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20 May 2019, 18:37
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So I sat the GMAT this morning having originally sat it 5 years ago (750). I will try give a pretty brief overview of my study plan, my lead up to the exam and the actual exam itself. I got a lot of value from reading these forums so hopefully can answer some Qs if anyone wants to know anything regarding my experience.
Materials used: Manhattan books, OG guides, all official mock tests, Q banks and GMAT Club tests.
Prep
It was definitely beneficial to have already sat the exam 5 years ago and certainly helped in my prep, especially in just knowing what to use as materials (especially knowing about this site). My strategy was to get reacquainted with the quant topics quickly using Manhattan and the just get through the OG Qs. I would get up every weekday at around 5 (I am not a morning person so this was a big ask for me that I am pretty proud of), I still enjoyed my weekends and took most of them off study. I will stress that I put in a huge amount of work to get the score I got and it certainly did not come easily, I would say that I am definitely not a stupid person and have always been a decent student but I am in no way a genius and unfortunately my main trick for achieving a good score was to just put in the work.
For Quant I am not sure if anything really stuck out as being a struggle for me in particular. I definitely found that when I operated at the speed that I needed to during the exam I would make stupid mistakes primarily from not properly reading the question. I also think in geometry especially I would see the answer and understand it but when I was doing it, the route to the answer wouldn't be immediately clear to me. I think looking back on it, especially post exam, my geometry could have done with more work and probably should have brushed up on probability & combinatronics a little bit more.
I was really good at pounding through the questions and getting a huge amount of volume under my belt but what I really struggled with was digging into the concepts and figuring out where I went wrong. I went through all the OG questions, all the extra Q bank questions and as a lot of the harder GMATclub test questions. I could go into autopilot and pile through the Qs with only a couple wrong but reviewing my wrong answers required a lot more effort and it was something that I definitely could have done better. I think that was the difference between me eventually scoring 49 vs 50/51
I will say that for quant the OG/mock hard questions are usually a little bit easier than the hard questions in GMAT club. They are also way less likely to put in the tricky little twists on the question that will sneakily catch you but it is a good thing the the GMATclub tests and Bunel's questions do test you on that as you become a lot more aware of the things that can get thrown at you.
Unfortunately I don't have a huge amount of insight here, verbal has always come very naturally to me (I know it doesn't seem like it from my writing here but please cut me some slack as I have had a long day). I didn't really need to study for RC & CR (as I got close to exam day I through in a few practice Hard OG Qs) but I used Manhattan SC to get the basics down and then answered every OG question. One thing I would recommend to everyone is that for Verbal you should try stick to the OG questions as much as possible, especially as you near test day. For me a lot of the time it was tough to pinpoint exactly why I was picking an answer when I was stuck between two options but my intuition was nearly always correct, I can't really explain why that was but I think sticking to the OG questions helped pick up a certain style that they use in the answers. My SC improvement was really just a huge amount of volume and I was pretty good at analysing my mistakes (Especially compared to Quant).
As the exam day approached I kept the same pattern during the weekdays of getting up early and I started mixing in about 6 hours a day on the weekends for the 2 weeks before the exam. I bought all of the mocks and all of the official Q bank. I tried to keep it reasonably realistic with my mocks but for the first few mocks I could 100% subconsciously remember some of the harder questions from 5 years ago, I also sometimes had a sneaky pause during the quant when I was stuck on a question. I probably did 1 mock a week and my results were as follows.
