confidence back. But this was another disaster and I couldn't even solve 5 out of the first questions correctly.
This was a wakeup call and I admitted to myself that GMAT is a different beast and my brute force approach won't work. I knew most of the basics but I always missed the small catches in questions.
Initially started with some very basic questions of both and tried to work my way up.
Then I started revising quant concepts from Quant Megathread by
Bunuel and did 1 or 2 chapters daily. In April I started to get the gist on things and confidence was up by a bit.
Then mid-April , the lockdowns were in full force and started getting lazy. So prep was nearly dead in these days except some RC or CR question here and there. I discovered some of my weaknesses in RC and worked a bit on those during this period.
Now the final phase of prep began in June after a break of nearly two months.
I started focused prep and made it a goal to solve at least 30 quant and 30 verbal questions daily. I made it a point to solve at least 2 RC passages daily.
During this time I improved a lot in all areas. I improved my SC a lot and RC was also progressing smoothly.
Then in July first week , I was feeling quite confident(except in SC) as I had taken a GMATclub mocktest and scored good in that. So I thought of taking an official mock and a Veritas mock. I took a veritas mock and scored 710. Was not satisfied with this but worked on some areas for a week and then took an official mock.
I scored 770 on my first official mock and confidence went up.
Then took a veritas mock again and scored 700.
Took one more and scored 720.(A bit better than others).
Then I thought of taking mock and scored 770 again. (This was booster shot)
After this I thought that I should but official mocks and check whether the scores stand or not(as some people wrote that they found mock 1 and 2 easier than 3 and 4).
So I scored 750 and 760 on mocks 3 and 4.
Booking the exam:After taking my 4th official mock on 23rd August, I talked to a couple of my friends from the study group and asked whether they were thinking about booking the exam. At point I was feeling that either I am done with my prep or I cannot improve beyond this.
So I thought that I should take the exam asap and I booked it for the next Sunday(30 August). This was an impulsive decision that I won't recommend you make.
The final week:I stopped practising questions from random sources and only did
OG or official questions. Did some LSAT passages and CR too.
I also increased my sleep hours to about 6 in the final week as I wanted to give my body enough rest before the exam. I had a pretty hectic schedule in the 2 months leading to the exam due to which I slept only 4 hrs everyday.
Please don't be sleep deprived on the exam day, it will definitely cost you a few points.Exam Day:My exam was scheduled for early morning(7:45 am) and I woke up a few hours early to get ready and prepare the environment and all(I also got up early because I couldn't sleep).
I was ready 30 mins before my scheduled time and made all the checks in time and verified my ID and environment). Then the proctor came nearly 10 mins after 7:45 and he just asked me to show my whiteboard and the room.
The process of exam delivery was smooth and I didn't face any issues(internet or software) .
The only issue I faced was that the proctor wasn't available for chat during the whole exam. I tried 3-4 times, but got no response. I couldn't even take my optional break to use the washroom and didn't drink water to avoid going to the washroom.
Scores:I got my scores on 3rd September and was really happy to see these. Wasn't expecting to score so well at all.
My take on the exam:I solved my first 10 questions in quant in 14 mins and I felt nervous that I might have got some questions wrong because it can't be that easy. Then I killed some time double checking my next few questions. Still I had 2-3 mins left in the end of quant section.
I felt that every question I got on my gmat quant was a familiar one(maybe because I practised too much quant or because I was having a good day).
Time pattern was same for verbal section.
Resources I used:The only resources I used are the
OG and GMATclub(can't thank you guys enough) and some questions that members of my study group shared(also can't thank those people enough ).
I practised nearly 5000 questions.(3200 are in my
error log plus
OG and some PDFs and veritas question bank).
My scores in mocks were(VP is Veritas Prep):
VP1,2,3: 670/680/690 (not in specific order and the order doesn't matter because I took these in span of 3 days).
VP4: 710
VP5,6: 700,720(taken on same day).
GMATclub mock: 780()aggregate) . This was the closest to my real score.
Official Mock1: 770
Official Mock2: 770
Official Mock3: 750
Official Mock4: 760
In the end, I would like to thank
GMATNinja (for his amazing verbal explanations)
VeritasKarishma (for her quant blogs and explanations, especially her weighted average solving method)
Bunuel(for amazing posts and the quant megethread). He is the most important factor in my quant prep.
bb for providing this amazing platform.
and countless other community members for their contribution in making this platform amazing.
If anyone has any specific questions about my experience or anything else, feel free to PM.