How not to study for a 700+ score

Question

Hi All, Hope everyone is safe and keeping well during these times. Recently, I scored 720 (Q50 V38) on the GMAT (online). My first mock score was 460 and the first official GMAT score was 560. It was a long, arduous journey but a fulfilling one. There are numerous debriefs on how to improve your score beyond 700 and thus, I'll not talk about another set of strategies but will like to talk about my learnings/mistakes and the emotional aspect of the GMAT Prep. My Background -: I'm a commerce graduate from Delhi University and a Chartered Accountant by profession, with the first level of CFA cleared. I've always been consistent with studies throughout my school and college days, being in the top 5% of the class. Who knew that I'll be very much humbled by another exam soon.

I was always fascinated by the MBA curriculum and how it shapes the personality and character of a person who goes through the rigor of it. I've quite a few close friends/relatives who have studied from the top B-Schools in India and abroad and could clearly see their level of intellect in my conversations with them. Thus, to improve my analytical thinking, to relive my college days and of course, to get an opportunity to learn/interact with the diverse cohort, I decided to take the MBA plunge in 2019. Let me go straight to the mistakes/learnings from my GMAT journey MISTAKE 1 - OVERESTIMATING YOUR CURRENT ABILITY Many a times I've come across people ,myself included, who are proud of their school and college scores in English and Math. One needs to realize that the focus of those examinations and the GMAT is quite different. All these exams test different skill and you need to respect that. Thus, I was in a rude shock when I gave my first mock and scored a 460 (Q32 V22). Learning -: The first important step before embarking on the GMAT prep journey is to accept that you need to work on certain aspects i.e. you need to unlearn quite a lot to learn more. Don't be rigid. MISTAKE 2 - GIVING A DIAGNOSTIC MOCK It's my opinion (I know I'm right) but it's a very foolish thing to give a diagnostic mock to understand your current level in verbal and quant. Mind you, almost all the test prep companies ask you to give a mock test to estimate the time needed to improve your score. I will like to ask the below questions to anyone who advocates taking such test -: 1) Let's say I get 3 questions correct in Number properties, will I be confident in all aspects and not study at all that section during my prep? 2) Let's say I'm unable to attempt the last 3-4 questions in any section or blindly guess, would I be sure that I don't know any of those concepts? 3) Let's say I get majority of the questions correct in all RC's, what if I got majorly science/business passages and my educational background helped me to comprehend these passages easily, will I be completely confident about the RC section? 4) What are my current test taking strategies i.e. Section Order and time management - For someone who has not given any exam in quite some time may take extra time to recall what are integers, what is the area of a triangle, geometry properties etc. Will I say that I don't know these concepts? Mind you - Many people, including me, take almost a month to perfect the test taking strategies by giving 3-4 mocks. How do you expect anyone to do so in the first mock without any prep. Foolish, eh? Learning - In case you've already given a diagnostic mock, don't pay much heed to the score. It's irrelevant. In case you haven't given any such mock, don't give and waste an official mock. In case some one is hell bent on giving a mock, please give any third party mock such as Veritas, Manhattan etc. and don't waste the precious official mock. MISTAKE 3 - NOT REALIZING THAT YOU NEED TO UNLEARN TO LEARN NEW THINGS As mentioned above, I always was a decent student. However, GMAT is a different ball game all together. Why? Because one needs to understand what the GMAT tests. Almost all the exams, including college and CA exams, I was able to pass even if I didn't have much clarity in concepts or possibly through rote learning. Just because you had success in the past with one strategy, the same won't work on the other exams. Learning - You should be ready to accept that you need to unlearn to learn new things. Respect the skill that any exam is testing and work accordingly. MISTAKE 4 - OVEREMPHASIZING ON THE PREP TIME This is one of the 2 biggest mistake one can make and I am proud (not) to be part of that club. As soon as I started researching about GMAT, I assumed that it will take me maximum of 3-4 months to ace the GMAT. Boy, was I wrong or what

