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TheStoryteller
Current Student
Joined: 25 Apr 2020
Last visit: 22 Feb 2025
Posts: 58
Given Kudos: 137
Location: India
Schools: Rice Jones '23 (M$)
GMAT 1: 790 Q50 V51
GRE 1: Q167 V163
GPA: 3
Updated on: 29 Aug 2020, 21:58
Originally posted by TheStoryteller on 07 Aug 2020, 10:37.
Last edited by TheStoryteller on 29 Aug 2020, 21:58, edited 1 time in total.
Last edited by TheStoryteller on 29 Aug 2020, 21:58, edited 1 time in total.
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I have always liked telling stories.
Let me tell you one today.
Four months ago, I had a good job with a nice progress graph, and had just resigned from my then job to join another one at a bigger company. That's when the Covid hit, the industry went down, my new job offer was technically put on a pause, but practically(as it later became evident)-revoked. I was left with no job, minimum savings, and credit card bills that I couldn't pay anymore. To be clear, I am not being ungrateful, as I understand financial loss is among the kind easiest to recover; I counted on my blessings for not suffering worse losses in the pandemic, something which I still pray for.
Enough background, I started my Gmat preparation around mid-April, something which I had been thinking about for a couple of years. I started with a free gmat mock(unofficial) and had a score of Q51 but couldn't even complete the verbal and scored something like 17(or worse, tried to forget the abysmal score and apparently it worked!). So, I decided to focus on Verbal.
Oh, and did I tell you, I belong to an over-represented pool called Indian Engineers(and increased this already large pool by one). Also I come from an average ranked college and have not-so-stellar gpa. One of my best friends, an ISB alumni, explicitly told me to go 750+ or go home(what a weird suggestion, I was at home: Lockdown, remember!), if I wanted a realistic shot at top colleges.
Instead of joining a course(which, I am sure could be very helpful), I decided to stick to books. I relied on three books based on GmatClub forum suggestions: OG, Manhattan SC, and CR Bible, and I never regretted my choice. These books are just amazing! Also, you do have to supplement them with the vast question bank of Gmat club.
My first month of preparation was dedicated to SC, as this was my weakest section, and a little bit of CR. Once completing the books, I gave the GMAt Club Free test and got Q51 V23, leaving me completely bemused, as at that time I was only concerned about Verbal. I didn't expect to have stellar verbal from first test, but at least a 27 or 30 would have been much more satisfactory, considering my target score. What did I do wrong? Did I misunderstand the concepts? Or am I just incapable?
I reread the books, and gave another test at Gmat Club at 1st May Q51 V35. Improvement! And most importantly the score crossed 700. It boosted my confidence, and considering it took me 3 weeks to get from V17 to V35, I figured I should hit the 760 target within a month--Right? Wrong! The next one month my V scores were 35,35,34,30,27,36,34. I had stopped giving the Q tests, focusing solely on verbal and my average score had only decreased. What was I doing wrong? Nothing! Turned out, as I learned from forum discussions,-hitting a plateau is not only common but inevitable at some point during preparation. I analysed my error log to see my accuracy on 700 problems was quite low, especially in CR. I read posts saying those good at quant are naturally good at CR and it only baffled me. Surely my CR should be good by that account--Or is my Quant week too, the earlier scores being fluke? Well, I decided to shift my focus from SC to CR now. Started exclusively with 700 LSAT questions, as those were the ones I was most scared of. Took about ten days and then I bought the Veritas tests and scored 710 Q49,V39(hell with quant, I am delighted about the verbal!). I took another test soon(24th May) and scored 730 Q51,V39. All right, so the increased verbal wasn't a fluke, but the decreased quant had been(Hey, my story-my judgments!). I figured I would soon reach the next 30 marks, couple of weeks maybe. Oh, did I tell I was spending all this time at a relative's, hundreds of miles from my home(a short visiting trip extended by lockdown). So as soon as lockdown was lifted, I flew to to my home, however the journey was twenty-four hour long and involved night stay at airport. I was a bit concerned about my parents, and upon reaching home I went in a self-imposed lockdown, isolated myself to a single room and took a break from the Gmat preparation.
