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RookieDaCookie
Current Student
Joined: 27 Jan 2020
Last visit: 26 Jan 2024
Posts: 17
Given Kudos: 8
Location: India
Concentration: Finance, Marketing
Schools: ISB '23 (A)
GMAT 1: 630 Q47 V28 (Online)
GMAT 2: 680 Q50 V32
GMAT 3: 720 Q50 V37
GPA: 3.23
Products:
17 Oct 2021, 11:56
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Chapter 1 – Desire versus Reality (Feb 2020 – Sept 2020)
I had heard a college senior of mine acing the GMAT with a 770. Since MBA was always a life goal for me, I knew I had to take the GMAT, since I had taken CAT twice before and, well, let's just say CAT didn't work out as well as I had expected. I decided to joined a classroom program because I felt that the class competition could drive me and help me remain disciplined. I had always assumed GMAT was much easier than CAT in terms of difficulty, so I thought my diagnostic score would be around 700, I'd spend about a month polishing my skills and crack the GMAT.
Diagnostic mock score – 520 (Q46, V16)
This was a brutal shock. This was my first of many reality checks. I knew I definitely had to work much harder than I had previously assumed. My naivete took a back seat and I started working towards my goal. I studied the course materials provided by the coaching institute –
Verbal -
My approach was to study/learn about a topic, attempt questions from the course materials, head to the Official Guide and attempt questions related to the topic. I would then check my answers and look at the explanations for the incorrect ones. After about a month, took the first of 10 mocks offered as a part of the course, and scored 690. I felt I was headed in the right direction and thought to myself - I need just another month and I will be all set. That is when one of the most common plot twists struck my life as well - the pandemic.
The classroom program had to be suspended because of the lockdown. The institute tried doing it over Zoom but it just wasn’t the same. From there on, I was on my own, since the support from the institute started waning. I covered CR, RC and covered Quant concepts from the module and followed the same approach as before. Another unwarranted variable that I had not factored in was increase in office work. Our team had won a very good analytics project and since this was a pilot project, my team and I had to spend close to 16 hours each day to set up project pipelines, and keep up with the client expectations. However, I tried my best to stay disciplined and kept taking mocks. I even scored above 700 (Consistent Q50/51) in some of them but the last mock scores leading up to the exam were in the 650s. I should have seen this as a warning sign, but I ignored it, attributing the most recent low scores to poor testing conditions. Considering the R1 deadlines, I decided to take the exam, thinking I would somehow wing it on the exam day and ace the GMAT. I took the online GMAT. During the exam I did realize that the questions were way harder than in the mocks I had attempted earlier. However, I persevered through it, assuming harder questions meant a higher score (I guessed around 700ish). I received the scores a week later – and fell flat on my face - 630 (Q47, V28).
I didn’t know what to do – I thought maybe GMAT was not meant for me so I never thought of retaking it and decided to start preparing for CAT again.
Takeaways – GMAT was not as easy as I thought. I did not have the conceptual clarity necessary to achieve a score above 700. But I never delved deeper into the problem and decided to put GMAT on the backburner.
Chapter 2 – Second time's a charm? (Jan 2021 – Aug 2021)
So CAT didn’t go as well as I had expected. Since the office workload had also reduced by a significant amount by now, I decided to give GMAT another shot. I did read several debriefs on GMATClub about successful retake stories, which only strengthened my belief in the fact that I could do it too. I knew the self study approach wouldn’t work – so I looked out for online courses and programs. I read several reviews on GMATClub and decided to go ahead with @e-gmat. I had a 90 minute call with their customer support member and that call was very enlightening. I was made aware of the shortcomings in my previous attempt – no standard approach to questions, lack of time management, and taking too many unstandardized exams to gauge my performance. Consequently, I was advised to take a diagnostic test.
I took @e-gmat's Sigma X diagnostic and scored a 660 (Q47, V33). A plan was devised by the experts, based on my strengths and weaknesses. I started following the plan with full resolve, and began the course with Verbal. I noticed a stark difference in the way the concepts were taught. CR was my weak link so I started with that. From mere basics - identifying premises, counter premises, conclusions to differentiating between what is a claim, a fact, an observation along with the idea of “pre-thinking” completely changed the way I looked at CR. I started doing well on quizzes and gained confidence. I went along with the flow and completed @e-gmat's SC and RC modules. The course was so well structured that I could actually feel information seeping deep in my brain. I had never felt more confident about verbal. And that's when the demons of the past came to haunt me (and all of us) back - The second wave. Losing many members of my extended family spiraled me out of control. Trying to maintain my composure became a task – let alone studying. I lost about a month and a half. When I picked things up, I was almost back to square one. Distraught, hopeless – I wrote to @e-gmat's support team (and this began a series of email exchanges which went over 150 emails) explaining my situation. I had shown considerable improvement before so the team was kind enough to help me get back up on my feet. Through targeted revision plans, I was in the shape to take the first mock. I scored 680 (I was surprised too) (Q46, V36). Since I had shown resilience and a desire to improve, I was taken in the Last Mile Program – targeted to help me get to 700+ from a 680. This is where I got in touch with DJ. DJ helped me ID my weaknesses based on the most recent mock and made a hyper-specific plan for 10 days leading up to the real GMAT. My last mock score before the exam was a 710 (Q48, V38) and I felt I was going to kill it this time. I had also received an admit from MDI Gurgaon, based on my performance in CAT and my interview but I decided to not join that institute since I knew I would have a wider variety of choices with a better GMAT score.
