Debrief: From 430 to 740 (Q49, V42)

About me
I am 29 years old Indian male (not an engineer). I am a Geoscientist (currently serving as Senior Geophysicist) in India's biggest Bluechip national Oil company for last 5+ years. And it was in the early last year that I decided to pursue an MBA. And regarding the name, Pyjama- Because that's my favorite clothing, and Scientist- For obvious reasons.

The show starts
I, like most others, searched the internet for what route I need to follow to pursue an MBA. Reasons behind my decision to pursue an MBA are too broad to sum up here, so I will leave that part out. Coming from a group of Scientists and researchers, I had nobody in my alumni network to look up to, so I was doubtful whether the path I am embarking upon is a good one. For sure, there must be many there like me, but I personally knew no such story and that meant paving my own path ahead. I know people who are working in the world's top research institutions, but I had none in this domain. So, during my initial research on the matter, I came across GMAT Club. And I was blown away with the amount of knowledge and experiences that people had shared here. I was awestruck and a bit intimidated by their profiles and high GMAT scores. And knowing that I haven't written a standardized test in ages or done any Math for the past five years, I knew I would need some work to get this rusted machine working. Hence, it was probably early 2021 when I subscribed to egmat. Why did I choose them? The answer is simple: They have the highest number of top reviews on the GMAT Club. I started the course by taking a mock test and scored a 430, I was shattered beyond words. I have been good at standardized tests in past and was hoping to score around 600. But, a 430 on egmat's mock test just broke my confidence. Then I read on the forum that people rarely go on to improve by 300 points. But, I eventually ended up getting a 740 two days back. So, did I achieve the impossible? I think not. And the reason is-- I am not sure whether 430 was my true ability level. So, is egmat to blame for this false representation? No. Because no test prep company can replicate the official mocks or exam, and it is a fact! GMAC, on other hand, spends more than $2000 on each question, as they say. So, to expect prep companies to roll out accurate mock scores is unrealistic. But, as a word of suggestion, I would appreciate if test prep companies, rather than improving their unofficial mock tests, just ask aspirants to take an official mock. There are six of those and they are enough!

Intermission
I went ahead with the course at the start of 2021. I started with SC and loved how detailed and precise their lecture videos were. I had made a point to "love the process" rather than "force the learning". For most of my life, I kept preparations till the last minute of the exam and wrote tests under "tremendous pressure", so this time, I wanted to enjoy the process. But, I was wrong. You do need "fire burning inside you" to achieve a goal. It doesn't have to be "tremendous" but there should be something to keep the flame alive. I did not do that and turned my preparation into a soap-opera. I would do something here, something there, and then take a break of a week or two. I take the blame for not being "determined" and "regular", but my job nature too restricted my plans and hampered with my preparation. As a Geoscientist, stationed in the remote part of North East India, I visit far off places to acquire "geophysical data" from oil wells, and then I bring the data back to base and interpret the data. And this keeps me off from anything else for a week or two. So, this routine kept me from being "consistent" and "regular". And believe me this is one of the red flags for your GMAT preparation, because you need to have "regularity and consistency" for the test, or the results won't come.

So, in a nutshell, I did some stuff here and there, but I was barely moving ahead, it's like, I was in a Brownian motion with zero net displacement with respect to my initial position. During the same period I was promoted to the position of Senior Geophysicist. So that came with it's added responsibilities. And then by September, I had almost given up on writing the GMAT. I loved solving SC questions so I would come here on the GMATClub and do that, but writing the actual test was nowhere in the picture. And then by October, me and my long time girlfriend decided to tie the knot in December. It was a life-changing experience for us and we had a beautiful wedding in December. We topped it off with a long vacation in Himalayas, and life was good.

