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Apr 2610:00 AM EDT
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The Target Test Prep course represents a quantum leap forward in GMAT preparation, a radical reinterpretation of the way that students should study. Try before you buy with a 5-day, full-access trial of the course for FREE!
Apr 2711:00 AM EDT
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Prefer video-based learning? The Target Test Prep OnDemand course is a one-of-a-kind video masterclass featuring 400 hours of lecture-style teaching by Scott Woodbury-Stewart, founder of Target Test Prep and one of the most accomplished GMAT instructors
Apr 2808:00 AM PDT
-11:00 AM PDT
Whether you are just beginning your MBA journey or fine-tuning your path to a 700+ score, GMAT Day is designed to give you a competitive edge.
10 Oct 2015, 06:18
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The GMAT is a scary prospect, especially for an Indian male. 700 is almost the norm these days and anything below or even slightly above may not be effective enough to get one through to a top B-school. My very first encounter with GMAT was an absolute disaster (massive understatement). Having prepared for a solid 3 months albeit along with a full-time job, I was extremely excited about the prospect of finally taming the demon called GMAT which had rendered many a sleepless nights. Due to all the tension accumulating all across my body parts, especially the tummy, I couldn't sleep all night and to offset the negative effects of not sleeping, I took 4 baths in the morning of the exam to awaken my sleepy grey cells and prepare them for battle. I reached the GMAT centre an hour in advance, smelling extremely good because of the excessive use of soap, to make sure that the probability of missing the exam was something closer to 1/1024 than 1/2. After reaching the centre, the first thing that I was asked for was my passport. Nonchalantly, I nodded my head in refusal and offered my PAN card. The centre attendant looked at me desperately trying to figure out whether it was a joke. She reiterated " Can I see your passport?". I reiterated "No, but you can have my PAN card". She looked at me with sympathy in her eyes and said " I can't allow you to give the exam without a passport", the scariest combination of words I had heard since " I see dead people". I argued with all my might using cliches in plenty, " I guarantee you that I'll get my passport tomorrow", to try and assuage the defiant attendant but to no avail. I was made to sign a form and metaphorically kicked out of the centre with the polite words " Read the instructions carefully next time". Not only had I lost 250 dollars, the average monthly salary of a middle-class Indian, but also a chance to slay the demon who would survive atleast till the next attempt. I was distraught but somewhere deep inside I knew that all was not lost, I could retake the exam on any date as the 31 day policy did not apply to me. I went home and the first thing I did was register for the GMAT again and luckily i found a date that was just 5 days away.
Five painful days had passed and I was ready for the battle. The no sleep, multiple baths theme reoccured and I felt a dejavu like sensation while leaving my house. Only, this time I had the magical passport, wrapped in 5 star quality plastic and shining like gold. I reached the centre an hour in advance and encountered the same attendant. She clearly remembered me as she grinned when I walked up to complete the formalities. She asked for my passport and I took the beautifully packed passport out of my pocket as if it were a trophy and placed it in front of her. Retribution was mine. She smiled and commented " Looks like someone read the instructions a bit more carefully" and I smiled back. I was escorted to the machine and provided the requisite material. The test started with instructions and I read each and every word as if it were a mystery novel. My hands were trembling even while clicking next on the instructions page and i knew that I was up against it big time. The tenth click led me to the AWA page. I read the argument while trying to place it within the context of the Chinese burned template I had memorised the night before. 30 mins turned out ot be ample time as I wrote 5 strong paras before logically concluding the argument. The IR too wasn't much of a challenge and I raced through it in twenty mins. It was time for Quant, something I was quite confident about. I nervously clicked on the " Do you want to take a break" button and headed straight for the washroom. Staring at my visibly tired face in the mirror, I splashed water on my face. It was the moment that I had been waiting for, the demon was at my mercy, I just needed to strike the killer blow. After a quick palm scan I was escorted to my machine. I waited the entire 1 min countdown to the quant section and when the clock read 1 sec I clicked next. The first question was easy but I solved it thrice just to be sure, did the same with the second and the third before eventually realising that at this rate I would be able to finish 15 out the 37 questions at max. Iincreased my speed and raced through the next three questions and then the tough questions started popping up. I found them relatively manageable and navigated through the rest of the questions with relative comfort and finished the quant section with about 30 secs remaining. Excited about what I thought was a solid quant performance I started the verbal section immediately. It turned out to be a huge blunder. 8 questions down the line I found myself struggling to read the words on the screen, my mind was rejecting any new information that I was vehemently trying to feed to it. After staring at a RC for about 3 mins, I decided to just finish the exam somehow and started randomly clicking on answers. I guess I might have got quite a few wrong as the questions towards the end were extremely easy and I managed to tackle them. After the painful 75 mins and clicking on 6 irritating pages I was pleasantly surprised, but not elated, to see a 710( Q49, V36) staring at me.