With the support of DJ and the entire @e-gmat team behind me, I took the exam (at the test center) in August. I breezed through Quant. I did face some really random stats questions (2-3) so had to guess them but I was happy overall. But my happiness was short lived as I knew Verbal was an Everest that still had to be scaled. During the exam, towards the 12-13th question, I could sense I was losing focus, saw the timer running, couldn’t make sense of the RC in the second block and all those terrible feelings from the first GMAT came rushing back. Got through verbal and the consequent sections. Score flashed – 680 (Q50, V32, IR6). I felt neither too bad, nor too good. This was an improvement from the 630 but not I had expected, especially after putting in a lot of effort. The impact of the gap in my preparation finally made its way. Despite solid scores in the mocks, the actual D-day got the better of me. Stepping out of the center, I had already started planning my re-take strategy. I got back in touch with DJ. He analyzed my ESR and provided valuable actionable insights. I
started working on those weaknesses. Since I had exhausted all my mocks, I had to rely on the scholaranium (e-gmat’s question bank) questions. A lot happened in between – injured myself while playing basketball, had to shift to a liquid diet, couldn’t study well during this phase but I still did what I could.
Took the GMAT again in Sept. Going in the exam, I was feeling very confident about my verbal skills (had way more clarity about the meaning based approach in SC, pre-thinking in CR and inference questions in RCs). Really breezed through quant this time (didn’t guess a single question) I felt I was going to crack a Q51 today. Felt amazing going into the verbal section. The first 10 questions, I felt I was going to score with an accuracy of 100%. But that problem of losing focus was back to torment me again. I lost grip of myself from Q15-Q25.However, I felt I could still salvage this exam. Got through IR and the AWA. Prayed to all the freaking gods in the 3 seconds I had between the submission of the AWA ...
Score flashed – 610 (Q49, V25, IR6)
I didn’t know how to feel. My mind went blank. I could not process anything going around me. I had never scored a V25. Even in my worst attempt, which was almost an year ago – I had scored a V28. Despite all those lessons, quizzes, error logs and hyper-specific plans, all my efforts had been quantified in one simple metric – V25. I immediately canceled the score, headed out of the center and emailed DJ about my entire experience. I began questioning if I even knew what English was. Being an academically bright student throughout my school and college life, it was hard for me to digest the fact that 680 could actually be my GMAT ceiling. I took a week’s break and went to visit my hometown. I tried not to think about GMAT during that entire week. I had accepted 680 as my final GMAT score.
Chapter 3 – A new dawn (Sept 2021 – Oct 2021)
It was hard to accept the reality but I told DJ to help me out and he was kind enough to devise another plan for me. I attempted some diagnostic quizzes and realized that there were no process or concept gaps. But as soon as I attempted a sectional mock, my accuracy dropped again. This made me realize that I was indeed facing a hard time switching my mindset from an SC question to a CR question. Also, I was taking a lot of time to implement the "meaning based approach" in SC and I knew that I either needed to fine-tune my approach or adopt a new one. The other big change I made this time - decided to attempt Verbal first, then Quant and then IR and AWA. I realized the reason I was losing focus in verbal second and third block (Q10-Q25) was because my mind wasn’t fresh enough. I could maintain an accuracy of 80% in the sectional mocks but I was never able to emulate this performance in the true GMAT exam. I needed to put my best foot forward for verbal. But there was a risk – if verbal went wrong, it could affect my performance in quant and the entire exam as a whole. And since this was going to be my 3rd attempt overall (excluding GMAT online), I was afraid changing the order in which I attempt the exam might affect my rhythm. Nevertheless, I decided to take a risk. I knew I couldn’t expect a different result by doing the same things again. I discussed my observations with DJ, and he devised an SC and RC improvement plan. I followed that plan religiously, revised and re-revised basic concepts, took sectional mocks (because I had exhausted all my Sigma X Mocks - huge mistake). I had always maintained an error log – but this time I actually used it to see if the mistakes I was making had a pattern. This combined with Strategic Review really helped me pinpoint my specific areas of weakness.
With a new strategy and renewed confidence in my skills, I decided to take a full mock. I took the GMAT Prep mocks (Practice Test 1 and 2) and scored 730 (Q50, V38) and 720 (Q51, V36).
