Second Attempt 575 to 645 - Self Prep

Hello, on my second attempt I made the jump from 575 (Quant 81, Verbl 76, DI 78) to 645 (Quant 81, Verbal 84, DI 80).

Some lessons I learned from the retake, I will write down more prep notes later when I have more time to collect my thoughts and look back at my journey since Jan 2024 - July 2024. My first attempt was early June and my second attempt was July 18.

1. Quant is a perishable skill, in between retakes, you will need to find a way to stay warm to the way the GMAT problem solving works, I stilll strongly feel my ability in quant is 83. I got 4 questions incorrect out of the 21 and I got 81. I have touched 83 previously however I did not practice a whole lot of GMAT way of problem solving in between retakes, I did only some hours just a day before the exam.

2. For verbal, if you are good with reading precision you will be good at RC as long as you understand how to find the stated idea and how to make inferences from given information. My first take seems to be a one-off anomaly where I got 76 and then my second take I got 84, big jump, I always believed verbal is a strength for me. For CR, being watertight in logic helps you with solving the tougher questions, I was struggling with CR and then read basic rules of the game, you can find these on the club forums. In the second attempt, I got 4 incorrect, 2 RC + 2 CR wrong. Overall, as I progressed through the test CR got really difficult and same with some RC questions.

3. For DI I was able to improve my score as well, some questions seemed very diffcult that I had never seen all my life. I spent some time, guessed and moved on. For DI, pacing is key, if you flail, bail, simple. The test will give you the opportunity to recover. I got 9 incorrect overall and scored in the 86th percentile, not bad.

Lastly, as much as you can try and compress your prep into less than 5months overall with buffer to write a retake in the event you do not get close to your target score. My target score was 645 - 655 with aspiration to get to 665 - 685. So aim high always, and be realistic at the same time. With regards to luck and hard work, remember that hard work is the elder brother and luck is the younger brother, as long as you work hard and trust in your prep you will do well nevertheless.

Thanks and I am lucky to be able to find this forum and community for my prep.

God bless America.