Abhimahna's GMAT Story - Everything happens for a reason. :)

Hey Guys,

Before I write anything I want to thank the following people:

1. bb : You owe great parties from me. You are THE BEST. I love the way you always help everyone.

2. GMATNinja: Sir, Although we met at the very last moment of my preparation, your articles actually helped me fill loopholes in my knowledge. Also, I love to answer the questions directed to you. Getting an appreciation from you actually motivated me a lot.

3. Bunuel : You are the champion Sir. You know you are helping millions of people to start a great life.

4. souvik101990: Bro, thanks a lot for helping me out during the last few days. Your RC strategy helped me a lot. You are THE MAN.

Okay, so I will try to brief a couple of things about myself to be able to support the subject of this post. But my main aim is to elaborate on how I improved my verbal from V21 to V40.

I am like any typical Indian Male Engineer who would give CAT (Indian Management Entrance Exam) to get into a top Indian bschool during college years. Okay, the result was 96 percentile. But unfortunately, I didn't get the school of my choice and one of my friends got into my dream school with just 88 percentile. Reason: I am from General Quota and he was not.

I thought of preparing for it again the next year but suddenly I got into a very good company (It's below 10 in fortune 500). I was excited, "Ohh man, I got into a great US company. I will go to the US soon. ". My plans to give CAT lost somewhere and I started working very hard in the company. Then my manager sent my name for H1B Visa. Result: My H1B Visa got rejected in April 2015. I was so excited to go to the USA but my Visa rejection screwed up everything. I had only one thing in mind," Everything happens for a reason". (I used to ask myself what is Good in this? But my brain always said the same thing, "Dude, calm down. Something good will happen".

Okay, what's next? Go for Higher Studies. Step: Let's start working on GMAT. I gave my first ETS mock and ended up with 540 (Q37 and V20). Yes, that was my performance when I didn't know anything about GMAT.

I joined Jamboree. BIG Mistake of my life. Complete wastage of money. They took lots of money but at the end result was zero. Quant was still good(maybe because I have been a topper in Maths since childhood, Family Genes you know!! ) but verbal was nowhere what is tested on GMAT. Some of the rules they gave were even wrong. I am sorry guys, but this is what I felt. At the same time, my friend asked me to join egmat verbal. Although I won't say they are bad, they might be good for people out there. Actually they are good if you want to get into the study mode. It may be good to help you reach above V30.

But again that didn’t work for me. By that time, I knew that it is me who has to put in the effort. No one in this world can help unless I multiply my efforts by 10 times and make my own strategies. I started solving GMATClub Quant questions daily. Do you know what once I solved 150+ questions on a single day? I know this is strange but this really helped me to remain at 50 even after so many months. I did almost all the questions of Bunuel and any question that I got in my email.

Yes, Quant needs lotssss of practice. I gave GMAT and scored Q50 and V21. Okay, Quant reached my goal but verbal was far behind.

Then again my brain said "Come on! everything happens for a good reason.". I again started working on GMAT a couple of months later. I joined Magoosh. I looked at their videos and tried to find new strategies. They were good. No doubt. But poor me, I ended up with Q50 and V32. Okay, my quant was the same but verbal saw some improvement. But it was not enough for me. I am a poor Indian IT Male :'(

Later, I found that I was spending way too much time for Quant but only 1/4 of that time to verbal every time. Please don't do this mistake. If you are weak in something, work on it more. Now, round 2 applications were on my head and I tried to apply to a couple of colleges. As usual, my aim was to get into top schools, else don't go.

I screwed up everything there for multiple reasons: 1. BAD demographic area 2. Round 2. 3. Low GMAT 4. 1 year less experienced than the average.

Fine, I learned a lot many things from these experiences and continued my process of getting a higher score. By this time, I got so much experienced that I don't really need any online course to get the knowledge. All I did was stopped studying for Quant at all. I knew that even if I don't do Quant(Please don't do this if you are not a Quant-Like person) , I can get whatever score I want. I focused completely on verbal. I followed everything I have written down(end of the post) and booked my exam. I ended up with Q50 V35. I was like what the hell is going on. I was going too slow, very calm, and completely focused but still the same range?? I requested my ESR. I found a very horrible thing:

First 3 sections my percentage of correct was more than 85 but the last section was just 25. This was not because I was rushing. It was because when I was at question 30, I wanted to go to the washroom because I had taken lots of water before that. I was both crying and laughing at myself. :-D

Now, I practiced a bit more and then booked my exam on 5th Sept. I found the nearest date was 8th Sept at 5 p.m. I booked it and this time while avoiding all the mistakes I did in the past, I gave my best shot. When I saw the V40, I was on the stars. Quant didn't decrease nor improve. Anyways, I know I always end up doing 3-4 super silly mistakes but I am happy now. I talked to bb first. He congratulated me. Then I tried reaching out to souvik101990 (he was watching a movie but later congratulated me. ) and then mihir0710 (He also congratulated me).

