RakshithTN wrote:
I took my GMAT online exam today and had a terrible experience overall. I'll try to briefly describe my preparation, mocks, and exam day.
Let me start off with the exam day experience:
To begin with, at the start of the day MBA.com website was running very slow. I have been monitoring my internet bandwidth for over a week it has been clocking 65-70 MBPS consistently, and it was no different today. I connected using a LAN cable to ensure that everything would go smooth on the exam day. I could log in only after 25 min after I started trying. Although, this caused only an 8 min delay from the scheduled time.
The Procter was super friendly and patient with the entire screening process. But, his voice was very unclear and there was s lot of disturbance in his voice (he said that he had an issue with the microphone). This necessitated me to listen to his voice extra carefully.
I chose Quant-Verbal-IR-AWA as my section order. I would like to brief through all the sections so that it could help the rest to plan for uncertainties during online exam.
Quant:
Firstly, I had to click 2-3 times to select an answer choice. And had to do the same to proceed to the next question (it took at least 5-10 sec for the pop-up to even get displayed, and it counted!!). While answering the 8th question, I clicked twice on the answer option and the portal crashed! I started chatting using the Expect chat option. After 5 min. the Procter contacted me and re-established the test. Fortunately, it resumed.
I felt that the Quant section was relatively harder (time-consuming) compared to all the mocks I have attempted. Also, the lag for selecting the answer option persisted adding to my misery. I was really disappointed with the way I performed in Quant, considering that it was my strength.
Verbal:
My demoralized state got dragged into the Verbal section as well. The lag didn't just leave me at the quant section!!!
I knew that I was performing abysmally. Had to pull myself really hard to complete the section.
IR:
After a shocker in my 6th Official mock(scored a 1 of 8!), I practiced the Official questions from the IR pack. And yeah, it did prove to be quite useful.
The lag still persisted!!
AWA:
This section was really frustrating. Whatever I typed wasn't getting displayed on many occasions. It took at least 20sec to even see what I was typing. I lost 5-7min because of this. So, had to cut short my essay to finish it in time
Final score:
Quant: 47!!!
Verbal: 24!!!
IR: 7!!!
I sat dumbstruck for at least 10min trying to decipher how I even ended up with that score, considering all the effort I had put in for this day.
Preparation
I started preparing for GMAT in early December last year. Initially, I relied on self-study. GMATclub forum has been ever useful.
I took few mocks on GMATclub (both verbal and quant), 2 Veritas mocks, 1
Manhattan prep mock; I was scoring Q(45-49) V(33-38) I realized that I needed a structured approach to push through the 700 barrier.
1st official Mock (May 2021): 570 (Q47 V26)
Then, I found
TargetTestPrep. The prep material is really extensive for both Quant and Verbal. I was kicking in 5-7 hours every day. In spite of hectic work schedules. I could see I was consistently improving my Quant and Verbal skills.
I took 5 mocks with a gap of 1 week between each mock. And I reviewed each of them. Found my weak areas and worked on the strategy as well.
2nd Official mock: 680 (Q50 V30)
3rd Official mock: 680(Q50 V30)
4th Official mock: 640 (Q48 V31)
5th Official Mock: 680 (Q49 V34)
6th Official Mock (3 days before my exam date): 660 (Q49 V31)
And my real exam score was completely unexpected.
Right now my thoughts are lingering in the blue. What my approach should be from here? My confidence has just taken for a toss. And the R1 applications are just around the corner for most of my target schools
Any suggestions will be really helpful.
I'm planning to retake the GMAT exam, but not an online exam again for sure!
And thanks for your patience and time to read till here.
Hi RakshithTN,
Sorry to hear that your test day did not go as planned. I understand how disappointing and demoralizing it would be. But don't be disheartened. Let me help you.
