The journey just began (540, q38, v26)

Hello,

As a lot of others frequently post debriefs of their successful experiences, this one is rather aimed to encourage those who did not make it with their first attempt.

My background:
- Non-native but 2 yrs in English working environment
- Engineering background

My goal:
600: not needed for my BS as I am already admitted but to have more or less free choice for a semester abroad

The first attempt

From those, I began to compile my own summary to only learn the bits I struggled with. Then, Christmas and New Years Eve came and it was extremely hard to focus on the studies as I also wanted to spend time with my family and friends over the time.

It ended somehow in a disaster. But let's begin a bit earlier:

My first mock in Mid Dec 2016 on GMAT Prep was 560. As I consider myself a fairly good learner, I gave myself 3 weeks to study to reach my target score.
My preparation consisted mainly of: PR Review, OG15 and some GMAT Club explanations / summaries.

Mistake: Scheduling a GMAT before even feeling familiar w/ the range of the concepts to know. What I did not know by this time was that I struggled big time with SC and the accuracy and speed w/ PS.

OG Test went pretty well with all but SC excellent or above average. Felt pretty comfortable by then.

The next 2 weeks consisted of going through the theoretical part of PR to get familiar w/ the type of questions asked. Definitely sufficient as a starting point as it is fun to read. In sufficient for reaching a score above 600 IMHO, as the tricks and concepts presented are good for easy to medium questions but lack the ability to tackle the hard ones.

I tried to fill the gaps of PR w/ sumarries from the gmat club forum. For SC, it worked pretty well. I improved my failure rate from 55% to less than 40%.

I took my second GMAT Prep test on Jan 2, 2017: Bingo! However, there were several repetitions from the questions form GMAT Prep 1 (it felt like every second q) which I expect has highly boosted the score. Do you know why this happened as I expected that those consist of two entirely different questions banks?! However, I felt pretty confident to score above 600 but wanted more and saw my gaps. As a consequence, I gave 120% the days before the GMAT.

I took the official GMAT at Jan 4. The night before I studied until 1:00 a.m. as I had the feeling to lack meaningful concepts for the GMAT - although I had to wake up at 5.30 the following day.
Big Mistake: Trying to learn sth. new the night before the actual exam on the costs of sufficient sleep - had roughly 3-4 hrs this night.

Entirely exhausted and w/o the usual concentration, I scored 540 (q38, v26), 5.5 AWA far below that what I would have expected and even lower than my initial GMAT Prep. Hard to make out a single reason for that. I account 40 Points for the lack of sleep and exhaustion and the rest to insufficient preparation.

I could not really spend the time with people which matters most to me and to make matters worse, it finally was not even worth the struggle.

This so far. I will lie down my study plan for the following 5 weeks soon as I will retake the GMAT on Feb 20 again, now aiming for 700. The sky is the limit!


This was the first time I truly consider myself to failed on something in my life. Instead of giving up, I feel even more motivated and dedicate every free second into the GMAT prep - although I have a demanding 50-70 hrs / week job on top - which makes the time for sure to a shaping experience.

I feel glad that I found this forum and am happy to accompany you during the next months!

Good luck to all that you master the beast!

Jan