Texas Salesman Owns the GMAT 760 (Q48/V48)!!!

Standing Outside the Fire

I took the GMAT this past Saturday and earned my 760 (Q48/V48). It’s been a long and winding road I’ve traveled to get to this point. I took my first (and only other) official GMAT in 2006 when I was a junior in college. I didn’t do great and walked out of the test center with a report that read 610. Looking back I’m shocked it wasn’t lower. I arrogantly assumed that since I was a high performing student and currently in college that I could ace the test with just a week of light studying…I was wrong. But I’m glad the test brought me down to Earth as I believe it ultimately got me ready to put in the work required to get my 760. This is a long post, but hopefully you’ll find some useful information in it. I wrote this post as long and detailed as it is because I’ve been a taker on this site and this is my way of giving back. Also the sections are all titles of Garth Brooks songs just for fun because really what’s life without whimsy?

Shameless

I am an Account Executive (salesman) in TX. Specifically I sell Energy Projects to public entities. I’m 28 years old, married, and have a three month old (more on that later). I went to a large Tier 1 public university in Texas where I got my undergraduate degree in Management and a minor in International Business. I consider myself strong in math as I deal with engineering figures and cash flow models a lot in my job and got very good grades in honors math classes in college. But I am not GMAT strong at math. Those of you who are engineers or from countries with a much stronger math foundation at all levels of education really hack me off (not really I like y’all I’m just jealous I can’t do GMAT Quant like you). However, Verbal comes easy to me since I constantly write reports, make presentations, and review proposals for my job.

Wild Horses

The GMAT kicked my tail in 2006, but I knew I wanted to pursue my MBA at some point in time. In 2008, after a year of work, I decided to make another run at the GMAT. This time I checked my ego and signed up for a Kaplan class that met twice a week. It was a good experience, but I didn’t get much out of it. I still didn’t quite “get” what it took to get a great score. I didn’t study much outside of class. I didn’t track my mistakes. I didn’t treat my preparation like the part time job it needed to be treated like. So I won’t say that these types of classes have little value, but I will say that unless you put in the needed effort outside of the classroom these classes will not help you get the highest score you are capable of getting. In the middle of the class I received a promotion, was heavily involved in a lot of different organizations, and met the girl that would eventually become my wife. The GMAT is not your life so you can’t put everything on hold just to focus on the test. To put it another way, the GMAT has to fit into your life and plans at the right time. Since I wasn’t planning to apply to b-school for another few years, 2008 was not the right time for me, and I never ended up taking the test. And so a high GMAT score continued to elude me and once again it was my fault.

Two of a Kind; Working on a Full House

In July of 2012 I decided I had done just about everything I was going to do in my current profession and that it was time to advance my career with an MBA. My wife and I found out we were expecting our first child so I had no interest in trying to rush my GMAT in order to apply for admission in 2013. I decided to wait partly because I didn’t want to have a 6 month old when I started the program, and partly because I knew if I rushed my GMAT and application I wouldn’t be able to get into a top 5 program like I thought I was capable of getting into. I planned to start studying for the GMAT in November because I’m a diehard college and pro football fan (American football the one with the oblong ball) and I knew I would be too distracted during the heart of the season. I wanted to study for 3-4 months and take my GMAT in mid-February just before my son was due. So I started studying the last week of November and it went slowly at first. I will try and attach my schedule as I used it to track what I was studying and the time I spent studying in case it helps somebody (warning its color coded that just the kind of guy I am). I ended up taking 6 months to study which would not be optimal for everybody, but it worked for me.

Wrapped Up In You

What follows are pointers that I can provide that hopefully somebody will find useful. Below are materials I used, my CATs, and my thoughts on each.

