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15 Sep 2021, 06:06
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Let me tell you my story; the only reason I write it is because hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and study more efficient and smart than I did.
First, in June 2020, I purchased Magoosh course, OG and after going through both in one month (around 200hours) I got 690.
July 2020: 690 V37 Q48
Important to say that I totally wasted precious OG questions. I did all the book in like 1 week, and my answers analysis did not go further than calculating % of correct answers.
Magoosh was entertaining, a lot of questions, very nice interface, great question bank for Q and V;
explanations for SC was pretty fast, and not always logical but sometimes emotional(?). How about:
"Choice A is an absolute disaster" or "A is wordy and flabby".
Building such a "sense" for mistake is important, but for me was crucial to know exactly why 4 choices are incorrect. Does all this make sense?
Anyway, I assumed it will be easy to go ~40points up, and I thought to do it by Q48 -> Q50, V37 -> V41.
Sounds easy!
I decided to join the Experts Global course. Well, let me say "No comment" on this resource.
After that, I bought OG Verbal, OG Hard Questions, PowerScore SC, PowerScore CR, ManhattanPrep SC books and start going through all of these.
My vision was that after going through these respectable books, somehow I will get enlightened and get my dream score. That was huge mistake!!
IMHO, PowerScore are great books. But they are great if you want something to start with, to quickly go through main concepts. Examples are scarce and not representative. Manhattan Prep books were the biggest disappointment. Actually, I found it extremely poorly written, badly organized, not helpful at all. (it is my opinion, other people think these books are Heavenly Gifts somehow dispatched to Earth)
After spending 250+ hours going through all these books, finishing all the OG questions from Verbal and Hard Questions, I went to test center to receive 680!
September 2020: 680 V35 Q47
10 points down from test 3 months ago. It was a shock, I cancelled score, and understand something is wrong with the whole system of my preparation.
Back then, I had Idioms lists all over my house, and I was trying to remember some 200+ of the idioms. Now I understand how useless and waste of energy it is.
After that, I purchased eGMAT course. I was surprised how good it looks, and how much information is inside. I start going through all the Verbal lessons, doing all the interactive lectures, quizzes - was very useful to build a foundation (which somehow was still lacking in some areas, like Modifiers, Prepositions etc.)
I think I went though all course, skipped some stuff, went to Scholaranium and also did most of questions, not caring so much about reviewing incorrect. I exhausted Scholaranium, which was a huge mistake.
So after 300+hours pure study at eGMAT course, I went to my next tests, and got... 690 again.
December 2020: 690 V35 Q49
Here I thought I am seriously dumb or there is some spell on me. Any past successes like CFA or other stuff felt like a lucky episode which fooled me into thinking positively about my intellectual ability. For January and February, I took a break to recharge mentally.
I restarted study in March. There were no more books that I have not purchased in this universe. To give up eGMAT and restart new course (like ManhattanPrep) from zero was an option, but I would not survive one more course from scratch. Somehow I felt that reason is in me any method, not in the course.
What is more, in January DJ from eGMAT somehow selected me for Free Personal Coaching, but I was so slow to answer, that by time I replied, there were no more places left for this program. Anyway I was still writing to eGMAT support all the time, asking a lot of questions on next steps, and they were answering fast, and gave precise steps to follow. I liked it. My email chain with egmat support is more than 100 mails, I believe.
Actually, reason I was so slow to reply DJ is because he said "do error log and after get back to me". But lol, am I silly to do error log? That is for people who can not connect 3 words in a sentence, was my thought, so I sabotaged it as much as possible. Finally, I decided to do it, and that was the best decision in my whole 500+hours of preparation.
ERROR LOG IS ESSENTIAL! I can not emphasize it enough.
I attach my error log, and I truly hope it can be helpful.
For SC, error log was my Holy Grail. I would go through each incorrect or "took longer" question from eGMAT and OG and write scurpulously correct answer, incorrect answers; why correct is correct; why incorrect is incorrect. What is the rule? Are there exceptions? Are there additional hints? Writing(typing) all this down is the only way that worked for me to remember the rules; internalize it = actually understand. First incorrect questions which I put into error log took me like 1 hour to go through underlying grammar theory. I watched "ING Modifiers" class in eGMAT maybe 4 or 5 times, and was able to understand it, using my incorrect questions.
eGMAT also have a "Mistake classification" system which looks complex, but actually very useful - it allows you to see where you made mistake - in meaning, in rules, by rushing, etc. I tried to implement this system both for SC and CR - please check it out.
eGMAT questions, both OG and their own, have answer by expert, and QA under this explanation. This QA and GmatClub posts were my treasure to understand each rule.
