Hey Guys,
Just finished taking my official GMAT test on the 27th and am really glad to finally get over with it. Really excited about seeing a score of 690(Q48 V35) on my official test after putting in a great amount of hard work and dedication into it. I thought sharing my experience will inspire many of you who are planning to take the exam in the near future. So I will try to share my four month journey from scratch as well as the materials I used to practice along with how I practiced for the Test.
I started off by joining a group coaching institute, I initially took a practice test 4 months ago without any preparation to gauge what level I was starting off with to achieve a score of 490 initially with a 32 in quant and 21 in verbal. This was just the starting point which indicated to me where I have to reach. I definitely wanted a 680+ to apply for my top programs in order to get into the schools that I wanted.
I then grasped all the concepts taught to me at the class through the verbal and quant review books along with practicing upto 4-5 hours a day analysing my mistakes side by side to understand them.
Along the journey, I took many practice tests to check my progress at regular intervals moving up initially from 490 to 590, getting stuck at 590 for a while till I changed my strategy. At that point I felt that I needed to change focus to my mistake analysis to cross 600, and also noticed that I wasn’t timing the test too well. So
I practiced all
OG questions online using the timer as well as the portal questions provided by my institute which got me more used to answering questions with time.
This took made me take another leap to 650, however this was the toughest time in the journey, with the nervousness and stress kicking in withonly 3 weeks to go for the exam, my score reached a happy 700 and went down all the way to 620 in the practice tests. I was extremely shocked and did not understand how to approach the shock.
Took a few days off at this point, completely got myself away from studies for 4-5 days to relax. Then I was able to recoup, make an
error log, note down the sections which were weak, revise the concepts of those and answer questions related to that particular section.
After a few days of practice I decided to take another practice test, got a 640 and gradually went up to 670 till about 3 days before the actual exam. At this point I followed the advice that I had read up on multiple forums about not studying at all a few days before the exam, went for a few parties watched a few shows and just relaxed.
On the exam day, I slept really well, was calm and composed, reached the centre well in time as I had mapped my route the day before and had got my snacks ready for the day. I listened to my favourite music just before entering the centre and had the music running in my mind throughout the test time keeping me calm and able to focus away from the distraction.
The happiest moment of my life was when I saw my score popup in front of me, a 690(Q48 V35) made my day amazing!
I hope I have contributed something and my journey inspires many of you to do well in your GMAT. All the Best! Do Well!
For reference, some of the materials used by me:
GMAC
OG 2017
Kaplan GMAT Premier 2017
GMAC
OG 2015
GMAC Verbal Review 2018
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02 Oct 2017, 12:29
