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11 Dec 2020, 10:17
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Hi everyone,
I wanted to share my experience in this forum in gratitude to all the support and great information gmatclub gave me through the gmat road.
First, I started to prepare for the GMAT on may 2020. Started by reading the OG 2020, which I founded on this site. After reading the whole guide (only the theoretical part of the guide) I tried some exercises from the guide but I didn't feel very comfortable doing those exercises because I am more used to the exercises in digital simulators so I suscribed to Magoosh and started practicing in its platform.
After a month and arround 600 questions, my results were 70% effectiveness in Quant and 60% in VERBAL. In this way, I decided it was time to see my performance in a mock test, so I took my first gmatprep mock test on July 15. The mock tests are a great way to prepare if you train for them and set a good space at home to took them properly. At my first mock test I felt like I was taking the real exam and I was very focused until the end.
I scored a 650 (48Q, 32V) and I was surprised because it is not a bad score (It is actually good in my opinion and you would be surprised on how hard it is to reach a 650 on gmat).
After that, It took me one more week to finish the Magoosh question bank and decided to try the 6 Manhattan Mock tests. I started with the first 2 exams and found them very difficult, I thought I was going to score zero, but my scores were 650 in the first one and 600 in the second. The quant questions are too difficult but they can be a good indicator to determine how good your quant is. Nevertheless, if you are struggling with QUANT I would recommend to left the manhattan questions for later.
In August 15 I decided to take another official mock test from gmatprep to see how much I had improved and scored 650 again. I was a little disappointed (further you will see that this was no reason to be disappointed at all). I thought there was no progress and I was studying all day long!! I studied from monday to sunday from 8 am to 10 pm. I read almost all the SC posts in the magoosh forum (it has very good posts) and many of the advanced CR posts which helped me realize many trends in the questions and how to address them, but I had not had any progress compared to my previous note.
Therefore, I decided to look for tricks in all the gmat forums to help me improve something or to see if there is an easy way to get better at RC, which was my weakest point. To be honest with you, I have never liked to read, I have not read a single book in my life even in my native language. It is just not my cup of tea. But do not get me wrong, I still do it. I forced myself to read articles in English and most of all to read everything I could find about gmat on the internet. I downloaded the Prepare4GMAT app on my cellphone so when I was outside I could practice, I believe that all resources are useful and one should never stop taking advantage of them.
In the next two weeks I took 2 more Manhattan Mock tests and scored 620 and 580. I was furious. I was actually getting worse. It did not make any sense. I remember so clearly that I felt like my first Mock test was my limit and I should only aspire to a 650 on the real test. To tell you a little bit about me, I am an engineer and I have a solid math background, I am very disciplined and compromised with everything I do, so studying 3 months for an exam and actually become worse at it was a pill hard to swallow. But this was my first and lesson from the GMAT, and it is that preparing for an exam like this is not exactly like climbing a ladder, but more like climbing a very irregular path with ups and downs.
I decided I was not going to invest more time on preparing for the exam and scheduled my GMAT online test for september 20. My strategy was to finish all the QUANT exercises from the Jeff Sackman guide, all the 300 hard questions from the GMAT prep bank (you have to pay for these questions) and arround 500 SC, CR and RC questions from the gmatprep mock tests (I found them here in gmatclub) in arround 20 days. To talk a little bit about these resources, I would say the Jeff Sackman questions are the best resource for QUANT. and without a doubt, the SC, CR and RC questions from the gmatprep mock tests are the best I found and helped me to improve significantly in CR to become my strongest point. Also, I finished all the gmatprep mock tests and scored 580, 610, 620 and 640 (the last score was from a mock test I took on septembre 18). I was not angry or disappointed, I finished all the problems I set out to do and studied non-stop in the last week. I accomplished everything I had planned and was responsible.
