From 620 to 670, from 670 to 730

Caution: very very long debrief. It may motivate you to retake the Test after breaking 700+ .
Disclaimer: my opinion can differ from yours. You have to identify what better suits your studying approach and lifestyle.

Prologue

On April 25 I scored 730 Q50, V38 and ended my GMAT journey.
As many other test takers I feel that its my obligation to write a debrief in order to contribute to the GmatClub community.
I joined GmatClub a year ago and since then I have been more of a lurker and searched for useful information regarding various questions at hand and MBA application process.
My background: Ukrainian male, 27 years old, 5 years of work experience in the agriculture, non-native speaker. I started as a finance specialist at a big multinational company in 2012, later became a Sales Analyst Team Lead and now I am the Head of Business Intelligence Unit at the big local agrochemicals company.

I had the thoughts of going for an MBA degree in 2015, but I did not do any research. The vision became clear to me when I had conversations with two senior managers at my company, who described their MBA experiences at local Ukrainian Schools as eye-opening. As a side idea I wanted to pass the GMAT solely for myself, not for application and in order to become more competitive in the labor market. At the end of 2015 I realized that my career has reached its peak and cannot be advanced further anymore. There is a difference between 5 years of work experience and a one year of work experience times 5 . My wife enrolled in the Ukrainian MBA program and pushed me to do the same.
At the end of 2015 I finally began my MBA research and GMAT journey.

Part 1: The Fellowship of the Test

When I examined the whole application process I saw that a 700+ GMAT was the thing necessary to move forward. I was naive at that time and thought that my Quant skills were OK and with some practice can become sufficient to pass the Exam. Actually, I worried more about Quant than Verbal, because I was sure that my IELTS score of 7.5 in 2014 was a proof of excellent mastery of English. Nothing could have been further from the truth and GMAT had a lot of surprises up in its sleeve .
I asked my friend, who graduated from IE Business School, for advice and she recommended me the local GMAT courses.
I took my first GMAT ever without knowing anything about question types and scope of material. My starting point was 410~430.
In February I enrolled in 3 month GMAT Fundamental course. At the beginning there were 9 of us, but only 4 reached the end of the course.
The courses began at 19:00 and ended at 22:00~22:30 + 4 hours on Saturdays. As for me the concentration for studying in the evening after hard working day was not optimal at all.

I learned everything about the Test and our small group was supportive and very motivated. We talked about Business Schools and career paths after graduation. Our GMAT coaches were professional, but they lacked what it takes to really understand the Test strategy. The main focus was mainly on the concepts, heavy Math rules and English Grammar, rather than on how to solve quickly and efficiently. The tutoring was not structured and after finishing the course I scored 620 in the Economist free practice test, which was not any near around my target score. My teammates had different ambitions and most of them either did not plan to take the GMAT soon or needed 600+ score to enter the international masters programs. We stayed in touch and everyone found their own way to prepare.

At the end of April 2016 I scored 610 Q45, V28 in the GMATPrep default question pack. I understood that the GMAT was not an ordinary school test, but rather a very deep and tricky adaptive system that seemed to be one step ahead of your thinking. At that point of time my strategy was to seek for an online course, which could solidify my skills.

Part 2: The Two Verbals

In the GmatClub, which became a great knowledge base for me, I read a lot of debriefs of 700+ / 750+ test takers, who recommended e-gmat for Verbal and GmatClub tests for Quant. I took the advantage of the e-gmat's bundle offer with a 6 month verbal online course and 1-year GmatClub tests subscription. On the May 7, while staying in Switzerland with my family, I scheduled my first real GMAT at the end of July 2016 to have enough time to prepare and to have plenty of time for R1 application process. I began with Verbal on May 11. The e-gmat course was rather specific and complicated for me. I pushed hard: got up every day at 5:00~5:30 to have from 2 to 2,5 hours of studying before work and 1 hour after work.

