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prateeksab
GMAT 1: 710 Q50 V36
Posts: 16
30 Aug 2019, 13:05
Kudos
Bookmarks
Hi Everyone,
I took GMAT the 2nd time in Aug 2019 and ended up with a 710 (Q50 V36 IR 7 AWA 6.0). This community has been a great help and I wanted to share my experience with you all.
- Graduated with a B.Tech in Textile Engineering from IIT Delhi in 2009
- Graduated with MS in Financial Engineering from Columbia University in 2013
- Looking to apply for intake of 2020.
Target schools - Wharton, Kellog, Berkley, Sloan, Tuck
I prepared for my 1st attempt for about 1 month and focused on verbal. I was always confident of doing well on quant and knew that verbal would be the area to work on. I started with verbal OG and then moved on to some pdfs (For SC and CR) on GMAT club, pdfs had 700 level questions.
It was hard to truly understand and solve the CR problems at first. But with some practice I got ok at solving medium difficulty questions. The hard questions were still difficult to solve, mainly because I was not understanding the question.
I got good at SC by doing the problems in the pdfs and watching lots of grammar videos on youtube. There are some fantastic English grammar teachers on youtube and I would recommend seeing some of their videos.
I didnt practice too many RCs.
Overall, I felt I needed a couple of weeks to really get good practice of all the topics before taking the exam. But before I knew it the exam date was here. In the official mocks I was getting a score of 650 (mock 3 and 4) at this stage. I had also got a score of 720 on mock 2. But I dont think mock 1 & 2 (the free mocks) are to be trusted.
Before the exam I got a good sleep and had a healthy breakfast. I took the exam and felt good after taking it; but the score revealed another story - V 27!
I was disappointed and cancelled the scores.
I had to rush through my 1st GMAT since I had a vacation planned. I came back after a couple of weeks and started figuring out the areas I needed to work on.
My ESR showed that I did really bad on CR. SC was ok. RC could be improved.
At this point, I tried out the e-GMAT course to get a better understanding of the core CR concepts. I really liked their instruction on CR. I realized that CR was all about comprehension and all the questions test is whether one can understand the passage and identify the assumptions and/or infer something interesting. So, I did the module on Assumptions and inference and I got strong with CR and started nailing difficult questions also. However, in all this time, I lost some ability on SC front. So I had to re-watch some of the youtube videos. I also did the e-gmat module on modifiers, idioms, verbs etc.
For practice questions - I used to do the 8 daily questions on gmatclub. In addition, I would do 15 question quizzes from Kaplan Question bank & 15 questions from e-gmat everyday. In addition, to improve RC I started doing 2-3 RCs everyday.
The good part about e-gmat scholaranium quizzes is that the time ticks down. So that creates a test like environment and you get to practice under that pressure.
Reviewing the solutions of the questions where I made mistakes was a very important step in the preparation. I felt that e-gmat provided very good explanations. They have lots of video solutions to every questions and these videos were very helpful.
Another thing I tried was to solve questions at different times during the day and see how my ability fluctuated with how mentally fatigued I was. I would recommend that anyone preparing for the exam should visualize a scenario where he/she is not able to get good sleep before the exam and test how that could possibly impact your performance.
Overall - I ended up almost living and breathing GMAT all the time for a period of 3 weeks or so.
I decided to take mock 5 & 6 and I got 750 in those exams. I was feeling confident that I should be able to get something in that range.
Test Day
Anxiety got the better of me the night before the exam and I couldnt rest well.
Anyhow, I felt the exam started badly - got super confused about an easy SC question - but then I got decent momentum and started getting into the zone. After I was done with question 27 (verbal) I had about 16 minutes left. I got an extremely challenging RC which took up 8 minutes of my time - and now I had 6 questions left with just 8 minutes.
This is where I lost the plot and ended up guessing on the last couple of questions and not spending enough time.
ESR revealed the same story
Big takeaway - if you are doing well on the test at some point the test is going to ramp up the difficulty significantly. So be prepared to skip a few questions and try to spend more time on questions you are likely to get correct. In my case, I should have skipped the tough RC after 4 minutes and that would still have left 12 minutes for me to work on remaining 6 questions.
