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Learn how Keshav, a Chartered Accountant, scored an impressive 705 on GMAT in just 30 days with GMATWhiz's expert guidance. In this video, he shares preparation tips and strategies that worked for him, including the mock, time management, and more
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28 Jun 2020, 07:40
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Hello,
I had a pretty rough journey with the GMAT, but it eventually led me to score a 760 (Q50, V42), hence I decided to share my experience here on Gmat Club, which has been my go to place for the solutions to all tough questions and some amazing tips.
I started preparing for the GMAT around January 2020. I started off by picking the OG and solved all the questions of Quant and Verbal, but always had a feeling that I am not going in the right direction and this was rightly indicated in my official mock score (660). Upon more practice and purchasing all the 6 mock tests by GMAC, I realised that my score had reached a plateau of 720 (Max). Upon contemplating I realised that my whole approach to the preparation was flawed. I was not 'learning' , I was only employing my previous knowledge. I was not analysing the solutions of the questions that I got right, why the wrong options were wrong and what made the right one the best out of the lot. I had been afraid to read books on SC, the topic that holds the most scope for improvement.
Post this, I re-worked on my entire strategy:
VERBAL
I went through the entire GMAT SC Guide by Manhattan, this is by far the best book for sentence correction on the GMAT, almost all the intricacies have been covered. I also went through all the videos by GMATNinja . These videos are phenomenal and the ways things are explained is simply beautiful. I owe a great deal of my success on SC to these videos by GMATNinja . These videos gave me an insight to what the question setter is thinking while drafting the questions, what are the potentials traps that are laid out, and how to avoid those traps.
CR is the next step. You need to develop a mindset to analyse the CR questions. All the websites that lay out straight out rules to answer CR questions are flawed. There is no single set of 'rules' to analyse CR. You need to develop a mindset for CR, a way of thinking. And this only happens when you practice more and more number of questions. There are only so much patterns of CR questions that the GMAT tests and once you practice good 200-300 questions you start getting a hang of it. And personally, for me CR was the most fun part of GMAT. I used the official guide, the verbal review, and the OG Advanced for practicing CR. Use only the official materials to practice GMAT CR.
Now the part which is probably the most important in RC, not because the weightage of the questions is more, as is claimed by many websites. There is no such blue-print laid out by GMAC so no-body can say for sure whether one particular sub-section holds more weightage over the other. The thing with RC is that you get 3-4 questions linked to a single RC and if you're not able to understand the RC well, there is a very high probability that you'll get all those 3-4 questions wrong, and this is what makes RCs the most risky sub-section. Getting consecutive questions wrong on the GMAT is doom in the sense that it influences the next quarter's questions(if you see an ESR, you'll see that each section of GMAT is in quarters. GMAC is adaptive in the form of quarters and not per question as most people think. What this means is that each quarter in the Verbal section will have 36/4 = 9 questions and if you get all the questions of one particular quarter right then you'll have more difficult questions in the next quarter and similarly if you make a lot of errors in a quarter, you'll get easier questions in the next quarter) that you'll see. Getting 2-3 questions wrong in a row will lead to you seeing easier questions in the next quarter. Hence, ALWAYS read the passage very carefully. Don't pay heed to the claims, "read only the first and last lines carefully and skim through the rest" that's a totally wrong claim. It is imperative to understand the WHOLE passage in order to get all the linked questions correct, otherwise you'll just be guessing. Regarding the practice for RC, take up only the official material. OG, Verbal review and OG Advanced. These resources are more than enough to improve your RC skills. GMAT Club has this brilliant feature to filter and select questions from a particular source so if you don't want to buy the OG, you can always check out the questions on GMAT Club
Overall, GMAT Verbal tests how you process data in your brain, how you interpret things. So develop that mindset by practicing more and more of official material.