Official Prep Mock 1: 760 48 47
Official Prep Mock 2: 770 50 46
Official Prep Mock 3: 780 51 46
Official Prep Mock 4: 770 51 45
Official Prep Mock 5: 770 49 48
Official Prep Mock 6: 760 49 45
I was ready to go and then just as I was a couple of days out for the exam disaster struck and I got a strep throat. It was an absolute nightmare as we were coming into our busy period in work and by the time I could book a new test time I would be right in the middle of it. I decided to postpone for a couple of months (Had to pay the full amount again as I was so close to the start date when I had to cancel
). It was a pretty big setback as I really struggled to get back motivated once that happened and the thought of getting back into study again was extremely daunting. Anyway eventually I got back to work but I think m work ethic probably wasn't as good as it was on during the first study period. I tried to keep myself relatively sharp doing a few hours a week but nothing close to what i was doing previously. Eventually I locked it in for the last 10 days or so and worked really hard during that period. I felt less prepared than when I was going into the exam pre strep throat but I am not sure if that was actually the case or was me just doubting myself.
Exam Day
Got to the test center, feel like I was waiting for ages before they called my name and didn't actually enter the exam room until about 40 mins after my supposed start time ( I got there early as well). I also wasn't allowed put my coffee I brought with me in the locker. I think this is understandable as if there was a spill it would go on other people's stuff however I really wanted half of it during my break so was kind of annoyed to have to throw it away. Anyway got all of the formalities out of the way and I was ready to begin.
I sat in and filled out all of the colleges etc. Decided to go for Quant-Verb-IR-AWA as I felt like my tired brain would be better during the Verbal and I needed my A-brain for the quant.
Quant started really easy, I was getting worried at how easy the questions were and I was good on time. There was rate/work q I struggled on but apart from that it was plain sailing until around Q20-25 when I ran into a geometry Q that I spent way way too long on (10 mins plus) and ended up guessing. It was a pretty criminal mistake as I ended up having to guess the last 2 questions.
I took my break. Just went out, had a snack, drank some water, went to the bathroom and then got back to it.
Verbal, I don't really know as it's sometimes tricky to know how you are doing during it. I didn't really get stuck on any questions and I was happy with my answers but was pretty sure that I must have slipped up somewhere. Usually for me I can start to struggle in paying attention to the RC passages and spend longer on them than I should. I found this was the case again, I went as quick as possible on the non-RC to try make up for it and finished up with one or two minutes to spare. I didn't really guess any Q's but there were a few that I wasn't 100% confident in and I assumed that I had made a couple of stupid mistakes as usual when it comes to verbal.
Took another break it took 2.5 mins for the supervisor to notice my hand was up as she was dealing with someone else so I had to be quick, just a quick bathroom break and another sip of water.
Sat back in ready to go for IR. In all my mocks I never had a problem with IR and I got 8 the first time I did the exam. First question comes up and my mind goes blank, it was such a weird passage and I just couldn't figure it out, it was one of those that had 3 questions attached to it. I became very aware that I was struggling with it and panic set in, I couldn't believe I was making a mess of this section that I had never had trouble on before. I eventually had to guess all 3 of the passages attached questions. I figured I was 0/3 and had wasted 12 mins once I got through that section. The rest was straightforward. I just couldn't get my head around that passage. Tough to explain what happened and maybe I was a bit cold coming in off my break but it was just one of those questions that i couldn't get my head around, it's a **** feeling during it but oh well it happened.
AWA hopefully went okay, I didn't think I had too much problems with it and I got a 6 the first time that I did it so hopefully I got the same. Finished with two mins to spare and I clicked next quickly, I was expecting more screens before my score but it popped up and it took me a second to process it. I saw 780 and gave a little fist bump. I saw the 49Q which I was a tiny bit disappointed in as I was hoping for a 50. Obviously delighted with the 51 in verbal, I had never scored that in any mocks I did so it more than made up for not getting the 50Q. I then saw the 5 in IR which sucked but I knew I had **** it up after the first 3 questions, it sucks to have that black mark on what would have otherwise been a really successful exam but oh well it happens. No way would I consider sitting again due to the IR even though it was by far the worst I have ever done in that.
That's it on the debrief. I had to go in and work for the day afterwards so I am absolutely exhausted. There is no way I am reading back over what I just wrote to check my grammar and if it makes sense so apologies for all the mistakes.