. People often fail to understand that the time taken to achieve your desired score depends on your starting point. Can you tell me whether a person who starts at a 620 will take the same time to reach a score of 740 as person who scored a 480 in any official mock or exam? It's unlikely because their starting points are quire different. Let me take my example - I've never read a novel in my life, thus my reading speed, comprehension ability and maybe vocabulary are certainly expected to be lower than those of a person who has read novels consistently or probably someone who majored in English Literature in college. Consequently and Logically, I will take more time with the Verbal section and it's reasonable. No point comparing here. Learning - You need to realize that everybody has a different starting point. No point in comparing your prep time with someone else's. Constantly, see where you're at and how you can improve. Don't get disheartened by the prep time you're taking. The only thing that matters is the ending point (score) and not the starting point or the prep time taken. MISTAKE 5 (MOST IMPORTANT) - OVEROBSESSION WITH 700+ SCORE OR QUESTIONS This is second of the 2 biggest mistake people make during their preparation. The obsession with 700+ questions or 700+ score. Consequently, people fail to focus on the process/path but end up focusing on that score. Many a times, especially during free webinars on youtube, I've noticed people asking the level of question being shown in the session. Why? Will that help you in any respect. chiranjeev Singh - He subtly points out this obsession with hard questions during the prep in his articles. Let say you want to drive a car at 80 mph. But initially your focus will be getting that confidence while driving at 30-40-50-60 mph and then improve to 80mph. You can't be expected to directly drive at 80mph. Same concept applies to GMAT Prep. Learning - Please focus on building the skills rather than on hard questions. Once the skill is developed, you're highly likely to get the harder questions correct. Thus, focus on medium and medium-hard questions to build your skill. Think of it as this way, you're unlikely to get a harder question on the GMAT if you get a medium question wrong. Same applies to practice as well. Further, I did analysis of the ESR's of people available online, especially of those who got a V40+. I noticed in the charts that even those people get medium to medium-high questions only. We can infer that it's more about consistently getting the questions correct. Thoughts are welcome on this analysis. MISTAKE 6 - FEELING DISAPPOINTED WITH INCORRECT QUESTIONS Though it's a natural human tendency to feel disappointed with mistakes, a change in perspective may help you. Why don't you think of this as a learning opportunity and one mistake that you'll avoid in the exam. This change in perspective certainly helped me - Rather than getting disheartened, I noted down the mistake and learning from that question in my error log. This quote by Thomas Edison is quite relevant here - "Edison once said, “I have not failed 10,000 times—I've successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work." Learning - See the mistakes as a way to learn and improve. More importantly categorize the mistakes i.e. Silly Mistakes, Conceptual Gap, Timing Pressure or Didn't read properly etc. This way analysis will be better and will help you to narrow down your focus points. MISTAKE 7 - NOT BEING CONSISTENT This is a problem that many of us face. Consistency is probably the most important thing for GMAT Prep. Often, people end up giving random excuses of not being able to study, the most famous one - "I don't gave enough time". You're not saving the world, eh? Just buckle up and start studying. To give you some context, I have studied for 16-17 hours during my CA Final preparation and 3-4 hours after a 14-15 hour workday for my GMAT prep. Excuses will do you no good. Learning - Try to be consistent and make a timetable (realistic). Make the targets achievable and work towards those on a daily basis. MISTAKE 8 - TIMING PROBLEM Timing is not a problem but a symptom. The real problem is the current level of skills. You certainly may improve on your timing in a couple of mocks or during practice but that can't be your problem. For example - I finished my quant (Q50) 10 mins before the allotted time and Verbal (V38 - though not a big score) 5 mins before the allotted time. Learning - Focus on the building the skills and you can further hone the test taking skills/strategies later on. MISTAKE 9 - NOT STUDYING STRATEGICALLY During your prep time, you need to be smart to identify high value topics. For example - I never studied coordinate geometry for my Quant prep. Why? Because it was unlikely that I'll face that question in the exam. So why waste my precious prep time on that topic. Luckily, I didn't encounter in my exam and even If I had encountered, it would have been at later stage i.e. Question 25 to 31, wherein a wrong answer wouldn't have impacted my score. Premise - Coordinate Geometry questions generally come at the harder level of the test. Similarly for verbal, be smart in identifying you strong and weak areas and leverage that in your exam. Remember you don't need to get all the questions correct. One thing I did during my prep is to consciously develop guessing strategy i.e. How can I improve the odds of answering correctly from a mere 20% to at least 50%. Learn how to eliminate options. Learning - Study smart

MISTAKE 10 - NOT ANALYZING ESR's Only during my later stages of prep I analyzed the publicly available ESR's. This is a good step to devise test taking strategies. Why? Because you need to understand how many questions you need to get correct and what is the level of these questions. You certainly will get valuable insights on how the test maker tests us. Learning - Analyze ESR for your target score i.e. For example you want a 740. The combination can be Q51/V40 or a Q50/V41. Analyze the ESR's according to your desired split. I'll fail in my responsibility if I don't express my gratitude to the following people -: - GMATNinja - Sir, you are a legend. Your youtube videos and verbal answers on the forum are invaluable. - chiranjeev Singh - Thank you for the assistance in my prep. I'm sure that I wouldn't have achieved this score without your guidance. - egmat - You guys have made a wonderful platform for learning. I'm glad that I was able to experience the same

- Bunuel - Sir/Mam - Who ever you are and where ever you are - God Bless You!!! I'm indebted to you for the simplicity in your answers. - bb - Thank you for creating this amazing forum. You're a super human. Hopefully people can learn from the mistakes and observations I made

Thanks, Karthik

GMATNinja · Answer

Congratulations on the great score and the EPIC improvement! This is an absolutely spectacular debrief, and I hope that tons of GMAT Club members read it.

And thank you for the shout-out! You're making me blush.

Congratulations again, and good luck with your applications!

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Karthik740,

Great job on your GMAT! Thank you for sharing and good luck with things moving forward.

Karthik740 · Answer

Thank you Charles for the kind words!

Karthik740 · Answer

Thank you for the message Scott. Appreciate it!

bb · Answer

Thanks for sharing! I have added a link to your Mistakes in my new post: https://gmatclub.com/forum/bb-s-list-of ... 55746.html

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