Endgame
Our vacation ended in January of 2022. We relocated to a new house and built that house up from scratch (not literally). From furniture to carpets, everything. My wife knew my desire to pursue an MBA and how badly I had been struggling to balance my work with my MBA plan. She understood me not only as a wife but also as a fellow Geoscientist, and thus she understands the challenges that come with our profession. So, it was her who pushed me in the month of February to get my act together and said, "If you really want to do it it, do it now, but this time it has to be in a time pressure". So, I started my prep. This time I was not going to sign up for a course. I had my notes for SC from egmat's course and they were good for the SC. I was still heavily involved in field operations across the Southern Assam region, but had made it a goal to study for at least 5 hours a week for the next few months. My plan was to finish my prep from March-May, and then write the test in June. And I was on my track, I had a good March, and I gave my first mock and scored a 760. It was inflated because I had seen a few SC and CR questions that came in that mock. So, I wasn't thrilled. But, I was confident that the finish line is almost there. But then our entire office got reshuffled. Many senior colleagues of mine got transferred to the other offices in the country, but their replacements did not join. This was long overdue as Covid had restricted the in-company transfers, and when the transfers occurred, they came with a bang. Our group got halved and the work load got doubled. Now, we had to do "double" the number of field operations and the office work to make up for the manpower loss. This gave me almost no time for my prep and squeezing time for the prep looked ever more demanding.

But, I had booked the exam date for the 1st of June and went ahead with writing the test. I scored a 660 (Q44, V37). I was shattered, more so because I had scored a flat 740 a week back and averaged a Q50 and V40 in all three of those official mock test. So, my world came tumbling down. I was frustrated and in a fit of rage, I mailed my supervisor and my boss my leave application. I asked them for three weeks off because I had to wait for another 16 days to write another test. They were taken aback but supported me, reluctantly. I have done the most number of operations for my team in the last five years. So, I had earned that leeway. And I was granted a leave for three weeks. So, I booked the retake for 19th June, and was scheduled to rejoin office on 21st June. A Q44 broke my confidence so bad that, in a knee-jerk reaction, I signed up for TTP's one month course. And used that to practice Quant as much as I can. I had seen questions on "conditional probability" on the exam, and that shook me. There is a rumor in the community that GMAT does not test "conditional probability". So, I made sure I was practicing everything on their Quant platform, and it was good. Their Verbal section is not that great, but that's almost same for almost all test prep companies. There were other mistakes that I committed, such as overdosing on Caffeine on the day of the exam. I have mentioned my mistakes at the bottom under the heading mistakes, so head over to that for the list of errors that jeopardized my GMAT preparation.

Climax
So, I was all focused on my retake on the 19th of June and was performing nicely on all practice quizzes, I used GMAT Club's Forum Quiz module extensively for that. I used the filter for "official questions" and kept my preparation strictly restricted to the "official questions". I used TTP for about two weeks, and in the last week before the exam, kept my preparation around official matters only. And just when I thought I am heading for a victory lap, the unthinkable happened. On the 18th of June, I started experiencing some funny stuff in my body, I took it for "exam-related" anxiety and tried to brush it off. But, the night before the exam, the night of the 18th, my head shut down. It started with a headache and soon turned into a body shiver. I could not sleep the entire night. I believed that my nerves were taking over my body and the exam stress has got to me. The exam was scheduled to start at 12 noon, and at 7 am I was sitting in my bed with a heavy head, "no sleep", and my wife right beside me. I tried to power my way through it, and at around 11 am, I quickly created a custom quiz on Forum Quiz to do my customary warm-up before the test, to get my neurons firing. But, I ended up getting 8 out of 10 incorrect. Observing from a distance, my wife came, consoled me, and asked me not to go ahead with the test. But, I felt so ready and could not accept the fact that this was happening to me. But, I realized the situation and bailed off at the last moment.

