My GMAT Experience

I had first taken the GMAT in 2018, and score a 510 (V21 and Q41).
I was extremely demotivated and stunned by this score, given the number of questions that I had solved and time put in and took a break

I decided to apply for MBA for the 2021 in take, and started studying for it again. I took classes from Jamboree for the same. The following are my observations about Jamboree:

• Worst institution to learn from, they do not focus on skill building
• The teachers themselves aren't aware of what GMAT tests

This time around, I scored a 570 in GMAT (This was in October'20)
However, I did not want to give up before achieving my target score.

After doing some research, I took eGMAT for verbal and a private tutor for quant:

• eGMAT is a skills based course, however, due to lack of personal attention, my skills weren't building. It is a great course for avid readers, and people who are at a 33+ in verbal.
• For quant, I took Abhishek Sharma: My score shot up from Q38 to Q48. He made me stretch my reasoning muscles, as a result my quant performance automatically improved

I gave the GMAT in Feb' 21 and score a 640. V29, Q48. I didnt know, where I was going wrong in verbal and decided to hire a private tutor for it.
I gave the GMAT again in May'21 and scored below 600, again mainly due to an abysmal performance in verbal.

I then came across AnishPassi videos on GMAT, and his course GMATIntensive, a skills focused course with live teaching. I decided to take one on one classes with Anish (to understand where I was going wrong) while simultaneously taking the gmat intensive course

In just one class with Anish, I finally understood where I was lacking and what I needed to improve. I highly recommend everyone to take AnishPassi for tutoring or GMATIntensive

He pointed out the deficiency in my comprehension skills, and put me on a path to improve it. He actually altered my reading to improve my comprehension skills. I gave the gmat again in Jan'22 after preparing through his method for 6 months.

My verbal score shot up from V29 to V34. This gave me the confidence to continue focusing on skill building. I gave the gmat again 2 weeks ago and ended up with a 680 (V38 and Q46).

Mistakes that I made during my gmat prep:

• Focusing on solving questions and not learning from them
• Not tracing my thought process to identifying where exactly I made a mistake
• Not creating an error log to identify trends in areas of struggle
• Not being engaged while practicing gmat questions
• Using faulty techniques taught by Jamboree in verbal
• Not focusing on foundational skill building
• Not reading for meaning in SC- This is the most crucial element in sentence correction

Learning from GMAT prep

• Quality over quantity: I eventually started spending about 30 mins on one CR question, and tried to identify all the gaps and to tried to reason if certain aspects over answer choices were altered
• Focus should just be on skill building, once skills are built, a decent / high score is just an outcome
• Learnt to admit that I am weak at a certain topic / Honesty with myself
• Quant- Getting comfortable with numbers and learning multiple methods to solve a question increases flexibility and improves reasoning, which helps in verbal as well
• Learnt to find a pathway to solve a problem- Started taking a step back and analysing why things are going wrong

Eventually, my RC improved from 17 percentile to 85+ percentile

I would urge all GMAT strugglers to take coaching from AnishPassi or from GMATIntensive.
For new comers- Taking coaching from the mentioned coaches would save you guys months.

Thanks