Quant & IR & AWA were fine.
I was waiting to see a 750; and then I saw a 710. I had broken the into the 700+ territory, but didnt get a great score to get through to a top MBA program.
1. Verbal OG
2. Kaplan Qbank
3. E-GMAT - modules + scholaranium
Mocks -
Veritas; Kaplan; E-GMAT; Official
I dont think that the mocks are indicative of the final result. A couple of reasons -
1. State of your mind is not going to be the same - mocks vs actual exam
2. Verbal Questions on the GMAT are harder than what can be found in materials of various prep companies or this forum
3. Quant questions on GMAT are a lot simpler that what I found on forum and prep companies question banks
Scoring 750 is definitely very challenging and one really needs to respect the exam.
Overall, going through the GMAT prep has taught me a very valuable lesson -
Life and career situations are adaptive as well. You will only be tasked with a tougher project if you can demonstrate complete control and understanding on easier projects. You only get promoted once you truly master & are completely comfortable with your current job. GMAT only throws tough questions once you knock away the easy ones quickly (and with a lot of confidence).
If you are thinking about taking the GMAT, do the following -
1. Know what your target score is
2. Before starting any prep, make an account on mba.com and do the 1st free mock - try sticking to the exam conditions; avoid pausing
3. The mock will give you a good idea of what the exam is
4. Get e-gmat or another course and go over the basics. watch youtube videos for sentence correction
5. Make sure you study minimum 2-5 hours everyday. This is needed to get some momentum and to really make an improvement in your comprehension ability.
6. Make a habit of doing 2-3 RC everyday. Before you realize it in 1.5 months you would have already done 100 RCs. Must take notes and must make sure your notes match with the notes provided in the solution.
7. Whenever you make a mistake, make sure you learn about all the aspects of that mistake.
8. Take mocks every couple of weeks in the beginning. Closer to the test day take mocks every 3rd day.
Last but not the least - use this forum. This is an amazing forum with lots of great people. I learnt so many things just by reading how other people thought about a specific CR problem.
Best of luck to everyone taking the exam. I hope my words help.
I took GMAT the 2nd time in Aug 2019 and ended up with a 710 (Q50 V36 IR 7 AWA 6.0). This community has been a great help and I wanted to share my experience with you all.
My Background
- Graduated with a B.Tech in Textile Engineering from IIT Delhi in 2009
- Graduated with MS in Financial Engineering from Columbia University in 2013
- Looking to apply for intake of 2020.
Target schools - Wharton, Kellog, Berkley, Sloan, Tuck
1st GMAT Attempt (June 25, 2019 - Q50 V 27)
I prepared for my 1st attempt for about 1 month and focused on verbal. I was always confident of doing well on quant and knew that verbal would be the area to work on. I started with verbal OG and then moved on to some pdfs (For SC and CR) on GMAT club, pdfs had 700 level questions.
It was hard to truly understand and solve the CR problems at first. But with some practice I got ok at solving medium difficulty questions. The hard questions were still difficult to solve, mainly because I was not understanding the question.
I got good at SC by doing the problems in the pdfs and watching lots of grammar videos on youtube. There are some fantastic English grammar teachers on youtube and I would recommend seeing some of their videos.
I didnt practice too many RCs.
Overall, I felt I needed a couple of weeks to really get good practice of all the topics before taking the exam. But before I knew it the exam date was here. In the official mocks I was getting a score of 650 (mock 3 and 4) at this stage. I had also got a score of 720 on mock 2. But I dont think mock 1 & 2 (the free mocks) are to be trusted.
Before the exam I got a good sleep and had a healthy breakfast. I took the exam and felt good after taking it; but the score revealed another story - V 27!
I was disappointed and cancelled the scores.
2nd GMAT Attempt
I had to rush through my 1st GMAT since I had a vacation planned. I came back after a couple of weeks and started figuring out the areas I needed to work on.
My ESR showed that I did really bad on CR. SC was ok. RC could be improved.
