Happy not to read explanations anymore, or my 3-year journey to 710

I just wanted to tell my story and say thank you to GmatClub. I don’t know how I would state motivated and eventually pass the GMAT without such a great community.

I know that we all love stories such as 780 on my second attempt, 800 after two weeks of preparation, Q51 with 40 mins left, and so on…

But my story is quite different from those. It took me a very good 3 years and 7 attempts to score a 710.

PHASE I

Since I’m not a native speaker nor did I study anything formal in English before, I expected that verbal part would be a problem for me, but I couldn’t even imagine how difficult it would actually be. I remember the spring of 2017 and naïve me being excited and enthusiastic, receiving my first OG and looking forward to six-month preparation. Lol

First attempt, 25 Jul 2017 | Q39, V20 500 (info from ESR: CR 28, RC 22, SC 13). A lot of anxiety and nervousness. Obviously, not only my verbal was very weak, but quant also required my attention. To understand how bad my verbal was, just imagine that in RC I chose those answers that had the same several words that I saw somewhere in a passage. I was so exhausted at the end that I barely could think or talk. So, I decided to join a GYM to improve my physical stamina and gave myself another six months.

Math Revolution + E-Gmat and
Second attempt, 04 Feb 2018 | Q47, V27 600. I was happy with that result and saved it because a 600 was the first benchmark that I aimed for. However, my dream was 7-something, so I kept on studying.

Third attempt, 29 May 2018 | Q46, V26 590. I had to wait 3 hours after my scheduled appointment because of some trouble with the Internet at the test center. I went out very tired and disappointed, wondering what else I could do to make that jump in 100 points.

I decided to have a short summer break and sign up for an autumn online group course. Based on reviews on gmatclub, I picked Veritas intensive course with Ravi Sreerama. It was a very right decision for me and a true pivotal point because Ravi showed how those who perform well think and tackle questions. ‘It’s not a math, it’s a reasoning test’, he kept saying. I started doing Veritas CATs regularly, and my confidence started growing little by little. But I still was somewhere around 640-660.

A long break due to the birth of my son Moving to another apartment and to a different office. Life kept going, despite my passion for the exam.

PHASE II

I returned to my preparation journey in September 2019, rewatched all recordings from Veritas course. Started reading gmatclub forum regularly. Thanks to all those success stories, they kept me motivated. To improve my reading skills, I followed bb 's advice and started reading fiction books, signed up for NYT and the Economist. mikemcgarry thanks for your posts here and your blog, I read it almost entirely. How can a person be so smart, so educated, and so sophisticated? You just blow my mind. I kept going to GYM and started running regularly. I realized that GMAT wasn’t even close to anything I had studied for before, and thus required a kind of a different approach.

Only in two years I noticed and figured out what are GMAT Official Prep CATs everybody mentions and talks about. Omg, how could I miss them?

Exam1, 13 Oct, 2019 | Q49, V26 640

Self-preparation, PowerScore CR Bible, gmatclub explanations, reading books, etc.

Exam2, 20 Feb, 2020 | Q49 V32 670
Exam3, 23 Feb, 2020 | Q49 V35 690
Exam4, 26 Feb, 2020 | Q50 V35 710

Pretty confident I went for

4th attempt, 29 Feb 2020 | Q48 V32 650

Buuuuum…It hit me like a ton of bricks. I was very nervous during the exam, so nervous that I barely could write properly on a pad, my hands were so shimmering that I couldn’t even recognize numbers that I was writing. I spent almost the entire Q part just to catch my breath and normalize my pulse. Sadly, I realized that in addition to mastering material I had to learn to manage my psychological state. So, I started meditating regularly. It has so captured me, that now I can’t even live a day without a session of meditation.

I also recognized that all that time I had been focusing on improving my strong (Q) part. Now I can say that it was a HUGE mistake of mine. Of course, tuning up your strong part will benefit you, and you will do so willingly because you are good at it, however, only working on your weaknesses will catapult you. Any athlete will tell you this. But the problem is that you will be trying to avoid it in all kinds of ways, finding tons of arguments and excuses. Embrace your weaknesses, train them, love them. They are what you will come to success through!

