GMAT Debrief - 770 (Q50, V44, IR8, AWA5.5)

Friends,

It has been 3 weeks since completed my GMAT. This community has helped me in preparation since day 1 so I thought it is my duty to share my experience with fellow students. Instead of going the traditional route of explaining how I prepared etc. I thought I will try something different. I am planning to share a few nuggets of experience during the preparation and point out some tips from it. If anyone has any other questions I can answer, please ask here or pm me.
And get ready for a LONG post!

1) General preparation - So, believe it or not, I ordered the OG (officially beginning my GMAT study) some time around December 2013 (yeah, I know, its been 3 years!). However, I did not even register for the exam until Jan 2016. I started with just the OG and going through tens of forum posts on GMAT Club. I went through the OG material, started solving few random problems here and there. However, every few months, something used to come around and disrupt my preparations. It didnt help that my work was very busy with often 12+ hour days and work spilling over weekends. However, by end of 2014 I was ready, or so I felt. I had planned to take exam around Dec 10th 2014 and then go on a 3 week vacation. However, I realized around November if I do take the exam I wont be putting my best foot forward and decided to take the exam after the vacation. As it turns out, a 3- week vacation is enough for you to even forget your password to login into mba.com and I realized I had simply lost track of all my preparation. From then onward, for a few months I was preparing on and off (mostly off) and then GMAT just kind of took a backseat. Around mid 2015 I re-started the prep, realized I needed some "structure" to the prep, joined e-gmat Verbal Online course and completed it by end of 2015. Even then I did not register for the exam since it felt like I was missing some more preparation - I was getting around 700-720 but I had not exhausted all of my tests materials etc.
Around beginning of 2016, I got email from e-gmat that my subscription was going to end. but if I gave proof that I have registered for GMAT, they can extend it until exam day. This prompted (or rather forced me) to book the exam for early March and the rest is history.

Tip: My main advice to anyone starting GMAT prep - dont start until you are in a situation where you can study for 2-3 months in such a way that you are not away from prep for more than 1 day. You may study for 1 hour or 10 hours a day but you need to be in a stage in life and with work that you study every single day. Maybe some people are different, but for me even a single day break would mess with the preparations. If you dont feel like studying some day, just browse through GMAT debriefs, go look at univ websites, read some stats from Poets and Quants or some other stuff. But make sure you login into your GMAT-mode every day until you take the test.

2) Sentence Correction - Of all the time I spent preparing for GMAT, 75% time was spent on Verbal and of that almost 60% was spent on SC. English is not my first language, but I went to a school where English was teaching medium. I would rank myself as an avid reader of English books, novels etc. However, something in the SC section of GMAT just wont 'click' for me. I completed OG problems in all sections - twice!. I still could never get the 700+, 'hard' SC problems. Based on all the discussion on GMATclub, I ordered the Manhattan prep SC guide and completed it. At that point, I realized my accuracy in SC was somewhere close to ~50-60% on 700+ questions. This would bring my Verbal score to somewhere 37-38 on a good day and around 30-32 otherwise. I realized I needed some 'structure' to solving SC going beyond theory. I joined the e-gmat Verbal course after reading few reviews here and attending a couple of their free seminars. I will type a separate review for e-gmat but I must say their Verbal course is worth every dollar spent. It is not great as far as grammar theory is concerned (MGMAT book is excellent in that regard) but e-gmat has nailed what grammar you need for GMAT specifically. One other advantage is that they have interactive video lessons which help in preparation immensely. Anyway, I was able to get a 'method' to solving SC problems, kept following and zoning it in. Towards the end, when I solved GMAT Prep full length tests I was able to get most of SC questions right and kept scoring >40.

Tip: For every section, plan to have strategy to tackle the problems. I feel that GMAT tests an approach to problem more than anything else and some questions are designed such that only those following a known approach will get to the answer in time. Even though you get the answer during a test, go back and practice your approach on the problem. This is more important in SC and CR.

3) Integrated Reasoning - It is almost comical that I was dreading this section as my exam date approached (and feel like I may have gotten little lucky with my score), since most people just dont bother preparing for this section. One reason for this is most prep companies (including GMAT Club and e-gmat) are still not giving enough attention to this section- not as much as they give to Quant or Verbal. However, most recent news suggest that admission offices are planning to consider IR score important. Anyway, I never got a good handle on this section. On one hand, you need to solve a 2-3 part question with paragraph-long descriptions in <2.5 mins; and on other hand, there was no guessing, no skipping which would ultimately reward you. I even posted a plea on GMAT Club about this and found few people in same boat as me. I decided to do the only thing I could do - solve as many IR questions as I can. I solved all the question in GMAT's software, on e-gmat's course and several on GMAT club. I also solved few tests on 800 score which I got through e-gmat subscription. I realized I needed to get the easy questions correct on IR - the one with geometry, graphs or the ones where you need to select 2 answers one in each section etc. Either way, I did get an 8 on GMAC test and in the final exam.

Tip: Nothing specific really - if you dont know what to study in a section, just go and solve whatever problems you can get in that section!

