Hello you all!
I looked forward to writing this debrief for a long time now, because the fact that I am writing this means that I have finally reached my score goal of 730+! In this debrief, I would like to share the tips that I would have wanted to know when I first started studying for the GMAT. I certainly wasted a lot of time studying with the wrong resources, and I will try to help others avoid the mistakes I made. Also, I'd just like to give a motivational boost to all of those out there that are studying towards their score goal and to those that might be struggling with the GMAT. My GMAT story is a story of ups and downs, and I think this is what should make it useful for many other test-takers.
My Background: I am 22yo Undergraduate student in a European country. I study management, so my quant background is not very strong, and definitely weaker than many of the engineering and econ students that take the GMAT. On the other hand, my program is fully taught in English, and I read a lot of books and newspapers in English as well. So my understanding of the English language is probably on the stronger side for a non-native (TOEFL 114).
Part 1 - The baby steps: Alrightyyy, so in October 2020 I started to look at my future plans upon graduating from my undergraduate degree and realized that a GMAT score will certainly be required for the programs I want to go for. At this stage, all I knew is that I want to get a score of 700+. I then discovered the GMAT club forum and many people recommended to take a diagnostic test to see my baseline abilities. Well, the results were disappointing to say the least ->
Unofficial Test: 470 Q31 V24So I knew I was in for a long ride, but with Covid lockdowns around the corner I thought there would be no better time to really invest my resources for this test. I then started using the
Manhattan books to brush up my basics in quant. In fact, I thought I needed much more preparation for quant, because I felt much less comfortable in the quant section during the diagnostic test. After a two or three weeks of studying with the
manhattan books I realized that this is not really cutting it for me, and I didn't think I could reach my score goal by simply using the books. So, I looked at different test prep providers and I came across
e-GMAT. The hundreds of 5-star reviews on GMAT club made me go for
e-GMAT and I bought a 4-month subscription. So in November, I started with
e-GMAT..
Part 2 - e-GMAT: Through November and December I followed the
e-GMAT study plan. I started with Quant and later continued with SC. After four months, I have really seen enough. What I am gonna say now will definitely upset some people, but I have talked to multiple people with the same opinion about the
e-GMAT course.
For quant, the course certainly goes through all the relevant topics on the GMAT. However, there are multiple flaws:
(1) The practice questions are often unrealistic, nothing like the official questions
(2) The explanations to the solutions are often very confusing, and the comments section provides no real background to the reasoning behind a certain approach to a quant question. I feel like it is more about solving a particular question, rather than actually understanding the underlying concept.
For verbal, the course is even worse imo:
(1) The question quality is bad, really bad. Prove for this? One week before my 740 exam I took a SC diagnostic test from
e-GMAT and had 3 out of 10 questions correct. I received a V44, and I am sure my verbal didn't improve that much within a week. In official questions I normally got at least 9 out of 10 correct, but the unofficial questions from
e-GMAT really do not resemble the official questions.
(2) The "pre-thinking" approach for CR almost killed my CR ability. I really had to "unlearn" the approach later! After I used different materials (I will introduce that later), CR was probably my strongest section on the GMAT.
I could say many more things about the
e-GMAT course that I didn't like, but I think I really wasted 3 months for this course. After 3 months I took another diagnostic exam and got a 530. Not very impressive after 3 months of almost full-time study.
e-GMAT really has some strong marketing and it also got me. They throw around with fancy words like, SigmaX mocks, Scholarinium, AI, data-driven, and all this blabla..really, a test prep company that truly generates impressive results doesn't need such words for their marketing. Additionally, the success stories are impressive, but
e-GMAT has hundreds if not thousands of clients. Obviously, with such a large sample there will be some great success stories. But for the majority of students I do NOT recommend the course at all, and I will now introduce how I finally improved my score to my target score.
