GMAT 675: How I Went From a 515 to a 675

Question

I didn't get here on talent. I got here by trusting a process I didn't fully believe in yet, and drilling it until it became automatic. Here's how, with e-GMAT.

Here is the one thing this debrief is about: when I started, a 675 felt out of reach. My diagnostic mock was a 515, the 32nd percentile. What closed the 160-point gap was not a sudden jump in ability, it was learning to follow a proven process even when it felt slow and unnatural, and analysing every mock until that process became second nature. Everything below is how that happened.

Where I started, and why I nearly doubted it

I am a mechanical engineer working in the automotive industry, and I wanted an MIM abroad, so a strong GMAT mattered. The honest problem at the start was that I answered questions on instinct, reading a question and jumping straight to an answer with no real method underneath. That works until it doesn't, and at a 515 it clearly wasn't. Admitting that my instinct was the ceiling, not the foundation, is what let me start again properly.

Verbal: learning a process instead of guessing

I chose e-GMAT largely because everywhere I researched, it was called the strongest option for Verbal, and Verbal was my weakest area, starting at a V75. What changed things was being taught an actual process rather than reading and hoping. It began with the Master Comprehension course, which teaches you where to pause and how to genuinely comprehend a passage rather than just read it. On top of that sat pre-thinking, deciding what a correct answer needs to do before looking at the options, which I now think is the single most important habit in Verbal. The catch is that none of it felt natural at first. The HOW that made it stick was volume plus honesty: I spent nearly half my prep on Verbal, kept a proper error log so I could see which mistakes repeated, and applied the process through mock after mock until it stopped being forced and started coming out on its own. By the exam it was automatic, and my Verbal reached a V84.

Quant: a strength I almost let trip me up

Coming from engineering, Quant felt comfortable, and I breezed through the cementing quizzes from a starting Q83. The PACE engine fit this perfectly: before each topic it gives you a short diagnostic and tells you which lessons to study and which you can skip. Because the GMAT uses school-level maths, not engineering maths, I had forgotten a few basic formulas, and PACE pointed me straight at those rusty spots instead of making me redo what I already knew. The real lesson came in the mocks, where my Quant dropped to around 80 or 81 on silly slips, one or two stuck questions wrecking a section. Fixing that was not about learning anything new, it was about tightening execution through repeated timed practice, and it brought me to a Q86.

Data Insights: leaning on strengths, respecting the clock

DI came last, which made sense, since it draws on both Verbal and Quant and is really about knowing the question types once those foundations are set. It went from a 67 on my diagnostic, a negligible percentile, to an 81. Multi-source reasoning, which most people fear, was actually my strongest type, and I made no MSR mistakes on the real exam. My weakness was data sufficiency, and the HOW there was specific: I kept missing a stated condition, a "must" or a constraint in the prompt, and solving as if it were not there, so naming that exact recurring error in my log is what let me start catching it. The other fix was timing, where the time-management module my mentor gave me retrained how I paced the section under pressure.

The engine: what I did between the mocks

This is the part I would underline for anyone. My mock trajectory was not smooth, it went 575, 635, 685, 665, then 685 again, and the first full mock rattled me because I fumbled under the clock. What turned it around was the work between the mocks, not the mocks themselves. I emailed my mentor Shubham every single day with exactly what I had done, and he would tell me where I had gone wrong and hand me a precise plan for the next day. I analysed every mock closely and pinpointed where I lost points, and he would assess it and set the next step. Alongside that I ran a light Verbal drill almost every day, a CR or an RC, paired with a set of DI or Quant questions, so no section went cold. That daily loop of do, analyse, adjust is the real reason the score moved.

Coming back from a break without losing ground

My biggest fear was the common one: learning Verbal first, then Quant, then DI, would I forget the early sections by exam day? I even took a ten to fifteen day break after getting sick, so the worry was real. What I found on returning is that the process had gone deeper than I realised. A day reviewing my own notes and some practice on the Neuron question bank showed the skills were only rusty, not gone, and a few sectionals under pressure knocked the rust off. Trusting the plan enough to specialise, rather than nervously juggling everything at once, was the right call.

If you are starting where I started

If a big jump feels impossible from where you are, I understand, a 515 felt that way to me. The process is rigorous and it will feel slow before it feels natural, but that is the point, because it trains the method to come out on its own under pressure, which is exactly what I needed on exam day when the nerves hit and I had to detach and trust it. Trust the plan even when your instincts resist it, analyse every mock instead of just collecting scores, and do not panic if you fall off the schedule, I got sick and missed plenty and still caught up. That, far more than raw ability, is what took me from a 515 to a 675.

Reon · Answer

Congrats for 675 and all the best with applications

Archit3110 · Answer

Congratulations for score.. all the best with application

counterclash1 · Answer

Massive congratulations on the phenomenal score!

I had a couple of quick questions regarding how you executed your prep:

Pre-thinking under time pressure: When you were practicing pre-thinking for Verbal CR, how did you handle questions where a pre-thought answer didn't come to you immediately within 30–40 seconds? Did you force a pre-think, or move to the options?

DS Error Logging: You mentioned tracking missed constraints/conditions in Data Sufficiency. How did you structure your error log specifically for DI/DS to make sure you stopped missing those "must be" constraints?

Can you share how you kept your error log outside GMATClub as well?

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GMAT 675: How I Went From a 515 to a 675

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