Hi
bbI'm a final year Bachelor's student, aiming for a 700+ GMAT score (tentative D-Day: 1st Nov, 2022). From the very beginning itself, I had made up my mind to prepare for the GMAT all by myself, using the free resources that are available throughout the internet.
So to begin with, I took a free mock from
GMATWhiz on 03.04.22, in which I scored 500 (Q33 V26) with absolutely no knowledge of the test contents. I was a bit surprised upon seeing the split as I expected Verbal to be my strength. I noticed that I'm a decent guesser as I successfully guessed quite a number of 700+ questions, specially in DS. However, my initial GMAT prep got derailed due to semester exams and also my IELTS prep (still continuing).
After a few weeks, I got heavily involved in reading numerous articles and watching videos related to GMAT and finally stumbled upon this utopian forum called the GMAT Club! Meanwhile, I started with the Math and Verbal Reviews of OG 2022 (downloaded for free). Then, I moved on to solving 10 OG questions each from PS, DS, SC, CR & RC daily. I was getting most of the initial easy ones correct but I could realize that it was just my gut feeling or something which sounded right, helped me answering those questions.
Soon after, I took another free mock from
Experts' Global in which my score plummeted to a 390 (Q 20 V22) which baffled me a bit initially but then I saw that almost all of the questions were beyond 650 level. Consequently, I still couldn't identify my strengths and weaknesses.
As I went through the explanations by various experts on the forum, I came to know about the different intricacies of GMAT Verbal : for example, I didn't even know what a modifier was, or what did parallelism mean, how to negate, strengthen or weaken arguments etc. It was then that I decided not to deplete the OG question bank without properly knowing the ins and outs of each 'n every topic.
As of now, I have started following Beat the GMAT's 60-Day Study Guide, using
MGMAT pdfs. The number of GMAT resources out there is really overwhelming, starting from Manhattan's All the Quant + Verbal books, PowerScore books, Aristotle SC and then the other useful GMAT Club resources such as the Math & Grammar books, flashcards, notes and even the error logs for different OGs. Unfortunately, I still can't get my head around how to effectively and efficiently utilize the plethora of resources at my disposal.
Long story short, I am really apprehensive about my GMAT score as of now. The lack of sufficient prep time and a proper step-by-step plan of action/schedule is downright terrifying. I just want to stop beating around the bush and start to delve deeper into the individual topics asap, but unfortunately all this is making me even more puzzled.
Therefore, any advice or suggestion from your end would be tremendously helpful.
Thanks in advance!