Gradually I understood that most questions are Meaning based; that is why Idioms, Grammar rules or difficult Grammar names are meaningless;
When you focus on meaning, and you can understand how each element in each choice changes Meaning, you can easily find the correct choice.
That way, error log allowed me to level up my SC.
I used eGMAT OG Scholaranium (official questions) and was scoring 85-90% on med+hard SC sets.
Btw about "OG Scholaranium". First, I though it is nonsense to just see the Number of question (because egmat can not show the actual GMAT questions due to copyright) and push answer A,B,C,D,E. But when I started using it with Advanced search on GmatClub, it made so much sense.
I can go through REAL questions, see the score in eGMAT and read explanation both from eGMAT experts and from GmatClub experts. So it keeps your error log and provides very detailed analytics - which is crucial.
eGMAT mocks are also pretty impressive. It gives a pretty good approximation of your ability; Q is slightly tougher than real.
Other shock was that my RC is actually bad. I learned it when we were analyzing ESRs with DJ. I saw it before, and he pointed it out.
The way I tackled was I downloaded GmatClub 1001 RC passage bundle (Its free and amazing). I downloaded, printed it all (sorry Mother Nature) and just did all the official passages (OG, LSAT, GRE). It was around 450 passsages, and took me around 300hours in total.
I made sure to keep log of mistakes, see what is my weak topic, and what is my weak type of questions. By ~300th passage, I was able to see the trap answers, too strong answers, etc. This is really the only way to do it. People say read Economist, Wall Street Journal; I think useful will be to through all this amazing data base of official questions. Start from GRE and GMAT, after move to LSAT. You will be invincible.
So in August 2021, I was pretty sure that both my SC and RC is improved; so I went to test center and got 720.
August 2021: 720 V38 Q49
I felt the V38 is not representative of my verbal ability. I speak with DJ, who took me for free "Last mile coaching". We went through ESR, and it showed that my CR actually needs improvement. Indeed, I was focusing mostly on SC and RC, neglected CR and Quant.
DJ recommended to revise some CR topics in eGMAT course, do Error Log for CR. Also, he introduced pretty straightforward, but very useful and easy to follow Quant improvement technique: I purchased GmatClub quant tests, and did 2; I found my weak areas. They coincided with eGMAT Scholaranium weak areas for quant from my exhausted scholaranium. For these areas, I went again through all theory and Application files (its easy to do in eGMAT), did Cementing quizzes, GMAT skill quizzess, Hard egmat Q questions and polished it up with targeted GmatClub quizzes. I did it for Word Problems, Probability, Geometry, some other stuff. By the end of this exercise, nearly no Q question was able to surprise me.
In less than a month I did all that - Q and CR, and took my next and last try - scoring 740.
August 2021: 740 V41 Q50 AWA6 IR8
This score is acceptable; I am sure if I study slightly more with the system I learned (Detailed error log and super-focused study), I can improve my V to 42 or 43.
My journey to that score was really tough, time and money consuming.
I bought a lot of unnecessary stuff and spend time on not important things.
Hope my story will allow you to study more efficiently and show great results.
Some rankings from my subjective view:
Best resources:
1. Error Log - created by yourself
2. Official Questions (OG, LSAT, GmatClub search by Q#)- for Verbal, use ONLY official questions! (egmat V is also good to learn rules).
There are plenty of GMAT and LSAT questions.
3. eGMAT - extremely beautiful user interface, very complex and full system that covers all Q and V. Your one-stop-shop for GMAT.
Actually while I was studying, they rolled out Scholaranium 2.0, which is super-detailed analytics and study support system; I was impressed by their effort; given that their Support is always available and free - I think they are the best.
4. 1000 RC Passages pdf here at GmatClub.
5. GmatClub Test question pack - use only Quant. Very easy to choose areas you want to target; Bunuel explanations are always there.
6. CR official questions collection pdf here at GmatClub.
My favorites for SC and CR are surely:
GMATNinja - explains everything without any grammar terms (something like subordinate conjunction etc.); undoubtedly, his innocent food fetish is neglectable taking in account such an amazing explanation talent. He focus on MEANING, which is a core to mastering SC, I believe.
daagh - reasoning is always out of the box; he looks always from different perspective; RIP.
