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ekuseru
Joined: 13 Dec 2021
Last visit: 01 Sep 2024
Posts: 39
Given Kudos: 14
Location: Singapore
Schools: IESE '25 (A$$) INSEAD Aug'23 intake (A)
GMAT 1: 760 Q49 V44
GMAT 2: 200 Q1 V1
Products:
26 Apr 2022, 11:19
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I wish I could share the usual happy path to a high GMAT score – buy this, read this, do this and you can get a score of 800 too! Even a scare-you-straight disaster story would be nice and par for the course. Unfortunately, there's no nuggets of wisdom to be found here – I can only speak of the constant war in my head between my rational self and my primitive consumer brain. Even the simple task of setting a target score was marred by marketing messages landing the wrong way. Needless to say, things only went downhill from there.
1. Introducing doomscrolling! Now guaranteed to cripple your self-worth!
I started by googling for articles to get an idea of an ideal GMAT score.
740 is the new 700! Find out how our course can help you get there, remember to use discount code: alpha!
Damn, looks like I need a 740 now huh.
You need a +30 above the average if you’re part of an over-represented group, +20 if you’re male. Did we mention that our tutors are all 99th percentile scorers?
… Guess 790 is the baseline?
You need a +20 to average to secure a scholarship, buy our question bank right now!
That’s an 810? Anything short of 800 is a failure?
I know the MBA admissions process is a holistic one and I won’t be reduced to just my GMAT score.
I generate marketing copies for a living so I know when I’m being sold the problem and the solution.
Despite all that, the siren song of “you’re not good enough” is an earworm I can’t rid myself of. I consumed reviews for prep courses, books, tutoring services, you name it. I was practically overdosing on anecdotes of big score improvements achieved in minimal time, and I wanted more, survivorship bias be damned. 800 or bust.
2. Staying the course on a sinking ship.
Eventually, I succumbed and purchased a course from GMATWhiz. For the next two months, I lived and breathed GMATWhiz and their “unique” problem-solving method. I swapped out gerunds, infinitives, and participles for ‘-ing verbals’, ‘to verbals’, and ‘-ed verbals’; I decomposed and overanalyzed sentences for ‘meaning’; I brainstormed for 30 seconds for each CR question before even reading the options. I was the ideal student, destined to be another smiling face on a banner.
The rational part of me knew that the course was a poor fit, but damn, that one infographic showing the largest average score improvement looks great. If everyone else can do it, so must I. So I labored through the course.
I scheduled my exam date for two weeks from my completion of the course as a celebration. I was ready to hit the mocks. The mocks hit back – I scored lower after the course than I did in the mock that I took raw. I was not going to make it.
3. Self-flagellation as a study tool
With a little less than 14 days before D-Day, I logged into the OG question bank and started burning through questions. When I ran out of OG questions, I bought more official questions.
Hard questions only please. Why yes I would like 125 of them in a single sitting, thank you.
Initially, I kept an error log in a nicely formatted excel sheet (like everyone else). But I soon found it unnecessary since I would beat myself up over a mistake so hard that I would wake up in cold sweat from nightmares. I’m cocksure that a certain DS quant question about a regular pentagon inscribed in a circle will haunt me even on my deathbed. I would sure like to see your excel sheet give you insomnia.
4. Touching (virtual) grass
My ‘sigma grindset’ was not rewarded at all. My accuracy for the verbal section was still appalling low (800 or bust remember?), something no amount of sleep loss can fix. I did the only sane move in my GMAT prep journey by reaching out to a tutor (thanks GMAT Knight), one I recall reading about often during my consumption of GMAT material. After a quick 15-minute consultation, I agreed to take an official mock to gauge my progress. Mock 1 was a 730, Q50 V40, 70 points short.
Distinctively recall Aman being slightly surprised that I would still choose to go ahead with the lessons but I wasn’t about to turn the zoom session into an impromptu confessional. In hindsight, that was probably the first time I’ve spoken to an actual human about my GMAT progress. We did 3 sessions in a week. Probably learned more in 6 hours than I did in the past 2 months.
That breath of fresh air was what I needed to… continue grinding like a madman, albeit with a new approach that actually works™. I was running out of official questions so I started to treat my study sessions as a privilege, I would stop for the day upon getting even a single question wrong as a punishment. On good days I’ll get 40+ questions deep and I don’t even want to talk about that one bad day.
5. Stages of grief.
The tension building up within was getting too much to bear, I had to get it over with.
After a false start on an online attempt that ended in a cancellation due to technical issues, I took the exam at a center the very next day. Canceled the score out of pure disgust and in record time. After which, I left the room, vomited in the toilet, and left. I didn’t even think about the GMAT for a couple of weeks and it felt like pure bliss. I was finally able to decompress and start thinking rationally again.
Thankfully, Aman reached out to me to follow up and I decided that the least I could do was to write an honest review for him. GMAT Club doesn’t accept canceled scores and I’m not about to pay 50 dollars to pour salt on old wounds so I took the exam again. The result was … not great, but it’s enough for me. Or at least that’s what I try to tell myself.
Even now, I still don’t know what came over me. Maybe it was the shock from the mocks? Maybe it was covid addling my brain? Maybe it was the uncritical, overconsumption of marketing copies?
I’ve recently started googling articles on MBA admissions…
The WAMC is all red...
1. Introducing doomscrolling! Now guaranteed to cripple your self-worth!
I started by googling for articles to get an idea of an ideal GMAT score.
740 is the new 700! Find out how our course can help you get there, remember to use discount code: alpha!