The day of the exam I was very nervous, like I have not been ever before. I entered to the test platform and talked to the proctor, the first proctor was very clear and I showed him my room and my desk. He approved and the test began. At the start of the test I was very surprised with the QUANT difficulty. I struggled a lot in the first 3 exercises and started to feel very nervous, but I tried to calm my self (I even took like 10 seconds to close my eyes and try to calm) and continued with the exam. I finished the QUANT portion of the test and I feel like most of the questions were difficult (maybe as difficult as the ones from manhattan) and there were some easy questions (maybe 2). In my mock tests my QUANT scores varied between 48 and 50, but in this case I didn't feel the same security and I answered some questions at random, which I never usually do in QUANT. But the nightmare wasn't over. In the VERBAL portion of the test, I felt like the CR and SC questions were very difficult and the RC part was moderate. I had a very hard time at VERBAL because the proctor interrupted me several times, and in more than one time she demanded me to answer to her chat by writing: OK I UNDERSTAND, to let me continue (the time didn't stop). Finally, IR was also very hard and I was exhausted, I did my worst there.
After the exam I felt a little depressed, I felt the exam was very hard but I remembered that the harder the questions the higher your score so I tried to calm down thinking about that.
Finally, my score was available three days later and it was a huge surprised! I scored 700 (49Q, 36V) !! and I could not believe it. It was the best news I had received in a long time.
To be honest with you, 700 is a very good score, but is not the best and as funny as this sounds, it is not that competitive if you are aiming for a top mba program. Please do not take this the wrong way, I am very happy with my score and I feel amazing, but this path has made me think a lot about what success really is? I know that even achieving a 650 on the gmat would have relieved me and I'm sure that some low note would not have been the end of the world for me. And that's because, in my opinion, the real success on this path was the perseverance, the constancy, and all the work I did to meet such a big challenge as the GMAT exam.
I'm convinced that all the people who aspire to take a GMAT have a great education and very good training and have achieved important things and so on and so forth. But in my opinion the GMAT always expects even more from you and the most important thing is that you are humble and continue on the path with the same perseverance even if you don't find improvements. You must always see through the disappointment.
So please take this post as motivation and inspiration to work hard for the goals you have because achieving that consistency and that study habit will help you not for one exam, but for a lifetime. Remember that a grade does not define you, what defines you is your attitude, effort and perseverance.
I wanted to share my experience in this forum in gratitude to all the support and great information gmatclub gave me through the gmat road.
First, I started to prepare for the GMAT on may 2020. Started by reading the OG 2020, which I founded on this site. After reading the whole guide (only the theoretical part of the guide) I tried some exercises from the guide but I didn't feel very comfortable doing those exercises because I am more used to the exercises in digital simulators so I suscribed to Magoosh and started practicing in its platform.
After a month and arround 600 questions, my results were 70% effectiveness in Quant and 60% in VERBAL. In this way, I decided it was time to see my performance in a mock test, so I took my first gmatprep mock test on July 15. The mock tests are a great way to prepare if you train for them and set a good space at home to took them properly. At my first mock test I felt like I was taking the real exam and I was very focused until the end.
I scored a 650 (48Q, 32V) and I was surprised because it is not a bad score (It is actually good in my opinion and you would be surprised on how hard it is to reach a 650 on gmat).
After that, It took me one more week to finish the Magoosh question bank and decided to try the 6 Manhattan Mock tests. I started with the first 2 exams and found them very difficult, I thought I was going to score zero, but my scores were 650 in the first one and 600 in the second. The quant questions are too difficult but they can be a good indicator to determine how good your quant is. Nevertheless, if you are struggling with QUANT I would recommend to left the manhattan questions for later.
In August 15 I decided to take another official mock test from gmatprep to see how much I had improved and scored 650 again. I was a little disappointed (further you will see that this was no reason to be disappointed at all). I thought there was no progress and I was studying all day long!! I studied from monday to sunday from 8 am to 10 pm. I read almost all the SC posts in the magoosh forum (it has very good posts) and many of the advanced CR posts which helped me realize many trends in the questions and how to address them, but I had not had any progress compared to my previous note.
Therefore, I decided to look for tricks in all the gmat forums to help me improve something or to see if there is an easy way to get better at RC, which was my weakest point. To be honest with you, I have never liked to read, I have not read a single book in my life even in my native language. It is just not my cup of tea. But do not get me wrong, I still do it. I forced myself to read articles in English and most of all to read everything I could find about gmat on the internet. I downloaded the Prepare4GMAT app on my cellphone so when I was outside I could practice, I believe that all resources are useful and one should never stop taking advantage of them.
