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At one point, she believed GMAT wasn’t for her. After scoring 595, self-doubt crept in and she questioned her potential. But instead of quitting, she made the right strategic changes. The result? A remarkable comeback to 695. Check out how Saakshi did it.
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Struggling with GMAT Verbal as a non-native speaker? Harsh improved his score from 595 to 695 in just 45 days—and scored a 99 %ile in Verbal (V88)! Learn how smart strategy, clarity, and guided prep helped him gain 100 points.
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08 Aug 2020, 06:59
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Fellow hustlers, I am happy to announce that after three months of preparation (400+ hours!), 7 CAT tests, and 2 official GMAT tests, my GMAT journey has come to an end!
I would like to share my personal tips on GMAT as a form of self-reflection and as a way of giving back to this community. In this post, you will see (1) statistics I have gathered; (2) resources I have used; (3) things I wished I learned earlier; (4) general tips for Verbal (SC); (5) General tips for Quant; and (6) my secret weapon.
(1) Statistics:
1. GMAT CAT does reflect quite closely my actual score - I'll explain how I mess up my first official GMAT later
2. You won't improve by doing more official CAT - the actual GMAT tests the same concept, but the official questions can be quite different from the retired questions
3. Skip TPR's CAT - I completed the quant section with 15 minutes to spare, but almost ran out of time on the official GMAT.
(2) Resources:
1. Start with OG - highly recommend, you don't need the newest edition. Going through OG is the best way to get a feel of the GMAT questions. It'll let you to identify which resource is legitimate, and which other teaches you questionable stuff
2. Skip GMAT grammar book - do not recommend. it does provide you with a very broad foundation of grammar, but some concepts are not consistent with GMAT, while some others are not tested.
3. Powerscore GMAT CR - highly recommend. Once you learn to identify the conclusion, the CR gets much easier.
4. Manhattan Prep Series - highly recommend both Quant and Verbal. The RC section that teaches you how to take notes and identify main idea will you lots of time during the actual test. The grid method for solving Venn Diagram question is also super efficient. Overall, the content is very consistent with the actual GMAT.
5. Youtube GMAT club SC series by Gmat Ninja - highly recommend. Very good explanation for SC, wish there was more of such videos.
6. The Princeton Review - do not recommend. This book focuses on quick tips like "Process of Elimination" and "Pluck In The Number". These are good test taking strategies, but not the way to learn. If you only read this, you'll probably be in the low 600 range.
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(3) Things I Wish I Knew Earlier:
(4) General tips for verbal(SC)
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(5) General Tips for Quant:
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(6) Secret Weapon:
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I've left this information all the way to the end because I don't think it's relevant - regardless of your background, you can master gmat. Hardwork beats talent when talent doesn't work hard.
I would like to share my personal tips on GMAT as a form of self-reflection and as a way of giving back to this community. In this post, you will see (1) statistics I have gathered; (2) resources I have used; (3) things I wished I learned earlier; (4) general tips for Verbal (SC); (5) General tips for Quant; and (6) my secret weapon.
(1) Statistics:
- • Start / End / Duration: 01-May-2020 / 08-Aug-2020 / 400+ hours
• Final Score: V39 / Q49 / IR6 / 720
- •GMAT CAT 1: Q48 / V40 / 720
•GMAT CAT 2: Q48 / V40 / 720
•GMAT CAT 3: Q50 / V39 / 740
•GMAT CAT 4: Q50 / V42 / 760
•GMAT CAT 5: Q50 / V41 / 740
•GMAT CAT 6: Q49 / V40 / 720
•TPR Test 10: Q47 / V39 / 690 (The Prinston Review)
•Official 1: Q43 / V38 / 660
•Official 2: Q49 / V39 / 720 (Final)
1. GMAT CAT does reflect quite closely my actual score - I'll explain how I mess up my first official GMAT later
2. You won't improve by doing more official CAT - the actual GMAT tests the same concept, but the official questions can be quite different from the retired questions
3. Skip TPR's CAT - I completed the quant section with 15 minutes to spare, but almost ran out of time on the official GMAT.
(2) Resources:
- • OG
• GMAT grammar book
• Powerscore GMAT Critical Reasoning
• Manhattan Prep Series
• Youtube GMAT club SC by GMAT Ninja (9 parts)
• The Princeton Review
1. Start with OG - highly recommend, you don't need the newest edition. Going through OG is the best way to get a feel of the GMAT questions. It'll let you to identify which resource is legitimate, and which other teaches you questionable stuff
2. Skip GMAT grammar book - do not recommend. it does provide you with a very broad foundation of grammar, but some concepts are not consistent with GMAT, while some others are not tested.
