GMAT Club forum helped me a lot in preparing for the actual exam and therefore, thought of sharing my story. I took 2 months to study for the exam - first month was on and off while the second month was where I leaned in.
I used the following resources to study for the exam:
Quant:OG 2020
OG Quant 2020
GMAT Club Book (awesome resource)
Manhattan Prep: Numbers Theory and Geometry
Verbal:OG 2020
OG Verbal 2020
Manhattan Prep SC
Manhattan Prep Critical Reasoning (only for the questions on the step type of the question)
GMAT Ninja YouTube Videos
My study plan was to make sure I attempt all the
OG medium and hard questions. I was averaging 80% accuracy in the
OG Verbal Section and close to 95% accuracy in the Quant Section. I made sure that I spent more time on the Critical Reasoning and the Data Sufficiency Questions as those were the questions where my accuracy percentage faltered.
In quant, I made sure I solved the question using the full equations in algebra etc. as sometimes I tend to plug-in numbers to get answers quickly.
In Verbal, GMAT Ninja YouTube videos were very revealing and confidence boosters as the videos discussed
OG questions; and, I realized that the questions that I was getting wrong were the questions that were being discussed in these videos and that these questions were indeed tricky for everybody.
I took a lot of the mock-up tests including the following:
Manhattan Prep : Score Ranged from 680 - 720
Kaplan: Score ranged from 730 - 740
GMATPrep: Score ranged from 730 - 760
I never believed the
Manhattan Prep score to be a reflection of my GMAT score as I knew that the Quant was way too difficult and different from
OG questions and I will never encounter such questions in the real exam. However, I really liked solving those questions. The verbal questions in Manhattan seemed a little off to me as well but they were good practice nonetheless. I really enjoyed the GMATPrep verbal questions as those questions always seemed to have very elegant answers while the other two (Kaplan and
Manhattan Prep) sometimes had solution that just did not seem right.
I did not practice IR but I was not concerned as I thought will be okay as I deal with a lot of charts and numbers in my job. I read a couple of GMAT AWA sample answers on
OG and
Manhattan books before the exam.
On the exam day, I made sure I maintained my composure. I started with verbal and for some reason my first three questions were extremely tough - they were sentence correction, were long with multiple things being tested simultaneously. After that the easier questions started to appear but then got a long and tedious passage after question 9. I was always slightly behind schedule and had ~12 mins for my last 10 questions.
Naturally, I got a few answers wrong in that section lowering my score. Here's what the ESR says about my accuracy:
"You responded correctly to 88% of the first set of questions, 100% of the second set of questions, 86% of the third set of questions and 63% of the final set of questions. The average time it took you to respond to the first set of questions presented was 1:55, the average time for the second set of questions was 2:32, the average time for the third set of questions was 1:36 and 1:10 for the final set of questions"
However, I was still able to score well getting a 44 (98th percentile in the section)
Quant was simple. I did not have to make very many guesses and was mostly using full equations to solve rather than plugging-in numbers. I probably use plug-ins for less than five questions. Again, section 2 was where I took the longest. I was extremely happy when I got the ESR and realized that I had all the answers correct in quant.
"You responded correctly to 100% of the first set of questions, 100% of the second set of questions, 100% of the third set of questions and 100% of the final set of questions. The average time it took you to respond to the first set of questions presented was 1:45, the average time for the second set of questions was 2:29, the average time for the third set of questions was 1:43 and 1:41 for the final set of questions."
In IR, I was taking it very slow and making sure I spent at least 2.5 minutes per question even though some questions needed less time. The questions I got felt easy. However, one of the passages got me and I scored a 7. There were four questions in the passage and Question 3 in the passage made me realize that I might have interpreted the first two questions wrongly.
I wrote AWA well but was slightly disappointed that I got a 5.5 instead of 6. I used a bullet format to critique the argument and used questions to challenge the question itself. I believe the non-traditional way to answer the question might have shaved-off 05 of a point. I realized that the GMAT club has an AWA template that is better than the format I used and I could have used that has I known about the template.
All in all, it was a good experience and GMAT club really helped in my prep. Those GMATNinja explanations of the SC on the forum + videos + GMATClub quant books are awesome resources that definitely helped boost score in my preparation.
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09 Feb 2020, 14:23
