Mission: Possible - Rogue Exam - 740 (Q49, V41, IR 6, AWA 6)

Question

Dear gmatclub community,

Thank you so much for being there, every time:
- I needed some information, 
- I couldn't understand some of the OG explanations, and
- I just couldn't handle the (admittedly) easy stuff of this otherwise very challenging exam.

Very special thanks go out to  bb  who mentored me various times and  Bunuel , whose shortcuts, explanations and question sets have helped me improve my quant score. This thread is further dedicated to  GMATPill  and Zeke, who were detrimental to my success! I relied on them after my 1st attempt (which was based on the Manhattan series).

For comparison reasons, some information about me: Eastern European business major in his late 20's; 7-8 years out of school working in own energy project management startup.

Having sat for the GMAT 4 times in total, my story obviously is a long one. I really don't want to bother you with all the details. You can find all my struggles via my posts here, but in a nutshell, while I always have been a strong student (top 10%), it took my long before I could understand and master the GMAT. It all started back in 2012 with  this  thread that got included in the gmatclub newsletter. I wanted a 740+ score. My avatar even says 780. Well, I'm still very happy with my score.  And you know why?  Because this community makes us dream of the very best scores, which makes us forget that the average score of this exam is   540  . I am sure I might score higher as on my 2nd attempt I actually had a V44 ( Debrief ) which could have brought me a 760 this time. Additionally, my last GMATPrep CAT without repetitions was a 770 (Q51, V44), but who cares. GMAT is just one part of the puzzle.

In order to cut the chase I will try to enlist the few important things I have learned while studying for the exam. Though from my own experience, I know that reading about what others have experienced doesn't help you until you feel it yourself, I hope that this experience might still be valuable. So...

1. Do NOT waste your time by reading too many success reviews, strategy threads, etc. 
This might sound counterintuitive, but you HAVE to understand that the GMAT is about SOLVING PROBLEMS. So your time is best invested in solving GMAT problems - the more, the better!

2. Target your weaknesses 
Next, UNDERSTAND that after your initial preparation phase, in which you revise and strengthen the basics (yes, this one takes weeks or months and includes learning the entire MGMAT series or as in my case, luckily, watching all the interesting and entertaining  GMATPill  videos of Zeke Lee), THEN you have to target just your weaknesses. I knew I had to focus on overlapping sets/venn diagrams, coordinate geometry, etc. and just used the search function of the gmatclub. I would recommend you do the same ->  SEARCH  -> Mark "700-Difficulty" and your weakness and  GO! There can be no excuses!

3. SCORE correlates with EFFORTS 
I still think that all those success stories, in which someone studies for 2 weeks and gets a 780 are BULLSHIT. If this would be a CR argument, in order to assess its validity it would be most interesting to find out... answer  (A) Whether there has been any preselection of the candidates who got a 780 within 2 weeks . Because I can assure you, they have put the exact same efforts and number of hours, just somewhere in the past. This doesn't make you more stupid, you just have to GO THE EXTRA MILE!

4. REMEMBER EFFORTS  ALWAYS  PAY BACK 
So just do your part of the deal...

5. Analyze and deal with psychology 
The last day before my exam (good moment, I know) I thought a bit about what watered my attempts and it was 2 things:
- Quite often (especially on Quant) I got a bit tired, but almost always around questions 12-14 and then 26-28. I don't know why, but it was almost always at  \frac{1}{3}  and  \frac{2}{3}  of the exam that I lacked focus. This analysis allowed me to focus even more on those questions. I believe it helped. 
- The GMAT is looking for weaknesses - weaknesses in terms of theory and weaknesses in terms of your psychology. You desperately need to be confident in all sections in order to not let it beat you. That's why I paid attention to AWA and IR, because bad performance in AWA or IR almost always resulted in worse Q and V scores.

6. Learn to LET GO... questions 
Related to the above points, you have to promise to learn to LET GO on the questions that target your weaknesses or are just absurdly awkward. I had such a DS question about the volume of a bottle as Q #35 on the exam. Thought about it 30-45 secs, hit (E), and moved on. Don't overthink, but master the exam! Don't allow it to master you!

7. QUESTION all those suggestions (very frequent here) to go to the toilet, have a splash of water, eat, etc. 
Lastly, please, question everything that you read. Of course, all those suggestions might help, but they constitute a probability of <1%. Let's be realistic, those things are clearly overestimated. It's not that they don't work, it's that YOU HAVE TO PUT IN THE EFFORT, GET BETTER, AND THEN THINK ABOUT THEM! There are no shortcuts, right?

That's all from me! I hope I didn't rob you of too much of your valuable time! Enjoy life, solve problems and you'll get the score! It's all going to be OK! By the way, I am a firm believer that GMAT online courses are far superior to all available books on the topic, so that's what I would do if I had to start over.

Feel free to comment, ask or drop me a PM! I value this community so much, everyone will get an as detailed as possible answer!

