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03 Jun 2020, 22:36
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Hi Guys,
I got done with my GMAT today (June 2, 2020) and scored a 770 (Q51, V44, IR8). I owe A LOT to this forum, as it has practically been my primary source for preparation. I’m not someone who has been super active on this website, save for my practice sessions. But I owe my score to this wonderful community and this is my attempt at paying back.
Started at: 700 (Q51, V32) in my first official mock in March. Verbal was obviously where I needed to focus. My background (engineer, currently a business analyst working with big data) served me well in the Quant section.
I started with the Official Guide. Solved timed sets of 15 questions every day, identifying topics that were slowing me down. I would focus on these topics for a few days until I was comfortable with them. After I was done with OG, I started with the GMAT club question bank. Solved 10-15 questions every day. For me, it was important to practice quant every day to stay sharp.
Resources: I used OG-19 and the GMATClub question bank for practice. The questions on GMAT-Club are really good. You just need to use the question bank the right way. Solve questions that have the most kudos. If you find yourself taking a lot of time to solve certain kinds of questions, see if you can find Bunuel in the comments section. In the future, use any tricks he might have employed on those questions
The juggernaut. I had been exposed to second hand accounts of how intimidating GMAT verbal can be to non-native speakers. To be honest, I had underestimated it until I started preparing for GMAT.
My initial attempts at half-assing the questions, focusing on quantity of prep rather than quality, didn’t help much. The scores of my first few mocks were stagnant at ~710. I visited GMAT club looking for a way forward. I came across a popular thread started by one of the moderators (bb/souvik) where they dissected the reasons for a score plateau. They stressed the importance of error analysis and following strategies to deal with verbal as the next steps. For me, these techniques were key.
My structured verbal prep started with SC. I went through Manhattan’s SC guide, which served as my base for SC. I would read a chapter everyday, make notes for important rules, and follow it up with the exercises at the end of each chapter. After I was done with the guide (~ 1 week), I focused on solving questions from the GMAT question bank. My performance during the first 3-4 days was abysmal, I was getting most of the questions wrong. But I made sure to analyze my mistakes so as to not repeat them. After a few days, it was clear how GMAT SC was about a limited set of concepts. Once I was cognizant of this, I could solve SCs with decent accuracy. The most important steps of the strategy I followed for solving SC are:
1. Cutting out the middleman (Manhattan): Try to simplify the sentence as much as you can. This helps you focus on the larger issues of the sentence without getting mired in the details. This skill would prove to be very useful in skimming RC passages later on
2. Re-read the sentence before finalizing: I used to commit a lot of silly mistakes initially. I tackled this by adding an additional step to re-read the sentence with the final option plugged in. If it sounded good to me, I would finalize the option. Hence, if you’ve got a trained ear for sensible English, this will serve as an additional validation step.
For critical reasoning, I went through the powerscore guide. I focused on the chapters for assumptions, weaken/strengthen, and inference. From what I’ve learnt, the key steps to ensure a decent performance on CR are:
1. Training yourself to identify the premise and conclusion. This step is fairly straightforward once you get a hang of it. But this step is also THE most important step, as the answer choices speak to the conclusion in some way. During the final days of my prep, most of the mistakes I committed were because I had incorrectly identified the conclusion
2. Focusing on the conclusion (where applicable): For assumption/weaken/strengthen questions, it is paramount to not lose sight of the conclusion. You are vulnerable to trap answer choices, if you do not have the conclusion at the back of your mind.
3. Pre-thinking: I did not bank a lot on pre-thinking in my strategy to deal with CR, primarily because it would take me a lot of time. However, the few times I have pre-thought, I have been able to sail through CR. Hence, there is definitely some merit in investing the time to develop this skill.
RCs were a tricky bunch to conquer. I’ve had to change strategies a few times before finalizing one. My key takeaways from RC prep are:
1. Maintain a good pace: You should neither read too slow (one of my initial strategies), nor too fast (another one of my initial strategies). By test day, I was averaging 2-3 minutes for short passages, and 4-5 minutes for long passages.
2. Know what parts to rush through: As you keep practicing, you need to develop the skill to identify the sentences you need to skim, and the ones you need to pay extra attention to (use transition keywords to guide you).
3. Pay attention to structure: Try to discern the structure and purpose of each paragraph, how each paragraph is linked to each other. This helped me answer primary-purpose/structure based questions.
Resources for practice: Again, the quality of the questions you solve is very important. Here too, I used OG-19 and the GMATClub question bank. It is very important to choose good sources while searching for questions on GMATclub. Manhattan, Aristotle, Kaplan, etc. provide great questions, ones that are representative of official questions.