This is how I came to GMATNinja. Charles, you are the man! I attribute all my success in verbal part to you and Harry. Say hi to him, btw. Thank you, guys! And a little bit to a spring lockdown, because thanks to it I was able to work methodically every day. It was like a preparation for a sports competition: studying, running, sleeping; studying, running, sleeping.

Since by that time I had used up almost all official resources and questions, we started with questions from LSAT tests. Oh, my God! How dense and convoluted they are. I’m so happy that three years ago I didn’t decide to take LSAT, hahaha. GMAT passages after those of LSAT look short, understandable, and manageable.

Exam1 (Retake), 18 Apr, 2020 | Q50, V44 760
Exam2 (Retake), 25 Apr, 2020 | Q51, V38 740
Exam5, 03 May, 2020 | Q49, V29 640
Exam3 (Retake), 10 May, 2020 | Q50, V38 730

5th attempt, 14 May, 2020 | Q48, V34 680

So close to 700, that I could even smell it. At that time, I was so strong mentally and physically that I could do two exams one after another. Energy bars, water, nuts, or rituals indeed are important, but they won’t help if you are not prepared. I had been focusing too much on unimportant side things, trying to find some shortcuts and gimmicks, while the only thing I had to do was to train for the GMAT, solving sets of questions under timed conditions.

FINAL STAGE

Exam4 (Retake), 31 May, 2020 | Q50, V47 780
Exam6, 07 Jun, 2020 | Q49, V39 720

6th attempt, 10 Jun, 2020 | Q47, V32 640

Buuuum again, but now I stayed calm and kept saying myself "It’s just bad luck. It’s OK, sometimes it happens. You still have two attempts. Just keep doing what you have been and success will follow". My score fluctuated because I was applying new skills and a new strategy. Some time was required to absorb them and to get used to them. Well, knowing is not the same as doing. This is simply how our brain works. We need to learn skills and then we have to train them, but we need to do so in chunks. There is a very popular course, which helped me a lot, called “Learning how to learn” by Barbara Oakley.

Moreover, I analyzed the ESR report and noticed several reassuring things. For example, all my incorrect answered questions were harder than those answered correctly. It meant I did well on my base level and answered correctly all I was supposed to. Another example, I had a big disproportion within subparts: CR - analysis/critique 100% vs construction/plan 60%; SC - grammar 83% vs communication 50%. Official Advanced Questions book came in handy here since it has questions divided by subparts. So, I simply trained my weak subparts with those questions. I also scored IR 7, though my best result before was only 5. As you can see there were some good points to stay motivated, or I just found them to fool myself

I also read the book "Stillness is the key" by Ryan Holiday. I highly recommend it to anybody who struggles with test anxiety and high expectations.

Exam6 (Retake), 28 Jun 2020 | Q51, V44 770

I live in a small European country, therefore I needed to travel 3-4 hours to the any nearest big city with test centers. I tried different options – to go on the day before, stay at a hotel, and take the exam next morning; to go in the morning on the same day and take the exam later afternoon; to go by car, or to go by public transport to stay rest and focused.

This time I decided to change a country and consequently a test center, and went to Paris, just for fun part of the way by car and part by train for my

7th attempt, 04 Jul 2020 | Q48, V40 710, with CR 46, RC 38, SC 37, and IR 8. I went outside, holding my unofficial score report and trying to fight my tears back.


Special thanks to IanStewart. I wish I had written to you and met you earlier. You always have an elegant and saving time and mental energy solution. Your books are second to none. Thank you, Ian.


I know it’s a long post, just as my journey was though. People write shorter ones after scoring 760+, but for me that 710 feels like…you name it.

Would I have gone through this journey again, if I had known that all before? Yes, definitely! I’ve learned so much that I won’t change it for anything.

Thanks, GmatClub. I’m happy not to read explanations anymore