If you have any Q's let me know as I definitely owe this community a huge amount.
Materials used: Manhattan books, OG guides, all official mock tests, Q banks and GMAT Club tests.
Prep
It was definitely beneficial to have already sat the exam 5 years ago and certainly helped in my prep, especially in just knowing what to use as materials (especially knowing about this site). My strategy was to get reacquainted with the quant topics quickly using Manhattan and the just get through the OG Qs. I would get up every weekday at around 5 (I am not a morning person so this was a big ask for me that I am pretty proud of), I still enjoyed my weekends and took most of them off study. I will stress that I put in a huge amount of work to get the score I got and it certainly did not come easily, I would say that I am definitely not a stupid person and have always been a decent student but I am in no way a genius and unfortunately my main trick for achieving a good score was to just put in the work.
For Quant I am not sure if anything really stuck out as being a struggle for me in particular. I definitely found that when I operated at the speed that I needed to during the exam I would make stupid mistakes primarily from not properly reading the question. I also think in geometry especially I would see the answer and understand it but when I was doing it, the route to the answer wouldn't be immediately clear to me. I think looking back on it, especially post exam, my geometry could have done with more work and probably should have brushed up on probability & combinatronics a little bit more.
I was really good at pounding through the questions and getting a huge amount of volume under my belt but what I really struggled with was digging into the concepts and figuring out where I went wrong. I went through all the OG questions, all the extra Q bank questions and as a lot of the harder GMATclub test questions. I could go into autopilot and pile through the Qs with only a couple wrong but reviewing my wrong answers required a lot more effort and it was something that I definitely could have done better. I think that was the difference between me eventually scoring 49 vs 50/51
I will say that for quant the OG/mock hard questions are usually a little bit easier than the hard questions in GMAT club. They are also way less likely to put in the tricky little twists on the question that will sneakily catch you but it is a good thing the the GMATclub tests and Bunel's questions do test you on that as you become a lot more aware of the things that can get thrown at you.
Unfortunately I don't have a huge amount of insight here, verbal has always come very naturally to me (I know it doesn't seem like it from my writing here but please cut me some slack as I have had a long day). I didn't really need to study for RC & CR (as I got close to exam day I through in a few practice Hard OG Qs) but I used Manhattan SC to get the basics down and then answered every OG question. One thing I would recommend to everyone is that for Verbal you should try stick to the OG questions as much as possible, especially as you near test day. For me a lot of the time it was tough to pinpoint exactly why I was picking an answer when I was stuck between two options but my intuition was nearly always correct, I can't really explain why that was but I think sticking to the OG questions helped pick up a certain style that they use in the answers. My SC improvement was really just a huge amount of volume and I was pretty good at analysing my mistakes (Especially compared to Quant).
As the exam day approached I kept the same pattern during the weekdays of getting up early and I started mixing in about 6 hours a day on the weekends for the 2 weeks before the exam. I bought all of the mocks and all of the official Q bank. I tried to keep it reasonably realistic with my mocks but for the first few mocks I could 100% subconsciously remember some of the harder questions from 5 years ago, I also sometimes had a sneaky pause during the quant when I was stuck on a question. I probably did 1 mock a week and my results were as follows.
