So I took GMAT exam today and scored 770, I will outline my road to 770 + my rationale for retaking the exam.
When I started preparing, I went through all manhattan guides (w/o
advanced quant) and without much practicing (0 real problems solved, only
mgmat problem sets which are in the guides) Scored 710 on official prep exam (38V, 49Q).
After that I went through
og 2020, but I had to take off 6 months from gmat, I renewed my studies this October (late oct, start of Nov), I went through the
OG 2020 again and took second official mock, scoring 730 (39V and 50Q).
My main problem always was and remains SC, I read everything about it, went through Manhattan guide several times, took
e-gmat course (which I dislike) watched
GMATNinja videos (Made by charles, whom I adore
) and went through
TTP SC module (I liked
TTP, never used for quant though).
Still, SC remains my weakest point, I am non-native, English isnt even the first foreign language to me, just 2nd.
After second mock, I almost exclusively used official MBA.com products, I purchased the biggest bundle there with every problem, including paper tests (which I loved) and solved every single official problem out there apart from IR (which I never practiced, even omitted in 4 mock exams)
In total I solved about 3500 official problems - About 1500
OG 2020 bundle + about 500 old questions from old OGs, + Gmatprep 2 question packs totalling about 900 questions, plus 9 paper tests each containing about 100-104 questions (+900) + 6 official mocks.
I went though hard problems and problems which I had marked several times. I dedicated most of the prep time to SC, about 60% of total gmat preparation went to SC, less than 1% went to AWA and IR.
I took 4 exams (2-6) in february scoring 770, 800, 770, 780 - in that order.
I was afraid that the real exam would be much harder, especially quant, which is a LIE, please don't listen to the people who say things like ( I scored 800 on mocks but got 560 on the real thing) maybe they cheated on their mocks, maybe they went untimed, who knows, thats a big BS that in-person real tests are harder than the mocks.
I was so stressed because i thought, despite my spectacular mock results, I would only get suboptimal score.
The exam went well, but as always, I had to guess like 5 SC questions (down to 2 options) and made several silly mistakes. I am ordering ESR and will attach later.
During quant part, I had to go to the toilet, (if you are not accustomed to caffeine and you intake it on the test day, you will drink lots of water and will have the same problem, I do not drink coffee usually, but wanted to increase my alertness and thats why i did it, but it backfired) so I lost about 2 minutes and had to guess 35th question because of that.
I feel that I can do better, I was not in an optimal shape today, I am planning to register for another one in 16 days.
Acknowledgments: First and the foremost, I want to thank Charles Bibilos, the legend,
GMATNinja, This guy is extremelly helpful and declined to take me as a student saying: " I do not think we will be able to provide much value, you scored 800 in a mock, so better use that money to retake later if neede". I mean, how cool is that? Do you know many people who will decline getting paid and prioritize your interests?
If you plan to get a private tutor I am firm in my beliefs that Charles is one of the best tutors out there, not just because of his spectacular knowledge and teaching style, but because of his non-comercial, value-oriented attitude.
I would also like to acknowledge
TTP, although I never used it for quant (my Q score was 49 from the very start and
TTP seems too exhausting) I loved their SC section. At first, I was put off by their aggressive marketing on reddit, when Scott replied to every single post and often suggested his product, but
TTP turned out to be a spectacular product. So if you are like me, don't get biased cause of aggressive marketing (there was one RC official articel about the phenomena
) and purchase it without doubt.
I would also thank
bb, who often was the very first to address my concerns on the forum. How cool is it that the founder of the business spends his personal time to answer your questions when you are just another registered user?
Major Takeways: Focus on Official Stuff, don't believe people who claim that the Real exam is way harder than the real thing, the difference is either not existing or like 0.0001%. Don't get discouraged (as I did).