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secureoverachieve
GMAT 3: 720 Q46 V42 (Online)
Posts: 61
Updated on: 03 Dec 2021, 03:51
Originally posted by secureoverachieve on 02 Dec 2021, 13:51.
Last edited by secureoverachieve on 03 Dec 2021, 03:51, edited 2 times in total.
Last edited by secureoverachieve on 03 Dec 2021, 03:51, edited 2 times in total.
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It can be painful when you struggle with GMAT and see so many amazing stories here on the GMAT Club of people getting 750+ in 1 or 2 months. I wish I had a straightforward path to 700+, but my GMAT journey was long and full of detours. Moreover, I learned many things for life while preparing for this exam. As a way to give back to the community, I decided to post a short debrief here.
Some background:
This year, 2021, I restarted my MBA and GMAT journey in January intending to finally break through the 700 level and reach a 720-740 score. Initially, I took an official mock test with a 590 score and then spent 1.5m brushing up on the math and verbal foundations, climbing to the mid-600s. I took a break in April due to personal reasons and resumed only in May. From mid-May to early September, I have solved over 3,000 questions in total—either Official GMAT questions or LSAT questions. Some of the GMAT questions I saw two or even three times.
On 31-Jul, I reached 710 (Q49, V37, IR 8, AWA 6). My quant was great, but my verbal slipped significantly compared to my previous attempts—I could have got 730-740 if my verbal score was consistent with my prior attempts. I have heard a joke that “The hardest question in the universe is whether to retake a 710 GMAT.” I decided that I will re-take because I thought there is more potential in me than 710—by the way, I still think that if I had more attempts and time, I would have nailed 730-740.
I had two more attempts after 710, ultimately reaching 720 (Q46, V42, IR 8, AWA 6) and then slipping back to 700 on the last one. The last attempt was an unfortunate outlier--I did not sleep the night before it due to stress and work, and as a result, did not feel well. I achieved the highest personal verbal score (V44/98%), relying on the process I developed, but totally failed on quant. So I cancelled the score. At this point, I ran out of lifetime attempts and my GMAT journey ended.
Here is the table with my mock and actual tests below:
Picture 1.png [ 125.98 KiB | Viewed 5074 times ]
As you can see, the biggest problem for me was huge volatility in my results, especially in sub-sections (as in THE 710 attempt). I wanted to fix this and turned to the GMAT Ninja GMATNinja (shout-out to Charles and Dana) as a result. In terms of personal tutoring, as well as webinars on the GMAT Club YouTube channel, GMAT Ninja guys are unbeatable—instead of providing generic advice, they really pay attention to your specific situation and provide actionable recommendations. Working with Dana I understood that my weaknesses stem not from lack of knowledge but mostly coming from a lack of consistent process and me overly relying on intuition/situational judgment, resulting in avoidable/silly mistakes. I was able to move through the exam quite fast, sometimes with 20 minutes remaining on the timer in each section, and if my intuition was right and luck was on my side even get a decent score.
This reminded me of Kahneman’s “System 1” and “System 2” metaphor--the fast and slow decision-making systems used by our brains. System 1 thinking is our intuition in the fast lane, continually making judgments in real-time. Our System 1 hunches are often correct, but because of speedy, inherent biases and periodic errors this process can cause us to make silly mistakes and poor choices. System 2, on the other hand, is the slower, methodical decision-making process that keeps our hasty System 1 process in check. Although little mental energy is exerted by using System 1, a great deal of energy is required to use System 2. So our brain, for the sake of preserving energy, prefers to use System 1 and resists to use System 2 too much—resulting in various mental heuristics and shortcuts that help us to speed up decision-making process--this works well most of the time, but can be dangerous on the tests like GMAT.
After this, I focused on using “System 2” by being consistent in my approach for each question type and overriding my intuition all the time. To achieve this, I developed a key “guiding light”/key idea and a set of principles that I need to follow for each question type.
Strategies/process I developed for each question type:
Some thoughts and things that shaped my preparation:
Also, I cannot understate the importance of mindfulness practice as part of my preparation. As I have mentioned in the intro, I am not a good test taker—test make me feel uncomfortable and anxious. It was really helpful to have a daily meditation practice (10-20 minutes). I also tapped into this during my practice tests and actual exams—when things did not go as expected, I made a pause, focused on my breath, and made a couple of deep breaths to refocus myself.