The grammar rules for SC were very dense. The great thing though was the concept of concentrating on the meaning of the sentence first before going to the POE.
The CR approach was not clear for me, but I liked the idea of prethinking the answer before going to the answer choices. The assumption negation technique proved itself also very useful. The RC was not close to the real GMAT and there were some controversial questions with unclear answer choices and logic behind them.
One thing in particular that was great about e-gmat and worth the time and money invested is its Scholaranium testing system. It has questions that are harder than the actual test and it prepares you to work under time pressure. Overall, you have to try e-gmat's free stuff and attend its free webinars to have an impression of the course.

In the second phase, when I exhausted 90% of the e-gmat questions, I switched to Quant using GmatClub tests. The questions were really hard for me and the explanations were math heavy. I understood the concepts, but it took me too long to solve the problems and my top Quant raw score was never above 48. The analysis of mistakes, timers, and correct answers were awesome. The dashboards were very informative and I immediately saw the areas for improvement.
I felt that my worldview and brain were transforming. The period was rather tough, because it was high season on the job and I was not fully concentrated. The boss and I started to often misunderstand each other. I did not have a proper mistake tracker and tried to only memorize common mistakes and rules here and there.

When I took the GMATPrep 2 days before Day D I scored 720 Q47, V41. I was overexcited, though I suspected that the Verbal part was inflated by previously seen questions.
The days before the Exam were disturbing. I thought a lot about the test, doing a lot of problems from various sources. I was nervous and could not stop preparing, because I put a lot of emphasis on this Exam. I dreamed about 700+ score. The Exam was set on Monday. I took the vacation on the job and came to the Test center 30 minutes earlier. Parked my car nearby and went into the old Soviet building, the Test room was in the IT company's office with old squeaky chairs and thin walls. I heard ongoing meetings and phone calls of other people. There were computers in the room, but only two were intended for GMAT purposes. When I entered and checked in the guy to my left had been already hammering the keyboard doing his AWA. The nice lady wished me good luck, I plugged in my earplugs and it all began. AWA and IR pumped me up and my heart beat quickly. I went to the break, visited bathroom, made some squats, ate peanut butter, drank water and - what a fail - when I started the quant section the Timer in the corner already showed 74:09. It embarrassed me and the stress was building up. Second break - this time I was not late. The Verbal felt rather hard. At the end of the Test my heart was jumping. The blood pressured my brain and I thought that earplugs will eventually shoot sideways. Statistical questions and the score popped up. I was thunderstruck: 620 Q46, V32.
Under impression I chose to cancel the score, because I knew about that option and had plenty o time ahead to retake the GMAT. I was shocked. I went to the car and sat staring upfront for 30 minutes. Finally, I took that first blow.

Retake

I decided to take a break and went to my friend in Germany for couple of days. When I returned to Kyiv I restarted my preparation. I ordered the ESR from GMAC and saw areas for improvement. This time I planned to strengthen my Quant, CR and RC, because my SC has been strong since the school years. This time I decided to avoid burnout and gave myself time to sleep in the morning, but not too much. My social life was scarce, I rarely went out to see friends and my wife suffered from the lack of our social life such as cinema and theater. I started to study on the job, because the season was low. My boss stopped supervising me, because of pursuing his own corporate goals and ambitions. Once again I began with Verbal. I managed to read the Powerscore CR Bible in 5 days, which was an eyeopener for CR approach, question types, solving methods, and common pitfalls. I knew how to deconstruct the argument, while remembering the conclusion and the main goal. Later I switched to Manhattan Strategy Guides for CR and RC, but I found nothing new. The Guides only restated the verbal concepts, which I already learned from other sources. I scheduled my second Exam on December 16 2016, because I wanted to submit my applications in R2 not to wait one more year. I exhausted OG 2016, purchased Gmatprep Question packs, Exam 1 and Exam 2. At that time I was not sure about my Quant and it was a moment when I enrolled in the full course from Math Revolution. Thank you Jin and all the team for the great support and dedication! The course really focused on math concepts and formulas needed to make quick and accurate calculations. The way of introducing material is easy and comprehensive. Ivy approach and DS common mistakes reloaded my quant vision to have the toolkit for any problem. I combined my training of Math Revolution with GmatClub Tests and it proved to be a fine approach. Bunuel's explanations were awesome, but some of them were more theoretic for me and I found that comments of other GmatClub members were a great substitute. This time I took one GmatPrep exam in full (240 minutes) every week, but the time of the day was different each time. I followed the break time and the step by step process rigorously.

