From 670 to 750 (planning to retake)

No, no, just joking. I’m extremely happy with my score and I’d like to thank every single one in this community. Now let’s get to my story…

August 2012: 670 (Q50 V29)
April 2014: 750 (Q51 V40)

In my first attempt, I did a couple of things wrong. I studied for 12 weeks. However, I dove right into solving problems without first strengthening my core. I’m saying this for verbal because my math was always great. So,

LESSON 1: Build your core first!

Anyways, I studied a lot and the day came. Everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong on that day. I hadn’t practiced stamina enough, therefore I LITERALLY slept through last 10 questions of verbal, dying to get out of there.

LESSON 2: Build stamina! This is very very important.

When I saw my score of 670, I was very disappointed. I was sure that I could have done better. Then, I decided to put business school behind me and give up.

January 2014! I decided to retake. I was going to study harder and smarter. I made myself a 14 week plan. I used a 1-2 quant-verbal split since I was still very good on quant. 4 weeks of quant. And then 8 weeks of verbal. Last 2 weeks were all about strategy, error log, reading. So, this time around I used MGMAT Verbal books. My God! How did I miss out on these?!?! These are holy books of GMAT!

LESSON 3: Use MGMAT books!!!

In the last 5 weeks, I took a CAT each weekend. (4 Gmatpreps and 1 Manhattan) Until this point, my goal was 710-720. However, my first CAT made my expectations higher!

Gmatprep 1: 720
Gmatprep 2: 740
Manhattan: 690 (don’t know how this happened)
Gmatprep 3: 750
Gmatprep 4: 770

LESSON 4: Always aim higher!

I increased my score and stamina as I went through all my materials.

And one more thing. Kudos to bb! I took Gmatprep 4 just one day before my real exam. I woke up at the same time, wore same clothes, did the test on exactly same time. Some people swear this is a bad idea but it worked for me!

LESSON 5: Use last Gmatprep as late as possible!

So, after 14 weeks of stress and studying I got what I wanted. I traveled 300 miles to take the test. I dreamt about GMAT, I skipped work for GMAT. It was a hard 14 weeks. But the ending was great! I hope it will be so for everyone else! Cheers.