Official Guide 2013: It’s the best, if you don’t use this in your studies then don’t take the GMAT.
Official Guide Quant/Verbal Review: Get these too, just do it you won’t regret it.
Kaplan GMAT Guide: Strongly recommend, very good basic strategies and reasonable depth.
Kaplan GMAT 800 Guide: It’s not necessary, but it provides some decent more advanced questions.
Manhattan Guides: Strongly recommend, decent strategies, deep analysis.
Princeton Review: Strongly DON’T recommend, shallow analysis, not as easy to follow as Kaplan.
Nova GMAT: Recommend, easy to follow and good for those who aren’t very strong at Quant.
GMAT Club: Strongly recommend, I used the forums and taught myself several topics.
GMAT Prep Question Pack 1: Very good, allows you to better target areas and difficulty. Worth the $.
GMAT Prep Software: If you don’t use this software for CATs then don’t take the GMAT. It’s the best.
Manhattan CATs: 2nd best to GMAT Prep, Quant very hard, Verbal isn’t great but not terrible.
Kaplan CATs: 3rd best CATs, Quant is harder than the real thing and Verbal isn’t very accurate, but useful.
800 Score CATs: 4th best CATs, Quant is harder than the real thing, Verbal is way too easy. Worth the $.
Princeton Review CATs: Terrible don’t bother, Quant and Verbal are not representative, horrible scoring.
GMAT Pill Free CAT: The worst, questions ripped from elsewhere, very buggy, not worth your time.

As I got closer to the test I focused almost exclusively on questions from the Official Guide and GMAT Prep. You need to practice on high quality questions as low quality questions don’t mimic what you’ll see on the test. For Verbal I recommend studying GMAC questions almost exclusively as you need to see questions that are as similar to what you’ll see on test day as possible in order to figure out what the GMAT considers correct. There are a lot of reviews for most of this material on these forums so I’m not going to touch on most of the above material, except for Nova GMAT. If you are like me, pretty good at math but not a GMAT Quant stud, then Nova may be a book you should consider buying. It’s not a good general strategy book like Kaplan or Manhattan, but it helps with math (especially algebra) fundamentals. I got a lot stronger at sequences and number theory with this book and I didn’t work it in to my studies until 3 weeks before my test. Throughout the process I ended up taking 23 CATs, if you want to see my ranges then open the attached file. I think CATs are an excellent study tool. You get timed practice, you get to see a variety of topics, and they force you to work on your timing. To get the most out of your CATs study what you missed. A couple days before my GMAT I reviewed all the questions I had missed from most of my CATs. My CATs were all over the map even two weeks before my test (one gave me a 650 while others gave me 760s) so I wouldn’t freak out too much if you get one score that is very different from the others. GMAT Prep was dead on (my last 2 GMAT Prep CATs were both 760s, though each gave me different composite scores) and you can take the tests multiple times. I took the first GMAT Prep CAT 3 times and the second one twice. If you take those tests multiple times you will see some of the same questions, but I felt like the system compensated by throwing new things at me. Other pointers are as follows:

1. When you take your CATs try and mirror the conditions of the test as much as you can. I had nothing in my pockets, my phone was off and in another room, I didn’t eat or drink while taking my practice CATs, I timed my breaks to 6 minutes, etc.
2. Obviously keep track of what you missed and go back and re-do what you missed.
3. Do all the OG and accompanying reviews questions at least twice, early in your study and late.
4. Track the time you spend studying so you can adjust as needed. Remember you can’t manage what you can’t measure.
5. Don’t rush your prep time, but don’t study forever.
6. Schedule your GMAT at least 2 months in advance (I had very few options for when I could take it even two months in advance because it was booked solid).
7. Schedule your GMAT when you are 85% ready. You will never be 100%, but setting an end date will cause you to step up your prep as the date nears. I found it hard to do 30+ hours a week until I set my test date.
8. Don’t study every day, like with working out you need to have some recovery time. The Sunday before my test I intentionally didn’t study in addition to the day before, and I felt rejuvenated.
9. Warm up before you play. I did at least 10 questions per type (DS, PS, RC, CR, SC) the day of my test. High level athletes don’t walk out onto the field and just start playing, they warm up first. You need to do the same; it’ll clean the cobwebs and sharpen your focus. I started 3 hours before my test and quit an hour before. I picked some questions that challenged me and some that I could knock out of the park to boost confidence, all of them where from official material.
10. Plan to kick; kick for position. I planned the types of questions I was going to only spend 30 seconds on to narrow the choices down and then guess and move on. For me it was probability and combinations because they don’t show up often and they are easy to spot.
11. If you hit a plateau, do something different. I hired a tutor.
12. Hope is not a strategy. You have to work hard to beat this test.
13. Don’t emotionally go for the 800. This is something my tutor beat into my head because I had such a problem giving up on questions. If you can’t get the question right in the amount of time you’ve allotted MOVE ON. You can score very high (top 1%) by giving up on (or strategically not attempting) some question. Don’t ruin your test on a question, you can recover if you have time.
14. Time is the only thing you can’t recover on the GMAT so use it well.
15. DON’T have a kid in the middle of GMAT studying. I know this doesn’t apply to most of you, but seriously avoid it if you can. A newborn requires a lot of time and attention and it’s not fair to your spouse to not pull your weight in rearing your child (on a side note my wife is a saint I’m filling out the canonization papers next week). I had to study at odd hours and cut back the time I would have otherwise spent. If I had worked as hard when I started my studying as I did as the test drew near it wouldn’t have been as big of a problem. All’s well that ends well I guess.
16. If you can avoid it, don’t take 6 months to study. Prepare hard for three months and take the test if your schedule allows it.