Part 3 - Target Test Prep: I was basically back at square one, and didn't see a real improvement. So I took two weeks off, and then I took a 5-day trial of
TTP (Mid-February 2021). I started with Quant and the course immediately worked for me. The quant concepts start from the absolute basics, and go all the way to very difficult concepts. Each topic is explained in a very conceptual way, and you can really see how much work they put in to develop the readings. All in all, I attribute my entire GMAT quant success to
TTP. I realize Q48 is not the most impressive quant score, but I come from a very weak quant background. I truly believe any student who takes the time to go through the quant readings can easily get a Q48+, no matter the starting score.
For Verbal,
TTP has SC and CR available at the moment. The SC readings are very useful and very detailed. However, I did not like the quiz questions for verbal either (albeit far better than those of
e-GMAT). For verbal, official questions are the way to go. The concepts for SC really opened my eyes tho, and I went through them twice to really understand the principles. For CR, I think the most useful readings are Assumption and Weaken/Strengthen questions. Learning the negation technique was a game-changer for me, and the concepts were very well-explained. However, I didn't go through every single CR module and I think it might be overkill to do so. Again, I would train the concepts with official questions and you can also use LSAT materials for some tougher questions.
Overall, the
TTP course is spectacular. It might take a long time to complete the course, but trust me, I would have saved months of studying if I had started with
TTP right away. But no regrets!
Part 4 - Official Prep: After completing
TTP, I started practicing with official questions for about a month. I used a spreadsheet to recognize my weak areas and I often went back to
TTP to brush up my concepts. If I couldn't find a good way to explain a certain answer I often looked at the approach of
Bunuel to answer a question (Quant). I steadily got accustomed to the GMAC style of questions and it was certainly helpful take sufficient time for practicing with official questions. For verbal,
GMATNinja is the absolute god! His explanations, his video series on Youtube...it simply doesn't get any better than that. His style of teaching is on another level, and his humor kept me motivated to really reach a high verbal score. I attribute a large amount of my verbal score to GMATNinja, and I really have to make a big shoutout here!
Part 5 - Official Test 1 (Online) - 710 Q46 V41 IR8 AWA6: I took my first official GMAT mid-July and scored a 710. The test experience was very bad tbh, a lot of lags, and I was pretty nervous taking the test. Nonetheless, I scored decently. I reached my score goal of 700+, but my ego didn't let me just leave it at that. I invested so much for this test, 90th percentile was just not enough for me. So I decided to sign up for a test center exam mid-August.
Part 6 - Official Test 2 (In-Person) - 660 Q43 V38 IR7: My 2nd GMAT attempt was obviously a big disappointment. But several factors played a role here. The biggest issue was that I was doing a summer internship at the time, and was very busy with work throughout the week. I think my mental and physical state was just not right to take the exam that day. But I decided that I don't want to give up just yet, and I signed up for one last attempt. I took my last attempt mid-September.
Part 7 - Official Test 3 (In-Person) - 740 Q48 V44 IR 6: Finally, I reached my target! All the hard work paid off, and I am more than happy with this score. Just to note, during the test I felt very bad. I thought..what the hell is going on here? I saw question types I never saw before, and I actually thought I completely bombed the test. I was positively surprised to receive such a score. This just shows you, no matter how bad you feel during the test, just move on, and take one question at a time!
This was my GMAT experience and I am happy to have it all over now. Below you can find the summary of my advice:
- If you want to improve Quant, no matter to what level, go for
TTP- If you want to improve Verbal, use
TTP as well, and only use official questions for practice. Also, GMATNinja is an invaluable resource for verbal. If you want to improve towards V45, also go for LSAT questions for CR and RC. The LSAT questions are harder and make many GMAT questions look easy.
- No matter how you feel on test day, be confident, and move on...question by question
- Keep on fighting, when it comes to the GMAT..everything is possible. I remember when starting my journey almost a year ago some GMAT "expert" friend of mine told me non-natives don't ever get a score of 700+ because the verbal section is simply too hard for non-natives. Well, I am surely gonna send him my score report
Should you have any questions regarding GMAT prep, feel free to reach out to me, I am happy to help! I will now apply to several Master programs and I am excited to move on in another chapter! Thank you all and all the best!
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17 Sep 2021, 10:55