Now, the question is what good thing happened? My brain said " Look, you got V40 dude. This is way above you would have ever thought. You did it and now focus on your apps. Let's target the school you always wanted." My fingers are crossed now.

Here are a couple of strategies I am gonna share:

GMATClub is THE BEST resource for Gmat Quant and Verbal.

How to make the best use of GMATClub?

How to use Error Logs effectively?

POE can save your life

Process of Elimination is the key to success in GMAT Verbal especially for non-natives.

Q: What is the POE? Is abhimahna saying reject the options which you *think* are incorrect?

A: No friend, I never meant so. Eliminate only if you are 100% sure it is wrong. In case you don't know why a particular option is incorrect or you are just 80% sure it's incorrect, PLEASE Don’t cross it out.

Q: Okay, I ended up marking 3 out with full confidence but I am not sure about the two options. I always end up marking the wrong one out of the two options left.

A: Guys, whenever you are stuck between two options, it means you have eliminated the easy options now here comes the true battle. All you need to do is get extremely focused now and Read TOOOO Slowly now.

If you rush, you will end up marking it wrong.

I remember, I met a guy who said," Hey I spent a lot of time in getting the 3 incorrect out, but I simply rushed through the two and marked the incorrect one.".

My response: Oh crap, you should have been slower when you were doing those two options.

RC Section:

1. Read Slowly. Very Slowly. TOO Slowly.

2. Make the following table and start making very brief notes.



souvik101990 , I took reference of your image.

3. If you don't know what a particular sentence is saying, please don't move to the next one. This way you won't end up understanding exactly what the passage is saying.

4. Ok Man, what if that sentence is difficult to understand?

Understand the structure of that sentence. What is the Subject, what is the verb, and what all are the modifiers?
Mostly, subject and verb are toooo away from each other that we end up getting confused. Understanding the structure would really help you improve your RC.

5. Ohh, I know what the passage is saying but 50%, or maybe 75%. I don't know.

STOP THIS. If you don't know what exactly the passage is saying, don't try to hit questions.
Most probably you would end up getting inference type questions wrong.

6. Practice 3 RCs a day. Make it your Habit. In case you don't have time to do other things on a particular day, make sure RC MUST be done.

7. Forget about Non-Official Material. The only material I like THE most after official is Manhattan.

My biggest mistake was I never gave much attention to RCs. I am telling you Guys, if you improve your RC at the beginning of your preparation, you won't take much time to improve your verbal.

Otherwise, RC won't let you score high easily. Take my words very seriously.

I remember I got an RC passage on the exam that was way too difficult for me to comprehend. I had two options: 1) Go to the questions directly. 2) Stop there and spend some time understanding the structure. I did the latter and finally was able to understand it completely.

CR Section:

CR has always been my strongest. Reason: Am I born with the right CR skills? NO. The true reason is that I followed the right strategies since day 1.

Okay, what are those strategies:

1. Read the question stem clearly please.

2. Read SLOWLY. Understand what the author is trying to say. Consider that you need to explain what you have read in that paragraph to someone else. You have only one chance to read it.

What would you do? You will read it very slowly such that you get the meaning of the argument properly.

Now: If the argument is about assumption, strengthen, weaken: Ask yourself two questions:

1. What is the author saying? I mean what is the conclusion.
2. On what basis did he say so?

Then try to pre-think something and start doing POE.

Again, I am not gonna reject any option unless I am 100% sure.

SC Section:

I made SC my habit. I got so obsessed with SC rules that whenever I hear anything wrong, I used to feel like "Let's kill this person. How can he/she use the wrong usage?".

A secret to share: My manager also uses the wrong English in meetings. He always say "whether or not", "reason why", "and also", etc. I am like what the hell.

How can you be wrong? You don't know this is against the rules of the GMAC world. :-D Unfortunately, I can't say anything to him else it will change my life. :-D

I know I have developed a bad habit, but I can't help it. Honestly, I have to stop watching such things otherwise people would make fun of me now.

I would say get comfortable with Basic SC rules and then do the right practice. Again READ slowly and try to do POE and then go with the meaning.

My process was:

1. Read the sentence slowly and try to comprehend the meaning.
2. Once done, quickly check the splits (as Magoosh Says) and eliminate if you can. (You must be 100% sure)
3. Work on the pending options and try to understand what the difference is and which is changing the meaning.

Meaning change is not allowed unless you don’t have the right option with the correct meaning.

Don't do questions from ANY sources. Stick to a few ones only.

Quant:

I created my own strategy for quant since the beginning. I named it a Decoding strategy.

What it means is to decode the maximum information from each word you read and simplify it. It can change your life. It did for me.

Let me know in case you have any specific questions. I would be happy to expand my debrief further. :-D