My Second D day was on Friday, but i did not took the vacation before, so it was the end of the workweek. I arrived to the Test center one hour earlier to take the better seat. To my surprise there were no parking slots available and I had to park farther. Finally, I checked in 30 minutes before the beginning. I chatted a bit with the lady I had seen in April and began. I did not stress too much attention on AWA and IR, because I wanted to give all my energy to the Quant and Verbal. I wanted a 700+ score badly, because R2 deadlines were approaching. The Quant was OK with 3 minutes to spare, which I used to make arrangements for Verbal. I was in a good shape. I followed my prepared rituals and checked the time. This time I did not wear earplugs at all, because I was the only person in the room. Verbal did not seem very hard and the Quant gave me confidence. The thunder from the clear sky came at the end of the Verbal section, when I saw a ridiculously easy CR weaken question. Statistics. Final screen: 670 Q49, V32. The Quant went up by 3 points compared to the previous Exam, but the Verbal was the same as 5 month before. At that moment it was a hard decision, but I accepted the score and thought that I'd better make the best possible application to neglect the below avarage GMAT score. At the beginning of 2017 I pushed the R2 Submit button.

Part 3: The Return of the Applicant

I did not study for GMAT anymore and was fully immersed into the application process, calculating the odds and connecting with current MBA students. Eventually I received the e-mail from Tuck saying that I was waitlisted. It was a turning point. It was now or never for me . Meanwhile I received an offer of employment from big Ukrainian agrochemicals producer with bigger salary and manager position, which I happily accepted. I analyzed the GMATClub past application threads and calculated that I had around 30 to 45 days to retake the test for the third time. This time I decided to become as disciplined and focused to achieve the goal as never before. I built a schedule without waking up too early (6:30~7:00). I used the IOS application called Sleep Cycle, which wakes you up at the most optimal time interval possible. I went to bed no later than 22:00. As for the preparation materials I opted for official sources only. I promised myself to maintain a detailed mistake tracker to know the true reasons behind my mistakes. My new job responsibilities and position did not allow me to study on the job, so I had mornings, evenings and weekends only. I desperately needed a course, which included Quant and Verbal sections, strategic enough, but not very long, because of time constraints.

I recalled that in June 2016 my colleague and friend, who is now an MBA student at HEC Paris granted me access to his EMPOWERGmat account for 10 days, because he scored 700 using the methods from that course. At that time I was amazed by Rich's test taking approach and all the tricks like Triage, strategic elimination, and other little things. But what I liked the most was the idea that the Test is beatable and winning attitude combined with heavy practice is the key. In March 2017 I enrolled in the one month Crash course. The EmpowerGmat team made the user interface even better and added several useful options in the dashboard. Doing practice questions I reached 80%~100% accuracy. Another point, which contributed to my self confidence, was the score guarantee provided by the company and the quick online support. I practiced all official questions I could find. I did full GmatPrep exam each weekend with conditions close to the real test. I scored 700+ on all the 5 GmatPrep tests. During my training the EmpowerGmat team supported and kept me motivated. I want to say special thanks to Stacy, Brian, Jessica, Rich and Max! The course is structured in a way for you not to get tired and with the focus on understanding the main goal: to answer the question fast and correctly, in that order. Time is a scarce resource on the Test and no question is worth more than 3 minutes. Leave your ego behind and skip some hard or weird looking questions!

