My GMAT Journey - 750 (Q-50, V-41)

Hello friends,

GMATClub has been constant support for my 2 month journey of GMAT. It was a great help for me since I mostly did self study. During my preparation, I build my strategy around each question type under each section of the GMAT rather than gathering a lot of knowledge on each topic. I have an engineering background, hence, Quant was never an issue for me. I was mostly worried about Verbal. My strategy for each of the sections are as follow:

Reading Comprehension:
For this session, I did not refer to any books. However, I used to read Economist, WSJ, NYT etc. and consciously try to find main idea of the passage, overall structure, major details and tone. While solving the questions, I followed OCTAVE (Opinion of the Author, Contrast Words, Tone, Avoid Extreme Choices, Verify each word) framework of Ivy GMAT. It took me 1 month to fully internalize the framework. It helped me immensely, and my accuracy used to be 90% in RCs.

Critical Reasoning:
For CR, I referred to PowerScore CR Bible. I summarized and used the strategies for each question type. In CR, it is very important to understand the argument first. My strategy was - read the question -> remember the strategy for the question type -> read the paragraph -> differentiate between facts and conclusion -> try to ascertain the assumption made by the author -> try to pre-think the answer. Pre-thinking helped me in elimination of answer choices. Moreover, 2-3 choices can simply be eliminated because they are "Out of Scope" of linear logic of the argument. My accuracy used to be around 80% in CR.

Sentence Correction
This was the most painful section for me. When I started my accuracy was pathetic (40-50%). I thought I could prepare for this section on my own as I am preparing for other sections. But after so much effort and practice, I could not increase accuracy in SC. Then I came across few articles by e-Gmat and I really liked their approach. Therefore, I purchased SC Course of e-Gmat. After 1 week of intense SC preparation, I was finally able to increase my accuracy to 70%.


Problem Solving
For PS, I referred to MGMT Advanced Quant for concept strengthening. It was very useful with a lot of shortcuts and tricks. I practiced a lot on OG problems and problems from various sources freely available on this site. My enemy in this section was "careless mistake". I tried to eliminate them by reading the question carefully, calculating carefully and cross-checking the answers. I tried to follow a structured approach as much as possible. One misconception among students is that if they follow each step so carefully they will run out of time on exam. But I can tell you from personal experience that if you follow a structured approach, it will be a huge time saver. I completed my Quant section 10 mins before the allotted time, though, I am not proud of this before I could have used this time to answer the questions carefully and increase my score from 50 to 51. Anyways, the time spent on mental confusion due to misreading of questions will get eliminated. And if you are re-checking the question, you will avoid the traps GMAT loves to trap you into.

Data Sufficiency
Nothing special here too. I just followed a structured approach. My strategy was - Read the prompt -> Simplify the information -> Rephrase the question -> consider all the explicit and implicit constraints -> check the choices systematically. Be wary of DS, there are a lot of traps after first 20 questions on exam. Consider all the possibilities before submitting the answer.

General Advice:
On GMAT, it is more important to be methodological than intelligent. Therefore, I followed a structured approach while solving the questions. Please find attached my strategy sheet, it may be helpful to some people. Another think to keep in mind is that mental coolness or grip on concentration is the MOST important asset during exam.

Thanks