EMPOWERgmatVerbal - good for another point of view; somehow I felt their approach is very formulaic: split 1, split 2, voila -> I suspect that actually AI is writing the posts, not a human being.
My 3200$ costs breakdown
5 GMAT attempts: 1375$, (with VAT)
3 online courses ~1000$,
Books and printing: ~600$,
Supplements: ~300$
OG tests, ESRs: ~100$
Your 550$ costs if you avoid my mistakes:
1 GMAT attempt: 250$
eGMAT: ~300$ dont remember
Gmat courses rankings (my objective opinion, no offence):
Supplements and other substances
- Be always careful with amount of caffeine you intake before exam. You need to know your body and do not take more than needed: if you cross the line, you will feel nervous, thoughts will be raging, you will not get needed clarity of mind. Caffeine tolerance is individual, but I will not recommend take more than 100mg of caffeine i.e. one red bull or one cup of coffee.
- Also do not stuff yourself with fast carbs prior to exam, and be careful not to eat sweets in break time; sugar spike can make you feel sleepy, which is the least thing you want on your second half of exam.
- I tried Mind Lab Pro, it was expensive, but I do not feel much effect. I advise not to buy it. All the reviews are affiliates (biased). Too expensive for placebo.
- Instead, what helped me a lot is a long course of solid and trust-worthy supplements.
My mix was:
Cognitive function: Lion's Mane, Bacopa, Ginkgo Biloba, L-Tyrosine, Ginseng, Walnut;
Support: Multivitamin, Omega 3, Turmeric, Curcumin.
Sleep: Melatonin.
Vitality: Orange jam.
My list of everything mentioned: https://iherb.co/tQrwyJi
(Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, but it helped me. Supplements I recommend will definitely not make you worse. I strongly believe in the power of herbal medicine/traditional Chinese medicine/sure there are some special Indian herbs used for cognitive enhancement)
Good luck for everyone preparing. You can do it! Study smartly. Please check my error log and if it is useful, buy something from my supplement list and use my discount code GSD422).
Thank you for reading!
First, in June 2020, I purchased Magoosh course, OG and after going through both in one month (around 200hours) I got 690.
July 2020: 690 V37 Q48
Important to say that I totally wasted precious OG questions. I did all the book in like 1 week, and my answers analysis did not go further than calculating % of correct answers.
Magoosh was entertaining, a lot of questions, very nice interface, great question bank for Q and V;
explanations for SC was pretty fast, and not always logical but sometimes emotional(?). How about:
"Choice A is an absolute disaster" or "A is wordy and flabby".
Building such a "sense" for mistake is important, but for me was crucial to know exactly why 4 choices are incorrect. Does all this make sense?
Anyway, I assumed it will be easy to go ~40points up, and I thought to do it by Q48 -> Q50, V37 -> V41.
Sounds easy!
I decided to join the Experts Global course. Well, let me say "No comment" on this resource.
After that, I bought OG Verbal, OG Hard Questions, PowerScore SC, PowerScore CR, ManhattanPrep SC books and start going through all of these.
My vision was that after going through these respectable books, somehow I will get enlightened and get my dream score. That was huge mistake!!
IMHO, PowerScore are great books. But they are great if you want something to start with, to quickly go through main concepts. Examples are scarce and not representative. Manhattan Prep books were the biggest disappointment. Actually, I found it extremely poorly written, badly organized, not helpful at all. (it is my opinion, other people think these books are Heavenly Gifts somehow dispatched to Earth)
After spending 250+ hours going through all these books, finishing all the OG questions from Verbal and Hard Questions, I went to test center to receive 680!
September 2020: 680 V35 Q47
10 points down from test 3 months ago. It was a shock, I cancelled score, and understand something is wrong with the whole system of my preparation.
Back then, I had Idioms lists all over my house, and I was trying to remember some 200+ of the idioms. Now I understand how useless and waste of energy it is.
After that, I purchased eGMAT course. I was surprised how good it looks, and how much information is inside. I start going through all the Verbal lessons, doing all the interactive lectures, quizzes - was very useful to build a foundation (which somehow was still lacking in some areas, like Modifiers, Prepositions etc.)
I think I went though all course, skipped some stuff, went to Scholaranium and also did most of questions, not caring so much about reviewing incorrect. I exhausted Scholaranium, which was a huge mistake.
So after 300+hours pure study at eGMAT course, I went to my next tests, and got... 690 again.
December 2020: 690 V35 Q49
Here I thought I am seriously dumb or there is some spell on me. Any past successes like CFA or other stuff felt like a lucky episode which fooled me into thinking positively about my intellectual ability. For January and February, I took a break to recharge mentally.
