GMAT Debrief | 760 (Q48, V47)

Hi all!

I wrote the GMAT on 27 July 2022. I spent about 2 months on prep. Thought I'd briefly share my approach and strategy here. I'll try and keep this quick.

Prep Material:

1) EGMAT: I bought the EGMAT online focused course which gives you 2 months' access. Very comprehensive and quite reasonably priced, would strongly recommend this, especially for people who prefer interactive videos to reading off a book.

2) Official Guides: A must. I used the 2020 versions, but would suggest using the latest ones.

3) Manhattan Guides: Used them as supplementary guides.

Verbal:

As a lawyer, I knew that verbal was my strong suit, and planned to expend as little time as possible towards the section.

Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning: I directly went to solving OG questions for RC and CR, which I found to be quite doable. I picked up the 'pre-thinking' approach from one of EGMAT's webinars, which was quite helpful.

Sentence Correction: I started with OG questions, and realized soon enough that SC needs work regardless of your general verbal ability. How we speak colloquially or even write academically is often incorrect from a grammatical or logical standpoint. The only way to improve is to learn the bare basics. I went through the EGMAT course for this (~30 hours) - covers everything - verbs, pronouns, modifiers, comparisons, parallelism, and idioms. EGMAT keeps things simple and easy to comprehend, avoiding any unnecessary grammar jargon (which GMAT does not expect you to know either).

After theory, practice as many SC questions as possible - first exhaust the OG questions and then go to other sources if you have the time (I didn't). This is extremely important for the rules to come naturally to you. I'd say I developed a certain GMAT SC sense (GMAT likes certain things and doesn't like others eg. the word 'being').

Quant:

I had not dealt with quant since school, was completely out of touch and needed to start at ground zero. And when i say ground zero, i had to teach myself how to long divide, that 0 is even and that angles of a triangle sum to 180 degrees. I primarily relied on the EGMAT course + Manhattan Guides for quant theory. Again, EGMAT does a great job of dealing with bite-sized basics and the concurrent practice quizzes help you test yourself on individual concepts in an incredibly precise manner. I followed the course from top to bottom.

For practice, I used the same approach - OG questions only (you can use the primary OG guide + OG quant guide + OG advanced questions guide) and did not find the time to go to EGMAT scholaranium practice (but i've heard good things about it). For me, this sufficed and I was hitting my target score, in the range of Q47-50, in my mocks. I would recommend preparing your own notes specifically for quant, to enable a quick revision a day before the exam.

Mocks:

Use the 2 official mocks judiciously. They will likely be the most accurate measure of your ability. I suggest writing the first one upfront, BEFORE you start your prep. The idea is to get an estimation of how you stand on each section, identify weak areas, and then craft a study plan accordingly. You don't want to spend most of your prep time strengthening your strengths.

You can write the second official mock closer to D-Day, say a couple of weeks before the exam. The intention then is to confirm that you're on track, or in case you need to change your focus of study in any manner, while you still can.

Ofcourse do other mocks (maybe 3-5) periodically in the middle phase. You'll only learn time management well during a mock. I found EGMAT mocks' difficulty level to be quite close to the actual exam.


Misc exam tips:

1. Prepare your scratch pad to keep track of time. Use the 2-3 mins of tutorial time to set it up. I used manhattan prep's strategy here, you can google 'how to set up your gmat scratch paper - manhattan' (I can't post the link with fewer than 5 posts on GMATClub).

2. Practice AWA atleast a couple of times. I learnt it the hard way - wrote my first during the actual exam. Scored decently (5) but fell extremely short on time, wrote about a 120-140 word essay. Would've done better had I practiced one during a mock.

3. Don't worry much about IR. It tests the same quant and verbal skills. Just familiarise yourself with the different formats of questions, and you should be good to go.

4. Read exam instructions properly before test day on the official website. I did not realize that I would need to wear the face mask during the exam. My eye glasses started fogging up when i started and I ended up wasting the first couple of minutes making monitor adjustments etc. to do without the eye glasses. Take note and use your lenses!

5. While researching the 5 schools to send your scores to, check whether they even require an official score to be sent before admission. Several schools simply accept self-reported unofficial scores at the time of application. Send your scores to those which require official ones and which you would likely apply to based on your expected score.

Any specific questions, feel free to drop a DM! I'd be happy to help in whichever way I can.

Kosheel.