The next day that is the 20th of June my headache turned into a mild fever, and on the 21st, that mild fever turned into a high fever (102° C). I was in pain and afraid, so my doctor advised me to get some tests done immediately. I and my wife thought that my body succumbed to the exam pressure. But, though we both are fine Geophysicists, we turned out to be pathetic doctors. The medical tests turned out to be entirely something else. I was Covid positive. I had not left the house for 18 days, so how could I have contracted the virus? It was my lovely wife. She had a party some days back at a hotel with her office colleagues and since then she was suffering from a sore throat and mild cough, which we brushed off as the seasonal flu. She got tested the other day, and she too turned out to be Covid positive. Our reports indicated high virality in my body but low in hers. And now, I would be teased for having poor immunity my entire life. Her body coped with the virus relatively easily, and mine did not. My fever sustained for about a week, and then it started to go away. But, then it was followed by a sore throat. The fever and sore throat made me weak and my sleep suffered tremendously. I was getting a sleep of only about 5 hours. But, because of Covid, my leave period got extended to the 10th of July (about three weeks extra). And by 2nd July I was able to function to my somewhat normal self. I and my wife both were still suffering from sleep disorders so we were prescribed sleep aids (melatonin supplements) and that did help us increase our sleep to 7 hours. But, we never felt "fresh" post sleep. But, I had the gift of recovery period of three weeks. So, I decided to make use of the "recovery period" to squeeze out one last attempt before I join work on 11th July. So, I decided that I will prepare for a week and if I am able to perform at 80% of my pre-Covid levels, I will write the test. So, I practised 12 SC questions, 12 CR questions, 2 RC passages, and 31 Quant questions per day for the last one week. And except for the fact that my body was not able to withstand more than 2 hours of sitting at a stretch, the accuracy levels were a tad bit lower than my previous levels. I had issues breaking down the arguments in CR and RC because my head was foggy due to sleep aids. So, when my plan A, which is understanding each and every component of the argument failed, I devised a new, less efficient, but alternate method to circumvent my way around the drop in my comprehension levels. I called it my Plan B. It was to write down the flow of the argument, using symbols to depict ideas and logic as presented in the stimulus and map it all out on the whiteboard ahead of me. I never used to write down anything in RC or CR because the act of taking my eyes off the screen and writing down stuff distanced me from the passage and that break in the flow hampered my comprehension. So, I used to read in a single go, mapping the passage/argument as it came to me mentally. But, in my recovery period, no matter how I tried, I just wasn't able to execute this. My mind just won't hold up information, so I resorted to the Plan B. I had used it earlier on "very hard" passages but found that it increased my reading time and wasn't much of a help. But, this time I had to resort to writing down stuff and mapping out the logic on the whiteboard, something that my brain couldn't do anymore. Plan B gave me accuracies of about 90% of my original Plan A. And thus I concluded to resort to this if and when my Plan A gives up during the test. So, with an alternate game plan, I booked an appointment for the 10th July test on the night of 8th July.

A Happy Ending
On the exam day, I had a seven-hour sleep with sleep aid. My exam was scheduled for 2 pm. I had some cereal for the breakfast and proceeded with lunch at around 12 noon. I had brown rice, some vegetables and lentils soup. An hour before the exam, I created a 10-question (700 level questions) custom quiz for Verbal to ease my nerves. I did only 7, with 5 incorrect. I was shocked but soon realised that I forgot to choose the "official questions" filter and the ones I got wrong were, ahem, let's not go there. I wasn't bothered or troubled by that. I attempted those questions as a warm-up and the exercise did its job. I was going to write the GMAT online as I am stationed in a pretty remote city in the state of Assam, and it has no physical center; therefore, I chose the online version of the test.

So, I logged in at around 1:45 pm. I had two small bananas, Malbhog, a native species, and a few sips of Gatorade. In my first attempt, I had consumed two Red bulls before the exam and consumed a caffeine supplement in my first break to "fuel" my brain. It turned out to be the biggest mistake. I had never had that much caffeine before, and my body crashed. My nerves were all over the roof. My heart paced at the speed of a spaceship and by the time exam ended, I was drenched in sweat. This time I decided to do none of that. So, I kept to the advice that sayantanc2k gave me: Bananas and Gatorade. And, I stuck to it.

The proctor joined in at around 1:55 pm. He was a nice guy and eased me into the process. His name was Sagar. But Sagar faced issues entering in the access code at the starting screen of my test, and after escalating this issue to higher management, my exam commenced at 2:40 pm. One good thing about this delay was- all my nerves out of the window. I was taking long breaths in and out during the time he was solving the matter and that turned out to be positive for me. But, soon after, mid-way through my Verbal section, my browser crashed, it was one of the two crashes that happened, one each in the Verbal and Quant. That lead to a few minutes lost on my clock in both the sections. But, I kept my calm and reconnected with the proctor. You have to go through the room check again and the process is distracting. But again I found the good in the bad. I used that interruption as a short break to recollect my thoughts. As my body was not at its best, I rested my arms and back and calmed myself down. I was so determined to not lose my calm. IanStewart often says that, "GMAT is an exam of thinking clearly, and you can only do a lot better if you remain calm." So, I followed the word. And kept my calm.

