710 "en image": how one overcame its difficulties in Quant, Q36 to Q47

Just passed my second GMAT yesterday and wanted to thank the community and the founders. For me it’s been a long year and a tuff period with ups and downs. Today I am through and relieved.

The beginning

I began a year and a half ago with the 700 threshold in mind. I started my journey with a group course at Sight Prep Paris (a Kaplan certified center) to acquire the basics. Retrospectively, I paid way too much for something that I could have learned in books or on the forum, but the teacher was great and because you‘re not alone, this give you plenty of motivation to continue to train by yourself later on.

This type of course provides you only with the basics, it is your job to do the extra miles. So, I bought the Kaplan book, but did not use it a lot (not sure why, but didn’t liked it), I did use their CAT a lot though.

Official guides & lack of seriousness

My next move was to train with the official guides. They are a great source of questions, but they are also very **** to provide you with advance concepts and understandable answer explanations. I ended up doing a lot of questions without mastering key GMAT concepts, especially for quant and SC. In addition, I did not have rigorous studying schedules. I could study every night for a week and then do nothing for two weeks. During my first year, my average time of studying was 30 to 45 mn after work and 2h the weekend.



All combined, my results weren’t really improving, I was stuck around 650, with a very low quant score and an “ok” verbal score. During all that time I was aware of the existence of the forum but made the mistake of not using it.

First attempt

Even though I knew I wasn’t really ready, I decided to take my chance, 15 months after the beginning of my training.
During the exam, I panicked right after the very first question, I was stuck on a zero-trail question, my pencil wasn’t really working well, the following questions all seemed too hard, in short, I never really managed to gain back focus.



Ended up this part five minutes in advance, guessed way too much questions and realized how weak my preparation was for the quant part. Got into verbal, integrated reasoning and AWA sections alright though.
Finally, I scored a disappointing 640 (Q36, V40) correctly reflecting my experience during the exam, even though my latest GMATprep, two weeks before the exam, was 680.

The rebound

After a day of despair, I got back on track with a new plan to strengthen my quant and maintain my verbal.

• More hours of training with rigorous scheduled sessions:
  o 2 hours per night after work and 10h on weekend; alternate quant and verbal every day; emphasis on SC for the verbal.
  
• Use the GMATclub forum as much as possible:
  o I went through the Quant and SC megathread, through all Slingfox Quant and SC notes. Both training on new concepts and practicing on thematic set of
  questions.
  
• Start a notebook for Quant and SC to track all the advance concepts I wasn’t mastering. Memorizing them during my commute every day.

I did that for two months and really felt my confidence grow.



After completion of the megathreads and Slingfox notes, I got back on questions, increasing the difficulties of them with time. For quant I was doing official, Bunuel, EgmatQuantExpert and MathRevolution questions (I knew there were quality questions, representative of the real GMAT questions), and for SC, only official questions found on the forum or in my OGs. I purchased GMAT Club Tests and took load of CATs (Quant questions are really good, some verbal questions are a bit dodgy).

Listening to my wise friend

At that time, I was feeling better with GMAT material, less anxious with time pressure and was ready for another blank exam on GMATprep. Taking a full length GMAT blank test always annoyed me, because it takes you a lot of time: four, undisturbed, hours to do the exam and one full day to review your answers. Because I was complaining of this to a wise friend, she advises me to take a real one instead of a blank, she said “the real exam conditions will give you a more accurate result of your level, and if by any chance your score is sufficient, you would be done with the GMAT”.



So, I listened to my friend and booked the test at the very last-minute, right before leaving on holiday. To remove stress, l decided to change my habits and began the test with Verbal, my strong suit. Also, right before the beginning of the test I had this motto in mind to calm my nerves “Fear is the mind-killer”. I picked it up the night before while reading Dune from Frank Herbert (I added the complete passage at the end of the post *). Nota Bene: a good advice for non-native is to read, all along your training, good English material that you would enjoy.

The second attempt

Three months after my first attempt I was back to the same exam center. I worked the morning -I had loads to finish before leaving on holidays- and took the afternoon for the test. About the exam itself there is not much to say. I finished all sections on time, didn’t felt super great on verbal compare to the previous exam, but definitively much better on quant. IR went horribly and AWA quite smoothly. After a draining 3 hours and a half (I always use all 8mn time-breaks), a brilliant 710 (Q47, V41) flashed up on the screen. For me it was 10 more than expected, and of course one of the best moment of my GMAT journey.

Thanks!

I read a lot of these success stories on the forum, and always wanted to have one of my own, this kept me going. I hope this post will help others, and I am happy to share.

To conclude, a formidable thanks to the guys who created this forum and who maintain it. Thanks to the guys who post the questions, and to those who leave insightful explanations. A special thanks to VeritasKarishma, GMATNinja, souvik101990, daagh, EgmatQuantExpert, Bunuel, mikemcgarry, and nightblade354 who served me as teacher even though they never heard of me and owe me nothing. I will finish by thanking slingfox for the most helpful job he has done with its notes, a real life-boat when I was looking for help after my first attempt. Thank a lot dude.

Thanks guys, I am now moving on to the next chapter: MBA admissions.
* Update 20/06/2019: admitted to HEC Paris MBA and INSEAD MBA (I'm over the moon )
* Update 24/06/2019: final decision INSEAD. Good luck to all!



Cheers,

(*) Frank Herbert, Dune:
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

PS

A note on ESR. Out of curiosity I have purchased it, and was quite disappointed with the information provided or better to say the lack of information provided.