Damn, looks like I need a 740 now huh.
You need a +30 above the average if you’re part of an over-represented group, +20 if you’re male. Did we mention that our tutors are all 99th percentile scorers?
… Guess 790 is the baseline?
You need a +20 to average to secure a scholarship, buy our question bank right now!
That’s an 810? Anything short of 800 is a failure?
I know the MBA admissions process is a holistic one and I won’t be reduced to just my GMAT score.
I generate marketing copies for a living so I know when I’m being sold the problem and the solution.
Despite all that, the siren song of “you’re not good enough” is an earworm I can’t rid myself of. I consumed reviews for prep courses, books, tutoring services, you name it. I was practically overdosing on anecdotes of big score improvements achieved in minimal time, and I wanted more, survivorship bias be damned. 800 or bust.
2. Staying the course on a sinking ship.
Eventually, I succumbed and purchased a course from GMATWhiz. For the next two months, I lived and breathed GMATWhiz and their “unique” problem-solving method. I swapped out gerunds, infinitives, and participles for ‘-ing verbals’, ‘to verbals’, and ‘-ed verbals’; I decomposed and overanalyzed sentences for ‘meaning’; I brainstormed for 30 seconds for each CR question before even reading the options. I was the ideal student, destined to be another smiling face on a banner.
The rational part of me knew that the course was a poor fit, but damn, that one infographic showing the largest average score improvement looks great. If everyone else can do it, so must I. So I labored through the course.
I scheduled my exam date for two weeks from my completion of the course as a celebration. I was ready to hit the mocks. The mocks hit back – I scored lower after the course than I did in the mock that I took raw. I was not going to make it.
3. Self-flagellation as a study tool
With a little less than 14 days before D-Day, I logged into the OG question bank and started burning through questions. When I ran out of OG questions, I bought more official questions.
Hard questions only please. Why yes I would like 125 of them in a single sitting, thank you.
Initially, I kept an error log in a nicely formatted excel sheet (like everyone else). But I soon found it unnecessary since I would beat myself up over a mistake so hard that I would wake up in cold sweat from nightmares. I’m cocksure that a certain DS quant question about a regular pentagon inscribed in a circle will haunt me even on my deathbed. I would sure like to see your excel sheet give you insomnia.
4. Touching (virtual) grass
My ‘sigma grindset’ was not rewarded at all. My accuracy for the verbal section was still appalling low (800 or bust remember?), something no amount of sleep loss can fix. I did the only sane move in my GMAT prep journey by reaching out to a tutor (thanks GMAT Knight), one I recall reading about often during my consumption of GMAT material. After a quick 15-minute consultation, I agreed to take an official mock to gauge my progress. Mock 1 was a 730, Q50 V40, 70 points short.
Distinctively recall Aman being slightly surprised that I would still choose to go ahead with the lessons but I wasn’t about to turn the zoom session into an impromptu confessional. In hindsight, that was probably the first time I’ve spoken to an actual human about my GMAT progress. We did 3 sessions in a week. Probably learned more in 6 hours than I did in the past 2 months.
That breath of fresh air was what I needed to… continue grinding like a madman, albeit with a new approach that actually works™. I was running out of official questions so I started to treat my study sessions as a privilege, I would stop for the day upon getting even a single question wrong as a punishment. On good days I’ll get 40+ questions deep and I don’t even want to talk about that one bad day.
5. Stages of grief.
The tension building up within was getting too much to bear, I had to get it over with.
After a false start on an online attempt that ended in a cancellation due to technical issues, I took the exam at a center the very next day. Canceled the score out of pure disgust and in record time. After which, I left the room, vomited in the toilet, and left. I didn’t even think about the GMAT for a couple of weeks and it felt like pure bliss. I was finally able to decompress and start thinking rationally again.
Thankfully, Aman reached out to me to follow up and I decided that the least I could do was to write an honest review for him. GMAT Club doesn’t accept canceled scores and I’m not about to pay 50 dollars to pour salt on old wounds so I took the exam again. The result was … not great, but it’s enough for me. Or at least that’s what I try to tell myself.
Even now, I still don’t know what came over me. Maybe it was the shock from the mocks? Maybe it was covid addling my brain? Maybe it was the uncritical, overconsumption of marketing copies?
I’ve recently started googling articles on MBA admissions…
The WAMC is all red...
Updated on: 27 Apr 2022, 11:14
Originally posted by GmatKnightTutor on 27 Apr 2022, 06:27.
Last edited by GmatKnightTutor on 27 Apr 2022, 11:14, edited 2 times in total.
Last edited by GmatKnightTutor on 27 Apr 2022, 11:14, edited 2 times in total.
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Probably learned more in 6 hours than I did in the past 2 months.
Glad you felt our verbal sessions helped that much. Didn't know you were writing a post here! I know you wanted more but I'm super happy you got a 99% score with a V44 to boot
Glad you felt our verbal sessions helped that much. Didn't know you were writing a post here! I know you wanted more but I'm super happy you got a 99% score with a V44 to boot
bostonwhether
Joined: 07 Mar 2022
Last visit: 14 Dec 2022
Posts: 7
Own Kudos:
Given Kudos: 11
Location: United States
Schools: Stanford '25 (A)
GMAT 1: 790 Q50 V51
27 Apr 2022, 06:37
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Bookmarks
Highly relate to your story. The #sigma #grindset can turn poisonous, especially after the vein of OG questions collapses and you're still not hitting 95%+ accuracy.
What do you think made the most difference in your prep for the retake?
What do you think made the most difference in your prep for the retake?
