Hi everybody,
I've been lurking on this website for like 8 months but this is only my fourth post so far and I always dreamt about writing a debrief like this.
Today, it finally happens...
Now, this is not the story on how to go from 400 to 700 in 6 months, rather is my own unique way to turn a disastrous first attempt into a very good score with a huge boost on both ends, especially on the quant side, with some tips which may be helpful for those people still struggling with the cruel GMAT.
Materials used:
1)
OG 2017, mastered as much as possible.
2) Veritas Prep Online Weekend corse (attended back in August, from mid-August to mid-October)
3) GMAT CLUB Math Book (Bible!!!)
4) Questions on GMAT Club
5) Official questions, as many as possible, downloaded from various topics here
FIRST ATTEMPT:
I started taking GMAT seriously back in August. I only have an Undergraduate Bachelor In Languages and Economics, and currently am working for the fifth custodian bank in the world as a financial analyst (Corporate Action specialist, to be precise) and I wanted to boost my career with a Master in Corporate Finance in one of the best European B-Schools, but I then realized that almost all require a high GMAT score
. So I said to myself: "There's only one way to get in: hard working." Since I was and am still working, it is very difficult to find some time to study and to have the mind free to assimilate some hard concepts, especially if your work takes around 10-12 hours a day DURING THE WHOLE YEAR.
I also had a very poor quant background and was quite weak in reasoning in general.
After attending the Veritas course (very useful but too "fast", I couldn't get the most out of it because I didn't have strong fundamentals and not enough time to build them) with Ravi, (a super teacher) and some weekends spent studying, I decided to have the first try since I felt I was ready (how stupid!!!).
Result: I couldn't believe what my eyes saw on test day:
490, Q 30 V 27
How come Quant 30?!?!?
My GMAT PREP test were all around 530-580 and i thought I could get at least 550 (the programs I chose require at least 600).
I immediately ordered my ESR and the only good thing was a surprising 81pct on Sentence correction (at least I didn't have to improve so much there
) but a very poor 20PCT on CR and 40pct on RC.
I knew I had a very long way to go (and I couldn't do that on my very own)
SECOND ATTEMPT:
Around January I decided to dedicate full-time for the next 4-5 months to GMAT ( full time : every "minute" when not at work )
Luckily I find a Math Engineer (online adv!) living in Milan, my city, and I decided to put all my faith in his hands (He took the GMAT 2 years ago and scored a 710).
We had 2-3 hours of one-to-one lesson EVERY weekend from January 'till the end of April.
Moreover, my week was fully scheduled: 3 times a week I woke up at 5 AM (!!!!!) to study before office hours, then almost every evening until 11PM and then back again...for four months.
I don't even know how many LITERS (tanks) of coffee I have drank!!! Some days I was around 6-7 small espresso cups! I also had some homeopathic drugs to go to sleep early (w**d not included
)
I scheduled my exam for today 2nd of May. During these months I tried not to repeat past errors: quality over quantity, full and in depth understanding of key and basic concepts (GMAT will destroy you if you don't master the basics!!!), official questions, long reviews of GMAT PREP test ( I took all six available) and lotta lotta reasoning: this is a test which awards reasoning, in every question of every section.
With my own tutor we covered only the Quant part, for the Verbal one I tried to do it on my own, improving the accuracy of CR and Reading comp (get that GIN RC technique! For me it worked greatly)
I felt like I was really improving this time, I started to get more and more questions correct (starting from getting ALL easy ones correct, because I think that my poor quant was due to that, errors on easy questions), and getting also some medium-high ones.
Today I finally took the test. Felt quite good in the morning, not too anxious, I watched some motivational videos (Kobe Bryant greatest clutch shots
) and listened to some music that gave me the level of adrenaline needed for the exam. I had breakfast (didn't have on my first attempt), I brought some chocolate and water for my breaks (didn't do that on first try) and tried to remain as calm and focused as possible.
Result: I did it!!!! Again I couldn't believe!!!
610, Q 41, V 33 (69pct, very proud
)
I haven't got my ESR yet (I will post in the dedicated forum for some advice). I felt that during the Quant I was doing quite well because I saw some Medium- hard questions (DS Coordinate Geo, Hard Work-Time-rate questions) but wasn't completely satisfied with it.
During verbal section, instead, I was FULLY confident that I was getting almost all questions right! (I had some difficulty with a couple very long RC passages) but I was very confident, and in the end I was right...
I think 610 is a very good score (taken into consideration all the external factors - hard working during the week, poor reasoning skills) and a +120 points increase.
And this has been possible also because of this fantastic community.
I have to say a special thank you to Bunuel ( he is a frekin Genius, his explanations are always clean, logical and easy to understand. What a mind!!!) and to VeritasPrepKarishma, another superlative mind.
Key take-aways:
- PERSEVERATE, EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE!
- Quality over quantity
- Program your study carefully and wisely!
Ciao a tutti e Grazie!!!
Andrea, aka Mister81
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02 May 2017, 15:00
