Getting 770 in my first attempt (Q49, V47, IR8)

I wanted to share some of my experience taking the GMAT as I gained a lot of value reading others' experiences. I will try to make this post as concise and practical as possible while providing relevant background information so that you can see if my advice/tips are relevant. Hope you find it useful.

Test-Taking Experience
I took the train to another city to take the GMAT in-person because I was not going to take the online GMAT. The lack of a whiteboard and inability to cancel scores bothered me. I was also concerned that the lack of AWA may impact its utility in the future once the COVID situation normalizes. I was visiting the GMAT website every day to see if nearby testing centers were open and was relieved when a center opened last week. Ideally, I would've taken the GMAT in the first weeks of June rather than May, but I didn't want to run the risk of the center re-closing again from a second wave of COVID or anything.

I finished my exam this morning and was ecstatic when I received a 770, which was higher than any score I received in mocks. I'm a bit disappointed with my Quant score given that I spent >95% of my time studying for Quant and I was aiming for Q50+, but (and I hope I don't sound cocky here) I was not too surprised at a Verbal score that was higher than what I got in mocks - I generally fooled around in the Verbal section in mocks.

I think that if I spent another two weeks prepping for Quant, I could retake the exam and get try for a 780+. But there's not point in that.

Background
I studied for the GMAT for a month in January 2019, but work and life got hectic and I postponed plans for my MBA anyway. I took my first mock exam with Veritas Prep back then and scored a 650 with no prep. I resumed studying for the GMAT in January of 2020 but maybe studied 2-3 hours a week and didn't take it truly seriously until March 2020.

I received an MBA acceptance offer on a competitive GMAT score, so I was able to quit my job and focus on GMAT prep full-time. For two weeks, I studied roughly 350-400 minutes a day. I'd say about 95% of this was on quant prep.

I tracked my studying hours with an app called Forest (more on this later). In total, I spent roughly 100 hours studying, with 80 of those hours coming from the past two weeks (May 1 onwards).

My mock progression was:

• 5 Jan 2019: Veritas: 650 (Q43/V37 - cold mock, no prep)
• 5 Jan 2020: Veritas: 720 (Q47/V39 - restarted my GMAT studies in January 2020, got a better feel for the type of questions GMAT asks and timing)
• 22 Apr 2020: GMAT Official Mock: N/A (IT issues resulting in no scores)
• 24 April 2020: GMAT Official Mock: 750 (Q49/V42 - did not feel this was a fair representation as I hit pause a lot to take breaks or think over some hard questions. I was still not used to the pace of GMAT and used pause liberally to see if my conceptual understanding of math concepts was at the right level)
• 9 May 2020: Manhattan Prep - 740 (Q47/V45 - did not hit pause here and felt good about this one)
• 12 May 2020: GMAT Official Mock: N/A (IT issues resulting in no scores)
• 13 May 2020: GMAT Official Mock: 750 (Q50/V41 did not hit pause here either but this was a redo of the Official exam I did a day ago and there were some recycled questions, so I was questioning if this score was an accurate representation)

A Few Thoughts on Taking Mocks

• I think that there are several advantages in taking mocks (e.g. trying out different strategies, developing stamina, understanding areas of weaknesses) but that you hit a point of diminishing returns really quickly. Mocks are time-consuming and exhausting. I think time is generally better spent on working on areas of weaknesses.
• Some people say that the Official Mocks should be saved until as late as possible to get a fair diagnostic of your score. I disagree. I think it's good to take a third-party mock first to get an understanding of the exam and not fully waste one of the two mocks, but I found tremendous value in taking the Offical Mock early to get an understanding of what the actual exam could look like. As mentioned above, I actually took the Offical Mock four times instead of two - IT issues made it so that two of my four mocks resulted in no score being given, and I created a new account to re-do the exams. I found that there's enough variability in the question bank that this is a viable and useful strategy.
• GMATClub's paid test center has like 15+ Quant CATs and each CAT provides an estimated score. I found these scores to be generally accurate but I did have a CAT a few days ago that gave me a Q40 score (I was averaging Q47 - Q50 prior to that). This shook my confidence and nerves really badly. What likely happened is that I exhausted most of the 700+ questions and the algorithm got tripped up on scoring. Just wanted to share that experience in case others encounter the same issue later on.

Other Tips

• After enough questions to understand and appreciate what GMAT is testing for (maybe after around 300-500 questions?), I found a lot of value in revisiting old questions that I got wrong or took too long and re-doing them over and over again. After the third or fourth redo, even though I knew exactly what to do and what the answer would be, I would force myself to go through the process anyway. This helped me solve similar questions more quickly.
• I was a bit worried about timing but I think time management comes naturally after you develop a good guessing strategy. I did not find time management to be an issue on the exam.
• I read a LOT so did not have to study for Verbal at all aside from understanding what the test makers were looking for in CR. I'm not sure, but I have a hunch that it's hard to improve RC/SC scores in such a short time. I think CR is where score improvement in Verbal can really come from.
• I did absolutely no prep for IR or Essay. I don't know how helpful IR prep can be given how weird the questions are but I always skipped the IR/AWA sections in mock exams (even in the official mocks) and it seemed fine.

Random Tips

• I was studying for the GMAT while reading Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and I highly recommend it. It help put me in the right mindset for studying Quant, which can be rote and tedious.
• I found an app called Forest really helpful in tracking studying time. After consistently using it, I was able to figure out when I was most productive and tailor my test-time accordingly. Specifically, I found that I was most productive between 9AM - 12PM, so I scheduled my exam for 10:30AM to take advantage.
• I did not eat any junk or processed food throughout my studying and stuck to a low-carb diet. I found this help with keeping my focus sustained through long hours of studying.

Review of Study Materials

• Veritas Prep - I think Veritas' math is probably too basic but they were really worth it for the Critical Reasoning section. I think I went from about a 40% accuracy rate to 90%+ in CR from learning their strategies of approaching the problem. Their question bank and mock exams are decent too.
  
• Math Revolution - A word of caution on Math Revolution. You need to fully buy into the program's method of approaching DS questions to make it worth its money, in my opinion. I understood the rationale behind MR's approach to DS but nevertheless fundamentally disagreed with it. But at the very least, it's a good guessing strategy if all else fails. The site's Diagnostic Exam is good but there were a couple of tech issues. Ultimately, it's clear that the instructors are incredibly smart and well-versed in the GMAT, but their methods are unorthodox and I did not buy in. Given my <Q50 score, may I should have
  
• GMATClub CATs and Quiz Bank - easily the best value for money. I tried my best to not pay for this as long as possible since they have a free Question Bank Option, but ultimately caved in and was so glad I did. The explanations for questions are clear, particularly so for quant questions, and I found the link to forum discussions helpful whenever I wanted to explore alternative approaches to solving a problem. The "Bookmark" and "Review" features are clutch. Most importantly, the ability to filter for Incorrect answers or answers that took too long was incredibly valuable[/b][/b].
  
• Manhattan Prep Advanced Quant book - think most people know of this one. Good and useful.
  
• Manhattan Review DS book - would suggest against getting this book. There are many difficult quant questions in that book that I've never encountered in other books. They clearly put it in to teach math concepts, but doing that through DS is not the best way IMO.
  
• Official Guide books - Obviously incredibly useful.

Again, hope this is helpful and happy to answer any questions