3. Powerscore GMAT CR - highly recommend. Once you learn to identify the conclusion, the CR gets much easier.
4. Manhattan Prep Series - highly recommend both Quant and Verbal. The RC section that teaches you how to take notes and identify main idea will you lots of time during the actual test. The grid method for solving Venn Diagram question is also super efficient. Overall, the content is very consistent with the actual GMAT.
5. Youtube GMAT club SC series by Gmat Ninja - highly recommend. Very good explanation for SC, wish there was more of such videos.
6. The Princeton Review - do not recommend. This book focuses on quick tips like "Process of Elimination" and "Pluck In The Number". These are good test taking strategies, but not the way to learn. If you only read this, you'll probably be in the low 600 range.
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(3) Things I Wish I Knew Earlier:
- 1. Get laminated paper, markers, and alcohol
2. Don't trust everything you read on GMAT club
3. Learn why you are wrong
- Get laminated paper, markers, and alcohol. No, I don't mean to drown your sorrows with alcohol - you use it to wipe off your workings! Rubbing alcohol works fine, but I read that nail polish remover works too.
I underperformed on my first GMAT because I did not do this. I had been practicing with a pen and paper for so long that the feel of marker on laminated paper just didnt guide my brain to process what I was writing down. I also have quite a serious case of sweaty palm, so sometimes my working got smudged or wiped off during my official gmat. It made me try to do most of my quant mentally.
Learn from my mistake, practice under test conditions.
Don't trust everything you read on GMAT club . Don't get me wrong, this IS the best place for all things GMAT. However, "best" is relative, and "best" does not mean "perfect".
There are some users that really know what they are saying, but most other users are like you and I - learners. Some users try to pass themselves off as "experts", and some resource providers just change the subject of official GMAT questions (eg. Sarah changed to Tom), and pass these questions off as their own. Don't trust everything you read here.
The most prominent example I can give you is that of "ambiguous pronouns" in SC. You will see many users reject certain answer choices because of this reason, but sometimes that is not the right thing to do. Don't trust everything you read here
Sometimes, even the most experienced users on this forum makes mistake. The truth is, we are all painting the bullseye where the arrow lands - we take OG as the bible, and tweak our explanation to fit OG. Sometimes OG is inconsistent. Grammar rules are not universally applied. Don't trust everything you read here - but this is still the best place for all things GMAT.
Learn why you are wrong . I started off learning why the right answer was right, until I learned why I was wrong.
At least for the Verbal section, GMAT relies more on eliminating the wrong answers rather than selecting the right one. Your goal is to eliminate 4 answer choices. You do this because wrong answers are almost always unambiguously wrong, but sometimes the right answer is ambiguously right (Halley's commet, i'm looking at you). Sometimes the right answer "sounds" wrong, or is not "grammatically the best". Eliminate, don't choose.
Learning why you're wrong also ensures that you don't make the same mistake. Two things happen when you get a question wrong: (1) You thought the correct answer was wrong, and (2) you thought the wrong answer was right. (1) could mean that you're unfamiliar with a particular concept, but (2) implies that you've learnt something wrongly. The latter is a graver mistake to commit, and deserves more attention. If you learnt something wrong, you'll apply it again and again. Learn why you are wrong so you can unlearn your mistakes.
(4) General tips for verbal(SC)
- 1. Eliminate wrong answers, starting from the top
2. You can never master grammar
3. Beyond a certain point, meaning takes over
4. Check SVA, check pronouns, check parallelism, check comparison
- Eliminate wrong answers, starting from the top. You'll encounter many people who will tell you to "identify splits" and "eliminate common mistakes" - all these are good test taking strategies, but IMHO terrible for learning. These strategies starts to fall apart when you hit the 700 level questions.
Ideally, you should be able to identify grammar mistakes the first time you read through an option. Getting used to rejecting the options one at a time gives you many more opportunities to identify pronouns and SVA, so you are more sensitive to such syntax in the long run. If you eliminate by splits / common errors, you miss out on the chance to sharpen your senses. Start from the top, work your way down.
You can never master grammar. Accept that there are questions you will get wrong. As stated previously, grammar is not universally applied irl, and GMAT has gone back on some grammatical rules before (eg. Possessive Poison Rule). You never know when they will test something new, and you'll never know when they will change their minds again.
Beyond a certain point, meaning takes over. Grammar can only take you so far in gmat before the meaning of the sentence starts to take over. You can easily eliminate 4 options for the pre-700 level questions, but you will start finding multiple options that are grammatically sound towards the end. This is another reason why "identifying splits" is not the most ideal strategy. When you train yourself to look for words in the sentence, you no longer read and process those sentences.