QUANT
Going from a Q38 to a Q49 is easier than going from a Q49 to a Q50. Yes, you read that right. Q49 is roughly 3-7 mistakes and a Q50 is roughly 2 mistakes, so reaching that level of accuracy is more difficult. Do not be very stringent about the 2mins per question thing. There will be questions that you'll be able to solve in 30-40secs and then there will be questions that take up 3mins. So just keep benchmarks in your mind, for example, I kept windows of 10questions each. AND the first 15 questions DO NOT hold more weightage than the other questions. It's a myth. It's the same concept of 'quarters' that I explained under Verbal above. For preparation I used GMAT Club Tests, they are slightly more difficult than the actual GMAT questions but they test the same concepts so it's better to practice slightly difficult content. I also used the official guide and the Quant review. In case you feel that you don't have your concepts in place, you can use the manhattan guides. I personally found reading quant concepts to be boring. I preferred to get questions wrong and then go through the concept used in that questions. But again, this is a personal choice, may not work for all.
DS is the main determining factor, in the sense that for PS after calculating the answer you can at least check if that answer is there in the options of not so if it's not there then you know that you've gone wrong, but in DS there is no way to verify this so you need to be extra careful. There is also an added advantage to Ds questions, you don't have to completely solve the questions. With enough practice you develop a sense of when to stop, when you can say that "Yes the answer would definitely be greater than 3 and I don't need to solve further" or whatever, that'll vary question to question. So, I would suggest that you spend more time on DS questions because here the tendency to go wrong is much greater. Gmat Club mocks, OG, official mocks, and manhattan mocks would be great sources to practice this.
Quant section also, particularly DS questions, tests you brain. Not more of the concepts but the prejudices and assumptions that our brain makes, for example, always taking the variable 'x' to be an integer. Until and unless it is specifically written that X is an integer, don't assume. GMAT always plays on your assumptions.
Test Series Used
Official Mocks
Manhattan Mocks
Gmat Club sectional tests
So as I mentioned, GMAT is less of concepts and more of a test of your thought process and spontaneity. I took the online version of the test, when the physical white board was not allowed. Initially I was very apprehensive and was more interested in taking the test centre version but due to the continued closure of test centres I had to take the online version only. I had to tune my brain to do most of the calculations in my head only, because to be very honest the on-screen whiteboard is useless. It eats up more time than it'll probably save. But still, the good news is that GMAT now allows the physical whiteboard and if any of you wants to take the online test you won't have to face the difficulties that unfortunately I had to face.
My advice to everybody would be that perseverance pays. Don't let the GMAT overwhelm you. Don't consider it as a hurdle or something that's a pain and you just have to take it because it is compulsory for applying to your dream B-school. Take it as a game. A game that challenges you mind and rewards you for using your presence of mind. Try to think from the perspective of the question setter, he hasn't set the question to fail you, he wants to reward you but just wants to make sure that he's rewarding the right person. When you keep this mindset I am sure a 760 or a 780 won't be as difficult as it might seem at the start of your GMAT journey.
I wish all the best to all the GMAT aspirants and I hope all of you get your desired scores. And use this amazing resource called the GMAT Club!
I had a pretty rough journey with the GMAT, but it eventually led me to score a 760 (Q50, V42), hence I decided to share my experience here on Gmat Club, which has been my go to place for the solutions to all tough questions and some amazing tips.
I started preparing for the GMAT around January 2020. I started off by picking the OG and solved all the questions of Quant and Verbal, but always had a feeling that I am not going in the right direction and this was rightly indicated in my official mock score (660). Upon more practice and purchasing all the 6 mock tests by GMAC, I realised that my score had reached a plateau of 720 (Max). Upon contemplating I realised that my whole approach to the preparation was flawed. I was not 'learning' , I was only employing my previous knowledge. I was not analysing the solutions of the questions that I got right, why the wrong options were wrong and what made the right one the best out of the lot. I had been afraid to read books on SC, the topic that holds the most scope for improvement.
