GMAT Online Debrief - 760 (Q50, V42)

Question

Phew - finally finished.

My GMAT journey lasted just under a year, but has proven to be worth all of the time and effort that I put into it.

I took my first practice exam with no prep in May 2019 and received a 590. I bought the OG books and casually read them over the summer, spending around 1-2 hours per week reviewing forgotten formulas and grammar rules. In the fall I decided I wanted a more structured approach and dedicated around an hour per day after work to GMAT studying. I felt that my self study was not the best use of my time, but also did not have the time to attend a class in person each week (work late/unpredictable hours), so I went through the Economist GMAT prep course and found it to be helpful for studying at your own pace/time of day, drilling the quant fundamentals and building a solid verbal foundation. During this time I also used the manhattan prep books and worked through a few chapters per week. The two weeks prior to taking my first GMAT, I was aggressively studying around 1-3 hours per day on weekdays and at least 5 hours per day on weekends.

I took my first GMAT exam in January 2020, but had a rough experience caused by proctors not understanding an approved accommodation - this created a ton of test anxiety so I underperformed and cancelled my scores. Pretty upset, I took time off to give myself a break and resumed studying in late February. This time I focused mostly on OG online test bank as I noticed, verbal especially, other question banks are too different from the GMAT's style. I thoroughly reviewed the questions I got wrong, read through GMATClub posts, and reread the manhattan prep books. I rescheduled my next in person exam for mid-April, but it was cancelled due to the Corona virus. I am based out of NYC and did not want to wait potentially until mid/late-summer for testing centers to reopen, so I scheduled the online GMAT.

While working from home and not having as many social commitments as I did pre-Corona, I was able to study more often. I also received some virtual tutoring to help improve my consistency with sentence correction which definitely helped me from overthinking on those problems.

The weekend before my exam, I used a manhattan prep CAT and OG Mock #6 to practice using the online whiteboard. Initially, I thought the whiteboard was going to be ridiculous, but I think that it may have actually helped me slow down and not make dumb mistakes. I crushed my last OG Mock with a 750 and felt pretty confident and relaxed going into the actual exam which helped with testing anxiety. The week leading to my exam, I reviewed my incorrect answers to OG mocks and noticed that the majority of my incorrect quant answers were simple mistakes from either not reading the question properly or arithmetic mistakes from trying to solve the problem too quickly.

My online GMAT experience went pretty well. I read a lot of the recaps here on GMATClub Forum and knew that the proctors may interrupt if you mouth questions to yourself or put your hand on your chin, so I made sure not to do any of that. The whiteboard is very manageable if you can practice with it beforehand. I thought that the 30 seconds between the Quant and Verbal section was the worst part - they should include a 5 minute break in between those sections to give your mind a break. My mind was pretty drained by the IR section, received three of the question types I normally guess on to save time, but pushed through and finished. Overall I felt that I did similar to my last OG Mock so was glad to be finished. I received my scores 3 business days later and was thrilled to score a 760!! I went from a 590-760 in just under a year, 6 months of hard studying (Oct-Dec) (Feb-April) paid off big time with a score way beyond what I would have imagined I finally ended my GMAT journey with.

Your Official GMAT™ Online Score Results: 
Quantitative Section Score: 50
Quantitative Score Percentile: 85
Verbal Section Score: 42
Verbal Score Percentile: 96
Integrated Reasoning Section Score: 6
Integrated Reasoning Score Percentile: 68
Total Score: 760
Total Score Percentile: 99

Materials Used: 
OG Guides/Question Banks
Manhattan Prep Guides
Virtual tutoring sessions
GMAT Club Forums
Economist GMAT course

Practice Exams: 
OG Mock #1: 590 (Q40, V30) 5/16/2019
OG Mock #2: 630 (Q39, V38) 8/20/2019
Economist Mock #1: 650 (Q42, V37) 10/4/2019
Economist Mock #2: 660 (Q45, V35) 11/9/2019
Economist Mock #3: 690 (Q40, V44) 12/7/2019
Economist Mock #4: 730 (Q47, V43) 12/23/2019
Economist Mock #5: 710 (Q42, 45) 12/28/2019
OG Mock #3: 730 (Q48, V42) 3/7/2020
OG Mock #4: 710 (Q49, V37) 3/13/2020
OG Mock #5: 710 (Q45, V42) 3/27/2020
Manhattan Prep CAT 1: 670 (Q44, V37) 4/24/2020 (used online whiteboard)
OG Mock #6: 750 (Q48,V46) 4/25/2020 (used online whiteboard)

globaldesi · Answer

Amazing score .. many congratulations for your score.
How was your experience regarding solving quant online?

bb · Answer

Thanks so much for posting. Fantastic improvement and congrats on your score!!!
Quick question - which day did you take the test and how long did it take to get the score?

Thanks!

unraveled · Answer

From 590 to 760..!!! that must have taken too great an effort.

This is motivating from a test-takers point to consider GMAT online. Any finer details about strategy you want to share...!?

shameekv1989 · Answer

Congratulations!! All the best with your applicatoons.

By the way what is virtual tutoring session?

Posted from my mobile device

NYCGMATTTER · Answer

I usually approach quant by thinking through in my head how to solve the problem or what is needed to solve the problem and jot down a few notes. I think the whiteboard actually helped me slow down and be very careful in arithmetic/algebra set up. There was only one question I had to guess on because once I realized how to solve, I already spent 2 minutes on the problem so I decided to take a guess instead of working out the answer on the whiteboard. Overall, not as much of a handicap as I initially thought it would be.

I took the exam on 5/2 and received the score on 5/6

.

Tutoring via video chat - this worked well for my not so flexible schedule

freedom128 · Answer

Congratulations. Your score increase is incredible. You have proven the notion that gmat online is a cumbersome doesn't hinder you from scoring high.

Posted from my mobile device

Evo23 · Answer

Congratulations! 760 and Q50 using whiteboard is impressive.

saasgrowth · Answer

Thank you for posting the de-brief.

1. I am curious, generally the GMAT Score Matrix will show a 750 for Q50+V42 combination. Do you know if the total score fluctuates a lot with the Q/V split? For reference, I took the Online GMAT in May 2020 and got 760 with a split of Q50/V44.

2. Additionally, can you also tell me how I can access the score in the following format (taken from your post):

When I try to access my online score, it shows it in a tabular format like this:

Total 760 99%
Quantitative 50 85%
Verbal 44 98%
Integrated Reasoning 8 92%

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GMAT Online Debrief - 760 (Q50, V42)

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