In the Verbal section, I simply followed the advice of AndrewN, "If you can let go of questions and the notion that you have to be perfect, you will do just fine." And I did just that. After spending a "justifiable" amount of time on a question, I marked a choice and moved on to the next, even if I wasn't a 100% sure of the choice. There is one more strategy that I followed. Sometimes, you carry baggage or the "feeling of defeat" from the previous question to the following questions. And that can hurt your accuracy. You need to learn to "hit that reset button" after every tough or challenging question and face the next question with great self-belief and confidence. If you can do just that, trust me, it can save you at least 2-4 points on your score because you will make "fewer mistakes". I used a table to keep track of time, as the clock runs backwards (65 minutes to 0 minutes), I made a table to keep track of the "time left" after every five questions (see spoiler below). And I followed it. Midway through the test around Question no. 22, I got a Boldface CR. A BF question is to be given extra 20 seconds just for the sheer "beauty" they possess. It's every GMAT test-takers' dream to see a BF question in the exam, so when it flashed on my screen, I thanked the GMAT Gods and angels and gave it its due respect. Maybe, I was not sincere in my prayers or perhaps the Gods weren't impressed because the next RC had four passages and I am sure one of those passages were written in Hebrew. Because, I spend a good full minute just on the first two lines and still nothing made sense to me. The only word I remember from that passage is "economy". So, when I knew my Plan A is failing here, I took out the Plan B and mapped out the passage on my whiteboard and solved it as "mechanically" as possible. I was able to get the bigger picture but the finer details were best known to the question maker. It had five questions, and I took about 9-10 minutes on it. And that's when the clock surpassed me. At one point I had 8 questions left, and about 13 minutes on the clock. But, I knew I had enough on my hands if I followed the plan, so I decided not to look at the clock till the very last question because the act of looking at a ticking clock raises the bar of nervousness and I knew if I let that happen, I'd start getting questions incorrect and my speed too would decrease. So, I chose the route of believing in my ability and by the time the last question came, I had about 2 minutes on the clock. It was a CR question, and I answered it with 7 secs on the clock. Overall, I made use of my strong SC skills and answered every question within 60 seconds or so, for CR I took about 1.5 mins, and the same goes for RC. I found the question types similar to the ones I had seen in mocks and official guides, so nothing popped out to me as strange.

In the Quant section, I believe I made a few careless errors. My body was starting to show signs of weakness. And I believe I could have done a bit better. There were a few DS questions that required some logical reasoning, but my brain wasn't helping me much. I tried the route of "algebraic approach", but they were made such that if you went down that road, it would take at least 5 minutes to reach to the answer. So, I guessed on them and moved on. I finished the section with some time left on my clock. I wish I had Plan B for Quant, but I would gladly take a Q49 anyway.

I did not practice IR and AWA since my first attempt. I had limited time for practice during my recovery period, so I chose not to waste it on IR. I did what I could on the spot and got a score of 6.0. I have scored an 8 previously, so this was not great, but I doubt it would make much difference. If it were a 4 or a 3, perhaps then the matters would have been different. But, an IR 6.0 might just be okay, I believe. By the time IR ended, I was on the verge of dropping dead. I had a banana in the break and it was keeping me running somehow. My spine was sending bolts of current left to right, my shoulders started to cave in, and my brain put up a "white flag of defeat". But I was very calm for I knew it would soon end. I had 30 more minutes of AWA writing, so I persevered and gave it my all. By the time I was done writing, 3 minutes were left on my clock, so I started to look for spelling errors and any other blatant construction errors, and with 5 seconds left on the clock, I hastily clicked on the submit button. I was not ready to see the result, but the score popped up on the screen in a flash. I had dropped my hands on my table out of tiredness and the vision too got a bit blurry. But, what I saw on the screen was uplifting. A Q49, a V42, and an IR 6.0. And below that, a blurry 740. Though that split generally gives a score of 750 (bb would agree), I was happy to see the score. I couldn't believe my eyes and went ballistic. I shouted, screamed, and asked the proctor whether I am free to go. I so wanted my wife to know that "I have done it". The proctor calmly said, please just give me one more minute to do some formalities at my end. I waited patiently like a child. And as soon as he got done with the exam, closed the recording, and then concluded the session. I stormed out of the room and gave my wife the news. And the rest they say is history. Currently, I am preparing to apply for R1 and focusing on my health recovery (mainly sleep).