Study materials/resources I used:
Closing words:
Stay optimistic even if it is hard. Accept the fact that some people will be much better than you at taming the GMAT—it is ok, you are not supposed to be the best at everything.
Do not overthink, especially poor results on a mock test. It is even better to get a bad score on your practice test—since it provides a great learning opportunity. Do not be overjoyed from great performance on mock tests as well—find things that you can improve. Learn from your mistakes as much as possible. Find your weaknesses and mitigate them as much as possible.
Find your strengths and hone them even further. Keep pushing!
Hope this helps someone in preparation for the GMAT! All the best!
Some background:
- • I am a non-native English speaker with a degree from a US big-10 university (3.9 GPA, magna cum laude)
• I worked in Investment Banking at a Bulge Bracket bank and then in VC/PE at a large multinational fund (around 4 years of total experience in finance)
• I am not a naturally good test taker, especially when it comes to computer-adaptive tests. The first time I took a practice GMAT, sometime in the spring of 2015, I scored something around 420-430. Then after hours of preparation over 2015-2016, I still could not break the 700s and reached only 680 (Q47, V37) on the third attempt, and was eventually rejected by all schools I applied to (3 schools from T10), essentially putting my MBA plans on hold
This year, 2021, I restarted my MBA and GMAT journey in January intending to finally break through the 700 level and reach a 720-740 score. Initially, I took an official mock test with a 590 score and then spent 1.5m brushing up on the math and verbal foundations, climbing to the mid-600s. I took a break in April due to personal reasons and resumed only in May. From mid-May to early September, I have solved over 3,000 questions in total—either Official GMAT questions or LSAT questions. Some of the GMAT questions I saw two or even three times.
On 31-Jul, I reached 710 (Q49, V37, IR 8, AWA 6). My quant was great, but my verbal slipped significantly compared to my previous attempts—I could have got 730-740 if my verbal score was consistent with my prior attempts. I have heard a joke that “The hardest question in the universe is whether to retake a 710 GMAT.” I decided that I will re-take because I thought there is more potential in me than 710—by the way, I still think that if I had more attempts and time, I would have nailed 730-740.
I had two more attempts after 710, ultimately reaching 720 (Q46, V42, IR 8, AWA 6) and then slipping back to 700 on the last one. The last attempt was an unfortunate outlier--I did not sleep the night before it due to stress and work, and as a result, did not feel well. I achieved the highest personal verbal score (V44/98%), relying on the process I developed, but totally failed on quant. So I cancelled the score. At this point, I ran out of lifetime attempts and my GMAT journey ended.
Here is the table with my mock and actual tests below:
Attachment:
Picture 1.png [ 125.98 KiB | Viewed 5074 times ]
As you can see, the biggest problem for me was huge volatility in my results, especially in sub-sections (as in THE 710 attempt). I wanted to fix this and turned to the GMAT Ninja GMATNinja (shout-out to Charles and Dana) as a result. In terms of personal tutoring, as well as webinars on the GMAT Club YouTube channel, GMAT Ninja guys are unbeatable—instead of providing generic advice, they really pay attention to your specific situation and provide actionable recommendations. Working with Dana I understood that my weaknesses stem not from lack of knowledge but mostly coming from a lack of consistent process and me overly relying on intuition/situational judgment, resulting in avoidable/silly mistakes. I was able to move through the exam quite fast, sometimes with 20 minutes remaining on the timer in each section, and if my intuition was right and luck was on my side even get a decent score.
This reminded me of Kahneman’s “System 1” and “System 2” metaphor--the fast and slow decision-making systems used by our brains. System 1 thinking is our intuition in the fast lane, continually making judgments in real-time. Our System 1 hunches are often correct, but because of speedy, inherent biases and periodic errors this process can cause us to make silly mistakes and poor choices. System 2, on the other hand, is the slower, methodical decision-making process that keeps our hasty System 1 process in check. Although little mental energy is exerted by using System 1, a great deal of energy is required to use System 2. So our brain, for the sake of preserving energy, prefers to use System 1 and resists to use System 2 too much—resulting in various mental heuristics and shortcuts that help us to speed up decision-making process--this works well most of the time, but can be dangerous on the tests like GMAT.
