My Debrief - Frustration to 710 to 740 to Stanford

Fellow GMAT Clubbers,

As a skilled procrastinator, I’ve been delaying posting this debrief for several months, but here it is. I honestly owe this community so much, so I hope sharing my GMAT experience will help some of you.


My Background

I’m 24 years old, from Latin America, non-native English speaker, majored in Economics. I have work experience as a management consultant and as an entrepreneur.


My Prep

I decided I would take the GMAT in January 2012. I had no MBA plans, but I was sure I wanted to tackle this test. Several co-workers registered for a 10-day intense after office GMAT course, I decided I would give it a try BUT hours later I was assigned to a project far away from home… no course for me. Weeks later they told me the course was not worth it – good thing I didn't take it.

I decided to study on my own, did some research on prep materials, went over GMAT Club debriefs, and purchased some books. The best books/resources for me were:

AWA: GMAT Club user “chineseburned” Guide. (IMO, this section is not worth too much of your prep time).
Verbal: Sentence Correction – Manhattan GMAT, Critical Reasoning – PowerScore CR Bible, and Reading Comprehension – Choose a strategy (more on this later) and practice, practice, practice. Preferably from OG 12 and/or OG 13.
Quant: Everything – Manhattan GMAT Books. (I just bought the Number Properties Guide and the Word Translations Guide; these two books are a MUST, but I’ve heard very good stuff from the complete Manhattan bundle).

Once the books arrived, I always found an excuse not to study. A co-worker told me: “Buy the exam, set the date, and that will get you studying”. It did. I scheduled my first exam for the last week of March – it all went terribly wrong from there. Long story short, the new project turn out to be extremely demanding and time-consuming, I had no time to study, just took some practice tests (scores were all over the place, I don’t remember them), and on test day the computer screen crashed, the lady at the test center panicked and the timer kept going. She moved my exam to another computer but I had lost 15 valuable minutes. I had to cancel my exam (chose no to report). I obviously filed a case; GMAC reviewed the case and offered me a free retake.


My Real Prep

After going through an awkward prep and frustrated exam attempt, I decided to restore my social life, act like a human being, and let future me worry about the GMAT. After long talks with friends and family, I decided to take two weeks off from work during the summer to focus 100% on the GMAT instead of trying to squeeze the GMAT into my daily routine and kill all chances of a healthy, balanced life. (I extremely recommend exploited consultants/bankers to do this).

I scheduled my test for August. I decided not to prep for Integrated Reasoning since many schools (including Stanford) announced that they wouldn’t consider this section until they had a clear understanding on how to evaluate it.

Once the two-week break began, I moved to my college town and became a hardcore GMAT nerd. I studied for 8-10 hours a day during the first 10 days. My plan was to finish the 4 books in those 10 days and to spend the rest going through the OG 12 and doing practice tests.

Quant
The MGMAT Number Properties Guide is the GMAT quant bible; it will refresh all the high school math rules you probably don't remember. The MGMAT Word Translations Guide was also very helpful. It takes you through concepts step-by-step so that you really understand what each question is asking and what the best approach to take is.

Verbal
For SC, the Manhattan SC Guide is a MUST. After going through this book you will become a SC master. Same thing for CR and the PowerScore CR Bible, another MUST. RC depends on the method that suits you better... Go over the GMAT Club's Reading Comprehension Strategy Guide, try different strategies, and see which one you prefer. I started by only reading the first and last sentences of every paragraph and then going back to the text for specific questions, that method didn't work for me, so I changed to reading everything and taking notes of the important stuff, which worked really well. The only downside is timing, if you want to read everything while taking notes you need to reduce the time spent on SC to around 1 minute per problem so you can use the extra time for RC. Using the Manhattan SC Guide, this is very achievable.

Anyway, I followed my plan accordingly, finished the 4 books in 10 days, and even had time to go for a run or hang out with friends at night. During the last couple of days before the exam, I took 3 practice tests:

GMATPrep #1: 710 Q48 V40
GMATPrep #2: 720 Q48 V41
GMATPrep #3: 770 Q50 V44 (Got a few repeats)

In order to keep track of my timing during practice tests, I wrote the question # - ideal time left on the top of the first three or four pages (for quant only):

5-65
10-55
15-45
20-35
25-25
30-15
35-5

On the top of the last page I wrote (for verbal):

5-66
10-57
15-48
20-39
25-30
30-21
35-12
40-3

I found these timing guidelines very helpful.

After reviewing these exams, I had figured out some of the GMAT tricks, especially for verbal. I found Sentence Correction simpler: Remember the answer is always there, verbs should agree with nouns, modifiers should modify the correct noun, and clauses should be parallel to each other. That is 90% of SC problems.


Test Day #1

I was very nervous the night before the test so I had trouble falling asleep. I finally got a few hours of sleep, but not enough; I woke up feeling very tired. I arrived to the test center around half an hour early, no problem there. The essay section went OK, then the IR section went very smooth, I finished with 3 minutes left. I took the first break feeling very confident. The quant section began and I stumbled upon a complicated sequence question, lost a lot of time there. Same thing with an inequality question. I had completely screwed up my timing with those two questions and had to guess the last 4. I felt extremely tired after the quant section; I blame the lack of sleep. During the verbal section I just relaxed and answered everything faster, I knew I wouldn’t be happy with my score because of the unfinished quant section. Finished the verbal section with 5 minutes left.

