Hi,
I just wanted to write my GMAT experience here as this forum and the tonnes of fantastic YT videos have helped me in GMAT journey. I started my GMAT journey in August 2022 and gave two attempts at GMAT. September 27 and October 05, 2022.
My GMAT Scores were
GMAT Mock 1 - 740
GMAT Mock 2 - 740
GMAT Mock 3 - 750
GMAT Mock 4 - 730
GMAT Mock 5 - 730
GMAT Mock 6 - 770
GMAT Attempt 1 - 720 (Q50, V 38)
GMAT Attempt 2 - 730 (Q50, V 39)
Test preparation experience:
If you are on GMAT Club for the first time, please follow the GMAT Ninja pages on YT. Watching all their videos should bump your score up by at least 20-30 points if you're below 650 currently. Charles and team, thank you for such gold quality free content.I took
e-GMAT's paid course for the prep in addition to mocks. Impressions -- Sentence Correction was excellent. CR was below average. Quant tends to be quite theoretical, whereas GMAT seems to test applications. I guess, their quant is meant for people getting below Q49. Their analytical section, where they analyse your performance, is absolutely fantastic. It really gave me insights into where I was spending my time incorrectly and what areas I need to strengthen more. For instance, I always "assumed" I was bad at world problems. The tool analysed a lot my attempts and made me realize that I was actually quite good at WP and that I lagged in inequalities and absolute values. I found their SIGMA-X mocks to be closest to actual GMAT papers. Quant questions were well designed.
I also took the 6 CATs by
Manhattan Prep. I would actively discourage anyone from taking them. They are at least 50% harder than actual GMAT and if you take these CAT results seriously, you can be thrown off your actual course of study. For example, in three of their mocks, I got a quant score below Q48 and I wasn't completing all the questions in 62 mins. I was left with 3-4 questions when the timer went off. This made me feel ill equipped in dealing with quant and also made me lose confidence. Consequently, I spent far too much doing quant on
e-GMAT. I realize I could have spent that time doing
OG SC and CR questions, resulting in at least another 10 point bump. The difference between CAT and GMAT is so vast that in both GMAT attempts, I finished all 31 questions with over 1.5 mins remaining.
I also want to share a kudos with the
target test prep team that was kind enough to reply to all of my queries on the gmat club forums.
I felt GMAT Mocks were simpler than the actual GMAT. So be vary of the scores you get there. I'll get into the details below
GMAT Experience 1 (At Center)
Overall, all GMAT Mocks started with easy SC/CR questions and short RC passages. In the mocks, I would be 90% confident of getting all of the first 5-6 questions right. In GMAT -1, the first 5 questions were really difficult. Two SC questions were meaning based questions and the RC passage was really long with three inference questions. This took me completely by surprise and I lost precious minutes trying to adjust to difficulty level. I gave the test in the pearson center in Mumbai and the center was professionally run. The proctors were responsive, environment was conducive for the test, and the overall experience was easy going. (except for the stress of the actual test). Only con was that the keyboard was really bad. I have been working on Macbooks for over 7 years and I found that the laggy keyboard really slowed my typing speed down during the AWA.
GMAT Experience 2 (At home)Pre Exam -- 3 days before my GMAT, I got a mail from Examity (The company that conducts GMAT at home) with test instructions. A really small point written at the end and one that you might miss is that a candidate is supposed to upload an ID card 48 hours before the test on the Examity forum. I missed this point completely and panic called them 11 hours before the exam. They told me that my ID was already two months before when I had made my GMAT account. I am still wondering why the email was sent to me, causing me to panic unnecessarily, a few hours before the exam.
The white board experience is pretty easy. Unlike what a lot of people area saying, you are not supposed to show your whiteboard to the proctor at all times. It is to be shown only during the start and at the end. Had I known this before, I would have never booked GMAT from test center. However, there are few cons to GMAT at home.
Firstly, the entire software collapsed in the middle of my quant exam! The proctor was not even at her seat when this took place. I kept calling out to them. She came back and took some more time before pausing the exam. All in all, I lost a little over 2 mins because of this. Since I was fast at quant, the time loss wasn't a big issue. Had this been verbal, I would have easily missed two questions.
Final Thoughts
There are three components to a GMAT exam
1. Your knowledge from school days
2. Your understanding of the application of knowledge
3. Your confidence during the preparation and during the exam.
Understanding your starting point in each of the areas tested by GMAT is key. For instance, your knowledge of school level probability might be poor but your application of algebra might be poor. First problem will be solved by going through the theory and the second will be solved by doing more problems. First will take significantly more time and the second can be done quickly.
Your preparation time depends on your starting score and your starting point in each area tested. For instance, a person scoring 600 in a mock will take lesser time to reach 700 if all his concepts are clear and only his application needs refining as compared with a person getting 630 in the first mock but with serious knowledge gaps 5-6 topics. Understand where you are on both fronts to select your prep time.
Don't underestimate confidence. Unless you a Q51, V51 kind of a person, you aren't going to be 100% sure for quite a few questions. In mocks, you may be marking a question that you are 80% confident of and move on, feeling less confident on GMAT day will make 80% feel like 50%. I think GMAT Ninja needs to make a video on the best start to adapt when you're "stuck" between two choices!
Again, thank you Charles and team for this fantastic forum. Hope you keep helping aspirants. If I am ever in the USA, I'll send some Bhindi Masala over to Charles.