In the next two weeks I took 2 more Manhattan Mock tests and scored 620 and 580. I was furious. I was actually getting worse. It did not make any sense. I remember so clearly that I felt like my first Mock test was my limit and I should only aspire to a 650 on the real test. To tell you a little bit about me, I am an engineer and I have a solid math background, I am very disciplined and compromised with everything I do, so studying 3 months for an exam and actually become worse at it was a pill hard to swallow. But this was my first and lesson from the GMAT, and it is that preparing for an exam like this is not exactly like climbing a ladder, but more like climbing a very irregular path with ups and downs.
I decided I was not going to invest more time on preparing for the exam and scheduled my GMAT online test for september 20. My strategy was to finish all the QUANT exercises from the Jeff Sackman guide, all the 300 hard questions from the GMAT prep bank (you have to pay for these questions) and arround 500 SC, CR and RC questions from the gmatprep mock tests (I found them here in gmatclub) in arround 20 days. To talk a little bit about these resources, I would say the Jeff Sackman questions are the best resource for QUANT. and without a doubt, the SC, CR and RC questions from the gmatprep mock tests are the best I found and helped me to improve significantly in CR to become my strongest point. Also, I finished all the gmatprep mock tests and scored 580, 610, 620 and 640 (the last score was from a mock test I took on septembre 18). I was not angry or disappointed, I finished all the problems I set out to do and studied non-stop in the last week. I accomplished everything I had planned and was responsible.
The day of the exam I was very nervous, like I have not been ever before. I entered to the test platform and talked to the proctor, the first proctor was very clear and I showed him my room and my desk. He approved and the test began. At the start of the test I was very surprised with the QUANT difficulty. I struggled a lot in the first 3 exercises and started to feel very nervous, but I tried to calm my self (I even took like 10 seconds to close my eyes and try to calm) and continued with the exam. I finished the QUANT portion of the test and I feel like most of the questions were difficult (maybe as difficult as the ones from manhattan) and there were some easy questions (maybe 2). In my mock tests my QUANT scores varied between 48 and 50, but in this case I didn't feel the same security and I answered some questions at random, which I never usually do in QUANT. But the nightmare wasn't over. In the VERBAL portion of the test, I felt like the CR and SC questions were very difficult and the RC part was moderate. I had a very hard time at VERBAL because the proctor interrupted me several times, and in more than one time she demanded me to answer to her chat by writing: OK I UNDERSTAND, to let me continue (the time didn't stop). Finally, IR was also very hard and I was exhausted, I did my worst there.
After the exam I felt a little depressed, I felt the exam was very hard but I remembered that the harder the questions the higher your score so I tried to calm down thinking about that.
Finally, my score was available three days later and it was a huge surprised! I scored 700 (49Q, 36V) !! and I could not believe it. It was the best news I had received in a long time.
To be honest with you, 700 is a very good score, but is not the best and as funny as this sounds, it is not that competitive if you are aiming for a top mba program. Please do not take this the wrong way, I am very happy with my score and I feel amazing, but this path has made me think a lot about what success really is? I know that even achieving a 650 on the gmat would have relieved me and I'm sure that some low note would not have been the end of the world for me. And that's because, in my opinion, the real success on this path was the perseverance, the constancy, and all the work I did to meet such a big challenge as the GMAT exam.
I'm convinced that all the people who aspire to take a GMAT have a great education and very good training and have achieved important things and so on and so forth. But in my opinion the GMAT always expects even more from you and the most important thing is that you are humble and continue on the path with the same perseverance even if you don't find improvements. You must always see through the disappointment.
So please take this post as motivation and inspiration to work hard for the goals you have because achieving that consistency and that study habit will help you not for one exam, but for a lifetime. Remember that a grade does not define you, what defines you is your attitude, effort and perseverance.
12 Dec 2020, 08:16
Kudos
Bookmarks
jproncal - Congratulations on scoring a 700 on the GMAT and thank you for sharing a debrief of your experience.