Maan, I still can't believe I just wrote this success story! I MADE IT! AND SO WILL YOU!

fireinbelly · Answer

Wow! That was really some perseverance. Very inspiring. Congrats!!!

keats · Answer

bgpower This is such an amazing score and a super amazing story behind it. Cheers to you, man. :-D

bgpower · Answer

Hey, guys!

Thanks to all of you reaching out via PMs and here within the thread! I'd love to answer all your questions so just shoot!

I'm really glad that we all agree that more often than not we just have to wait for our moment to come! Nevertheless, I still hope that with the admissions process it won't take me 4 times

Take care!

hdwnkr · Answer

Perseverance and commitment can create history. You proved it amigo!

Congratulations. Binge watch on Netflix may be!

Nevernevergiveup · Answer

excellent story of NeverSayNo attitude.
Please list out the resources and challenges faced along with the tips to reach a score above 40 in verbal.
Thanks in advance

vfqrk23 · Answer

Dear GMAT community,
From my point of view I can confirm every point made by bgpower, especially #2 and #6

Dear bgpower,
As you could see from my profile, I've come a similar long way to 740 (my GMAT story started in November of 2012).
Thank you for sharing your great story.

Dear GMAT fighters, do not hesitate to contact me if you are stuck and need some help to move on or even if you just started your GMAT journey.
Even though I'd love to change much of what I did while I was prepairing for GMAT and TOEFL tests ist's highly possible that I will be able to give you some piece of advice in order to make your dream score a bit closer.

Best regards,
vfqrk

bgpower · Answer

Thanks so much, guys!

vfqrk23 : We really had a pretty similar fight with the exam! Congrats on the score!

Mechmeera : That's a tough one! As I told you via PM, at the end it turned out that for me Verbal was easier to improve than Quant. In my first attempt I got a Q44/V34. I was definitely unhappy with the MGMAT/CR Bible prep set I had chosen. Please don't get me wrong - those books are wonderful and I'm sure you can get your score with them as well, but I just was re-born in the day I started using @GMATPill's prep materials. As an international applicant I just had huge problems working with all those terms as "descriptive phrase" and that's why the simple but very efficient process of Zeke Lee made sense. I still believe that the GMAT and especially the much feared SC section do  NOT  expect you to dig deep in order to find the right answer. Most of the time (~95%), it's going to be a "more - than" split or a "as-much-as" structure and you just have to know what's to follow. I do think that people on the GC sometimes take extreme routes to come to an answer, especially with SC.

With RC things are way more straightforward. Here the pills also made more sense to me, though in the end I just found what's working for me, namely - I read the passage once and slowly before all questions, trying to imaging the role of every paragraph within the text (still without painting or writing anything). Through trial and error, I had just found out that this works best for me. Nevertheless, I paid also increased attention to key words and turning points (e.g. "however").

It may not be what you want to hear, but CR is just about practice. There is a finite number of question types and you just need to get the reasoning. Answer choices are sometimes are far-fetched (those cases can be very difficult), but for example boldface questions are extremely easy to handle if you just don't care about the meaning as is, but focus on the role of each sentence from the very beginning. So you start reading (no look at the answer choices), you read the first sentence and you think what this is - a conclusion, a claim, an argument to back up another claim, etc. - and you move on. You repeat the entire process for every sentence and in the end, 1 or 2 of the answer choices will be pretty similar.

Bottom line, I won't hide - Verbal was also difficult for me. But I think by applying the above, you can easily get above 40. Having scored 44 on an official exam, I know the difference is subtle. I may even say that everything above say 42-43 can be equally attributed to the content of the passages you get. There should be a certain click and sometimes, this is just a question of pure luck!

Please let me know if you have further questions. I'd be glad to answer them.

GMATPILLBILL · Answer

Congratulations! This is a great story of perseverance and determination. Best of luck on your future endeavors!

bgpower · Answer

Thanks,  GMATPILLBILL ! I appreciate it!

I want to reiterate something I didn't write in my initial debrief, namely, that if I had to start today, I would always choose an online course over books. It may be just me, but I firmly believe this is the easier way to do it. Now, back in the days, for quite some time I was weighing different courses (especially GMATPill vs. e-GMAT), because on the one hand I loved e-GMAT's rudimental verbal explanation videos and, on the other, I was just amazed by this very video, in which Zeke Lee explains combinatorics and probabilities. As I was really frustrated by learning the entire quant/verbal terminology, I decided to go with  GMATPill  and I haven't regretted it for a second! I don't want to sound like a fanboy (and I certainly can't and don't want to evaluate all other courses out there), but I was and still am very happy with my choice.

Whoever is thinking about using the pills, do not hesitate to reach out! I'll gladly share my 2 cents!

Rock it!

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Mission: Possible - Rogue Exam -> 740 (Q49, V41, IR 6, AWA 6)

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