Resumed studies after three weeks, and focused exclusively on 700 level questions SC and CR from the Gmat Club database. Free Youtube videos of GMATNinja were very helpful in clearing concepts. The guy's a genius. I took his advice and stopped bothering about idioms and focused on meaning based approach instead, which proved very helpful. Meanwhile I had joined an online job in the meantime but kept a regular 3 hour study routine per day. After another two weeks, started giving free tests of any resource I could get my hands on, and my score was now touching the 750 mark. However, it wasn't consistent, and occasionally the score would go down to 700 or even lower. As the Gmat Online could be taken only once, I realized I couldn't leave things to chance, and Gmac itself agrees its scores have an error margin of 30-40. I moved my target score up to 780 so that I would get a 750+ even on a bad day. To do this, I moved on to my last and most hated section(which soon changed):RC. Although I had a good accuracy at sub 700 level questions, but the 700 level question gave me headaches, as if the passages were deliberately made uninteresting. Also, none of the note taking methods discussed in the forums seemed to work for me. I always lost my flow of the passage while writing notes. So I stopped doing that. For a week I focused exclusively on LSAT official 700 questions and tried to solve the questions without taking notes. I would read the passages as many times until it made sense, and turned out they weren't that uninteresting after all. Soon RC became my strongest section, as all the answers were already written there. It was then I booked my Gmat Online at 5th August from 7-15am. I had saved up both free Gmat prep exams for the end and after improving RC I was getting my V scores in the 99th percentile. I wasn't much worried about quant or IR(Mistake!) and only practiced it during tests.
In the last ten days woke up early and studied to set my biological clock. Practiced Quant with the online whiteboard to get a hang of the software until I was comfortable and made sure to revise my error log and notes. The last day before exam, revised ten questions each from the 5 sections to keep my brain-muscles working and then binge watched a bit.
D Day: GRE experience had taught me to not drink too much water and that helped--LOADS. I was a bit nervous about quant as last few tests had shown some fluctuating quant scores. I faced a minor difficulty during the exam as it had to be relaunched once in mid-way but thankfully the timer was paused. As I breezed through quant I felt that the questions were a little too easy, which led me to suspect that I had made some early mistakes, but tried not to think about that. Completed the exam with a few minutes to spare and used it as an unofficial break. Turned out to be a good decision. In Verbal, the first question was a tough CR and I took 3 to 4 minutes, which I think helped, since a tough first question set my mental state, not to mention the question levels. Completed the verbal with couple minutes to spare and then took the break and gave IR.
The next 36 hours were a torture. Did I actually perform well, or were the questions too easy? Did I make some early mistake in verbal too? Read a lot of stories on GMAT Club of people getting 770 and 780 and decided if it turns out well, I would write mine too! Woke up two mornings later to find an email. Hurriedly checked the website and the first thing I saw was a 790! And interestingly, the perfect 51 was not in Quant but Verbal! And yeah, did I mention about only practicing IR during mock tests? My IR score was 5 btw.
Let me tell you one today.
Four months ago, I had a good job with a nice progress graph, and had just resigned from my then job to join another one at a bigger company. That's when the Covid hit, the industry went down, my new job offer was technically put on a pause, but practically(as it later became evident)-revoked. I was left with no job, minimum savings, and credit card bills that I couldn't pay anymore. To be clear, I am not being ungrateful, as I understand financial loss is among the kind easiest to recover; I counted on my blessings for not suffering worse losses in the pandemic, something which I still pray for.
Enough background, I started my Gmat preparation around mid-April, something which I had been thinking about for a couple of years. I started with a free gmat mock(unofficial) and had a score of Q51 but couldn't even complete the verbal and scored something like 17(or worse, tried to forget the abysmal score and apparently it worked!). So, I decided to focus on Verbal.
Oh, and did I tell you, I belong to an over-represented pool called Indian Engineers(and increased this already large pool by one). Also I come from an average ranked college and have not-so-stellar gpa. One of my best friends, an ISB alumni, explicitly told me to go 750+ or go home(what a weird suggestion, I was at home: Lockdown, remember!), if I wanted a realistic shot at top colleges.
Instead of joining a course(which, I am sure could be very helpful), I decided to stick to books. I relied on three books based on GmatClub forum suggestions: OG, Manhattan SC, and CR Bible, and I never regretted my choice. These books are just amazing! Also, you do have to supplement them with the vast question bank of Gmat club.
My first month of preparation was dedicated to SC, as this was my weakest section, and a little bit of CR. Once completing the books, I gave the GMAt Club Free test and got Q51 V23, leaving me completely bemused, as at that time I was only concerned about Verbal. I didn't expect to have stellar verbal from first test, but at least a 27 or 30 would have been much more satisfactory, considering my target score. What did I do wrong? Did I misunderstand the concepts? Or am I just incapable?
