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Tejasvee
Joined: 01 Jun 2020
Last visit: 25 Feb 2022
Posts: 9
Given Kudos: 27
Location: United States (IL)
Schools: ISB'22 (A) Rotman '23 (A$) IIMA PGPX'22 (A)
GMAT 1: 710 Q48 V40 (Online)
12 Aug 2020, 21:24
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Exam date: Aug 03, 2020, 11 am - 2 pm
Final score: 710 (91%), V40 (90%) , Q48 (68%)
Before I took my exam, I had formed a habit of coming down to this page to read about people's experiences and said many silent heartfelt thanks for the stories shared. Hope this serves as the same for others.
I am a licensed structural engineer based in Chicago, US with a work experience of 5 years post my masters. I had been toying with the idea of taking my GMAT ever since 2017 so had first started looking into the GMAT back then. I wasn't a stranger to RCs and SCs since I had taken the GRE in 2012 and performed reasonably well, scoring a 322. My preparation was largely self-propelled, although I did receive some help with RC passages. Hence, I felt as if I had already overcome the main hurdle when preparing for GMAT.
I finally gave the GMAT for the first time in September, 2019 and scored a 680 (83%) with V38 (85% & Q45 (58%). I had largely prepared from the OG, verbal from Princeton and gotten just a couple of books of the Manhattan series to cover some of the weak areas in Quant. (Number properties, word problems, Probability and Statistics). My quant effort was half-hearted as I simply did not consider how tough the scoring for quant could be and figured I just needed an all out brute force approach and that would be it. I had barely put in a month of total studies and maybe 2 weeks of really effective studying. I did take a the first couple of GMAT mocks and had scored a 730 and 700 respectively but was horrified when I took my one and only Manhattan test (590) a week before the date. Given my final score, I was happy with my effort but realized that the actual exam was tougher than the practice mocks. I did not end up applying to business schools last year for personal reasons, but for the programs I was targeting, I knew that I would need at least a 700 plus score to having a fighting chance.
Fast forward to August of this year, and visa issues for my wife coupled with the pandemic proved to be an effective catalyst. I decided to commence preparations in June, keeping in mind the 1st round deadlines at the end of Aug. However, work pressures took the majority of that month away and I realized that I had only July if I wanted to meet these deadlines. At the beginning of July I decided to kick things off with Kaplan mock followed by a Manhattan mock and scored 650 and 600 respectively. One thing immediately became clear: I had to do as well as possible in quant if I need to break that 700 barrier.
Also, around this time, I finally discovered GMAT Club. Browsing through the various prep help posts increased my awareness significantly and I also picked up some very helpful tips and links to free YouTube sessions from e-GMAT for both sections. I also purchased the advanced quant text book from Manhattan and the GMAT advanced question bank after reading a review here roughly 3 weeks before the exam and decided to bite off as much as I could chew. I went on to take 3 more MGMATs till right before the last week of July and scored a 610, 660 and 620 in all of them. I decided to not take any further Manhattan mocks from then on simply since they were not helping my confidence. For verbal, towards the end of the month, I also borrowed the Kaplan GMAT Prep Plus from a friend in order to review the verbal strategies. Through the 3 weeks, I managed roughly 1-2 hours of preparation daily followed by 5-6 hours on weekends.
I took the last week (July 25 to Aug 3) off to allow myself to dive in completely before test. I finished all the chapters with the practice problems in the Manhattan text right upto the work out sets, of which I managed only 4. I found that I mostly struggling with time, and my nerves when working through quant. With verbal, I was way more confident, and only knew that I would have to work through the SC questions to make sure I was not making any silly mistakes. I also puchased the 3rd and 4th official GMAT mocks in the last week and decided to take one official mock on each of the 3 days before the exam date. I made sure to mimic the actual test conditions by not allowing myself to get up during the first two sections of quant and verbal. My scores in the 3 mocks were 720, 660 and 730. The dip in the second test was a result of an extended happy hour with some friends which ended up affecting my quality of sleep and focus the next day. After the last test, I had a pretty good indication of where I would land up, but felt that if I kept my cool in quant, I would, perhaps, break 730.
