I took the GMAT Classic Edition three times before deciding to switch to the GMAT Focus Edition. Here are my scores for the GMAT Classic Edition:
- Aug 16th 680 (V32 Q49)
- Sep 11th 710 (V37 Q49)
- Dec 9th 690 (V33 Q50)
I made a post about my experience with the GMAT Classic Edition
here. Now, for me, sentence correction appeared to be the biggest hurdle. So, on the advice of
klexian, I decided to switch to the GMAT Focus Edition. As I had prepared extensively for the GMAT Classic Edition Quant Section and consistently scored well (Q49, Q49, and Q50), I was pretty comfortable with my Quant Section, so I mostly focused on solving questions.
Here is a small deep dive into my strategy:
- I solved as many official questions as I could. The GMAT Club Quiz (New Edition) was really helpful in keeping track of all the official questions I had solved. The error log was also super helpful.
- I noticed that I was mostly able to get the right answers to the hardest questions, even though I sometimes spent 3 to 4 minutes on them, but I was extremely vulnerable to making mistakes on the easy questions. For example, if a question asked me what 7X3 is, I might end up choosing 28 instead of 21, but if the question involved 3 water tanks leaking water and I needed to find the average speed of Dave as he travels back from his office to his place and takes the same time as these 3 tanks will take to empty all the water, I'll probably get the right answer. So, I started being more mindful of the questions and the answers I was choosing for the simple questions. Being more mindful means reading the easy questions twice, sometimes clearly writing all the steps, fleshing out my argument well on the sheet before selecting the final answer. It does sound like a lot, but on super easy questions, sometimes it just took me 20 seconds, and this improved my accuracy by a lot for the quant section.
- For the verbal section, I was very relieved that I did not have to study for sentence correction because no matter what I did, my performance wasn't improving in this domain of the exam. Although I was performing well on RCs and CRs before this exam, I did not have any consistent approach or a strategy to solve a question. My approach was very ad hoc, but somehow I used to get correct answers. I knew if I had to improve my score, I had to work on my approach and fine-tune it a bit. For critical reasoning, I watched all the videos from here. Credits: AjiteshArun. I also atteneded the free classes conducted by AjiteshArun on Critical Reasoning. Link to his website here. For reading comprehension, I read Power Score GMAT RC Bible. Slightly bulky but a good book. I really loved their approach. I recommend reading it at the very beginning of the prep. Quite detailed and can be helpful. But if someone is really good with RC, they can skip it.
- For Data Insights, I was slightly confident that with my good quant skills, I might be able to tackle this section. I mostly focused on solving as many official questions and did not do anything different. Additionally, I practiced how to use the calculator given in this section strategically.
- I purchased all the GMAT Focus Edition Official Mocks and practiced using them. They were supremely helpful, to say the least. One thing I noticed was that for GMAT Mock 1, every time I retook it, I got new questions, which was super helpful. However, on GMAT Mock 2, I only got repeated questions. For the rest of the mocks, at least once, I received all new questions.
This is how I used the mocks:
- I solved the whole paper in one sitting.
- I analyzed each section after the exam. If I had got a question wrong and I had spent 3 minutes on that question then during the review I used to spend 10 minutes on the same question, even if that question turns out to be easy.
- I analyzed timing performance.
- I wrote in detail what went wrong with each incorrect question, in words. For example, if I misread "non-negative numbers," I'd point out that I missed reading "non-negative numbers" and remind myself to be mindful of such things in the next exam. I used my personal journal to write down about the exams so that I don't mess up writing about exam reviews.
All the mocks that I gave, along with the dates:
Here is a breakdown of the score that I got on the first ever GMAT Focus Edition Mock:
Here is a breakdown of the best score I got on the GMAT Focus Editon Mock (where I got all new questions):
In this exam I made careless mistakes in the quant section. It was my best ever performance in Verbal and Data Insights where I got all new questions. Posting my verbal performance here:
Notice that I got 100th percentile on Plan/Construct here. Okay, now let me start one week before test day. I work with a big bulge bracket bank, and I had a super chill January, so my expectation was that it'll be chill at least till February 13th, and I'll be able to study for my exam. But my manager had different plans. I was swamped with work starting January 31st. I even had to work on weekends. This was honestly a disaster for me, and I had almost given up, but I decided to give it my all. I decided to keep studying along with work. I consistently gave the mocks on the weekend, and during the weekdays, I decided to solve 10 questions, either verbal, quant, or DI, using the GMAT Club Quiz. That was super helpful as I was able to stay in touch with my approach.