I reread the books, and gave another test at Gmat Club at 1st May Q51 V35. Improvement! And most importantly the score crossed 700. It boosted my confidence, and considering it took me 3 weeks to get from V17 to V35, I figured I should hit the 760 target within a month--Right? Wrong! The next one month my V scores were 35,35,34,30,27,36,34. I had stopped giving the Q tests, focusing solely on verbal and my average score had only decreased. What was I doing wrong? Nothing! Turned out, as I learned from forum discussions,-hitting a plateau is not only common but inevitable at some point during preparation. I analysed my error log to see my accuracy on 700 problems was quite low, especially in CR. I read posts saying those good at quant are naturally good at CR and it only baffled me. Surely my CR should be good by that account--Or is my Quant week too, the earlier scores being fluke? Well, I decided to shift my focus from SC to CR now. Started exclusively with 700 LSAT questions, as those were the ones I was most scared of. Took about ten days and then I bought the Veritas tests and scored 710 Q49,V39(hell with quant, I am delighted about the verbal!). I took another test soon(24th May) and scored 730 Q51,V39. All right, so the increased verbal wasn't a fluke, but the decreased quant had been(Hey, my story-my judgments!). I figured I would soon reach the next 30 marks, couple of weeks maybe. Oh, did I tell I was spending all this time at a relative's, hundreds of miles from my home(a short visiting trip extended by lockdown). So as soon as lockdown was lifted, I flew to to my home, however the journey was twenty-four hour long and involved night stay at airport. I was a bit concerned about my parents, and upon reaching home I went in a self-imposed lockdown, isolated myself to a single room and took a break from the Gmat preparation.
Resumed studies after three weeks, and focused exclusively on 700 level questions SC and CR from the Gmat Club database. Free Youtube videos of GMATNinja were very helpful in clearing concepts. The guy's a genius. I took his advice and stopped bothering about idioms and focused on meaning based approach instead, which proved very helpful. Meanwhile I had joined an online job in the meantime but kept a regular 3 hour study routine per day. After another two weeks, started giving free tests of any resource I could get my hands on, and my score was now touching the 750 mark. However, it wasn't consistent, and occasionally the score would go down to 700 or even lower. As the Gmat Online could be taken only once, I realized I couldn't leave things to chance, and Gmac itself agrees its scores have an error margin of 30-40. I moved my target score up to 780 so that I would get a 750+ even on a bad day. To do this, I moved on to my last and most hated section(which soon changed):RC. Although I had a good accuracy at sub 700 level questions, but the 700 level question gave me headaches, as if the passages were deliberately made uninteresting. Also, none of the note taking methods discussed in the forums seemed to work for me. I always lost my flow of the passage while writing notes. So I stopped doing that. For a week I focused exclusively on LSAT official 700 questions and tried to solve the questions without taking notes. I would read the passages as many times until it made sense, and turned out they weren't that uninteresting after all. Soon RC became my strongest section, as all the answers were already written there. It was then I booked my Gmat Online at 5th August from 7-15am. I had saved up both free Gmat prep exams for the end and after improving RC I was getting my V scores in the 99th percentile. I wasn't much worried about quant or IR(Mistake!) and only practiced it during tests.
In the last ten days woke up early and studied to set my biological clock. Practiced Quant with the online whiteboard to get a hang of the software until I was comfortable and made sure to revise my error log and notes. The last day before exam, revised ten questions each from the 5 sections to keep my brain-muscles working and then binge watched a bit.
D Day: GRE experience had taught me to not drink too much water and that helped--LOADS. I was a bit nervous about quant as last few tests had shown some fluctuating quant scores. I faced a minor difficulty during the exam as it had to be relaunched once in mid-way but thankfully the timer was paused. As I breezed through quant I felt that the questions were a little too easy, which led me to suspect that I had made some early mistakes, but tried not to think about that. Completed the exam with a few minutes to spare and used it as an unofficial break. Turned out to be a good decision. In Verbal, the first question was a tough CR and I took 3 to 4 minutes, which I think helped, since a tough first question set my mental state, not to mention the question levels. Completed the verbal with couple minutes to spare and then took the break and gave IR.
The next 36 hours were a torture. Did I actually perform well, or were the questions too easy? Did I make some early mistake in verbal too? Read a lot of stories on GMAT Club of people getting 770 and 780 and decided if it turns out well, I would write mine too! Woke up two mornings later to find an email. Hurriedly checked the website and the first thing I saw was a 790! And interestingly, the perfect 51 was not in Quant but Verbal! And yeah, did I mention about only practicing IR during mock tests? My IR score was 5 btw.
11 Aug 2020, 18:40
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Bookmarks
Wow, what a score!! Thank you for sharing and good luck with things moving forward.
11 Aug 2020, 20:27
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Bookmarks
What a brilliant score! Congratulations! Clearly shows why reviewing and re-strategizing goes a long way. I am pretty much stuck at V35 in verbal although i did score 40 once in the official GMAT mock. Your story is quite inspiring. I've about 2 weeks before my exam. Do you have any advice for me please?
Best,
Lynn
Best,
Lynn
