A wonderful GMAT journey:610(Q46/V29) to 720(Q49/V39) thanks to EGMAT

Thank you, Gmat Club

Firstly, I wan to thank all the members of the GMAT club community. I have been a member of GMAT community for 4 years now, but I never imagined that I would be writing for this community one day because my GMAT experience has been challenging, but rewarding at the end. This post is dedicated to Retakers, especially non-natives ones, who want to give up on their dream score or business schools. Please, don’t quit!
My Background
I old a master degree in statistics and another one in financial engineering. I have been working since 2016. In December 2014, I took my first GMAT exam without any serious preparation, but I was very disappointed on the test day because I got 610 (Q46, V29). I was especially disappointed but my Quant score because it was too low for someone with my background (statistics/ quant finance) and I did not know how to justify such a low quant score, even in my optional essays. Thus, I decided to prepare more seriously and to retake the exams in 3 months.
I purchased Gmat Club tests and began to take quant tests, one test every week. My preparation was strongly focused on the Quant section because I thought that raising my Quant score to Q50 or Q51 would help me reach my dream score (700) more easily than attempting to raise my verbal score above V35.This time, I allocated the remaining 2 weeks of my preparation to verbal. However, this strategy was flawed because I did not understand how the GMAT algorithm works. On March 12, 2015, I appeared again for the gmat exam and scored a disappointing 650 (Q50, V28), mainly because my verbal score was very low. I was so disappointed that I decided to postpone my GMAT ambition and to focus on starting my career.
First set of lessons learned:
o If you want to get a good score (>700), you MUST also get good subsection scores, especially in the verbal section.
o It is very important to use official questions and exams wisely. Use them from the middle of your preparation or at the very end. This is especially true for the Official mock exams because their number is very limited (6). In my case, I wasted a lot of official questions and exams because I did not prepare well before taking them. I was repeating the same errors again and again because I thought improvement come only through practice while mastering the fundamentals is much more important
o Quality is much better than Quantity. Thus, pay careful attention to the preparation materials you use, if you don’t want to lose time, energy, and money.

Three years later, in 2018, I decided to restart my GMAT because I had not abandoned my ambition to move to a b-school. Thus, retaking the GMAT was a mandatory step given my low previous score. However, this time, I did not want to lose my time and money for nothing. I read a lot of reviews about the GMAT course providers on the GMAT CLUB. I was attracted by the high number of reviews E-GMAT had received and decided to attend a free GMAT preparation strategy session which changed the perception I had of the Gmat exam. For me, the most important takeaways were:

o GMAT is a test of ABILITY, not JUST a test of accuracy. Gmat test your ability to solve difficult question. The higher the difficulty level of the questions you solve, the higher your sectional score will be. Thus, focus on clearing the fundamentals to build good sectional ABILITIES
o You must adopt a VERY STRUCTURED approach in question solving and, in your preparation, if you don’t want to waste your time.

After attending a few verbal and quant E-GMAT webinars, I finally decided to subscribe to their GMAT ONLINE package. It was the most decisive decision I made during all my GMAT journey. My feedback regarding their platform and its contents are the following:
o Platform presentation and organization: The people at EGMAT have done a very great job because their platform is organized very well. The GMAT PLANNER is a very wonderful tool because it helps you build and/or get an idea of the sets of subsection score required to obtain a given total score. Furthermore, at the beginning and end of each lesson on the platform, the user can take an ABILITY test to get an idea of the evolution of his skills and continue confidently in his preparation. Finally, E-GMAT’s SCHOLARANIUM is a powerful tool that allow the student to take subsection-focused ABILITY tests an get detailed analytics on his/her weaknesses
o Sentence correction: the meaning-based approach of EGMAT has been a life changing concept for me as it helped me tackle the most difficult sentence correction question with confidence. Thanks to this approach, I was able to raise my SC percentile ranking from 63 percent to 86 percent in my last official exam
o Critical Reasoning: Prior to E gmat, the approach I used for CR was very unstructured. I used to guess most of the time. Using E GMAT platform, I was discovered the concept of Pre-thinking which is applicable to any CR question and helped me raise my percentile ranking from 45 to 76 in my last exam.
o Reading comprehension: Prior to E GMAT, I used to lose confidence any time I was faced with a passage out of my comfort zone (Economics) and guessed A LOT. Then, I discovered E-GMAT 7 reading strategies which where very helpful, especially for a non-native English speaker like me. I was able to solve more difficult question and, finally, I raised my reading comprehension percentile ranking from 47 to 83!
o Quantitative section: Overall, E-GMAT quantitative material are of extremely good quality. They are as structured as the verbal material and very similar to what you will get on the actual test. The difficulty level of the question is sometime higher than that of GMATCLUB tests and prepare you for the worst.

Overall, in my opinion, E-GMAT is definitely the best preparation provider for anyone who has a difficult time with GMAT verbal section. The technology behind their platform and the way the platform is organized will help any serious GMAT test takers get 700+ total score. In my case, I went from 650 (V28) to 720 (V39) using only E GMAT material for the verbal section.