But another hurdle I had was sleep. Before my third GMAT Classic Edition exam, the biggest issue that I faced was that I wasn't able to sleep at all before my exam due to anxiety. I might have slept like 3 hours on the night before the exam, and on the exam, I was not even able to comprehend the questions. I really did try to improve my sleep pattern a week before the exam - I slept consistently at 11 PM and woke up at 6 AM - but on the night before the exam, I slept at 11 and woke up at 3 AM in the morning - I think because of anxiety (I had no other visible signs of anxiety honestly, and it seemed weird as I wasn't consciously worried about the exam, but maybe subconsciously I was very worried. I don't know the mysterious ways of how my mind works). Anyways, I tried going back to sleep but couldn't, and my exam was scheduled for 11:45 AM, so I thought I am doomed. I had again almost given up - even thought about not going to the exam center at one point. But then I just woke up, took a bath, and decided to take a mock exam as I had plenty of time before the actual exam. (I do not recommend this at all, please don't do this before the exam). As most of the questions were repeated in the mock exam, I scored 775, and I was like, "Not gonna happen on the real exam for sure."
Anyways, I tried sleeping once again after having an early breakfast, but that was in vain.
I left for my exam center at 10:25 and reached there at around 11:20ish. The exam, I guess, probably started around 11:30 for me, 15 minutes early.
Here is the breakdown of the my experience for each section:
- Quant: The first 5 questions seemed super easy. Next few questions seemed unsolvable. The difficulty level really climbed up within first 10 questions. It was never like this in the Mock Exams. I always really hard questions in the end. But in the real exam I think the hardest questions was with in first 8 questions. I also got a question of a geometry - surprise surprise. The question had two triangles it explained the concept of similar triangles and then it asked the question (hopefully this does not violate any GMAC policies). Just shook me to the core and I might have spent like 4 minutes on it without making much progress. In the end I just took calculated risk in this question, but it did really set me back a bit.
Skill Wise Performance on the Quant Section
Time Management Performance for Quant Section. 7th, 8th and 15th question honestly seemed unsolvable and at least one of them contained significant amount of geometry.
Note that I only got two questions wrong that too question no. 16 and 20 yet ended up at 86.
- Verbal: I was really fast for some reason in this section. Apart from one really really hard RC everything else felt doable at least. I do not know how I got 4 questions wrong on Critical Reasoning. Never got this many questions wrong in the Mocks or even when doing the practice question. I think not sleeping well last night was a factor here. I did reconsider giving the exam again but then I dropped the idea. I had enough time to review at least 4 questions by the end of the exam but I did not change any answers. Now I think about it - if I had changed the answers it won't probably had impacted my marks because at worst I'd have gone from wrong to wrong and there would have been more probability of selecting right answer during the review. Anyways I am still glad that I scored this much. :p
Skill Wise performance on Verbal Section. Notice how my Plan/Construct dropped to 16th Percentile in the actual exam from the mock exam. I had no clue I can swing so low in the exam. Anyways I attribute this to lack of sleep. At one point I thought about giving the exam again, but then I dropped the idea.
Time Performance on the Verbal Section.
Question Wise performance on Verbal Section.
- Data Insights: I did struggled a bit for time in this section. But overall I felt pretty confident. I did mark one question wrong by mistake so I decided to change that question in the end - during the review. Overall it was a good section for me, slightly better than I had during my mocks.
Here are the final results:
I was glad to see a 705 on the screen honestly.
In the end I just want to thank the whole community here for their support especially
bb,
GMATNinja,
AjiteshArun,
MartyMurray and
BunuelThank you all for all the help!
PS: I'll edit this post later to make it more readable annd add more details.
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