Clicked on report score, my score: 710 Q46 V41. I was surprised I had scored 700+ given the bad quant performance. I was disappointed, not because I thought the score was low, but because I knew I could do a lot better, especially in quant. My AWA score was 5.5 and my IR was 8.

Came back to my friend’s apartment and registered for a retake next month.

Takeaways from Test #1: Studying for two weeks non-stop turned me into a GMAT-problem solving machine. During most of the exam, I was solving problems on autopilot mode. The big exceptions were the two questions that threw me off and the fact that I didn’t have the stones to guess and move on. My advice: If, after taking a good look, you have no idea how to answer a problem, guess and move on, the chance of choosing the correct answer is about the same whether you spend 1 or 10 minutes on that problem. Learn to move on!


My Real Prep #2

After scoring that 710, I took a two-week break from the GMAT, got back to my daily routine, and organized work so I could leave myself a few free days before the exam. I already knew the material from my recent studying so I didn’t open the books; instead, I just practiced, practiced, practiced. I bought the GMATPrep Software extension pack, very helpful for extra-practice, but still, I was having issues with my quant timing… so, what fixed it? GMAT Club Tests. These tests were the most helpful resource during my entire prep; they are extremely tricky and perfect for practicing 700+ GMAT problems. Since almost all questions in GMAT Club Tests are ultra-hard they train your brain to think faster. I did 6 quant tests in 3 days and improved my quant timing massively. After these tests, I felt ready for GMAT Round 2.


Test Day #2

This time, I was able to sleep decent hours. I arrived to the test center about 15 minutes late due to bad traffic. The lady at the center greeted me with the following words: “You’re late, you will not be taking your exam today, those are the rules, I’m very sorry”. I was terrified. After making a scene I sweet-talked my way into the computer room. During the initial instructions, I wrote in my booklet the timing guidelines described above. The exam began; AWA went as usual but IR felt more difficult than the first time and I didn’t finished in time, couldn’t answer the last 2 or 3 questions. Took the first break feeling confident, had a chocolate bar, drank some Gatorade, and back to the computer room. Quant began as planned and I was slightly ahead of time by question #10. During the middle of the section, the complicated, hellish questions began. I had many “eureka” moments with some questions; mainly unknown variable questions that were quite simple if reordered properly, but very, very trickily arranged, very similar to GMAT Club Tests. I did one monumentally stupid mistake, I misclicked the answer I wanted to select and noticed my mistake once I was hitting the submit button. That felt horrible. Anyway, finished the Quant section with 6 minutes left on the timer and feeling good. Took the second break, another chocolate, more Gatorade and back to the agony pit. The verbal section went relatively good. The questions were very similar to those in the GMATPrep extension pack. I actually had two repeated CR questions from the extension pack during the exam, but with a different final question. For example, I would have the same scenario with kids smoking or something like that, but instead of the question asking to weaken the argument, this time it asked to strengthen the argument. This was very, very confusing because the answers were the same as in the GMATPrep pack. *GMAT Creators: Come on guys, don’t be lazy… Finished verbal with a couple of minutes left, filled in some info, and was ready to report my score.

Score: 740 Q49 V42

I was extremely pleased with my score. I later found out that AWA again was a 5.5, and IR a 5 =/. Probably could’ve scored Q50 and a 750 if it weren’t for that idiotic mistake at quant, but who knows and who cares…


Summary and Key Takeaways

- Find a source of motivation, a purpose. I read this amazing debrief last year (couldn’t find it again) about a guy whose wife was pregnant and during the exam he kept thinking of his soon-to-be born son and how much his family needed this. Amazing. Think about someone you want to make proud or some special reason why you want to go to b-school. Motivate yourself and you will find this exam to be a little less of a pain.
- Maintain a balanced, healthy life and sleep well, not only the day before the test, but during prep, make sure you are feeling (and functioning) as good as possible during prep and on D-Day. If work consumes your life, try to get a couple of weeks off to study. If you are going to do your prep after office, try to do it in a positive mood and don’t kill your social life. Maintain a healthy balance and make sure you don’t hate this thing too much.
- Think of the GMAT creators as the most hateful, heartless, ill-intended, merciless, evil SOBs on Earth. Honestly, they’ll do whatever it takes to trick you into choosing the wrong answer. If a question looks relatively easy and straightforward, it most probably isn’t. Remember this and you will beat them at their own game. Again, GMAT Club Tests are excellent for getting used to conquering tricky questions.
- While solving OG 12/OG 13/GMATPrep practice questions, try to understand the nature of each question. Not only why the right answer is right, but also why the wrong ones are wrong.
- Don’t be late to your exam! If the person at the test center is having a bad day he/she has the right to keep you from taking the GMAT that day.

I really hope you find my debrief helpful! I know there is no need to remind you, but just in case: The extra effort needed in order to destroy the GMAT is worth it! I got into my dream school and am now the happiest dude on Earth! Please feel free to ask any questions, cheers!