If you’ve read this far, maybe you’ll read a little further. The biggest secret to my success was hiring a tutor once I plateaud (i.e. kept getting roughly the same CAT scores). I found my tutor through Wyzant and his name is Matthew Martin. If you live in the Dallas metroplex I cannot recommend him enough. In general I don’t think it’s the most helpful move to hire a tutor early in your preparation process. I got myself to scoring 700 consistently on practice CATs before employing Matthew. This made our sessions much more productive because we could focus in on what I needed. I brought him in for Quant help though he really bailed me out at the last minute with Verbal as well. A tutor can break down what you’re doing wrong in a way that other contributors on forums simply cannot because tutors can do it face to face. Matthew helped me with number theory, advanced geometry, he helped me be more disciplined with my algebra, and most importantly he was a great coach. Great athletes need great coaches. Part of the value of my tutor was him telling me that I could reach my goal (I wanted a 740) and that he could see 750 potential in my skills if I would focus in a few areas. He went above and beyond a week and a half before my test when my Verbal composite was still around 42. Even though I rarely missed RC or CR questions, SC was my Achilles Heel. He broke down the questions I missed and saw they all shared the same mistake so he created a customized lesson for how to approach that type of SC and pointed me to practice questions. I saw a rise in my next GMAT Prep CAT and another rise on the real test to the level that I believe accurately reflects my Verbal skills. The definition of insanity is doing the same the over and over again and expecting different results. If you’re stuck, do something different and hire a tutor.

The Dance

There are a lot of people describing their test day experience so I’ll be brief about this part. I got to the test center 25 minutes early and there were a ton of people. I had to wait 8 minutes until after my test was supposed to start for a computer to open up. I was scheduled for a 4pm test which is best for me because I studied in the afternoons and evenings and I think it’s best to take the test when you normally study. I brought 2 bananas and 2 bottles of water for my breaks. The bottles of water were so I didn’t have to get back into my locker again I just threw them away. Remember you get an 8 minute break, but it takes a minute or two to get through the check in and out procedure so plan accordingly. AWA and IR were a breeze. Quant started off with the weirdest question I’d ever seen (seriously never saw any practice questions like it) fortunately I’m pretty sure I was able to reason through to the right answer. My timing wasn’t great but I kicked out of the questions I had decided I would and I cut my losses appropriately to hit the last question with 55 seconds. I’m very good about staying in the moment so I didn’t think about how well I was doing or the difficulty level of questions until my break. Then I was pretty sure I had just bombed the test. The GMAT is designed to be hard no matter how well your scoring so just remember that. I took my break cleared my head and got focused for Verbal. I knew Verbal would determine the quality of my score no matter what so it was time to produce. Verbal seemed pretty easy to me. I spent extra time on SC to make sure I wasn’t making my usual mistake. This caused me to get behind on timing so I just started taking less notes on RC and CR questions which caught me back up and I got to the last question with a minute twenty to go. I finished the test and got to the screen asking to cancel the test or not. I accepted immediately and was blown away by my score. I was the last one in my test room as I exited so I was able to be a little bit more animated than I could have been if there were others present.

Long Neck Bottles and Two Piña Coladas

And that’s it. I’m floored by my score. I worked very hard and for a very long time to earn it. The score doesn’t guarantee me entrance into a top 5 MBA program, but it sure doesn’t hurt. I’m glad the test is behind me and I’m looking forward to the application process which I’ll start this week. Good luck and I hope you found something useful in this post.