My journey from 510 to 710!

Hi all,

I am delighted to share with you all that I scored a 710(Q49, V38) in September last year. I'm a few months late for this, but better late than never. I would like to share my GMAT journey with fellow gmatclub members. While I was preparing, I would read a lot of debriefs to keep myself motivated. So here you go

Just a little background before I start with the debrief. I am a 22-year-old Indian, working with one of the Big 4 firms in the Audit practice. Before starting to work, I graduated in commerce from University of Delhi. I decided to take the GMAT exam after I was done with 2nd year of graduation because at that time, I wanted to go for an MiM degree post my graduation.

I researched a bit and decided to go for regular classroom coaching (pretty famous in India, at least pre-covid lol). So, I joined Jamboree Institute, which provides a 36-hour course. I was pretty decent at quant from childhood so never really faced difficulty understanding the concepts. I was almost at Q46-47 even before I started preparing for GMAT. But for verbal, I had a hard time there. I studied for 6 months and booked the GMAT for September 2019 in June because I thought this would help me study more for the exam. After finishing the curriculum at Jamboree and self studying for 2 months, I took a mock, and scored a 510(Q48, V14). Even though I should have cancelled the exam that I booked, I went ahead and took the exam, and I scored a 550 (Q47, V20). I wasn't shocked with the result because I was getting 550-590 in mocks, so I kind of expected this.

I took a 3-month break from the exam and tried to reflect where did I go wrong. I knew that something is off. I restarted with prep in Jan 2020. So, I decided to take an online course. Talking to a few people at jamboree who scored more than 700, I realized that they took online course such as egmat. One of my college friends had an egmat subscription, so he passed on his credentials to me as he wasn't using it anyways (I hope egmat doesn't read this lol). It had only 1 month of validity left. So, I completed their verbal part in 30 days. I was super-fast with that because of which I guess I wasn't able to build the base. But the good thing was I realized where I was lacking. After completing the course, I retried OG Questions. The thing with OG is that there are limited questions and most of them are easy and medium. So, you can't really know where you stand. In March covid came so we really didn't have any option to take the test until mba.com announced the GMATOnline. But I wasn't willing to take GMATOnline because one couldn't use rough sheets initially.

In June 2020, ChiranjeevSingh and AnishPassi started an online GMAT course named GMATIntensive. I joined that because I wasn't very comfortable with my preparation. I believe that was the best decision till date. The sessions were real eye opener. I had no idea that I am lacking at such basic concepts as how to read sentences. Both CJ and Anish are super amazing, with 200% clarity over every concept. They encourage every student to ask doubts (this is a rare quality in Indian teachers at least). I would highly recommend their course to everyone. This course will save a lot of your time. Only tip- Blindly follow what CJ and Anish say. I attended more of verbal and less of quant. However, for quants also, I can assure that they are the best as I attended lectures for a few concepts like weighted average and Work-Rate-Time. Till date, I can solve questions without picking up pen and paper because CJ and Anish will teach you logically and will not tell you to learn tricks or just mug up formulae without understanding logic. They will teach logic behind everything that's in the GMAT world, and this is the best thing I liked. In the 1st class itself they taught us that an exam like GMAT cannot be aced with the help of tricks. One needs to develop aptitude and logical abilities in order to solve EACH and EVERY Question.

I finished GMATIntensive in July 2020 and did some questions for 25 days and took the exam in August 1st week because from 2nd week I had final year exams in University. So, I wanted to get done with the GMAT before exams. Although, CJ told me not to take the exam because he knew 25 days of practice is not enough especially when one wants to jump from sub-600 score to 700+, I went ahead and took the exam, because I wanted to test my luck lol. This time the computer got hung when I was on verbal question 30. And again got hung when I was solving quants. I panicked and ended up getting a 630. In mocks I was getting 680 on average. This was Pearson's fault, so they gave me a free attempt. I booked it for October 1st week.

Before the October attempt, I revised and did a lot of questions from the tracker CJ and Anish gave. (Also, this tracker contains approx 3700+ official questions for verbal and quant each, and is the most comprehensive resource for official questions). I went ahead and a took the GMAT in October and got a 670.