Occasionally, I discovered that eating protein power bars while studying and in the breaks boosts the mental power. Later I combined power bars with sweet cherry juice. My latest GmatPrep exam was on April 17 and I scored 710 Q46, V41. At that point I decided to take a break from studying not to overtrain myself and switched my attention to my job and social activities. I wanted to schedule my Third Exam on Monday, but there were no spots available, so I scheduled the Test on Tuesday April 25.
I took vacation on Monday and Tuesday, left my car at home and took the taxi to the Test center. I arrived 40 minutes earlier, repeated the Chinese Burner's AWA template, which is a must have, and checked in. Before the Test I chatted and joked with new lady, stayed as calm as possible and asked for the better seat. After some hesitation she agreed. I drank some cherry juice, ate 1 power bar and started. The AWA and IR went smoothly. I followed my break rituals: juice, power bar, and bathroom. Quant went well, but I did not see any Combinatorics / Probability questions, so I had some doubts about my performance. At that moment I ate 2 power bars, because I needed all my energy for Verbal section. The first questions were SC and RC, but later I ran into trouble, because I was on question 24 when I saw that I had only 25 minutes left with 2 RC passages ahead. I pushed myself to read and think faster and somewhere in the 30-ies I picked up the pace. Towards the end of section the 5 paragraph passage was a good sign, on one hand, but on the other hand it required more clock. The CRs became very dense and convoluted. It was a mix of general question types with method of argument question type. At the end I had four questions and 3 minutes left. I made educated guesses and finished the Verbal section with no time left. Statistics. Rolling circle and... wow...: 730 Q50, V38. I could not believe my eyes. I raised my hand and shook my fist in the as the sign of victory. The hardest thing was not to push the cancel the score button . The journey that started 14 month ago was finally over for me.

Another Gmat assassin was made (c)

Epilogue

Here I would like to make a short summary about what worked for me.

Resources:

-OG 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017,
-OG Verbal and Quant reviews,
-GmatPrep Question Bank,
-GmatPrep Exam Pack 1 and 2 - create your own mistake tracker to monitor areas for improvement and not to fall into the wrong way of thinking twice,
-GmatClub Tests - hard quant and verbal questions with brilliant analytics and customizable quizzes,
-PowerScore CR Bible - must read for CR mastery,
-Manhattan Verbal Strategy Guides - Verbal additional materials for better comprehension,
-Financial Times / Bloomberg / The Economist - good resources for RC practice if you have exhausted all official passages.

Courses:

-EmpowerGmat - strong course, which covers fundamentals and concepts as well as tricks and tactics needed to break 700+.
-Math revolution - great resource if you are unsure about your Quant skills.
-GmatClub tests and mobile app - a must use database for polishing your skills and knowledge as well as for learning multiple ways of tackling the problem.
-Mobile application Prep4Gmat - potentially useful smartphone app if you do not have notebook or have a busy schedule.

Physical training:

I exercised every morning and every evening. Big tennis is my favorite sport since childhood, so I regularly train with my wife on the weekends.
Your heart and body has to be tough to withstand long uncomfortable sitting and high stress.

Mental and strategic training:

Do not repeat my mistake. Do not overtrain, do not run yourself to exhaustion. Discipline in work and discipline in mental relaxation are equally important to beat the GMAT.
Try listening to the light music while studying. I ate power bars each time when I felt that my brain was low on energy. Carbohydrates and proteins are useful to keep the sharp concentration. Your brain will need fuel to perform on the peak of its abilities.

My GmatPrep scores evolution:

04/16 610
07/16 720
Exam 1: 07/16 620 (canceled)
10/16 680
12/16 670
12/16 690
12/16 730
Exam 2: 12/16 670 (accepted)
03/17 720
03/17 720
04/17 710
04/17 730
04/17 710
Exam 3: 04/17 730 Q50 V38

This is the end of my first debrief. Please do not hesitate to ask me any questions and clarifications, which may arise.
I will be happy to share my GMAT experience. Kudos are appreciated