Mistakes
♦ Not maintaining consistency and regularity.
♦ Relying too much on caffeine for the "kick" only to get my butt kicked back in return. (Adcoms don't read this, right?)
♦ Not maintaining an error log.
♦ Not eliminating all incorrect choices for right reasons.
♦ Looking for shortcuts and tips/tricks to ace Verbal.
♦ Not realizing that GMAT can not be done by "brute force"

My advice
❖ Do not stay away from prep for more than three days.
❖ No psychotropic would help you in the real exam as it hampers with anxiety, so stick to the basic food.
❖ Do not try something new on the exam day, keep the routine as normal as you would on any other day.
❖ Maintain an error log because it helps you "ascertain" your Achilles heel.
❖ There's no shortcut in the world of GMAT except for one, which is shortcut to "failure".
❖ GMAT is a sports like any other, and thus it requires "skills" that you need to develop in order to ace the exam. If you find yourself lacking, then you can not force your way through it. Instead, you need to work on developing those skills because as I said there is no "magic sauce". I wish there were, but there isn't.
❖ GMAT is a game of "comprehension". I believe that if you can comprehend the information provided as it is stated, you job's half done. And it is applies to both Quant and Verbal. Even before you answer the question or look for answer, try to absorb the stimulus as much as you can. If you can not absorb 100% of it, no issues, but try to use your energy into absorbing as much as you can, and this is why it is a game of "comprehension", and this is why you need to be calm. A calm mind is a precursor to a good comprehension. I invested about 25-45 seconds on each SC and CR question to "break the logic" into smaller pieces and then absorb those pieces into my mental map as much as I can. For Quant I invested 10-30 seconds for the same exercise. For RC, the strategy is one and simple, "Read the damn $#*&" (just as GMATNinja says).

Materials
SC:
‣ Official guides.
‣ egmat's SC course is good. egmat's SC course is rested on the shoulders of a maverick named Shraddha. You can check out her videos on YouTube too, she has a few on Verb-ing modifiers and they are "enough". But beware of "certain rules" that they teach. Because, GMAC loves proving that "language" is not governed by rules. And though the rules such as two independent clause need either a subordinating conjunction or comma + fanboys to join them, and "comma-splice" errors do hold undoubtedly. The ones such "non-possessive pronoun" can not refer to a "possessive pronoun" are often proven to be not so firm. Just few days before the exam, I got to know that "like" can be used to state examples, it shook me, but thanks to Sayantanc2k, I understood the "circumstances" when it can and can not be used.
‣ Expert replies under the official questions here on GMAT Club. If any of these following experts had an opinion on any question, I'd read diligently and learn. I strongly believed that this was the best source of learning for SC for me. Experts: AndrewN, KarishmaB, GMATNinja, daagh, mikemcgarry, RonPurewal (mainly on other websites), AjiteshArun, sayantanc2k, generis, MartyTargetTestPrep, etc. There are many other great experts as well but if I saw any post by any of the above experts in the thread, I would thoroughly go through it.
CR:
‣ Official guides.
‣ Mr. Charles Bibilos's (GmatNinja) videos on YouTube.
‣ Expert replies on forum of aforementioned experts.
You need nothing else.
RC:
‣ Official guides.
‣ Mr. Charles Bibilos's (GmatNinja) videos on YouTube.
You need nothing else.
Just try to mimic the methodology Charles uses to break down an argument or a passage. If you can do even 50% of what Charles does, you will coming out with flying colors. No jokes.
Quant:
‣ Official guides.
‣ Just as mimicking Charles would do wonders in Verbal, so would mimicking the methods of Bunuel, IanStewart, chetan2u, and KarishmaB.
(Identify the weak spots and practice. You don't need to go super deep into Combinatorics or Absolute values. GMAT Quant is really a test of logical reasoning, if you can identify that, you will do good.)

Credits
First to my lovely wife and my friend Shivendra.
Second to AndrewN and IanStewart for their constant support. They are simply the best human beings.
Third to bb for creating this community.

Giveaway
This community has given me a lot (looking at you Andrew & Ian), so I believe I should give back to the community in some way. So, I am offering two people free tutoring sessions for SC/CR. So, if you need help, kindly, comment in the thread below. I would go ahead with the first two people as per the posts below. For others, I would help in every other way possible, such as by replying to tags and mentions. So, feel free to tag.

Thank you for your time. And if I missed something or if I come up with something to add, I will add in this post.
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