I left the centre satisfied but something inside my head kept playing the words " You know you can do better, you just need to rectify your verbal" in loop mode. After a few weeks on contemplation, I decided to retake the exam. My logic being, " The worst that can happen to me is a 710". But I needed to improve my verbal somehow and not just the technical part but also the time management part. Randomly traversing my email inbox, I came across an old e-mail from e-gmat founder Rajat. It was an invitation to attend one of his free sessions of Verbal Strategy. As "free" is my 2nd favourite F word, I decided to attend his online session.The session was, in crude terms, awesome. Rajat seemed to know a lot about the problems facing Non-natives and he had a solution for each and every one of them. I asked a few questions at the end of the session and got immediate responses from Rajat. From then on, I would attend or watch the recoded version of almost every e-gmat session that I received a mail for. I realised the importance of meaning while solving SC questions and the importance of the conclusion for CR. Consequently, I kept applying these new techniques to solve verbal questions and kept improving my speed and accuracy. Before I knew it, it was time for my second attempt (actually 3rd, counting the passport incident). This time I found quant to be quite confusing and tricky and somehow managed to finish the section with 2 secs remaining. Extremely frustrated with myself, I started verbal without taking the 8 min break. With my poor quant show at the back of my mind, I found it difficult to concentrate on the first 2 questions. Angry with myself, I took a deep breath and rested for a couple of minutes. It seemed to calm me down. I looked at the question on the screen, a fully underlined SC and tried to make sense of it. Surprisingly, I found it quite manageable this time around. The tables turned, I was growing in confidence and words which were incomprehensible a few minutes back were making perfect sense all of a sudden. I was delighted to see a BOLD FACE question appear on the screen as I read somewhere that Bold Face questions indicate that the test is going quite well. Using the momentum, I finished the verbal with 6 mins remaining and furiously clicked next for the next 6 pages. I closed my eyes on the 7th click, counted till 10 and slowly opened them. 740 (Q48 V44) was what I saw and the sheer relief is something I had never felt in my life before. I had slayed the demon, it was time to take on the universities.
