My background; Indian male, non-engineering
2017. The first time I gave my GMAT, I had everything planned out, what to study, where to study from, how much I should study etc. I had a decent job that allowed me to come back from office by 6, I would start studying around 6:30 and would go on till 10 everyday. I did that for about 2 months, gave I think 6-7 mocks, scored somewhere between 690-730 in each (my inconsistency itself should have been an indication of not performing well) and when the day came, I scored 680. I had even bought Veritas practice tests I think. Studied the
OG, Kaplan etc. but I did not score well. Its only when I started studying the second time that I realized my mistakes. I was so shattered that I did not even think about giving it another go. I had always hated tests like GMAT/GRE because my English is not that great (as you would have realized in this post as well).
But I knew I had to give it again.
2019. This time things were different. I was in a consulting job, clocking 80 hr work weeks week after another and with no time for anything else whatsoever. However, I knew I had to pull up my socks and strike GMAT off my list. I reached out to a few of my friends and they unequivocally suggested gmatclub as one of the best resources for GMAT (which was surprising because I did not even take gmat club seriously back in 2017, I barely opened it once, looked at the UI and said I will probably go in for something more polished like veritas / kaplan. Imagine.) And these are the friends who I hold in high regard and scored well in GMAT so I thought why not give it a go.
Mistake last time - Thought I could do it all by myself and research everything off the internet.
Correction this time - Asked for help.
I started to study for gmat through gmatclub.. I would just open up any topic and start reading and solving question. Meanwhile I also simultaneously started preparing from other resources. This continued for about one and half months (jan-feb 19) where I would just randomly keep reading from a book and solve some questions. I did this because I thought let me first just get used to studying and then I will go in full throttle mode once I am comfortable. However, I started gmat at a time when I was between projects and soon I couldn't keep up with the work load. I would be so tired from work that I just gave up. So much that i almost gave up on my dream of mba because of gmat.!
However, I did couple of good things even in these 2 months of useless prep. Firstly, I started to read books on the sidelines and posted on instagram whenever I finished a book and would write two lines about how I felt about the book (all blame the internet). How it helped me was to keep myself accountable to my group of friends at least and I would at least keep up the good habit of reading books.
Mistake last time - thought of the english section as just something that you have to do for the exam
Correction - invest in myself for the long term (which has some benefits in the short term; faster reading and slightly improved vocabulary)
Secondly, this time when I was prepping, I told two of my closest friends that I was preparing for gmat. Again, this was more for keeping myself accountable to someone. And I am glad that I told these folks because they would ask me once a month or something "how is gmat going" and it is because of one of these messages only that I started studying again for the exam. A lot of time what we do is we make the entire process so secretive that we just think about the exam and nothing else. Which is exactly what I had done in 2017. I used to come back from office and lock the door and just casually tell friends that I was just studying for time pass. This time around I told a select few who would not only help me but also support me in my bad days as I found later.
Mistake last time - Not involving anyone
Correction - Told a couple of close friends to keep myself in check
And after one of these messages from my friend sometime in end of march I think, I thought to myself that I HAVE to get back in the game no matter what. I started preparing again but this time with a plan. Even when I was preparing for the first time, I really like the gmat club time feature. it would give me how i was performing (my education is statistics so I loved numbers), how long I would take, performance by section and everything. I wasn't sure how much I should study this time because clearly plans did not work the last time. I spoke to my friends again to get their advice. The only advice which they gave was - "You will know it in your heart when you are prepared. You will feel that high when you are preparing and just give it within a week". I knew this feeling. I had prepared for competitive exams in the past and I knew exactly what they were talking about. I decided that I wont fix a date just as of yet and decide later when I feel the time is right.
Mistake last time - Confining myself to a fixed start date for studying and the exam date
Correction - Have faith in yourself and being honest about it
Soon I started studying. My schedule was actually very simple and not by design, because of my work schedule I really could find time actually. But I made a few commitments
- I would study EVERYDAY no matter what
- I would be honest to myself as to why I got any question right or wrong
Resources:I chose gmat club as my ONLY study resource. I would start by solving the daily practice questions. (gmatclub gives you a total of 9 questions everyday based on your performance if you use the timer to answer the questions). Everyday, I would solve those 9 questions and then pull up some more questions from the website itself. They in fact tailor the questions just for you according to your skill level in each topic! You can check out the difficulty level of the questions and I could see the level of recommended questions going up over time!
Plan:I started small, I actually started with just solving those 9 daily personalized questions, increased slowly by waves (if i can classify them as waves)
wave 1: 9 questions each day (4-5 quant, 4-5 verbal)
https://gmatclub.com/forum/ucp.php?i=er ... _questionswave 2: 25 questions (5 questions from each section; CR, SC, RC, PS, DS)
wave 3: half a paper every day (15 quant, 2 RC, 5 CR, 5 SC)
The best part of this exercise was that I could see my performance getting better over time (thanks to gmatclub resources, timer and
error log features). Sure I had bad days when I couldnt keep up to my target for number of questions but I would at least solve the daily questions sent everyday from gmatclub. EVen if it meant that I am solving those questions 2am in the night after work, I would still do it. Hell, I have even solved those 9 questions at 1am while being on client sites). I would also spend time reviewing my answers, if if there were right, I would go option by option and understand why they were right or wrong.
Mistake last time: Complacency
Correction - Dedication and hard work (Sorry, there are no shortcuts)
In a nutshell, I had put all my faith onto this platform not only because my friends had told me, but because it felt right. I could see it helping me grown over time and there was an amazing community who would post all the wonderful things.! Soon after practicing for about 5-6 weeks I felt that this was the time. I enrolled for the exam for a date 2 weeks later, I just gave 2 mocks in this entire period (both the official practice tests and I scored 770 and 750) and I gave the exam and (with a little of bit of luck) scored 750 (Q51 V40) It was my happiest day in a while and I loved every bit of it.
I hope this helps someone.! Even if this help one person I think my job here is done. My best wishes to all the best to all the applicants.
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22 Jun 2019, 10:43