For scoring 700 and above, you need to get the easy medium questions right as GMAT test is adaptive in nature. You can afford making mistakes only in the later half of the Section, not in the beginning. You have to make the GMAT algorithm serve you difficult questions and get them right. For that, being conceptually clear on all topics is really vital. Not only this, you have to be good with application of concepts because
GMAT is a test of application of concepts.
You appear to have a solid command in case of Quant. However, you are not on the right path for Verbal prep.
Your verbal score clearly indicates there are many conceptual gaps and you may need to start from scratch, revisit the concepts and get a clear understanding of them before you solve the questions. Verbal questions on GMAT are very tricky. Let me help you with the right way to approach your Verbal Prep.
How to Ace your Verbal Prep?
For GMAT Verbal, it is very important that you follow the
right methodology and the
logical approach. Your focus has to be on
eliminating four incorrect choices rather than choosing the right one. The key is to develop a solid understanding of the concepts that are typically tested on the GMAT and master the process skills that are required to solve GMAT questions. Only then, you will be able to smartly avoid the traps set by the test makers.
Before you start learning, it's important to
understand what is actually tested using the questions. Each module in Verbal (SC, CR and RC) has to be approached in a different way. For example, before you start learning the concepts of SC, you need to understand that SC questions on GMAT test your ability to convey the right meaning without any ambiguity. So, it's important to approach them from a meaning stand-point. You might have often come across answer choices which are both grammatically correct and convey a logical meaning but are indeed incorrect because they do not convey the intended meaning. So, the process to approach SC questions is to:
• Comprehend the original meaning of the sentence
• Identify errors if any (both grammatical and meaning wise)
• Eliminate answer choices which either are grammatically incorrect or do not convey the intended meaning
You can go through the link below to understand the process in a better way:
Also, improving in SC alone won’t fetch you the desired score. You need to prepare for RC and CR as well in a structured and efficient manner. You have to follow a methodical and systematic approach while solving the questions in order to work on your accuracy and increase your score. For example,
• In CR, you have to understand the argument, identify the premise and the conclusion and then pre-think the answer before looking at the solutions.
• In RC, you need to have the right reading strategies to understand the inferences which are not directly stated in the passage.
I’d recommend you to
follow this order for the verbal part - SC->CR-RC. The reason for this is very specific. Each question type on the GMAT is testing a specific skill. SC tests your comprehension skills. CR tests comprehension & analytical skills. Finally, RC builds on the previous two skills and also tests your ability to be able to grasp the central point of the passage i.e. Your inferential skills. Thus, when you learn in this order, it's much more effective.
The importance of using a standard resource:
The only method to make sure that you invest your time, money and effort in an effective way is to use a standard resource which teaches you the concepts, strategies and also helps you work on your weaker areas. Studying using
OG or a few random resources might help you to solve GMAT like questions but I’m afraid that they won’t be able to help you much from a strategy perspective.
I would suggest you to go for some standard course for your Verbal preparation at least which can help you prepare in a structured and efficient manner thereby increasing your productivity. It’s always better to spare some more time on your preparation until you are ready instead of missing out on your dream colleges/ b-schools in hurry.
GMATWhiz helps you with all these things as we follow a
structured and methodical way of teaching things, which makes the learning process simpler and efficient. It also helps you to develop an understanding of the test maker’s intention behind asking the question. It uses an
AI powered learning platform to provide you with
real time improvement modules after every practice quiz. It provides you with
additional concept videos and practise quizzes which helps you overcome your weaker areas in a specific topic right away without having to put in additional effort to identify your weaker areas.
You can check out
GMATWhiz and go for its Verbal Prep Course.
Here’s a link to our free trial –
https://learn.gmatwhiz.com/?page=signup You can check out the verified reviews here:
https://gmatclub.com/reviews/gmatwhiz-345345722?fl=menu Hope this helped and feel free to contact if you have any further queries.
You can always write back to me here or the better way would be to connect over a call and have a discussion. You can schedule a free consultation call using the below link.
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06 Sep 2021, 08:09