I did not set aside any prep time for IR. I felt verbal/quant prep and the practice I got during mocks was sufficient.
For AWA, I followed the Chineseburned AWA guide. I started writing essays (1 per day) when I had about a week left. Initially, I used to have some trouble adhering to the 30 minute time frame. What helped me later was to get done with the intro and conclusion passages on the get go (after brainstorming of course). This strategy allowed me 17-20 minutes to expand on the body of my response. Make sure to use a lot of transition words everywhere. Use concrete examples where possible. And ensure you have at least 4-5 minutes to proof-read your response at the end. Proof-reading is important since it will help you iron out any obvious grammatical/spelling errors you might have introduced while writing your response.
GMAT Club Tests: I got a free 7 day subscription to the GMAT club test pack in March, upon subscribing to their youtube channel. I would do a quant test everyday for 7 days, which helped me overcome a few flaws in my test-taking approach and nail down my pacing for quant.
Experts Global Mocks: These tests are good value for money. They offer 15 mock tests for about $50. Quant questions are excellent. They’re neither too tough to be demoralizing, nor too easy to be taken for granted. However, I found the questions in Verbal to be lacking in quality at times. While RCs were mostly fine, SC/CR questions were poorly written at times. There are way too many sentences that are incorrect because they are ‘awkward’. You’d struggle to wrap your head around their CR explanations at times. Sometimes, you’d come out of a test review having learnt nothing new. Nevertheless, I would rate them an 8/10, because they are very good indicators of what you’d end up scoring on your final GMAT. I scored a 770 on my final mock which I had taken 3 days before D-Day.
Mock Strategy: I started with a GMAT-prep test in March, on which I scored a 700. I would then take an Experts Global test every weekend, thoroughly analysing my mistakes afterwards. After about two months, when I could see my scores stabilizing, I booked my GMAT. With a month to go, I took another GMAT-prep test on which I scored a 750. During the last week, I took a mock every 3 days, primarily to nail my pacing down (as my verbal scores were still erratic). I would not recommend taking mocks this frequently, unless you’re done with the learning phase of your prep.
I avoided any practice on the day before the exam. I just reviewed my SC notes, the common errors I made, and some math shortcuts. Other than that, I just relaxed. I picked up one of my favourite series, Narcos, and started binging. I also paid attention to my diet, eating light.
On the morning of the test day (my test was scheduled for 12pm), I solved a set of 15 questions from the GMAT-prep starter kit to warm up. Had a cup of green tea before I started for the center. I reached an hour early, and the administrator offered to let me take the test right then. I obliged and started my test. It took me a while to get used to the anxiety. But things went alright. There were no nasty surprises from GMAT. And when the 770 showed up at the end, I heaved the hugest sigh of relief.
These 3 months have been a period of great learning for me. I used to get demoralized at times due to my mock scores. But sticking to the strategy and constant practice helped me gain some stability towards the end. From what I’ve learnt, if I have to offer you guys any takeaways, they would be:
- Focus of quality of prep, rather than quantity
o Error analysis is of utmost importance. It would be a sin to keep making the same mistakes over and over again
o Follow good strategies to deal with Verbal, strategies that work for YOU
- GMAT Verbal tests only a limited set of concepts. As you practice and analyze your errors, you’ll start realizing this
- Stay grounded
. Do not get carried away by good scores in mocks. Stick to your strategies at all times. Cutting corners kills your score (as a certain super-tutor puts it 
)
- Stay calm. Tough times don’t last, but tough people do. GMAT allows multiple attempts. So try not to wear yourself out with anxiety during the test, there’s always another chance
Once again, I would like to thank GMAT club. You guys are doing god’s work here. I’m sure most of us would owe at least 30 points to this community.
To all the future test takers, good luck! I hope you do well on your GMAT, as well as your applications
. Cheers!
I got done with my GMAT today (June 2, 2020) and scored a 770 (Q51, V44, IR8). I owe A LOT to this forum, as it has practically been my primary source for preparation. I’m not someone who has been super active on this website, save for my practice sessions. But I owe my score to this wonderful community and this is my attempt at paying back.
Started at: 700 (Q51, V32) in my first official mock in March. Verbal was obviously where I needed to focus. My background (engineer, currently a business analyst working with big data) served me well in the Quant section.
Quant:
I started with the Official Guide. Solved timed sets of 15 questions every day, identifying topics that were slowing me down. I would focus on these topics for a few days until I was comfortable with them. After I was done with OG, I started with the GMAT club question bank. Solved 10-15 questions every day. For me, it was important to practice quant every day to stay sharp.