Post this, I re-worked on my entire strategy:
VERBAL
I went through the entire GMAT SC Guide by Manhattan, this is by far the best book for sentence correction on the GMAT, almost all the intricacies have been covered. I also went through all the videos by GMATNinja . These videos are phenomenal and the ways things are explained is simply beautiful. I owe a great deal of my success on SC to these videos by GMATNinja . These videos gave me an insight to what the question setter is thinking while drafting the questions, what are the potentials traps that are laid out, and how to avoid those traps.
CR is the next step. You need to develop a mindset to analyse the CR questions. All the websites that lay out straight out rules to answer CR questions are flawed. There is no single set of 'rules' to analyse CR. You need to develop a mindset for CR, a way of thinking. And this only happens when you practice more and more number of questions. There are only so much patterns of CR questions that the GMAT tests and once you practice good 200-300 questions you start getting a hang of it. And personally, for me CR was the most fun part of GMAT. I used the official guide, the verbal review, and the OG Advanced for practicing CR. Use only the official materials to practice GMAT CR.
Now the part which is probably the most important in RC, not because the weightage of the questions is more, as is claimed by many websites. There is no such blue-print laid out by GMAC so no-body can say for sure whether one particular sub-section holds more weightage over the other. The thing with RC is that you get 3-4 questions linked to a single RC and if you're not able to understand the RC well, there is a very high probability that you'll get all those 3-4 questions wrong, and this is what makes RCs the most risky sub-section. Getting consecutive questions wrong on the GMAT is doom in the sense that it influences the next quarter's questions(if you see an ESR, you'll see that each section of GMAT is in quarters. GMAC is adaptive in the form of quarters and not per question as most people think. What this means is that each quarter in the Verbal section will have 36/4 = 9 questions and if you get all the questions of one particular quarter right then you'll have more difficult questions in the next quarter and similarly if you make a lot of errors in a quarter, you'll get easier questions in the next quarter) that you'll see. Getting 2-3 questions wrong in a row will lead to you seeing easier questions in the next quarter. Hence, ALWAYS read the passage very carefully. Don't pay heed to the claims, "read only the first and last lines carefully and skim through the rest" that's a totally wrong claim. It is imperative to understand the WHOLE passage in order to get all the linked questions correct, otherwise you'll just be guessing. Regarding the practice for RC, take up only the official material. OG, Verbal review and OG Advanced. These resources are more than enough to improve your RC skills. GMAT Club has this brilliant feature to filter and select questions from a particular source so if you don't want to buy the OG, you can always check out the questions on GMAT Club
Overall, GMAT Verbal tests how you process data in your brain, how you interpret things. So develop that mindset by practicing more and more of official material.
QUANT
Going from a Q38 to a Q49 is easier than going from a Q49 to a Q50. Yes, you read that right. Q49 is roughly 3-7 mistakes and a Q50 is roughly 2 mistakes, so reaching that level of accuracy is more difficult. Do not be very stringent about the 2mins per question thing. There will be questions that you'll be able to solve in 30-40secs and then there will be questions that take up 3mins. So just keep benchmarks in your mind, for example, I kept windows of 10questions each. AND the first 15 questions DO NOT hold more weightage than the other questions. It's a myth. It's the same concept of 'quarters' that I explained under Verbal above. For preparation I used GMAT Club Tests, they are slightly more difficult than the actual GMAT questions but they test the same concepts so it's better to practice slightly difficult content. I also used the official guide and the Quant review. In case you feel that you don't have your concepts in place, you can use the manhattan guides. I personally found reading quant concepts to be boring. I preferred to get questions wrong and then go through the concept used in that questions. But again, this is a personal choice, may not work for all.