4) Exam Day - I am going to jump into my exam day now. My exam was starting at 11.15. I got there on time and after almost an airport security type atmosphere, went into the exam hall. (I was not expecting the examiner to ask me to turn my pant pockets out to show I dont have anything in them! ). I finished the essay and IR sections and raised my hand for a break. The very nice lady was just escorting another girl into the exam hall and came to me after around 1 minute. Now, when I took practice tests at home, I always did them timed with 8-min breaks. So I had my sandwich and chocolate bar as always, went to the bathroom across a long hallway and headed back to exam hall. What I didnt realize was I had to do the pull-your-pant-pockets out routine one more time and then the examiner walked me in the hall towards my booth. What this resulted in was that when I started my Quant section, the clock showed 55 seconds past my break-time! The unthinkable had happened! How do I justify to myself that after all this prep I was careless enough to sit outside eating chocolate while my exam seconds were ticking away!! To top it off, in the hurry, I even clicked through the initial description section which lasts for 1 minute. In my excitement I thought if I dont spend time on the information section I can use it towards the problem sets - that is not how it works and ultimately I started the test with only 73:55 mins remaining. I tried to calm myself, told myself Quant is my strong suit, and afterall 1 min is basically just 1 problem I have missed or have to guess. I started being extra careful with time, and by 10th problem I had recovered the lost minute. I think in the end I ended up guessing 1 problem which didnt matter much.
The story is not yet over. I managed to do the same thing in Verbal and was 23 seconds late. This time, I did not jump through the Information section (took full minute to calm myself down) and then started the test. I was again able to recover the lost 30 seconds.

Tip: Well, its kind of obvious but dont be late during the breaks. When practicing tests at home, try to take a 6 or 7 min break. You wont have a wrist watch on your hand when you take exam so try to mentally time the break. In the end it is better to be early and sit for couple of minutes staring at the exam screen after the break than to be late.

5) My exam-day gymnastics didnt end with just being late for both important sections Quant and Verbal. I took a nap during the Verbal section - well almost! 15-20 mins into the Verbal section, I started feeling incredibly sleepy! May be the initial exam time adrenaline had started to wear off. I also wondered if the chocolate bar I ate had some sort of sleep-inducing drug but no matter what I did I just could not control the yawns. I was afraid if I leaned on the chair I might actually fall asleep. I had managed to sleep 7-8 hours previous night. If this was a prep exam and I was studying at home I would have just done a few push-ups or jumped into air but obviously that was not an option. I had to literally fight sleep for few minutes until things got 'normal' again and I completed the exam.
In retrospect (and after my wife pointed out), I realized what happened. Almost every weekend on Saturdays, except when I took full-length tests, I always (and I mean ALWAYS) take a nap after lunch. I started my exam at 11.15 and was in Verbal section around 2pm which coincided with the time. My stupid body didnt know it was exam time and started getting dozy. I am glad I was able to fight that off and get through the 74 min 37secs of Verbal.

Tip: I know many people elsewhere on GMAT Club have mentioned but take an exam at a time of day when you are most active. For me, I had to take exam on Sat and most slots open were around mid-day time (Early morning slot was out of question, since I knew I wouldnt be able to take off from work on Fri and mostly wont get full night's sleep for an 8am exam). My advice would be if you get an exam time, make it a habit to be mentally and physically active at that time of the day/week.

6) Prep Material - Before closing this long (and probably boring) rant, let me list the prep material I used and its merits/de-merits.

a) OG - Obviously a must! I solved all sections of it twice, marked the important questions in each and went back and revised a few of them.
b) MGMAT SC - I got this for 2 reasons, one was obviously to get SC prep but other was also to get the 6 full-length MGMAT tests (more on the tests later). SC section is very detailed, systemmatic and also very boring. I found it really difficult to go through the prep questions in this book more because of the nature of problems. I know a lot of people like the SC book but I didnt find it that useful.
c) Powerscore CR Bible- Another book I got from recommendation from GMATClub members. One of the best, most logical prep books I have encountered. I am not sure how much it helped me because I was not tracking my score back when I went through the book, but I can tell you the book was a joy to go through - with every section neatly detailed with tip and in a logical fashion.
d) E-gmat Verbal Online course - Extremely useful. The course will not teach you what a gerund is or when and how to use a Past Participle in a sentence. What it will tell you, however, is that for every type of problem, what strategy is useful to solve a problem. I will post a separate review of this course elsewhere.
e) GMAT Club and GMAT Club tests - What can I say about the most amazing resource for GMAT on the planet, and that too absolutely free! GMAT Club has done a great service to all MBA aspirants with the detailed lists of everything you need from preparation strategy, experiences of past applicants, do and donts for multiple scenarios and now admission guides! GMAT Club quant tests are really good and I would say at par or slightly tougher than the real ones. Verbal tests are alright and can use some improvement in my opinion. I have also found the members very helpful in general. The kudos system is pretty good and if you spend some time you can get enough kudos to get access to GMAT Club tests.

Practice Tests.
a) I took quite a few 'free tests' initially from almost every Prep course - MGMAT, Veritas, Powerscore, Economist etc. Most of the tests are OK and help build stamina.
b) MGMAT tests - Apart from the GMAC software tests, I think Manhattan tests are the most reliable source of practice with good problems. Their quant is unnecessarily hard, confusing and has long paragraph problems which you wont get on real test, but as an indicator of an ability the MGMAT tests are very good. I did 3 of the test before getting into full gear for prep so I wont list the score here, but these were the scores in final 3 tests.
Exam 1 - 740 (Q47, V45, IR4)
Exam 2 - 700 (Q45, V40, IR5)
Exam 3 - 710 (Q48, V38, IR5)
c) GMAC tests - obviously the best indicator of the real test. My scores were identical to real one.
GMAC 1 - 770 (Q50, V44, IR8)
GMAC 2 - 760 (Q50, V44, IR8 - I got the SAME IR questions in the both GMAC tests)
Real GMAT - 770 (Q50, V44, IR8).

7) Last tip - and IMO most important - GMAT is for most people a long and time-consuming journey. No matter how hard you prepare, what score you get, people around you bear the brunt of it and you take time away from them. So after the exam, thank whoever in your life has supported you through that journey - spouse, partner, parents, kids, colleagues, God, anyone. Take some time to do something nice for them.

That is all from me. Hope this helps someone. Good luck and all the best!