Resources: I used OG-19 and the GMATClub question bank for practice. The questions on GMAT-Club are really good. You just need to use the question bank the right way. Solve questions that have the most kudos. If you find yourself taking a lot of time to solve certain kinds of questions, see if you can find Bunuel in the comments section. In the future, use any tricks he might have employed on those questions
Verbal:
The juggernaut. I had been exposed to second hand accounts of how intimidating GMAT verbal can be to non-native speakers. To be honest, I had underestimated it until I started preparing for GMAT.
My initial attempts at half-assing the questions, focusing on quantity of prep rather than quality, didn’t help much. The scores of my first few mocks were stagnant at ~710. I visited GMAT club looking for a way forward. I came across a popular thread started by one of the moderators (bb/souvik) where they dissected the reasons for a score plateau. They stressed the importance of error analysis and following strategies to deal with verbal as the next steps. For me, these techniques were key.
Sentence Correction:
My structured verbal prep started with SC. I went through Manhattan’s SC guide, which served as my base for SC. I would read a chapter everyday, make notes for important rules, and follow it up with the exercises at the end of each chapter. After I was done with the guide (~ 1 week), I focused on solving questions from the GMAT question bank. My performance during the first 3-4 days was abysmal, I was getting most of the questions wrong. But I made sure to analyze my mistakes so as to not repeat them. After a few days, it was clear how GMAT SC was about a limited set of concepts. Once I was cognizant of this, I could solve SCs with decent accuracy. The most important steps of the strategy I followed for solving SC are:
1. Cutting out the middleman (Manhattan): Try to simplify the sentence as much as you can. This helps you focus on the larger issues of the sentence without getting mired in the details. This skill would prove to be very useful in skimming RC passages later on
2. Re-read the sentence before finalizing: I used to commit a lot of silly mistakes initially. I tackled this by adding an additional step to re-read the sentence with the final option plugged in. If it sounded good to me, I would finalize the option. Hence, if you’ve got a trained ear for sensible English, this will serve as an additional validation step.
Critical Reasoning:
For critical reasoning, I went through the powerscore guide. I focused on the chapters for assumptions, weaken/strengthen, and inference. From what I’ve learnt, the key steps to ensure a decent performance on CR are:
1. Training yourself to identify the premise and conclusion. This step is fairly straightforward once you get a hang of it. But this step is also THE most important step, as the answer choices speak to the conclusion in some way. During the final days of my prep, most of the mistakes I committed were because I had incorrectly identified the conclusion
2. Focusing on the conclusion (where applicable): For assumption/weaken/strengthen questions, it is paramount to not lose sight of the conclusion. You are vulnerable to trap answer choices, if you do not have the conclusion at the back of your mind.
3. Pre-thinking: I did not bank a lot on pre-thinking in my strategy to deal with CR, primarily because it would take me a lot of time. However, the few times I have pre-thought, I have been able to sail through CR. Hence, there is definitely some merit in investing the time to develop this skill.
Reading Comprehension:
RCs were a tricky bunch to conquer. I’ve had to change strategies a few times before finalizing one. My key takeaways from RC prep are:
1. Maintain a good pace: You should neither read too slow (one of my initial strategies), nor too fast (another one of my initial strategies). By test day, I was averaging 2-3 minutes for short passages, and 4-5 minutes for long passages.
2. Know what parts to rush through: As you keep practicing, you need to develop the skill to identify the sentences you need to skim, and the ones you need to pay extra attention to (use transition keywords to guide you).
3. Pay attention to structure: Try to discern the structure and purpose of each paragraph, how each paragraph is linked to each other. This helped me answer primary-purpose/structure based questions.
Resources for practice: Again, the quality of the questions you solve is very important. Here too, I used OG-19 and the GMATClub question bank. It is very important to choose good sources while searching for questions on GMATclub. Manhattan, Aristotle, Kaplan, etc. provide great questions, ones that are representative of official questions.
AWA & IR:
I did not set aside any prep time for IR. I felt verbal/quant prep and the practice I got during mocks was sufficient.
For AWA, I followed the Chineseburned AWA guide. I started writing essays (1 per day) when I had about a week left. Initially, I used to have some trouble adhering to the 30 minute time frame. What helped me later was to get done with the intro and conclusion passages on the get go (after brainstorming of course). This strategy allowed me 17-20 minutes to expand on the body of my response. Make sure to use a lot of transition words everywhere. Use concrete examples where possible. And ensure you have at least 4-5 minutes to proof-read your response at the end. Proof-reading is important since it will help you iron out any obvious grammatical/spelling errors you might have introduced while writing your response.