I restarted study in March. There were no more books that I have not purchased in this universe. To give up eGMAT and restart new course (like ManhattanPrep) from zero was an option, but I would not survive one more course from scratch. Somehow I felt that reason is in me any method, not in the course.
What is more, in January DJ from eGMAT somehow selected me for Free Personal Coaching, but I was so slow to answer, that by time I replied, there were no more places left for this program. Anyway I was still writing to eGMAT support all the time, asking a lot of questions on next steps, and they were answering fast, and gave precise steps to follow. I liked it. My email chain with egmat support is more than 100 mails, I believe.
Actually, reason I was so slow to reply DJ is because he said "do error log and after get back to me". But lol, am I silly to do error log? That is for people who can not connect 3 words in a sentence, was my thought, so I sabotaged it as much as possible. Finally, I decided to do it, and that was the best decision in my whole 500+hours of preparation.
ERROR LOG IS ESSENTIAL! I can not emphasize it enough.
I attach my error log, and I truly hope it can be helpful.
For SC, error log was my Holy Grail. I would go through each incorrect or "took longer" question from eGMAT and OG and write scurpulously correct answer, incorrect answers; why correct is correct; why incorrect is incorrect. What is the rule? Are there exceptions? Are there additional hints? Writing(typing) all this down is the only way that worked for me to remember the rules; internalize it = actually understand. First incorrect questions which I put into error log took me like 1 hour to go through underlying grammar theory. I watched "ING Modifiers" class in eGMAT maybe 4 or 5 times, and was able to understand it, using my incorrect questions.
eGMAT also have a "Mistake classification" system which looks complex, but actually very useful - it allows you to see where you made mistake - in meaning, in rules, by rushing, etc. I tried to implement this system both for SC and CR - please check it out.
eGMAT questions, both OG and their own, have answer by expert, and QA under this explanation. This QA and GmatClub posts were my treasure to understand each rule.
Gradually I understood that most questions are Meaning based; that is why Idioms, Grammar rules or difficult Grammar names are meaningless;
When you focus on meaning, and you can understand how each element in each choice changes Meaning, you can easily find the correct choice.
That way, error log allowed me to level up my SC.
I used eGMAT OG Scholaranium (official questions) and was scoring 85-90% on med+hard SC sets.
Btw about "OG Scholaranium". First, I though it is nonsense to just see the Number of question (because egmat can not show the actual GMAT questions due to copyright) and push answer A,B,C,D,E. But when I started using it with Advanced search on GmatClub, it made so much sense.
I can go through REAL questions, see the score in eGMAT and read explanation both from eGMAT experts and from GmatClub experts. So it keeps your error log and provides very detailed analytics - which is crucial.
eGMAT mocks are also pretty impressive. It gives a pretty good approximation of your ability; Q is slightly tougher than real.
Other shock was that my RC is actually bad. I learned it when we were analyzing ESRs with DJ. I saw it before, and he pointed it out.
The way I tackled was I downloaded GmatClub 1001 RC passage bundle (Its free and amazing). I downloaded, printed it all (sorry Mother Nature) and just did all the official passages (OG, LSAT, GRE). It was around 450 passsages, and took me around 300hours in total.
I made sure to keep log of mistakes, see what is my weak topic, and what is my weak type of questions. By ~300th passage, I was able to see the trap answers, too strong answers, etc. This is really the only way to do it. People say read Economist, Wall Street Journal; I think useful will be to through all this amazing data base of official questions. Start from GRE and GMAT, after move to LSAT. You will be invincible.
So in August 2021, I was pretty sure that both my SC and RC is improved; so I went to test center and got 720.
August 2021: 720 V38 Q49
I felt the V38 is not representative of my verbal ability. I speak with DJ, who took me for free "Last mile coaching". We went through ESR, and it showed that my CR actually needs improvement. Indeed, I was focusing mostly on SC and RC, neglected CR and Quant.
DJ recommended to revise some CR topics in eGMAT course, do Error Log for CR. Also, he introduced pretty straightforward, but very useful and easy to follow Quant improvement technique: I purchased GmatClub quant tests, and did 2; I found my weak areas. They coincided with eGMAT Scholaranium weak areas for quant from my exhausted scholaranium. For these areas, I went again through all theory and Application files (its easy to do in eGMAT), did Cementing quizzes, GMAT skill quizzess, Hard egmat Q questions and polished it up with targeted GmatClub quizzes. I did it for Word Problems, Probability, Geometry, some other stuff. By the end of this exercise, nearly no Q question was able to surprise me.
