Background:
I had been studying for CAT (GMAT for Indian B-schools) for 2 years, but after failing to get into IIM ABCL, decided that I wanted to apply to ISB as well. Starting studying in March 2020.
Baseline Tests:
Veritas Free Test (Aug 2019)- 630
Official Practice Test (April 19,2020) - 710 (50Q,35V)
Veritas Practice Test (May 31,2020) - 690 (51Q,34V)
Veritas Practice Test (June 7,2020) - 680 (48Q,36V)
Veritas Practice Test (June 12,2020) - 710 (50Q,38V)
Official Practice Test (June 20,2020) - 690 (49Q,35V)
Kaplan Free Test (July 2,2020) - 720 (49Q,40V)
GmatClub tests- Scored 50 on Q 5-6 times, got a 48 twice
Materials Used:
1. Didn't even buy the
OG. Covered all official questions from GmatClub.
2.
e-GMAT Verbal
3.
TTP : 10 day trial thanks to GmatClub
4. GmatNinja videos
5. LSAT/GRE questions for CR and RC
Test Day:
Couldn't sleep at night easily but as I had booked my appointment at 2pm in the afternoon, was not a huge factor. Reached the center early where Pearson staff were very professional,the center was very hygienic as well. In terms of the test itself, I found the pen given for the scratch pad to be extremely annoying. Had to write almost everything twice. Its definitely not the easiest to use.
Verbal- Started with SC, and I'm pretty sure I got the first question wrong. The SC seemed very different to me than from the
OG questions - with many answer choices with no clear errors (or at least it looked like that to me). In the middle of Verbal I got a couple of very easy RC/SC questions and that made me even more nervous. However, towards the end I was getting some tough questions, so was expecting atleast a 35 here.
Quant- I found it to be way more difficult than I expected it to be, and that hurt my score. Made a good start, but I got 2 sitters in the middle which again made me think if I had made some silly mistakes (not uncommon for me). In the end pretty sure I missed 3-4 more. Was very nervous by the end of this section.
IR and AWA- Put 1 hour into each a day before the test, got a 7 on the IR, yet to receive my AWA but confident of atleast a 5 thanks to Chineseburned' AWA guide (please do look it up)
Shortly after got a 690. Was disappointed but not distraught.
My learnings from this journey:
1. GMAT is not that easy to improve upon, especially Verbal for non-native speakers. The 600 to 770 stories do not help, they are not the trend but mostly exceptional cases. Do not set such unrealistic expectations. I studied atleast 3 hours daily for 2 months, and my scores did not improve much.
2. I'm still shook by my score in Quant. I was confident of nailing a 50 on the Quant and hence dedicated 70% of my prep time towards that. Imo the Quant on the official GMAT is way harder than that on the Official Practice Tests
3. Stick to
OG. Franky, thanks to GmatClub we have access to thousands of questions and I don't see the need for anyone to practice non-official questions (unless you're retaking it for the 3rd or 4th time maybe).
4. Do not expect a miracle on the D-Day. I was targeting 730 but booked my exam in spite of scoring 690-710 consistently on mocks. Only book the exam when you have scored 20 points above your target score twice , otherwise realign your expectations.
Material Review:
1. I liked
E-gmat for SC , but I found their Scholaranium, CR and RC to be useless.
2. For Quant I only used
TTP for 10 days: I found their course to be solid for anyone aiming for a 48-49. But I feel if you want to score higher than that,
TTP is not the course for you (for context I averaged 80% on their hard tests). However, if you are at anything below 46 on Quants, I would surely recommend
TTP to you.
3. GMATNinja: he's the god. No need to review his YouTube series. I would recommend to go through his videos only once you're done with the basics.
Please feel free to ask any questions you have, and if you found this debrief helpful , would love a Kudos !