My journey from 680 to 780 in two months and a half!

For many months, I have pushed the beginning of my GMAT journey. Working in management consulting, I have many colleagues who have already been to business school and gave me tons of advice on how to best prepare for the exam. With this information, there were many points in time when I read some materials available online, and almost kicked-off my journey. However, any of the recommended paths felt right for me. Also, I felt that there was an ocean of content that I would have to navigate through, and I felt as I was out of time.
This is when one colleague recommended the e-gmat course to me, and I found a single source of truth that combined the best practices from all the other resources:
1) A personalized study plan
2) Clear and structured content with the possibility of going faster over concepts that one already knows to focus in closing knowledge gaps
3) A super-powerful question bank with detailed answers
4) Mocks that are representative of the real exam.

Part 1: Building a personalized study plan
I registered for the full course of the e-gmat: quant + verbal. I began by taking a first Sigma X Mocks as a diagnosis and I scored a 680 (Q44, V39). This result really surprised me because I thought that I would do much better in quant and much worse in verbal because I am an engineer and I am not a native speaker.
With this result in hand, I entered the LMP (last mile program) from e-gmat invited by Archit Bhargava, who was my mentor throughout all the program. Archit set up an hyperpersonalized study plan to address my conceptual and process flaws. Archit built a plan that was ambitious yes, but most important, feasible around my work commitments.

Part 2: Executing my study plan
For two months, I completed my study plan through e-gmat. Where I had conceptual gaps, I went through the concept files, which cover all the relevant points that are important for the gmat. All concept files first explain the basics and build on top of this to explain the full topic. I followed the Concept -> Process -> Cement flow for each of the topics until I have covered them all. Their question bank, Scholaranium 2.0 allowed me to identify my weaknesses and strengths so that, together with Archit, I could make little tweaks to the study plan. Let me be honest, I did not go to the concept files of all subtopics because some concepts I already had very clear from my background. It most certainly takes more than two months to cover the full e-gmat course in detail.

Part 3: The final push
I completed my journey by taking some more mocks from e-gmat and also the official ones to practice for IR and AWA sections. To prepare for this last two sections I used the e-gmat IR course and the resources available in gmat club forum. Archit was there to support me when, after scoring between 730 and 750 in my mocks, I receive the surprise of a 680 5 days before the exam. He helped me identify what went wrong, how to “troubleshoot” but what mattered the most, to rebuild my confidence and do great in the real exam. I scored a 780 (Q50, V48, IR8, AWA 6)

My recommendation to you?

• Invest time to build a feasible study plan that really works for you.
• Decide what resources you are going to use – don’t try to boil the ocean! Work with a platform that allows you to identify where you are failing and where you are doing well.
• Be consistent in your study, try to study every day.
• If you can spend 350 USD, I recommend the e-gmat course for this.
• If possible, find a mentor. If you can find someone to guide and support you in your journey, through the good and the bad, it will change the game. For me, this person was Archit. If you are able to work with him, it will be great!