At this point, I tried out the e-GMAT course to get a better understanding of the core CR concepts. I really liked their instruction on CR. I realized that CR was all about comprehension and all the questions test is whether one can understand the passage and identify the assumptions and/or infer something interesting. So, I did the module on Assumptions and inference and I got strong with CR and started nailing difficult questions also. However, in all this time, I lost some ability on SC front. So I had to re-watch some of the youtube videos. I also did the e-gmat module on modifiers, idioms, verbs etc.
For practice questions - I used to do the 8 daily questions on gmatclub. In addition, I would do 15 question quizzes from Kaplan Question bank & 15 questions from e-gmat everyday. In addition, to improve RC I started doing 2-3 RCs everyday.
The good part about e-gmat scholaranium quizzes is that the time ticks down. So that creates a test like environment and you get to practice under that pressure.
Reviewing the solutions of the questions where I made mistakes was a very important step in the preparation. I felt that e-gmat provided very good explanations. They have lots of video solutions to every questions and these videos were very helpful.
Another thing I tried was to solve questions at different times during the day and see how my ability fluctuated with how mentally fatigued I was. I would recommend that anyone preparing for the exam should visualize a scenario where he/she is not able to get good sleep before the exam and test how that could possibly impact your performance.
Overall - I ended up almost living and breathing GMAT all the time for a period of 3 weeks or so.
I decided to take mock 5 & 6 and I got 750 in those exams. I was feeling confident that I should be able to get something in that range.
Test Day
Anxiety got the better of me the night before the exam and I couldnt rest well.
Anyhow, I felt the exam started badly - got super confused about an easy SC question - but then I got decent momentum and started getting into the zone. After I was done with question 27 (verbal) I had about 16 minutes left. I got an extremely challenging RC which took up 8 minutes of my time - and now I had 6 questions left with just 8 minutes.
This is where I lost the plot and ended up guessing on the last couple of questions and not spending enough time.
ESR revealed the same story
Big takeaway - if you are doing well on the test at some point the test is going to ramp up the difficulty significantly. So be prepared to skip a few questions and try to spend more time on questions you are likely to get correct. In my case, I should have skipped the tough RC after 4 minutes and that would still have left 12 minutes for me to work on remaining 6 questions.
Quant & IR & AWA were fine.
I was waiting to see a 750; and then I saw a 710. I had broken the into the 700+ territory, but didnt get a great score to get through to a top MBA program.
Materials used
1. Verbal OG
2. Kaplan Qbank
3. E-GMAT - modules + scholaranium
Mocks -
Veritas; Kaplan; E-GMAT; Official
I dont think that the mocks are indicative of the final result. A couple of reasons -
1. State of your mind is not going to be the same - mocks vs actual exam
2. Verbal Questions on the GMAT are harder than what can be found in materials of various prep companies or this forum
3. Quant questions on GMAT are a lot simpler that what I found on forum and prep companies question banks
Take Away
Scoring 750 is definitely very challenging and one really needs to respect the exam.
Overall, going through the GMAT prep has taught me a very valuable lesson -
Life and career situations are adaptive as well. You will only be tasked with a tougher project if you can demonstrate complete control and understanding on easier projects. You only get promoted once you truly master & are completely comfortable with your current job. GMAT only throws tough questions once you knock away the easy ones quickly (and with a lot of confidence).
GMAT STRATEGY for someone starting out
If you are thinking about taking the GMAT, do the following -
1. Know what your target score is
2. Before starting any prep, make an account on mba.com and do the 1st free mock - try sticking to the exam conditions; avoid pausing
3. The mock will give you a good idea of what the exam is
4. Get e-gmat or another course and go over the basics. watch youtube videos for sentence correction
5. Make sure you study minimum 2-5 hours everyday. This is needed to get some momentum and to really make an improvement in your comprehension ability.
6. Make a habit of doing 2-3 RC everyday. Before you realize it in 1.5 months you would have already done 100 RCs. Must take notes and must make sure your notes match with the notes provided in the solution.
7. Whenever you make a mistake, make sure you learn about all the aspects of that mistake.
8. Take mocks every couple of weeks in the beginning. Closer to the test day take mocks every 3rd day.
Last but not the least - use this forum. This is an amazing forum with lots of great people. I learnt so many things just by reading how other people thought about a specific CR problem.
Best of luck to everyone taking the exam. I hope my words help.
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