GMAT 685 (V85, Q83, DI84) with e-GMAT

Question

How I finally got my prep to stop swinging around, while working full time.

I scored a 685, with a V85, Q83, and DI84.

Where I started

I had a decent base when I started, and honestly I think that was part of the problem, because a decent base kind of hides where you are actually stuck. I was landing somewhere between a 575 and a 645 depending on the day and I genuinely could not tell you why. Some days quant felt easy and other days the same section would drop to around 40 percent. I was doing all of this around a full-time job, so I could not really afford to relearn things I already knew or just grind away without a plan. I looked into live classes and on-demand options, and the honest reason on-demand fit me was that studying for this test is a very individual journey. Even with live classes you still end up re-cementing the concepts on your own anyway. So I needed something that would show me where I was actually leaking and let me sit with it on my own schedule, and that is why the e-GMAT course worked for me.

What PACE did for me

One of the first things I used in the e-GMAT course was the PACE quizzes. These are short quizzes you take before you learn a topic, and based on how you do, they tell you which lessons you can skip and which ones you actually need. A lot of my concepts came back as already solid, so I did not have to sit through material I would have done fine on anyway. By my own rough estimate this saved me somewhere over 45 hours, and I moved that time over to the sections where I actually needed it. If you are preparing around a job, that kind of time saving really matters.

Verbal

Verbal ended up being my strongest section at V85, and critical reasoning is where the biggest shift happened. I already knew what a strengthen or weaken question was, but I was missing a reliable way to actually read the argument. The lessons in the e-GMAT course broke every argument down sentence by sentence until I understood what was really being claimed, and then pre-thinking became the thing that changed everything for me. People talk about pre-thinking as this step you do before looking at the choices, but what I had not understood was what that actually means for each different question type. I drilled it until it stopped being a step I had to remember and just became the first thing I did on every verbal question. The bold-face questions that used to drop me to around 20 percent steadied right out, because I was walking into the choices already knowing roughly what the answer should look like.

RC was honestly my weakest and most intimidating area when I started. My timing was a mess because I kept reading passages over and over and still landing in the low 60s. What changed was a bit counterintuitive, because I actually spent more time up front, not less. I got intentional about figuring out the author's purpose first, I visualized the content as I read so I would stop zoning out, and I took short-form notes with the subject at the top and each new entity as it came up. Reading comprehension is not like reading a news article where you skim to get the gist. You have to actually track the structure. Once that first read was clean, the questions took much less time and my accuracy held up, so the extra time up front paid itself back. That is how RC went from my weakest area to one of my strengths.

Quant

Quant was pretty volatile early on, especially algebra. I would take a cementing quiz, which is a short exam-level quiz that comes after each topic, and my score would swing from 70 to 40 to 60 percent and I had no idea what was moving. My first instinct was to just redo the whole algebra block over and over, and I think that is the trap a lot of people fall into, because if you keep grinding the big block you never find the specific thing that is breaking. So instead I read my analytics block by block and the data pointed me to sequences and functions. From there I did an error log analysis on every question I got wrong, then I went into Neuron OG in the e-GMAT course, which is the official-style question set with full step-by-step solutions, and I drilled just those concepts on the clock until I was using a cleaner approach instead of the clumsy one I had been forcing. Then I would take a fresh cementing quiz to confirm the block held. Advanced topics got the same treatment, and permutations and combinations was one I basically had to rebuild from scratch. Doing it concept by concept is what turned quant from my most unpredictable section into one I could rely on.

Data Insights

DI is the section a lot of people are scared of, and MSR and TPA were weak spots for me early on. What clicked is that they lean on a lot of the same skills as verbal. You read the tabs and graphs the same careful way and take the same quick notes so you know where every detail is before you touch a question. The DI course within the e-GMAT course built the method for me, and the sectional mocks and cementing quizzes built the timing. On MSR I went from around 50 percent on a condensed mock to somewhere in the mid-80s on a full sectional mock, and what got me there was doing some untimed practice first just to prove where I was actually breaking before I put it back on the clock. Because I had already cemented my comprehension skills in verbal first, DI came together faster for me.

Where my mentor came in

I could see all my data, the L10, the L20, hard versus medium, block by block, but seeing the data and knowing what to do with it are two very different things. That is where the Last Mile Push program in the e-GMAT course came in. It is the closing-phase mentorship where a mentor goes through your data with you and catches the patterns you cannot see yourself. Kavya was the difference for me in the final stretch. About ten days out, instead of just having me take another sectional mock, she had me drill the specific question types most likely to move my score. But more than the tactics, it was the reassurance of someone who has worked with hundreds of students telling me which roadblock was real and which was just noise, so I did not spiral every time a section wobbled. If you are in the closing phase and keep second-guessing your own data, I would really recommend looking into LMP.

The bad mock right before the exam

My mocks bounced around a lot. I saw a 715 on one, a 655 on another, and then three days before the exam I took one that came back at 625. That is not a fun number to see 72 hours before your test. The old me would have walked in shaken. Instead I sat with my error log for a few hours and found that in almost every question I missed it was the process breaking, not my ability. In verbal I had skipped pre-thinking, in quant I had rushed and missed a constraint like integer or positive or negative, and in DI I had stopped taking my notes. None of it was a knowledge gap. So I wrote myself a do's and don'ts sheet and walked into the exam just executing that list instead of chasing a score. I also noticed my official-provider mocks were running inflated by around 50 to 60 points compared to the harder practice mocks, which is exactly why those harder questions prepared me and the real exam felt in range. The 685 was the ability I had all along, and the sheet just made sure I used it.

If you are working full time

Persistence and consistency are really the whole thing. You are not going to see the score on day one or day ten, you see it by working the process. Keep an error log, in a doc or a spreadsheet, whatever works for you, because it becomes your record of what to fix next. I studied full days on the weekends and squeezed in whatever I could on weekdays, and I kept my mentor updated so my roadblocks actually got solved instead of just sitting there. It is a long road, mine was about seven months, but the score is absolutely reachable while working full time. I am going back in for a higher one, and I am going to use this same approach.

dhruv23320 · Answer

Thanks for the update

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Congrats on the strong 685. I hope your applications go just as well for you.

pintukr · Answer

Congratulations on an excellent score. All the Best for the applications.

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