DS is the main determining factor, in the sense that for PS after calculating the answer you can at least check if that answer is there in the options of not so if it's not there then you know that you've gone wrong, but in DS there is no way to verify this so you need to be extra careful. There is also an added advantage to Ds questions, you don't have to completely solve the questions. With enough practice you develop a sense of when to stop, when you can say that "Yes the answer would definitely be greater than 3 and I don't need to solve further" or whatever, that'll vary question to question. So, I would suggest that you spend more time on DS questions because here the tendency to go wrong is much greater. Gmat Club mocks, OG, official mocks, and manhattan mocks would be great sources to practice this.
Quant section also, particularly DS questions, tests you brain. Not more of the concepts but the prejudices and assumptions that our brain makes, for example, always taking the variable 'x' to be an integer. Until and unless it is specifically written that X is an integer, don't assume. GMAT always plays on your assumptions.
Test Series Used
Official Mocks
Manhattan Mocks
Gmat Club sectional tests
So as I mentioned, GMAT is less of concepts and more of a test of your thought process and spontaneity. I took the online version of the test, when the physical white board was not allowed. Initially I was very apprehensive and was more interested in taking the test centre version but due to the continued closure of test centres I had to take the online version only. I had to tune my brain to do most of the calculations in my head only, because to be very honest the on-screen whiteboard is useless. It eats up more time than it'll probably save. But still, the good news is that GMAT now allows the physical whiteboard and if any of you wants to take the online test you won't have to face the difficulties that unfortunately I had to face.
My advice to everybody would be that perseverance pays. Don't let the GMAT overwhelm you. Don't consider it as a hurdle or something that's a pain and you just have to take it because it is compulsory for applying to your dream B-school. Take it as a game. A game that challenges you mind and rewards you for using your presence of mind. Try to think from the perspective of the question setter, he hasn't set the question to fail you, he wants to reward you but just wants to make sure that he's rewarding the right person. When you keep this mindset I am sure a 760 or a 780 won't be as difficult as it might seem at the start of your GMAT journey.
I wish all the best to all the GMAT aspirants and I hope all of you get your desired scores. And use this amazing resource called the GMAT Club!
28 Jun 2020, 08:16
Kudos
Bookmarks
Congratulations on earning a 99th-percentile score. I particularly like that you did so through self-study. Even though I am a tutor, I tell people all the time that using an online learning platform or, ahem, a tutor is just a shortcut for the process of self-discovery that you must undergo to make the test more accessible. As such, nothing is required of you except patience, persistence, and a mind for qualitative study over practice-makes-perfect-on-its-own study. If you do not mind my asking, how did those mock tests go for you, and how did you space them apart? Did you go through the official tests first, then Manhattan, etc., or did you pepper tests from all three sources throughout your prep experience? How did the results compare? I ask for two reasons. The first is that I like to tell my clients what others, especially high-scoring candidates, have said about third-party material. The second is that I am curious on a personal level whether this eventual 760 came out of nowhere (say, that your closest official mock was no greater than a 730) or fell in line with where you had been testing, even if such a result was at the higher end of what you had demonstrated before.
In any case, thank you for the debrief. I am sure many onlookers will read with as much interest as I had. Good luck with the next step of your journey.
- Andrew
In any case, thank you for the debrief. I am sure many onlookers will read with as much interest as I had. Good luck with the next step of your journey.
- Andrew
28 Jun 2020, 08:35
Kudos
Bookmarks
Hi Apoorv27
Congratulations on your excellent score !
I really liked the bold part in your debrief. If GMAT is taken as a mind game instead of a burden or hurdle to pass, it will really make the journey easier and more fruitful. The concepts learned during GMAT preparation may help you in rest of your life. I have personally improved in many areas of my life by enjoying them and taking them as a challenge.
Best of luck for your future endeavours!
Congratulations on your excellent score !
I really liked the bold part in your debrief. If GMAT is taken as a mind game instead of a burden or hurdle to pass, it will really make the journey easier and more fruitful. The concepts learned during GMAT preparation may help you in rest of your life. I have personally improved in many areas of my life by enjoying them and taking them as a challenge.
Best of luck for your future endeavours!
Apoorv27
