From 530 to 710; 4 years of arduous journey

It took almost 4 years to achieve 700+ score. I still remember it was 18 Feb 2018 when I woke up at 4:00 am and I was clear that I want to prepare for the GMAT. I opened my laptop and did a few google searches and landed on gmatclub. The gmatclub not only helped me in getting acquainted to the GMAT exam and its syllabus but also helped me in shortlisting on-demand GMAT courses. It's been a while since then. My son who was 3 years old then is now 7 years old. Looking back, I think I have missed a lot of fatherhood time and other aspects of my personal life. Obviously, I had to compromise a lot of things in this arduous journey. I will try not to turn this debrief into a poignant story so I am jumping directly into what went well and wrong.

2018
As per my logs on average I devoted 100 hrs each month. Clearly, putting a number of hours in studying is not enough to score a 700+ score. On the day of the exam, I knew that I would not score a stellar 700+. I was hoping to get 600-620 or 650 if I get lucky. However, I got 530. I was crestfallen. In Quant, I got 48, and In Verbal, "17".



What went wrong?
- Before the test, I knew that my CR was very weak. I needed more time for prep.
- I thought my RC was okay but in reality, it was brazenly poor.
-- The RC materials that I was referring to were not of good quality (I was reading magazines such as national geography and the history)
- I thought that I was good at SC but I realized after another year that my SC was also weak.

2019
I had taken Magoosh on-demand course. After getting a 530 score, I reached out to Magoosh and its team members were very helpful. They explained to me what I was doing wrong and extended my membership by another 6 months.



As I mentioned earlier, I thought that I have to only improve my CR and RC, so I gave more time to RC and CR than SC.
- Daily I was spending 2 hrs reading the economist
- Followed the Magoosh 3 months advanced plan. Here is the linkto the Trello board that I created for it.
- Bought expert global 15 tests so that I can practice mock over the weekend.

Result of all of this: I was getting sporadic 700+ mock scores. Sometimes I used to get 710 or 720 but most of the time my score ranged between 620-650. Clearly, something was wrong. And it was at this time I realized that my SC is affecting my score. However, it was too late and my exam date was 1 week away. I went to the exam and wished that my starting few questions should be either RC or CR. However, my first 3-4 questions were SC, and boom! I freaked out and ended with 640 (V30 and Q48). There was another blunder that I did in the exam. Best to show it using ESR report. Look at the average time I took to answer a wrong questions in Quant.



Take away after 2019:
- Improve SC
- Better time management in Quant

2020
To improve my SC, I referred gmatclub and a lot of members suggested watching Ron's video. I think throughout my journey that is the best thing happened to me. I met Ron Amazing teacher! I highly recommend watching his video. Especially if you are a non-native. A lot of tutors say that SC is all about meaning but they don't have the magic of Ron. The way Ron has explained the meaning-based approach is just phantasmagorical.




In 2020, I devoted a lot of time to SC. Going through OG multiple times focusing on individual topics. Doing so really helped me improve my overall score. However, I was still struggling with completing tests on time: in both verbal and quant. Result: I scored 590 (v25 and q48) in the official test. Why 590? Because of work from home, I had increased workloads and hence, was completely out of practice. Plus poor time management was still an issue. In the end, I wasn't able to complete the exam on time. I had to guess the last 5-6 questions of verbal and struggled to manage time in quant as well.


2021
In 2021, I just focused on quality than quantity. I knew that my knowledge of SC, CR, RC, and Quant can get me 700+ score. So this year, I devoted more time to time management than to anything else.




- Bought veritas 7 tests
- Bought gmatprep exam 3-6
- Bought kaplan tests

Result:
Veritas tests range: 660 - 720
Kaplan tests range: 660 - 740

gmatprep 1: 740
gmatprep 2: 760
gmatprep 3: 650*
gmatprep 4: 710
gmatprep 5: 700*
gmatprep 6: 740
* Both exams I gave on Saturday evening and I was having trouble concentrating. I noticed that if I take a 1-day break between office work and exam , it helps to concentrate a little better.

GMAT official: 710 (Q49, V37)

How did I improve my time management?
Plan for Verbal
- Do each CR in 2min.
- Do each RC question in 2 mins
- Do each SC in less than 1:30 min (this feat took some time but in 2021 I focused more on this part)
- After every question, I used to track on my whiteboard what should be my expected time left and then, used to compare with the actual clock. Though by doing so I used to lose out 1;30 min during the entire test but it helped me in my time management so I stuck to it.
- Improved accuracy by using ABCDE grid lines to solve difficult questions. Using ABCDE grid lines really helped me to improve accuracy and speed.

Plan for Quant
- I noticed that it was in PS that I was taking too much of my time and was doing silly mistakes as well. Therefore, I devoted a lot of time to PS. I did more than 1000 PS questions on gmatclub to improve my accuracy and speed.

Summary
I am happy to score 710 but there is a catch to this score. I scored only 2 in IR In my last attempt I scored 7 in IR but this time the questions were out of the syllabus Also, I think I can score 730 or 740. In all the gmatprep tests my quant score was at least 50 so I am not really merry with Q49. I am happy to solicit your views as to what I should do next? Give another try?


Sources I used.
1) Magoosh course
- Very good to clear your foundation.
- Good quality SC and Quant questions.
- Not so good to improve CR and RC but in its advanced study plan, it has suggested doing LSAT questions to improve CR and RC. A very forthright tutor.
2) LSAT exams for CR and RC.
- I did around 3500 LSAT CR questions - manhattan explanations are the best.
- ~30 LSAT RC sections (30x4 passages) - Kaplan explanations are the best.
3) Gmatclub test - best for quant prep
4) MathRevolution 1000+ PS questions on gmatclub
5) Ron's videos for SC
6) Manhattan navigator - for OG's SC questions explanations
7) Manhattan books
8) LSAT RC book by Powerscore - a must book to score V40+
9) Magoosh vocabulary builder app - I learned 1000+ GRE level words and it helped. In the official exam, some questions: 1 CR and 1 RC passage, had an advanced level vocabulary.