Sentence Correction Pwns People. Before you lock in your answer, repeat to yourself: Sentence Correction Pwns People. What is that? It's how I remember to check check for SVA, Comparison, Pronouns and Parallelism - Sentence Correction Pwns People.
For every question, before you lock in the answer, tell yourself Sentence Correction Pwns People, and check that these four elements fits into the entire sentence, including the non-underlined portion. You'll be surprised how often you selected an option that violates one of these grammatical rule. Remember: Sentence Correction Pwns People, so check.
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(5) General Tips for Quant:
- 1. Solve all questions till the end
2. Read the question carefully
3. You can never be fully prepared
4. When in doubt, square
- Solve all the questions till the end. Gmat is tricky, so you can't rely on strategies like "two equations, two unknown". More than once, I have stopped a few steps before getting to the final answer and chose the wrong answer. Sometimes its because I forgot to convert radius to diameter, sometimes I forgot to inverse the number, sometimes I forgot to net it off from some other number. If you can get to the point of solving the question, then its not worth it to get the question wrong because you wanted to save 15 seconds by skipping steps.
Read the question carefully. I cannot tell you how many times I have smacked myself on the head because I overlooked the "X is a positive integer" statement, or the trickier "X > 4 and X < 6. What is the value of X" (Ans: E, not C, because X = 4.1 is valid). If A, B, C is in set S, these three numbers can be the same! *smack*
You can never be fully prepared. You can master all the mathematical concepts, but there will still be questions on test day that stumps you. I have taken the official GMAT twice, and both times there are questions that I have not encountered in OG or the 7 CATs that I have done. Such is math - you need to learn to apply.
When in doubt, square. This is a tip that I got from my first trainwrecked gmat. You'll be surprised how often squaring an expression will bring you closer to solving the question, especially when (x+y) // (x-y) // xy are involved --> did you know that for a rectangle, the sum of [the square of the diagonal] and [2 times the area] is equal to [the square of half its perimeter]? Try it out with (x+y)^2.
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(6) Secret Weapon:
- • Anki Flashcard (desktop + mobile)
Anki Flashcard is an application that lets you create your own flashcards. Whenever I get a question wrong, I would create a flashcard with the question at the front, and the answer / explanation at the back. I will review my flashcard periodically, but focus on answering why each options is right or wrong, rather than which is the correct answer.
This system serves a few purpose for me: (1) Over time, I compile a set of questions that I found difficult, allowing me to see trends, (2) In creating the flashcards, I am forced to explain every option coherently, rather than glancing at the solution and make a vague mental note (3) It allows me to bring a stack of gmat questions on the go, so i can quiz myself whenever I have a few minutes to spare, (4) It is much more convenient than having to search each question individually on gmatclub, and parse through all the responses to find the explanation I agree with (5) Anki uses an "active spaced recall" framework - "active spaced recall" means that over a space of time, you actively recall a set of information (information on the back of the flashcard) based on a prompt (the front of the flashcard). Anki automatically queues my flashcards based on how often I have reviewed them and how difficult I rated them. Cards that I have reviewed often and found easy gets removed from the stack for a period of time.
You can also share your flashcards with other users. However, I will not share my deck because my flashcards contain official gmat questions, and I believe that creating those flashcards will aid in your own learning process.
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I've left this information all the way to the end because I don't think it's relevant - regardless of your background, you can master gmat. Hardwork beats talent when talent doesn't work hard.
- - I come from a country where English is my first language
- I have a degree in Financial Mathematics
- I work a bank
Thelionking1234
Joined: 09 Apr 2020
Last visit: 23 Apr 2022
Posts: 114
Given Kudos: 569
Location: India
Concentration: Strategy, Entrepreneurship
Schools: ISB'22 (D)
GMAT 1: 690 Q49 V35
WE:Engineering (Other)
Products:
08 Aug 2020, 07:09
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NunuBot Kudos to your efforts for GMAT and for writing a debrief in such a detail.
Congratulations for great score.
Thank you for brilliant piece of advise.
I have one query. Can you elaborate on use of laminated paper? Is it the one test centers provide for rough work?
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Congratulations for great score.
Thank you for brilliant piece of advise.
I have one query. Can you elaborate on use of laminated paper? Is it the one test centers provide for rough work?
Posted from my mobile device
08 Aug 2020, 07:25
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Thelionking1234
Thank you! I'm surprised someone actually read all that
Yes, the laminated paper is the "scratch pad" that the test centers provide.
At my test center, I was provided with a pad - 10 pieces of laminated paper bound together on the shorter side. Each laminated paper is about A4 width, slight longer than A4 length, with grids printed on both side.
