From 710 to 700 to 730!! A journey full of learnings

02 September,2019: 9:45 a.m. I was sitting in front of my laptop screen with mba.com opened in front of me. I was contemplating whether to take the same 'jinxed' center which I had in the last two exams or to opt for the other one which was 10 km farther but still not jinxed. Before I could decide on the same, I just flashbacked my last two attempts:

Attempt 1: Early February: I had earlier appeared for notorious CAT exam and got 97.xx%ile. I had faith that GMAT won't be that difficult. I studied for 2 weeks and all my official GMAT Prep tests were ranging between 730 to 760. When the big day arrived and I got to the final screen and the number '710' appeared, I was shattered. I was expecting nothing less than 730 because that was the number I was targeting. But I still accepted the score because I didn’t want to take a chance and keep this number safe for me. But belonging to an over-represented cohort of Male Engineers from India and at the same time already having an MBA from an Indian B-School, made this number too small for my dream schools. But I didn’t let it go. I came home and booked my next slot for April.
My score was Q49 and V38
Attempt 2: Quant was my strong point and hence I regularly practiced a lot of questions from it. For verbal, I did some research on gmatclub, talked to a few people and went ahead with an international course (I also considered the expense and this course was one of the cheapest options. A mistake on considering ROI). The course had a lot of videos but also had a few tricks which I was very fascinated with initially. Tricks were such as “If the question has the clause ‘Which of the following…..’ then answer would mostly be C, D or E. I finished the course in a month and sat for my exam. I was confident by the time I finished my exam and then the final screen came. This time the screen showed 700. I froze there and didn’t know what to do. I called my parents and they told me to go ahead with 710. I also thought that it might be the right strategy and I don’t deserve anything more. I realized that every weekday I contributed nothing less than 2 hours and every weekend nothing less than 8. I took a break from the studies for a week. I researched schools to understand my prospects with 710 but got mixed reviews, reviews which were more inclined towards my slim chances for the top 20 schools. By the way, before my attempt 2 I took the Veritas test series and gave 5 tests and scored between 710 to 740. I had one test left. After my break, one day I appeared for my last pending test and scored 750. Somewhere in my heart I was unable to digest the 700 score but at the same time, I knew that my English is not improving. So, I took a call of ordering ESRs of both tests and I was astonished to see that my CR percentile was 22 %ile and 25 %ile respectively. I always thought CR was my strength and SC is a problem. But this data point discovery changed the whole game plan for me.
Attempt 3: I started looking at ‘good’ verbal courses online which could help me with the basics. I talked to Payal from E-Gmat in one of the free one-on-one sessions, and followed E-Gmat posts on various threads. Taking a leap of faith, I opted for E-Gmat. The only problem with E-Gmat was their exhaustive course and because of the busy schedule I wasn’t sure if I would be able to cope up. But then it was my final attempt and I started dwelling 1-2 hours each day with the course. I went through the whole module, made notes, and attended a lot of webinars. E-gmat responses on gmatclub threads were the best ones to search for. I took Manhattan Test series and every Saturday I appeared for the mock test and spent one whole day on the analysis of the same. Not only I made a log of wrong questions but also I made a log of various approaches to solving the same question.
As soon as this flashback passed by, I understood that I have grown from where I was before my 1st attempt to where I am right now. Without taking ‘jinxed’ as a consideration for the centre, I filled the same center again. The only difference this time was that I was better prepared and nobody else knew about it- not even my parents. So, I had confidence but less of pressure.
D-Day: I left for the center little early this time but half the way down, I got stuck in bad traffic. My exam was at 11 a.m. and google maps was showing me ATA 10:57 a.m. Somehow after jumping a few signals, I reached the center at 10:55 a.m. The pressure of reaching on time actually overpowered the pressure of the exam. I opted for the Verbal section first and finished the section with 3 mins remaining. But this time the confidence was different. I knew not only that I have marked the right answers but also that why I didn’t mark the wrong ones. I got one really long RC and that too on arts genre, my weakness. But then I took calculated risks and moved ahead. Quant this time was a little more difficult. I don’t know if GMAT makes QA more difficult in repetitive attempts but that’s what I felt. Finally, after attempting IR and AWA, I knew my exam went well. But then one part of my mind was still skeptical about “What if….”. The screen with the marks appeared and I had got 730. V41, QA49. A sigh of relief. I didn’t do anything but stared at the screen for 2 mins and smiled.
Here are a few learnings which I would like to share with other members
CR: The biggest turning point in my approach for CR was the pre-thinking approach. I was hardwired to process of skimming the question first, moving to answers and then relate each answer to the question. My average time with this process was 3.2 minutes per question with an accuracy of less than 50%. When I shifted to the pre-thinking approach after going through e-gmat course, it was really difficult to leave the old habits behind. I started to keep my hand on the options to get into this zone. My accuracy by the time I finished the course, was around 80% with an average time of less than 2 mins.
Also, it’s as important to mark the wrong answers wrong as it is to mark the right answer right.
SC: For me, the biggest thing regarding SC was the application of the concepts. My concepts were not bad in attempt 1 and 2. But I lacked the knowledge of application of the same. Concepts can narrow down the options from 5 to 2. But after that, the application of concepts plays a game-changing role.
RC: RC is all about patience and practice. I was above average in RC because of my comfort level in topics such as Biotech, Science, Economics, Business, etc. but in case of topics such as literature and arts I had to dwell too much of time and had to read the passage again and again.
For Verbal as a whole, I think Meaning based approach can’t be done away with. Rules are there but only if they convey the meaning rightly. It’s always important to understand the intent of the question to get to the right option. Sometimes the answer might be right grammatically but the meaning might be completely off and that can lead the candidate to choose the wrong option, even when he/she is sitting on the last two options to choose from.
That’s it from my side. I have learnt a lot from the debriefs of many candidates(mentors) and I found it to be my moral responsibility to give back to this community.
Lastly, a special thanks to bb Bunuel and souvik101990, VeritasKarishma and GMATNinja for their amazing compilation of questions, topics, explanations. Trust me you guys are doing an amazing job.
I hope this de-brief helps a few of you who are riding in the same boat where I was riding a few months back. Also, I have a few notes with me. I can help if anyone wants those.
I would love to have kudos if this helped you.