Finally onto the exam day and my nerves threatened to overwhelm me. The very first question in quant was a word problem (PS) , 5-6 lines long! By the time I got to it, I had already lost a minute and panicked. I had practiced enough to know I needed to as many correct as possible, while not spending more than 3 mins on any questions but I do not believe I got that right. I had another such question, shortly after that, which was in geometry (D/S) which was similarly tricky. After that, I tried my best to answer every question correctly and finished within 1 min before the clock wound up. After that, I knew I had to keep a razor sharp focus on the questions in verbal, the strategies picked from Kaplan for RC and SC served me very well. When I was done with the IR section, for which I had prepared exclusively through tests, I knew and done enough to break the 700 line, but fumbled enough in quant to ensure that I wouldn't see past 730. Exactly 2 days later, the results came through and I found myself reasonably satisfied with the effort.
I had pre-tested my personal laptop and made sure it was compatible. The process went through quite smoothly without any technical glitches. In my nervousness, I did not realized that I could have perhaps, spoken with the proctor instead of typing every time? This took a few longer seconds than needed.
My key takeaways from the exam experience has been that you have to find a balance between the Bottom-up brain, the preconscious processor and the top-down brain, the conscious self. This has been beautifully explained by the authors of the MGMAT Advanced text book. In other words, you have to keep your nerves about you and allow yourself to remain calm even in those rough few minutes, when you have the sinking feeling that the previous question is surely lost. I wish I had come across this forum last year, but I am incredibly grateful that I did come across it when I did.
Hope this helps!
Final score: 710 (91%), V40 (90%) , Q48 (68%)
Before I took my exam, I had formed a habit of coming down to this page to read about people's experiences and said many silent heartfelt thanks for the stories shared. Hope this serves as the same for others.
I am a licensed structural engineer based in Chicago, US with a work experience of 5 years post my masters. I had been toying with the idea of taking my GMAT ever since 2017 so had first started looking into the GMAT back then. I wasn't a stranger to RCs and SCs since I had taken the GRE in 2012 and performed reasonably well, scoring a 322. My preparation was largely self-propelled, although I did receive some help with RC passages. Hence, I felt as if I had already overcome the main hurdle when preparing for GMAT.
I finally gave the GMAT for the first time in September, 2019 and scored a 680 (83%) with V38 (85% & Q45 (58%). I had largely prepared from the OG, verbal from Princeton and gotten just a couple of books of the Manhattan series to cover some of the weak areas in Quant. (Number properties, word problems, Probability and Statistics). My quant effort was half-hearted as I simply did not consider how tough the scoring for quant could be and figured I just needed an all out brute force approach and that would be it. I had barely put in a month of total studies and maybe 2 weeks of really effective studying. I did take a the first couple of GMAT mocks and had scored a 730 and 700 respectively but was horrified when I took my one and only Manhattan test (590) a week before the date. Given my final score, I was happy with my effort but realized that the actual exam was tougher than the practice mocks. I did not end up applying to business schools last year for personal reasons, but for the programs I was targeting, I knew that I would need at least a 700 plus score to having a fighting chance.
Fast forward to August of this year, and visa issues for my wife coupled with the pandemic proved to be an effective catalyst. I decided to commence preparations in June, keeping in mind the 1st round deadlines at the end of Aug. However, work pressures took the majority of that month away and I realized that I had only July if I wanted to meet these deadlines. At the beginning of July I decided to kick things off with Kaplan mock followed by a Manhattan mock and scored 650 and 600 respectively. One thing immediately became clear: I had to do as well as possible in quant if I need to break that 700 barrier.
Also, around this time, I finally discovered GMAT Club. Browsing through the various prep help posts increased my awareness significantly and I also picked up some very helpful tips and links to free YouTube sessions from e-GMAT for both sections. I also purchased the advanced quant text book from Manhattan and the GMAT advanced question bank after reading a review here roughly 3 weeks before the exam and decided to bite off as much as I could chew. I went on to take 3 more MGMATs till right before the last week of July and scored a 610, 660 and 620 in all of them. I decided to not take any further Manhattan mocks from then on simply since they were not helping my confidence. For verbal, towards the end of the month, I also borrowed the Kaplan GMAT Prep Plus from a friend in order to review the verbal strategies. Through the 3 weeks, I managed roughly 1-2 hours of preparation daily followed by 5-6 hours on weekends.
