Hey guys,
I've been a big-time lurker have definitely been inspired by the stories here, so I wanted to share my experience. I've been on the GMAT journey since last year and yesterday I finally crossed the 700 barrier and scored a
720 (Q47, V42, IR8).
I did my first GMATPrep mock on July 28, 2020 and scored a dismal
500 (Q40, V20). I can't emphasize enough how useless it is to start your prep with a GMATPrep mock test diagnostic, given that it does not give you much useful information and you pretty much waste a valuable data point.
I completed the
TTP quant course in about 3 months and I drastically improved my quant. I also improved verbal fast and within 3 months or so I was scoring between 660-710 in the mocks.
On my first test (Dec, 19, 2020), the newness of the experience probably got the best of me, and I feel my knowledge wasn't as cemented as it is now, so I got a
640 (Q43, V35). I was surprised I scored a V35 as I felt the most confident about the verbal. I chucked it to losing a little bit of time in the break as I was getting signed back in. I felt the verbal was a fluke and scheduled a test a month later.
On the second test (Jan, 26, 2021), I was a little bit more comfortable with the whole testing experience and the test overall felt decent. So, when my score came up, I was surprised to see another
640 (Q48, V30) and I was SHOKED by the V30. I thought it was some sort of error. I had never scored that low in verbal in any mock. Even in my first mock after finishing
TTP and hardly studying verbal I scored a V34.
After analyzing the ESR and coming to grips with the low verbal score. I decided to focus on verbal more strongly, and I assumed that my discrepancy between the mocks and the real test had to be due to verbal being a little more difficult on the real thing. I took a break from studying and then started studying verbal, my approach being mostly drilling problems. My main problem area was critical reasoning, reading comprehension was my strong suit. After focusing on verbal for 2 months or so I retook the test on May, 15, 2021 and scored a
620 (Q46, V31). This was a big shock. My score was regressing, and I did not even improve my verbal score. At that point I started to seriously doubt myself. On that test the verbal felt really tough, it felt harder than the
OG practices and the mocks.
At this point is when I knew I had to go back to the basics in verbal. I needed to figure out why critical reasoning went so bad, and why my scores dropped so much on the real test. I thought one of the reasons my verbal was not improving was that I was using a lot of repetitive material, (I had gone through most official questions) and I was stumped when faced with hard verbal questions in the test. Going through the forums I noticed that every person who took the LSAT first (and scored reasonably well) rocked the GMAT verbal with ease. So, I thought using this material can be helpful just to get used to hard critical reasoning problems and dense passages. Over the following months I first reviewed
TTP verbal in DETAIL. I dissected every question type and tried my best to understand how to deconstruct the arguments. Then I went right into two LSAT books, and solved hundreds of critical reasoning and reading comprehension questions. I also never neglected the math and slid in a couple of days of quant per week. This practice gave me a lot of confidence with critical reasoning, it almost made it my strength rather than my weakness. It also improved my timing and reading speed. In my opinion LSAT logical reasoning and reading is great practice because you have an unlimited number of hard GMAT-like questions. Whereas the
OG/mocks only has a limited number of hard questions.
Lastly, the mental part is crucial. If you are like me and you are someone who isn’t a natural, chances are you are going to need hundreds of hours of studying. Initially, I made the mistake of letting the GMAT take over my life too much. On my fourth attempt, I had a more balanced approach, I worked out hard and studied hard when I had time. In fact, I may have studied less in terms of hours for my fourth attempt than any of my previous three attempts. This thing is a marathon and not a sprint.
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Updated on: 01 Sep 2021, 06:20
