Hi everyone,
I completed my GMAT journey a few days ago with a 770 (Q50, V47; IR7) and wanted to share my experience, as it was a somewhat unconventional and chill one that some might find helpful.
The PrepMy general strategy for studying for standardized tests (though not always effective on all tests for me) is to accumulate as many types of mistakes as possible and review them briefly each time, so that I can slowly train my brain to adapt to the logic and knowledge base of the test. As you can imagine, this is a fairly prolonged process. I was lucky enough to not have a urgent deadline for taking the test, so this process worked fairly well for me this time. My overall prep spanned around 8 months, though on average I spent around 3 hours per week and only studied on weekends.
I started the process by taking the GMAT Official Practice Test 1 without any prior knowledge about the exam, which I highly recommend others to do as it allows you to get a baseline idea of your strengths and weaknesses and familiarize with the test. I had a vague understanding that there is a quant, a verbal, and a writing section, but I had no idea about the question formats (such as data sufficiency) nor was I aware of the IR section (which was quite confusing to me the first time). I ended up getting a 710 (Q48 V40; IR7) on this first mock (and I had no idea what the scores meant).
The score was certainly not bad, though in some ways the score was not really the point of the mock for me--the main purpose was to understand how much room there was for me to potentially improve in the next months. From the questions that I got wrong on the mock, I found a number of key issues that I could certainly work on: time, some basic math principles that I hadn't used in a hot minute, tricky logic in some SD questions, basic grammar that I was not careful with, and getting attuned to the logic of some verbal and IR questions. I generalized from each of my mistakes and recorded the key takeaways in a note book by section.
From then on I started doing practice questions. I only used the 90 official practice questions, the Online
Official Guide 2020 and the
OG Verbal and Quant 2020 for the rest of my prep (around 810 Q, 805 V, and 90 IR questions in total). I generally did one practice round on Sat. and one on Sun. For each practice round, I always mixed up the difficulty levels (this is using the online test bank) and use exam mode, and I did 30 questions of Verbal/Quant at a time for an hour to mimic the actual test sessions (I also initially did sessions of 10 IR questions, but, after realizing there are substantially less practice questions, I put IR on hold until the end). I took screenshots of questions I missed and recorded takeaways from the mistakes. I generally aimed for at least 85% accuracy though I was not particularly keen to see improvement over time since the questions were expected to be of different types and the goal was to collect mistakes. Every 2-3 months, I would review all the questions I got wrong and redo them in one session.
I continued this process for the next 8 months (though there were some interruptions and unevenness in the middle as I got worried that I might run out of questions before deciding on an exam date, so I paused for a week once in a while). In these months, I became familiar with GMAT's general thought process, picked up many math and grammar rules that I had gotten rusty on before, and trained myself to be more careful with logical questions and catching potential traps. I exhausted all the practice questions and finished reviewing them 4 days before my scheduled exam, then I spent the next 3 days doing practice tests.
Practice TestsFor my subsequent mocks, I used the GMAT Official Practice Tests 2-4 in order (also, I always chose the section order Q-V-IR-W).
While I had studied the practice questions extensively, it still felt different and foreign when I started my second practice test, and first in 8 months. The issue with my prep process was that it was difficult to maintain focus over such a long period of time and be truly engaged in the test, so even though I could improve in individual questions, the actual test demanded a lot more concentration and energy that I had not really prepared for. Therefore, I strongly advise that people take at least 2 practice tests in the few days leading up to the actual test in order to get in the zone and prepare mentally and physically for it.
On my practice test 2, I got 740 (Q49 V42; IR8). The result was less than ideal because I had set my goal on 770 by that time and the improvement felt marginal compared to how I felt and the amount of time spent. However, after reviewing the mistakes, I realized a huge factor was carelessness potentially caused by my general unease with the test format. This result in some ways ended up motivating me to truly take this exam seriously and go into my next practice test with purpose--eliminate all unnecessary mistakes and survey every question before and after I think I have an answer.
On my practice test 3, I got 760 (Q50 V44; IR7). This result felt like the best I could do as I made almost no silly mistakes and performed as I expected, so I was prepared to get an actual score of 760 or 750 on the real test.
I took my last practice test 4 the day before the exam, and shockingly I got a 790 (Q51 V51; IR8) where I missed only one verbal question. This had really mixed effects on me--it was definitely a huge confidence booster, but it also raised my expectations to a level that I also did not feel realistic. I had a difficult time processing the result and just tried to not think about it for the rest of the day. I also do want to note that I feel the GMAT Official Practice Test 4 quant questions are a bit easier (not sure if others have similar experience, or if it just happens to be mostly question types that I'm good at).
Exam DayI could not fall asleep the night before the exam, and I went into the actual exam unusually nervous and almost panicky for some reason (likely due to the simultaneous high and low expectations I derived from my practice tests). I chose the early afternoon hours as I'm not a morning person and my brain stops functioning after 7pm. The unerasable pages of "white board" papers threw me off a bit at the beginning, and I was so nervous on the exam that I spent almost 5 min on the very first quant question. I would not say that the nervousness went away completely during the exam, but I managed to just keep going.
The quant questions felt a bit harder (or maybe more diverse) than I expected, and I had to take the chance and guess on one question due to time, which I really did not like to do on practice tests. The verbal section was generally consistent with how I always felt on practice tests--not super confident on many questions but they turned out alright. There were a few questions where I leverage specific rules I remembered from practice, which felt good (though I don't know for sure I got them right). I actually felt that the IR section was a bit easier or more straightforward than I expected, which is why I was a bit surprised that I didn't get a perfect score on it. I also did not feel that the pattern in difficulty levels were obvious on the exam, and overall I would discourage people from trying to keep track of difficulty levels as they almost never indicate what you think they do and you just end up wasting time and energy.
Ending ThoughtsWhen the results showed up I was definitely relieved and happy. I was not actually expecting a 790, and I was prepared to retake the test online if it was below 770. While it was probably the most intense testing experience I've ever had for reasons still unknown to me, and I did not feel like I did my best, I do get a sense that the exam algorithm does a fairly solid job distilling out the noise to capture the test-takers consistently demonstrated mastery of logical reasoning, attention-to-detail, and relevant knowledge.
As a result, I do feel that the long period of knowledge and experience accumulation was worth it and appropriate for this type of exam as the things that sink into your brain and intuition will not fade away so quickly compared to things remembered in last-minute crams. I also encourage people to approach prepping for the the exam with the belief that all questions are doable, as this is ultimately a logical exam and all you really need is your brain (and maybe the pythagorean theorem), and focus on your own thought process in practicing rather than memorizing the methodologies or solutions of others.
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03 Dec 2020, 02:50