This time I decided to take a break from GMAT for 2 months and started preparing again in Jan 2021. GMATIntensive was kind enough to extend my subscription. So, I watched the lectures again just to revise and figure out where I was faltering. I would do a zoom session with couple of friends whom I met at GMATIntensive. We would pick random questions from trackers and solve and then discuss. This really helped me because my friends had a good grasp over verbal. I prepared on my own till June and in June I took TTP's course because in mocks I was stuck at 710. And I knew if I take the official GMAT I would score a 690-700(on a good day). TargetTestPrep has a beautifully designed course with very amazing analytics of one's mistakes. MartyTargetTestPrep is super helpful. He responds to doubts in the chat box almost in 2-3 hours. Feels like this man doesn't sleep at all. I mainly did Sentence Correction from TTP as with the help of GMATIntensive, I kind of became pro at CR (I scored a 97%ile in CR in October 2020 attempt). So, I was trying to master one thing at a time. I believe I was able to master SC by the help of TTP. Initially when I took the 1st official GMAT, I had an accuracy of 20% in RC. GMATIntensive helped me reach 75% accuracy in RC. I was still not good at RC but I managed to be decent at SC and CR so that it gets balanced. TTP is a very comprehensive course so one needs a lot of time, because one needs to go slow and complete everything. If you're just starting with GMAT, TTP is a good course to go with.

I decided to take the GMAT in September 1st week as my deadline for B-schools were approaching towards end of September. I took the exam and got a 710!


Verbal tips-

1. I would suggest to take a quality online course first. GMATIntensive, TargetTestPrep, egmat - these 3 are the only courses I would recommend.

2. Don't waste official questions. First clear your basics, and then go on to solve official questions. Official questions are limited, so don't waste them.

3. There are some solutions for SC and CR on CJ's website. (Called gmatwithcj.com) Go through those solutions and understand how he goes about questions and try to replicate that while solving questions. This is very very helpful. You should for sure try this.


Key tips-

1. Less is more - I solved only 8-10 questions per day (Only for SC and CR). On any given day, I would either solve 8-10 SC Qns & some quant question, or 8-10 CR Questions and 3 RCs. Why 8-10 Questions? Because I would go deep in every question I solved. I would evaluate every option of every question. Whether I rejected the wrong option for the right reason or wrong reason? Whether I selected the right option for the right reason or wrong reason? This has helped me immensely. This was taught by GMATIntensive

2. Don't rush - If you want to ace GMAT asap, it will take more time. I have experienced this firsthand. I would say, go slow. Slower you go, faster you reach. You will be wasting time, if you rush. You will end up nowhere. It's better to go slow on right path than to go fast on wrong path. Again, this was taught by GMATIntensive.

3. You need to deserve the score - Tricks wouldn't help. You need to learn to apply logic and solve questions.

4. Find a study buddy - I was lucky to join GMATIntensive. They formed a Whats-app group, where everyone would promote healthy competition and we would solve each other’s' doubts. I also met EatMyDosa there. He has helped me the most in the whole preparation. We would study and ask doubts from each other. This helped me understand his logic and why I am wrong. And I also got to express my logic to him and tell him why I am right. The best way to learn is by trying to teach. This can also be done by writing solutions on GMATClub for questions you're solving.


Few mentions:
1. ChiranjeevSingh and AnishPassi - Thank you for starting GMATIntensive. You guys are amazing. Critical thinking is the most important skill you have taught. I can’t thank you enough for this. This is really helpful, and I believe will help me outside GMAT world too.

2. KarishmaB GMATNinja – These 2 teachers are the best teacher on GMATClub. They responded to almost every doubt I posted. You 2 have helped me reach my target score. Your explanations are really to the point, and very logical. Thank you, for all the hard work you put in. GMATNinja I hope you come to India and have Bhindi Masala lol.

3. GMATClub - Thank you, bb. I have no idea what I would have done without GMATClub. This was the most helpful thing in the whole prep. You have no idea the amount of impact you have made in people's lives.

3. Some more people who have helped me immensely in my journey - AndrewN EducationAisle MartyTargetTestPrep Bunuel (Not in any order)


Thank you, GMATClub!

Best,
Ashmit