Finished with the GMAT 780 (Q: 50, V: 48) recently and I wanted to wrap up my overall GMAT experience.
I want to thank this awesome community for sharing great debriefs and inspirational stories!
My situation is quite different from an average MBA-applicant because I’m a college senior and I’m not a native English speaker. I decided to take the GMAT sooner rather than later and use it for my MBA application.
I took a holistic approach to the test - I acknowledge the usage of my score s a way of comparison with other students, but that is it. I do not let my score predict how well am I going to perform in the first year of my MBA studies nor how successful am I going to be throughout my career. Life is what you make of it.
Back to studying & prep time - I used different resources with focus on official materials such as
OG 13, Verbal and Quant book.
Veritas Prep online lessons are the best - short and with the most comprehensive curriculum available.
gmatquantum has comprehensible answers to every
OG Quant question for free, each answer is less than two minutes or just about two mins long!
Further I found
Manhattan GMAT Advanced Quant to be very useful - aiming for higher Quant score.
Besides, Question Pack 1 and GMAT Focus are great resources of retired questions for everybody who’s done with the
OG, Quant & Verbal books.
I cannot stress how important it is to learn from own mistakes and give yourself a thorough feedback!
Every single question that I got wrong I’ve marked it and wrote an explanation on colored paper. For instance, I used orange color for geo, yellow for FDPs, green for algebra, etc... By doing so I immediately reinforced my brain to connect the dots - let me explain - while practicing online exam, I would see a Q that was seemingly unfamiliar to me, or Q that had a specific catch, I would pull out the color that I used for that topic and go through the problems in my mind and in 99% of the time I would find the answer there! Couldn’t be any simpler if you have a good visual memory... And should that not be the case, there are great video explanations mentioned above to help you understand and remember difficult Qs.
Thanks to the GMAT I also learned to change my mind set. I used to be terrified by word MISTAKE that I wouldn’t dare to use it, or even worse if I had to write it, I would deliberately misspell it. Luckily, I learned from my failures and grew from each mistake that I’ve made, so MISTAKE suddenly became MY TAKE - something that I was able to learn from and grow personally! (I would still misspell that “word”, only as mytake)
I did not care at first about my scores on mock exams, I did not even look at them at all until now, only to see that I was not as near to 780 as I was on the real exam!!! My scores were 640, 670, 720, 690, 730... However, each wrong Q I did again and wrote it on my colored paper... That is all that I have done.
Last but not least - believing in own strength and knowledge is the most important factor of success on the GMAT: I quote Oz the Great and Powerful:
“We have nothing to fear, as long as we believe. For when we do believe, anything is possible!”
Wish you all the best of luck in prep time!"