Scored 730 and cancelled it...my debrief

Hello Community,

I recently gave my GMAT and scored 730 (V42, Q48). I had set my mind on not accepting anything below 760 so I cancelled it. Since material provided by users on this site has been of immense use to me for my prep, I think it's only fair if I share my journey so far and how I am planning to progress from now on. This debrief is lengthy, so if you are short on time and are interested in the tips, go the last section. Otherwise, let's go

Introduction: I am 24 years old Indian working at a FT 100 as a Business Analyst. Last year, I decided to go for the MBA with the intentions to get into Tech with PM roles. After a quick search, I opted to go for the GMAT against the domestic CAT exam based on my career goals to gain international exposure and work experience.

GMAT Preparation: Once decided, I started collecting more information of the exam. I came to know that OG was the most reliable question bank so I purchased one. By that time I have already read that the Quant section in GMAT is fairly easy for an Indian so I decided to jump on the PS section of the OG and solved all of them without much difficulty. I was on cloud nine, thinking I can pull a 750+ without any coaching/guide and be on my way to an M7 lol. Then I went to Sentence Correction part and that was it. I got 1 correct out of 10 (or maybe more) questions which I attempted. I was bamboozled and decided to get external help in Verbal. I was pretty comfortable with Quant so didn't bother spending any dime for Quant resources or preparing any plan whatsoever (my biggest mistake). Since Verbal was my weakness I looked out for different courses (offline and online) and then finally settled for e-gmat's Verbal Live prep as working full time hardly game me any time on weekdays plus when you travel for 5 days a week you kinda want to stay at home on weekends. I bought this course in September 2018, studied for 2 weeks aggressively and then just left it out in dark. Procrastination hit me so hard that it wasn't until December 2018 that I started to study again seriously but thanks to my job I had to travel out of city for 2 weeks twice which again hampered my progress. Finally in the last week of January I started to hit the engines in full throttle, started studying for 2 hours everyday on weekdays and ~10 hours on weekends. At the same time I booked the GMAT for 24th April as I knew nothing would get be fired up as much as a real exam will do. I finished the Verbal course in March, and then shifted my focus on Quant and practice tests. For Quant I referred to the GMAT Club's Maths book as well as their Quant Mocks. I saved the GMAT Prep's official mocks for the last 2 weeks to get a real assessment of my preparation. In the first one I scored 750 (V41, Q50) and in second 770 (V42, Q51). These scores gave me confidence and I actually got less scared of the exam.

Exam Day: The day before exam I revised some formulas, did some IR questions and read the AWA template. Slept normally for ~7 hours. My exam was scheduled for the afternoon so I woke up early in the morning, had breakfast, revised some formulas, practiced some questions from OG to get in the groove and then went for the center. Gave the exam and got the score of 730.

Some Tips: These are by no means my tips, after reading hundreds of debrief they are a subset of a few that worked for me.

Quant: Practice, practice and practice. I didn't, neither did I make any plans to tackle to DS or difficult PS questions. I knew I was good in Quant therefore decided to left it for last and approached it unstructured. Please don't do this. Doesn't matter how good you were in a subject, your skills wane off if not being in touch for long which can hurt your efficiency in that subject. I could have easily scored Q50 had I stayed humble but hey that's life, what's important is you learn and don't commit those mistakes next time. So for Quant, practice tough questions, time yourself and use GMATClub's resources (there are many question pdfs) as much as you can.

Verbal: During my final stage, I became really comfortable with CR and SC. For CR I would just look for the conclusion and then connect it with the other statements in the passage by thinking their purpose. Once I got a grasp of it I was solving CR questions in ~1 minute with 90% efficiency (for OG and GMATPrep questions). For SC I thank the egmat for their extensive course on it. They over simplified it and made it so simple to learn. But whether or not you will take any course or not, just remember this - MEANING is everything. You don't even need to learn hundreds of Idioms (I learned like 15), just understand this basic concept, practice it, and you will get unreal efficiency. RC was my weakest, and I will be improving it the most in my next sitting but from what I understand the passages in actual exam were difficult than what I practiced in OG and GmatPrep Mocks so practice hard questions and read the passage with interest to get the maximum out of it from first time.

For both Quant and Verbal maintain an error log and go through it every 15 days or so to not repeat those mistakes again. Also for the questions that you get right look for the solutions as you will learn new concept (for Verbal) or a new method (for Quant) to solve that question.

IR: I scored 8 in IR while I practiced this section for 1 day. In exam there was 1 msr question that I guessed but otherwise I solved rest of the 11 questions and found them to be fairly easy.

AWA: I just read the template provided by someone on GMATClub and I learned it by heart. You can found it by searching AWA topic (It has like 2000+ kudos) so it will be a top post.

Some Exam Center Tip: Reach 40 minutes early, and request for earplugs straight away (they will inform you that you can request for one provided you didn't find headphones comfortable). I was not comfortable with the headphones but didn't ask as I thought it would be a waste of time.

Ah this is it, I will be sitting again in 2 months and this time will hopefully break the 750+ barrier. Thank you for reading and please feel free to ask me anything. Good Luck!