Hey!
Getting a high GMAT score was something that I wanted to do, more than getting into a good business school itself.
I was always good at quant and never had to study it. In the three attempts that I gave (once in July 2013, July 2017 and Nov 2018) I scored a Q51 without studying for a single minute.
It was the verbal section that daunted me.
I don't even know what happened in my first attempt, I remember that I didn't understand the questions and what they were trying to ask. I scored a Q51 V31 for a 690. So I went back home and bought a bunch of Manhattan verbal books and understood the basics of the verbal section.
In the four years that I didn't attempt the GMAT (July 2013- July 2017) I kept preparing a tad bit by reading the economist to improve my reading ability (I can say for sure that it didn't help me)
The attempt that I took in July 2017 was the one that I prepared the most. I read the economist, read Manhattan SC and prepared for almost 3/4 weeks. I started with the verbal section and got stumbled in the first few SC questions. And from there on, I got easy questions and scored a V33 and Q51 for a 700. The timing wasn't the issue in the verbal section, I truly didn't know the answer to the questions.
I was shattered and didn't really care about the GMAT anymore. I also started to believe that I am stupid. And I thought about the things that I could have learned in that time that I spent reading grammar rules. So I took a break, did the first two levels of CFA and then started verbal a year later.
This time I applied the rule that I apply while I play tennis: Practice with people much tougher than your actual opponents in matches. So, to avoid the problem of not understanding the verbal questions, instead or practicing GMAT questions, I practiced LSAT's. I studied LSAT's critical reasoning and reading comprehension. And for sentence correcting studied the
GMAT official guide and read why each incorrect option was wrong, which helped me learn a lot of grammar rules.
During the exam day, I had to first go to work, took a half day and reached the examination centre. The first verbal question was really tricky, one of the weird SC question. I spent almost 3 mins on it because I really wanted to get the first few correct. After question 13 or 14, I couldn't understand anything the exam was asking me. I remember that it was a really tough CR question and I had no clue what the argument was and I had to somehow weaken it.
But I completed the verbal section with about 5 minutes left. And I scored a Q51 V41, a 760. (Though I really wanted to score a 780, I was content with that score)
I knew for sure that the third attempt would have been my last even if I scored a 600.
I might want to be a GMAT tutor in my life, so ask all your doubts and I would be happy to help!
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