After this, I focused on using “System 2” by being consistent in my approach for each question type and overriding my intuition all the time. To achieve this, I developed a key “guiding light”/key idea and a set of principles that I need to follow for each question type.
Strategies/process I developed for each question type:
- • PS: Understand the question well, think through the best approach, work slowly through the problem checking each step, check answers, choose the right answer
• DS: Understand the question well—what is the question really asking? squeeze as much as possible from the question prompt, think through the best approach, work slowly through each statement, use the process of elimination (cross-out ADBCE)
• SC: use the process of elimination—first focus on clear grammatical errors then on meaning, eliminate 4 wrong answers (you need to have a clear explanation why you are eliminating an answer)
• CR: read for meaning and structure, then use the process of elimination
• RC: read for meaning and structure—pay attention to the most important things, then use the process of elimination on each question (take notes only to cover the most important meaning-related things, and refer to the text for details or sentence specific questions)
Some thoughts and things that shaped my preparation:
- • GMAT does not test my school math knowledge or English grammar knowledge—it tests my reasoning abilities -> “It is not a math or grammar test; it is a reasoning test”
• It is more important to get the easy ones right consistently, than getting hard ones -> “I get the easy ones right all the time”
• Instead of looking for one perfect answer, look for four wrong answers
• “Reasoning ability only goes up” Avi Gutman from Quant Reasoning—this reminded me that given my baseline I can maintain and even increase my score
• “I have all the knowledge needed; it is not about knowledge gaps but about the process I use”
• Do not expect to be in the perfect state, rely on the process instead
• Spend more time on the first problem in each section—for me it takes time to switch gears between modes of thinking
• Generally slow down while taking the exam, instead of trying to rush and beat the clock—“slow is fast”
• Be willing to give up questions that are too “hard” or will take too long (walk in with the thought that you will give up at least one question during the test)
• Take your time to understand the problem completely and only then solve it. If it takes 1.5min to understand the questions fully, but then I can solve it in 30-45 seconds it is totally fine
• Don’t follow your intuition (System1 )—the exam is made to fool it; use reasoning and process (System 2) instead
• One breathe at a time, one question at a time—"I am here and now “
Also, I cannot understate the importance of mindfulness practice as part of my preparation. As I have mentioned in the intro, I am not a good test taker—test make me feel uncomfortable and anxious. It was really helpful to have a daily meditation practice (10-20 minutes). I also tapped into this during my practice tests and actual exams—when things did not go as expected, I made a pause, focused on my breath, and made a couple of deep breaths to refocus myself.
Study materials/resources I used:
- • GMAT OG and Verbal/Quant reviews for 2020 and 2015
• GMAT Official Review 12th edition
• GMAT Official Practice Questions and Exams (all that are available on the website)
• MGMAT Mock Tests
• GMAT Club Premium and app
• The Official LSAT SuperPrep and The Next 10 Actual, Official LSAT PrepTests
• Magoosh full Premium GMAT course – mainly to brush up foundations
• Avi Gutman / Quant Reasoning avigutman – was a breath of fresh air for me in quant preparation: I used his book coming along with premium membership and was watching solutions for OG questions on Youtube
• GMAT Ninja webinars on the GMAT Club YouTube channel
• GMAT Ninja personal tutoring -- helped to understand my weaknesses and develop the proper processes to overcome them
Closing words:
Stay optimistic even if it is hard. Accept the fact that some people will be much better than you at taming the GMAT—it is ok, you are not supposed to be the best at everything.
Do not overthink, especially poor results on a mock test. It is even better to get a bad score on your practice test—since it provides a great learning opportunity. Do not be overjoyed from great performance on mock tests as well—find things that you can improve. Learn from your mistakes as much as possible. Find your weaknesses and mitigate them as much as possible.
Find your strengths and hone them even further. Keep pushing!
Hope this helps someone in preparation for the GMAT! All the best!
02 Dec 2021, 15:08
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Amazing story.... Congratulations!! I scored a 680 after five month of preparation but now I am studying for a 700 or even a 700+ score... I think I will take the GMAT online in August....
02 Dec 2021, 18:53
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Congrats on your GMAT! Good luck with things moving forward.
Got it, thank you! I totally understand this, and already plan extensive visits for the next year to get a better feel of schools (I have already visited some of the schools previously).