In less than a month I did all that - Q and CR, and took my next and last try - scoring 740.
August 2021: 740 V41 Q50 AWA6 IR8
This score is acceptable; I am sure if I study slightly more with the system I learned (Detailed error log and super-focused study), I can improve my V to 42 or 43.
My journey to that score was really tough, time and money consuming.
I bought a lot of unnecessary stuff and spend time on not important things.
Hope my story will allow you to study more efficiently and show great results.
Some rankings from my subjective view:
Best resources:
1. Error Log - created by yourself
2. Official Questions (OG, LSAT, GmatClub search by Q#)- for Verbal, use ONLY official questions! (egmat V is also good to learn rules).
There are plenty of GMAT and LSAT questions.
3. eGMAT - extremely beautiful user interface, very complex and full system that covers all Q and V. Your one-stop-shop for GMAT.
Actually while I was studying, they rolled out Scholaranium 2.0, which is super-detailed analytics and study support system; I was impressed by their effort; given that their Support is always available and free - I think they are the best.
4. 1000 RC Passages pdf here at GmatClub.
5. GmatClub Test question pack - use only Quant. Very easy to choose areas you want to target; Bunuel explanations are always there.
6. CR official questions collection pdf here at GmatClub.
My favorites for SC and CR are surely:
GMATNinja - explains everything without any grammar terms (something like subordinate conjunction etc.); undoubtedly, his innocent food fetish is neglectable taking in account such an amazing explanation talent. He focus on MEANING, which is a core to mastering SC, I believe.
daagh - reasoning is always out of the box; he looks always from different perspective; RIP.
EMPOWERgmatVerbal - good for another point of view; somehow I felt their approach is very formulaic: split 1, split 2, voila -> I suspect that actually AI is writing the posts, not a human being.
My 3200$ costs breakdown
5 GMAT attempts: 1375$, (with VAT)
3 online courses ~1000$,
Books and printing: ~600$,
Supplements: ~300$
OG tests, ESRs: ~100$
Your 550$ costs if you avoid my mistakes:
1 GMAT attempt: 250$
eGMAT: ~300$ dont remember
Gmat courses rankings (my objective opinion, no offence):
Supplements and other substances
- Be always careful with amount of caffeine you intake before exam. You need to know your body and do not take more than needed: if you cross the line, you will feel nervous, thoughts will be raging, you will not get needed clarity of mind. Caffeine tolerance is individual, but I will not recommend take more than 100mg of caffeine i.e. one red bull or one cup of coffee.
- Also do not stuff yourself with fast carbs prior to exam, and be careful not to eat sweets in break time; sugar spike can make you feel sleepy, which is the least thing you want on your second half of exam.
- I tried Mind Lab Pro, it was expensive, but I do not feel much effect. I advise not to buy it. All the reviews are affiliates (biased). Too expensive for placebo.
- Instead, what helped me a lot is a long course of solid and trust-worthy supplements.
My mix was:
Cognitive function: Lion's Mane, Bacopa, Ginkgo Biloba, L-Tyrosine, Ginseng, Walnut;
Support: Multivitamin, Omega 3, Turmeric, Curcumin.
Sleep: Melatonin.
Vitality: Orange jam.
My list of everything mentioned: https://iherb.co/tQrwyJi
(Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, but it helped me. Supplements I recommend will definitely not make you worse. I strongly believe in the power of herbal medicine/traditional Chinese medicine/sure there are some special Indian herbs used for cognitive enhancement)
Good luck for everyone preparing. You can do it! Study smartly. Please check my error log and if it is useful, buy something from my supplement list and use my discount code GSD422).
Thank you for reading!
Attachments
File comment: My error log which allowed me to improve SC
error log IB 2407.xlsx [2.57 MiB]
Downloaded 390 times
15 Sep 2021, 08:38
Kudos
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This is one of the best debrief I have ever read. I am sure to put some of your tips into good use. Congratulations on attaining a high score!
I have looked through your error log. It is very detailed. No wonder why it was able to help you so much.
I have looked through your error log. It is very detailed. No wonder why it was able to help you so much.
15 Sep 2021, 16:55
Kudos
Bookmarks
ib1703 Glad to hear you enjoy our explanations! We are definitely not an AI, though it would be pretty cool if we were. We're just a team of people who really think our method works to help students answer questions quickly and correctly. 