STUDY MATERIAL I FOUND EXTREMELY USEFUL
OG 15
GMAT PREP SOFTWARE
GMAT PREP QUESTION PACK 1
GMAT PREP EXAM PACK 1
Five painful days had passed and I was ready for the battle. The no sleep, multiple baths theme reoccured and I felt a dejavu like sensation while leaving my house. Only, this time I had the magical passport, wrapped in 5 star quality plastic and shining like gold. I reached the centre an hour in advance and encountered the same attendant. She clearly remembered me as she grinned when I walked up to complete the formalities. She asked for my passport and I took the beautifully packed passport out of my pocket as if it were a trophy and placed it in front of her. Retribution was mine. She smiled and commented " Looks like someone read the instructions a bit more carefully" and I smiled back. I was escorted to the machine and provided the requisite material. The test started with instructions and I read each and every word as if it were a mystery novel. My hands were trembling even while clicking next on the instructions page and i knew that I was up against it big time. The tenth click led me to the AWA page. I read the argument while trying to place it within the context of the Chinese burned template I had memorised the night before. 30 mins turned out ot be ample time as I wrote 5 strong paras before logically concluding the argument. The IR too wasn't much of a challenge and I raced through it in twenty mins. It was time for Quant, something I was quite confident about. I nervously clicked on the " Do you want to take a break" button and headed straight for the washroom. Staring at my visibly tired face in the mirror, I splashed water on my face. It was the moment that I had been waiting for, the demon was at my mercy, I just needed to strike the killer blow. After a quick palm scan I was escorted to my machine. I waited the entire 1 min countdown to the quant section and when the clock read 1 sec I clicked next. The first question was easy but I solved it thrice just to be sure, did the same with the second and the third before eventually realising that at this rate I would be able to finish 15 out the 37 questions at max. Iincreased my speed and raced through the next three questions and then the tough questions started popping up. I found them relatively manageable and navigated through the rest of the questions with relative comfort and finished the quant section with about 30 secs remaining. Excited about what I thought was a solid quant performance I started the verbal section immediately. It turned out to be a huge blunder. 8 questions down the line I found myself struggling to read the words on the screen, my mind was rejecting any new information that I was vehemently trying to feed to it. After staring at a RC for about 3 mins, I decided to just finish the exam somehow and started randomly clicking on answers. I guess I might have got quite a few wrong as the questions towards the end were extremely easy and I managed to tackle them. After the painful 75 mins and clicking on 6 irritating pages I was pleasantly surprised, but not elated, to see a 710( Q49, V36) staring at me.
I left the centre satisfied but something inside my head kept playing the words " You know you can do better, you just need to rectify your verbal" in loop mode. After a few weeks on contemplation, I decided to retake the exam. My logic being, " The worst that can happen to me is a 710". But I needed to improve my verbal somehow and not just the technical part but also the time management part. Randomly traversing my email inbox, I came across an old e-mail from e-gmat founder Rajat. It was an invitation to attend one of his free sessions of Verbal Strategy. As "free" is my 2nd favourite F word, I decided to attend his online session.The session was, in crude terms, awesome. Rajat seemed to know a lot about the problems facing Non-natives and he had a solution for each and every one of them. I asked a few questions at the end of the session and got immediate responses from Rajat. From then on, I would attend or watch the recoded version of almost every e-gmat session that I received a mail for. I realised the importance of meaning while solving SC questions and the importance of the conclusion for CR. Consequently, I kept applying these new techniques to solve verbal questions and kept improving my speed and accuracy. Before I knew it, it was time for my second attempt (actually 3rd, counting the passport incident). This time I found quant to be quite confusing and tricky and somehow managed to finish the section with 2 secs remaining. Extremely frustrated with myself, I started verbal without taking the 8 min break. With my poor quant show at the back of my mind, I found it difficult to concentrate on the first 2 questions. Angry with myself, I took a deep breath and rested for a couple of minutes. It seemed to calm me down. I looked at the question on the screen, a fully underlined SC and tried to make sense of it. Surprisingly, I found it quite manageable this time around. The tables turned, I was growing in confidence and words which were incomprehensible a few minutes back were making perfect sense all of a sudden. I was delighted to see a BOLD FACE question appear on the screen as I read somewhere that Bold Face questions indicate that the test is going quite well. Using the momentum, I finished the verbal with 6 mins remaining and furiously clicked next for the next 6 pages. I closed my eyes on the 7th click, counted till 10 and slowly opened them. 740 (Q48 V44) was what I saw and the sheer relief is something I had never felt in my life before. I had slayed the demon, it was time to take on the universities.
STUDY MATERIAL I FOUND EXTREMELY USEFUL
OG 15
GMAT PREP SOFTWARE
GMAT PREP QUESTION PACK 1
GMAT PREP EXAM PACK 1
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