Official Prep Mock 1: 760 48 47
Official Prep Mock 2: 770 50 46
Official Prep Mock 3: 780 51 46
Official Prep Mock 4: 770 51 45
Official Prep Mock 5: 770 49 48
Official Prep Mock 6: 760 49 45
I was ready to go and then just as I was a couple of days out for the exam disaster struck and I got a strep throat. It was an absolute nightmare as we were coming into our busy period in work and by the time I could book a new test time I would be right in the middle of it. I decided to postpone for a couple of months (Had to pay the full amount again as I was so close to the start date when I had to cancel
). It was a pretty big setback as I really struggled to get back motivated once that happened and the thought of getting back into study again was extremely daunting. Anyway eventually I got back to work but I think m work ethic probably wasn't as good as it was on during the first study period. I tried to keep myself relatively sharp doing a few hours a week but nothing close to what i was doing previously. Eventually I locked it in for the last 10 days or so and worked really hard during that period. I felt less prepared than when I was going into the exam pre strep throat but I am not sure if that was actually the case or was me just doubting myself.Exam Day
Got to the test center, feel like I was waiting for ages before they called my name and didn't actually enter the exam room until about 40 mins after my supposed start time ( I got there early as well). I also wasn't allowed put my coffee I brought with me in the locker. I think this is understandable as if there was a spill it would go on other people's stuff however I really wanted half of it during my break so was kind of annoyed to have to throw it away. Anyway got all of the formalities out of the way and I was ready to begin.
I sat in and filled out all of the colleges etc. Decided to go for Quant-Verb-IR-AWA as I felt like my tired brain would be better during the Verbal and I needed my A-brain for the quant.
Quant started really easy, I was getting worried at how easy the questions were and I was good on time. There was rate/work q I struggled on but apart from that it was plain sailing until around Q20-25 when I ran into a geometry Q that I spent way way too long on (10 mins plus) and ended up guessing. It was a pretty criminal mistake as I ended up having to guess the last 2 questions.
I took my break. Just went out, had a snack, drank some water, went to the bathroom and then got back to it.
Verbal, I don't really know as it's sometimes tricky to know how you are doing during it. I didn't really get stuck on any questions and I was happy with my answers but was pretty sure that I must have slipped up somewhere. Usually for me I can start to struggle in paying attention to the RC passages and spend longer on them than I should. I found this was the case again, I went as quick as possible on the non-RC to try make up for it and finished up with one or two minutes to spare. I didn't really guess any Q's but there were a few that I wasn't 100% confident in and I assumed that I had made a couple of stupid mistakes as usual when it comes to verbal.
Took another break it took 2.5 mins for the supervisor to notice my hand was up as she was dealing with someone else so I had to be quick, just a quick bathroom break and another sip of water.
Sat back in ready to go for IR. In all my mocks I never had a problem with IR and I got 8 the first time I did the exam. First question comes up and my mind goes blank, it was such a weird passage and I just couldn't figure it out, it was one of those that had 3 questions attached to it. I became very aware that I was struggling with it and panic set in, I couldn't believe I was making a mess of this section that I had never had trouble on before. I eventually had to guess all 3 of the passages attached questions. I figured I was 0/3 and had wasted 12 mins once I got through that section. The rest was straightforward. I just couldn't get my head around that passage. Tough to explain what happened and maybe I was a bit cold coming in off my break but it was just one of those questions that i couldn't get my head around, it's a **** feeling during it but oh well it happened.
AWA hopefully went okay, I didn't think I had too much problems with it and I got a 6 the first time that I did it so hopefully I got the same. Finished with two mins to spare and I clicked next quickly, I was expecting more screens before my score but it popped up and it took me a second to process it. I saw 780 and gave a little fist bump. I saw the 49Q which I was a tiny bit disappointed in as I was hoping for a 50. Obviously delighted with the 51 in verbal, I had never scored that in any mocks I did so it more than made up for not getting the 50Q. I then saw the 5 in IR which sucked but I knew I had **** it up after the first 3 questions, it sucks to have that black mark on what would have otherwise been a really successful exam but oh well it happens. No way would I consider sitting again due to the IR even though it was by far the worst I have ever done in that.
That's it on the debrief. I had to go in and work for the day afterwards so I am absolutely exhausted. There is no way I am reading back over what I just wrote to check my grammar and if it makes sense so apologies for all the mistakes.
If you have any Q's let me know as I definitely owe this community a huge amount.
24 May 2019, 23:37
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Congratulations on sharing your debrief! 780 is a killer score and V51 is an achievement in itself. (V51 is superb performance 
)
All the best!!
)All the best!!
