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souvik101990
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Joined: 19 Mar 2012
Last visit: 11 Nov 2025
Posts: 4,321
Given Kudos: 2,326
Location: United States (WA)
Concentration: Leadership, General Management
Schools: Ross '20 (M)
GMAT 1: 760 Q50 V42
GMAT 2: 740 Q49 V42 (Online)
GMAT 3: 760 Q50 V42 (Online)
GPA: 3.8
WE:Marketing (Non-Profit and Government)
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Expert reply
28 Apr 2020, 20:16
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GMAT Online is not all that bad!
As many of you may know, I took the GMAT the second day after it launched (April 21st). I was nervous and excited. I had taken the GMAT 4 times in the past (twice for business school reasons and twice recreationally). I wanted to test first hand how the experience was and also to check how much can my previous scores (720, 760, 750, 750) really drop. I am going to write this debrief in an FAQ style because that's what I wanted to do by taking this test!
What did I do to prepare myself for the test?
Pretty much nothing really. I wanted to go in with zero prep and zero whiteboard practice. I wanted to accomplish two things here. First, I wanted to check how much erosion has taken place in my GMAT concepts since the time I last took the test. Second, I also wanted to see how alienated I would feel if I had no whiteboard practice, and all of a sudden I had to do things in my head a lot more.
What was my test day experience?
I had booked the test late evening (10:45p to be exact). I had a few minor issues, mostly because of my own impatience at the start. I could not find the link to the test and the system test was not working for me. A few tries and @VertiasPrepHailey led me to discover what I was doing wrong and I finished my system test in about 10 mins. Remember, that you have to do the system test twice. Once to check if your system actually supports this and once again when you download the test on your computer. The test consisted of checking my internet connection, my microphone, webcam, and pictures of my room in four different angles taken from my phone.
How was the test at the beginning - setup proctor etc.?
I wanted to check if the proctor was listening/watching me so I pinged him at the beginning to make sure that I am clear to take the test. He told me that it is all good. I lost about 20 seconds in order to do this and I did not care, to be honest. A lot of different tutors were talking about whiteboard strategies to keep track of time etc. I did not do any of those. I took one question at a time in quant but more on that later. Also, I realized that the beginning of the test involved opening the secure browser so everything else on your computer gets relegated to the background. I was happy about this because there were no notifications to distract me.
How was the quant experience?
I was nervous about quant, but I had somewhat laid out a strategy for myself going into the test:
- A. Try to do as much math mentally as possible
B. Ignore the whiteboard
C. Guesstimate questions that need extensive calculations or move on
I, sort of, followed my strategy, except in questions that involved linear equations. I failed at manipulating equations in my head. For example,
3x + 91 = 4 - 8x
Solving something like this (or a slightly more complicated version of this) needed some sort of a paper-pen situation and I felt it would be stupid to move on from this. So, for questions like these (as you know there are many on the GMAT), I used their text editor tool just like I did above. It was fine and did not take a lot of extra time. There was a geometry question that I took a LOT of time in because I could not draw out or visually manipulate the figure. I think I got it right, but it took a fair 4-5 minutes.
Finally, I did leave out 2 questions to chance. They were clearly questions that needed taking the shovel and digging the dirt. Perhaps Bunuel could find an incredibly elegant way to solve the question without adding or multiplying large numbers, but I am no Bunuel (can we start a petition to get him to take the GMAT, already!).
How was the verbal section?
If you have read my old debrief, you know that I recommend writing fairly elaborate notes for CR and RC, a trick that I had learned from the EMPOWERgmat guys. I had to throw that out of the window and I used my intuition. The thing that I struggle the most for verbal is remembering my stances for the answer choices. My thought process often go like this for any verbal question (especially CR and RC).
Analyzing Souvik's brain while solving a CR/RC question
Hmm a weaken question - okay let's read this prompt.
UGH that was boring... so I guess I need to find an argument that goes something like this.
Reads A - ugh that does not make any sense.
Reads B - hmm.....maaaaaay beeeeee - let me keep this one.
Reads C - hmm - interesting - this is tempting but doesn't this strengthen the argument instead? get rid of this for now.
Reads D - Okay this is very likely. Should I just mark D and move on? Fine let's just give E a read.
Reads E - Okay this could be decent too but unlikely.
Let's go back - which ones did I eliminate again? UGH I don't remember what I thought about A. Let's read this again!
Do you see an issue with this approach? My head (and I am sure many others') is messy and I often have to put structures to make sense of direction and my stances. I could not do that here, so I had to be extra careful.
For sentence correction, I often do this thing where I draw 5 vertical bars like this
| | | | |
If I think A is clearly wrong, I would cross out the first bar and so on. This keeps me in check and helps me not having to go back to an answer choice I already eliminated. I could not do that here either. Sure, you could make an argument that you could do this on the whiteboard. I just don't have patience to do stuff like this unless I can do it in a second or two.
Overall, I felt my verbal section went okay but I felt it took longer than usual because I was constantly second-guessing myself.
What did I do in the break?
I went downstairs to grab some water and ate some peanuts. I got very hungry because it had been about 5 hours since I had dinner. Got back with a minute left on the timer. FWIW, I did not time my break.
How did I feel in the IR section?
I had originally planned to just guess every question on the IR. Then, I felt it would be a wasted opportunity not to see how my IR abilities were. Fortunately, the IR felt really easy this time. When I landed on the MSR question, I thought I would just move on, but when I read the question, it felt I could answer them by just skimming the data table and the paragraphs. It seemed stupid not to do that so I did. I finished the IR section with about 10 minutes to spare.
Are the questions easier/harder?
No. Definitely felt it was the same level of difficulty as the original test. I got like four boldfaced questions, so I was annoyed with that. I also got 3 absolute values and inequality questions and it was really annoying to type out those equations instead of just writing them.
Okay, those are all the questions I could think of. Please let me know if you have any other questions. If I had to give advice on what you can do on the test, I would say, practice your mental math and up your game. You will need it. See if you can solve at least 70-75% of the quant portion in your head. Be careful with numbers as you cannot use your scratchpad to correct yourself. And, finally, for equations questions, be comfortable in writing them out. Use the GMAT Club Whiteboard to try it out! All the best! Let me know if you have any questions!
28 Apr 2020, 21:45
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souvik101990 - great performance 
. You have not lost your touch, my friend... and congratulations on getting a job in Seattle. Amazon is lucky to have you 
.
Good luck on the move!! (I am assuming that you probably are moving soon)
On the test front, clearly quant is the challenge. Post the test did you try using the Whiteboard to see if you could develop some strategies to optimize the same for Quant?
-Rajat
. You have not lost your touch, my friend... and congratulations on getting a job in Seattle. Amazon is lucky to have you .Good luck on the move!! (I am assuming that you probably are moving soon)
On the test front, clearly quant is the challenge. Post the test did you try using the Whiteboard to see if you could develop some strategies to optimize the same for Quant?
-Rajat
30 Apr 2020, 09:02
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It is so totally weird that I read it all in that accent you speak, I may be watching too many of your videos I am guessing
Did anyone else go through the same?
Did anyone else go through the same?