I took the last week (July 25 to Aug 3) off to allow myself to dive in completely before test. I finished all the chapters with the practice problems in the Manhattan text right upto the work out sets, of which I managed only 4. I found that I mostly struggling with time, and my nerves when working through quant. With verbal, I was way more confident, and only knew that I would have to work through the SC questions to make sure I was not making any silly mistakes. I also puchased the 3rd and 4th official GMAT mocks in the last week and decided to take one official mock on each of the 3 days before the exam date. I made sure to mimic the actual test conditions by not allowing myself to get up during the first two sections of quant and verbal. My scores in the 3 mocks were 720, 660 and 730. The dip in the second test was a result of an extended happy hour with some friends which ended up affecting my quality of sleep and focus the next day. After the last test, I had a pretty good indication of where I would land up, but felt that if I kept my cool in quant, I would, perhaps, break 730.
Finally onto the exam day and my nerves threatened to overwhelm me. The very first question in quant was a word problem (PS) , 5-6 lines long! By the time I got to it, I had already lost a minute and panicked. I had practiced enough to know I needed to as many correct as possible, while not spending more than 3 mins on any questions but I do not believe I got that right. I had another such question, shortly after that, which was in geometry (D/S) which was similarly tricky. After that, I tried my best to answer every question correctly and finished within 1 min before the clock wound up. After that, I knew I had to keep a razor sharp focus on the questions in verbal, the strategies picked from Kaplan for RC and SC served me very well. When I was done with the IR section, for which I had prepared exclusively through tests, I knew and done enough to break the 700 line, but fumbled enough in quant to ensure that I wouldn't see past 730. Exactly 2 days later, the results came through and I found myself reasonably satisfied with the effort.
I had pre-tested my personal laptop and made sure it was compatible. The process went through quite smoothly without any technical glitches. In my nervousness, I did not realized that I could have perhaps, spoken with the proctor instead of typing every time? This took a few longer seconds than needed.
My key takeaways from the exam experience has been that you have to find a balance between the Bottom-up brain, the preconscious processor and the top-down brain, the conscious self. This has been beautifully explained by the authors of the MGMAT Advanced text book. In other words, you have to keep your nerves about you and allow yourself to remain calm even in those rough few minutes, when you have the sinking feeling that the previous question is surely lost. I wish I had come across this forum last year, but I am incredibly grateful that I did come across it when I did.
Hope this helps!
13 Aug 2020, 04:47
Kudos
Bookmarks
Hi,
Congrats on your high score. Your quant prep strategy is quite helpful.
Thanks
Congrats on your high score. Your quant prep strategy is quite helpful.
Thanks
13 Aug 2020, 11:06
Kudos
Bookmarks
Hi Tejasvee,
Great post -- inspirational for a lot of people who face early challenges and disappoints and need to stick with it.
I'd add one thing about not letting a past question mistake keep dragging you down. It's useful to remember that unless you're targeting a high 700's score, the GMAT is about architecting a score by occasionally skipping (intelligent guessing) questions that give you the most trouble. You don't need to get every question right on quant or verbal to get a 700+ score.
Once you have that in your mind, you can let go of wrong answers more easily, because you'll know you're allowed a few of them along the way to your target score.
Great post -- inspirational for a lot of people who face early challenges and disappoints and need to stick with it.
I'd add one thing about not letting a past question mistake keep dragging you down. It's useful to remember that unless you're targeting a high 700's score, the GMAT is about architecting a score by occasionally skipping (intelligent guessing) questions that give you the most trouble. You don't need to get every question right on quant or verbal to get a 700+ score.
Once you have that in your mind, you can let go of wrong answers more easily, because you'll know you're allowed a few of them along the way to your target score.