Mocks:
GMAT Club Tests: I got a free 7 day subscription to the GMAT club test pack in March, upon subscribing to their youtube channel. I would do a quant test everyday for 7 days, which helped me overcome a few flaws in my test-taking approach and nail down my pacing for quant.
Experts Global Mocks: These tests are good value for money. They offer 15 mock tests for about $50. Quant questions are excellent. They’re neither too tough to be demoralizing, nor too easy to be taken for granted. However, I found the questions in Verbal to be lacking in quality at times. While RCs were mostly fine, SC/CR questions were poorly written at times. There are way too many sentences that are incorrect because they are ‘awkward’. You’d struggle to wrap your head around their CR explanations at times. Sometimes, you’d come out of a test review having learnt nothing new. Nevertheless, I would rate them an 8/10, because they are very good indicators of what you’d end up scoring on your final GMAT. I scored a 770 on my final mock which I had taken 3 days before D-Day.
Mock Strategy: I started with a GMAT-prep test in March, on which I scored a 700. I would then take an Experts Global test every weekend, thoroughly analysing my mistakes afterwards. After about two months, when I could see my scores stabilizing, I booked my GMAT. With a month to go, I took another GMAT-prep test on which I scored a 750. During the last week, I took a mock every 3 days, primarily to nail my pacing down (as my verbal scores were still erratic). I would not recommend taking mocks this frequently, unless you’re done with the learning phase of your prep.
Test day:
I avoided any practice on the day before the exam. I just reviewed my SC notes, the common errors I made, and some math shortcuts. Other than that, I just relaxed. I picked up one of my favourite series, Narcos, and started binging. I also paid attention to my diet, eating light.
On the morning of the test day (my test was scheduled for 12pm), I solved a set of 15 questions from the GMAT-prep starter kit to warm up. Had a cup of green tea before I started for the center. I reached an hour early, and the administrator offered to let me take the test right then. I obliged and started my test. It took me a while to get used to the anxiety. But things went alright. There were no nasty surprises from GMAT. And when the 770 showed up at the end, I heaved the hugest sigh of relief.
These 3 months have been a period of great learning for me. I used to get demoralized at times due to my mock scores. But sticking to the strategy and constant practice helped me gain some stability towards the end. From what I’ve learnt, if I have to offer you guys any takeaways, they would be:
- Focus of quality of prep, rather than quantity
o Error analysis is of utmost importance. It would be a sin to keep making the same mistakes over and over again
o Follow good strategies to deal with Verbal, strategies that work for YOU
- GMAT Verbal tests only a limited set of concepts. As you practice and analyze your errors, you’ll start realizing this
- Stay grounded
. Do not get carried away by good scores in mocks. Stick to your strategies at all times. Cutting corners kills your score (as a certain super-tutor puts it )- Stay calm. Tough times don’t last, but tough people do. GMAT allows multiple attempts. So try not to wear yourself out with anxiety during the test, there’s always another chance
Once again, I would like to thank GMAT club. You guys are doing god’s work here. I’m sure most of us would owe at least 30 points to this community.
To all the future test takers, good luck! I hope you do well on your GMAT, as well as your applications
. Cheers! 
03 Jun 2020, 22:46
Kudos
Bookmarks
Phew... just 70 points of improvement 
I am KIDDING! Wow! Awesome score! Congratulations! Where did you take the offline test if you don't mind me asking? Which country? It seems things are opening up but I am just wondering 
Very impressive job! 770 is 99th percentile and high up there, so you are probably one of 500 people who will ever score that high. Seems your focus was only on verbal and seems you have started quite well off (at 700... which is nice. I started at 540
and it was a long climb up the hill). Happy to hear you have been able to pull it off!
BB
I am KIDDING! Wow! Awesome score! Congratulations! Where did you take the offline test if you don't mind me asking? Which country? It seems things are opening up but I am just wondering Very impressive job! 770 is 99th percentile and high up there, so you are probably one of 500 people who will ever score that high. Seems your focus was only on verbal and seems you have started quite well off (at 700... which is nice. I started at 540
and it was a long climb up the hill). Happy to hear you have been able to pull it off!BB
03 Jun 2020, 23:04
Kudos
Bookmarks
bb
Hey, thanks a lot BB.
I took my test in Bangalore, India. In India, we came out of a nationwide lock-down during mid-May, except for some containment zones that are still subject to restrictions. So test centers have been allowed to function as usual. I woke up to a scare on the day before the exam, when I learnt that both my place of residence and the test center location were newly introduced to the list of containment zones
. But fortunately, my test center was still operating on the day of my exam . That said, the testing experience was nothing out of the ordinary, even though I was made to wear a face-mask throughout the exam.