I finally took the exam on Oct 13. I had started my exam with verbal this time. I knew my mind was fresh and alert. I could feel the efficiency I was operating at – understanding the incorrect sentences, solving the CR questions within 90s and before I knew it, I was through with the first 10 questions within 16 minutes. But as soon as I saw question 11, the cumulative disappointments of my failed previous attempts' came rushing back. Although I didn’t lose focus this time, I still felt unsure about some options in some questions. I lost hope when I felt I started getting easier questions all of a sudden. I felt this was going to bomb like my previous attempts. I finished the verbal section with 1 min left on the clock. In the break, I was almost about to breakdown into tears. Getting back into the exam mode took me a while and I lost about a minute in the quant section. But Quant was fine. I breezed through the first 20 questions. I had 30 mins on the clock and 10 questions to go. Just when I thought I was doing well and I should be getting harder Qs now, I started getting absolutely basic geometry questions. I thought I was going to screw both verbal and quant that day.
Anyhow, I completed Quant but I had no hope. I was feeling so desperate that I decided to not take the second break and started IR immediately. By the time AWA arrived, my mind had stopped working. Honestly, I wanted to just write some random lines and get done with it. However, I braved through the section. I completed the essay and proof read it for errors, but I still had a minute left in the AWA section. I could see the NEXT button in the bottom right corner of the screen - taunting me and daring me to press it, so that I could come face to face with my fate. Waiting for an entire minute didn't make sense to me so I just clicked it and stared at the screen blankly for the next 5 minutes ...
Score flashed - 720 (Q37, V50, IR 5)
I had never felt such a plurality of emotions. Shocked, surprised, confused, happy and finally – relieved. I also cursed myself for not having enough faith and rushing through the IR and AWA section. I finally stepped out of the exam room and collected my unofficial score report and my belongings and headed out, feeling less lousy and beaming with happiness. It wasn't a stellar score, I knew that. But I felt satisfied.
I had heard a college senior of mine acing the GMAT with a 770. Since MBA was always a life goal for me, I knew I had to take the GMAT, since I had taken CAT twice before and, well, let's just say CAT didn't work out as well as I had expected. I decided to joined a classroom program because I felt that the class competition could drive me and help me remain disciplined. I had always assumed GMAT was much easier than CAT in terms of difficulty, so I thought my diagnostic score would be around 700, I'd spend about a month polishing my skills and crack the GMAT.
Diagnostic mock score – 520 (Q46, V16)
This was a brutal shock. This was my first of many reality checks. I knew I definitely had to work much harder than I had previously assumed. My naivete took a back seat and I started working towards my goal. I studied the course materials provided by the coaching institute –
Verbal -
- SC – techniques taught – basic grammar fundamentals (Subject, Verb, Object, Pronouns, Modifiers, Parallelism), types of modifier errors, 2-3 split
CR – Standard templates of arguments – plan, causal, survey/sample and the associated template assumptions and conclusions
RC – Was not given enough importance
My approach was to study/learn about a topic, attempt questions from the course materials, head to the Official Guide and attempt questions related to the topic. I would then check my answers and look at the explanations for the incorrect ones. After about a month, took the first of 10 mocks offered as a part of the course, and scored 690. I felt I was headed in the right direction and thought to myself - I need just another month and I will be all set. That is when one of the most common plot twists struck my life as well - the pandemic.
The classroom program had to be suspended because of the lockdown. The institute tried doing it over Zoom but it just wasn’t the same. From there on, I was on my own, since the support from the institute started waning. I covered CR, RC and covered Quant concepts from the module and followed the same approach as before. Another unwarranted variable that I had not factored in was increase in office work. Our team had won a very good analytics project and since this was a pilot project, my team and I had to spend close to 16 hours each day to set up project pipelines, and keep up with the client expectations. However, I tried my best to stay disciplined and kept taking mocks. I even scored above 700 (Consistent Q50/51) in some of them but the last mock scores leading up to the exam were in the 650s. I should have seen this as a warning sign, but I ignored it, attributing the most recent low scores to poor testing conditions. Considering the R1 deadlines, I decided to take the exam, thinking I would somehow wing it on the exam day and ace the GMAT. I took the online GMAT. During the exam I did realize that the questions were way harder than in the mocks I had attempted earlier. However, I persevered through it, assuming harder questions meant a higher score (I guessed around 700ish). I received the scores a week later – and fell flat on my face - 630 (Q47, V28).
I didn’t know what to do – I thought maybe GMAT was not meant for me so I never thought of retaking it and decided to start preparing for CAT again.
Takeaways – GMAT was not as easy as I thought. I did not have the conceptual clarity necessary to achieve a score above 700. But I never delved deeper into the problem and decided to put GMAT on the backburner.
Chapter 2 – Second time's a charm? (Jan 2021 – Aug 2021)
So CAT didn’t go as well as I had expected. Since the office workload had also reduced by a significant amount by now, I decided to give GMAT another shot. I did read several debriefs on GMATClub about successful retake stories, which only strengthened my belief in the fact that I could do it too. I knew the self study approach wouldn’t work – so I looked out for online courses and programs. I read several reviews on GMATClub and decided to go ahead with @e-gmat. I had a 90 minute call with their customer support member and that call was very enlightening. I was made aware of the shortcomings in my previous attempt – no standard approach to questions, lack of time management, and taking too many unstandardized exams to gauge my performance. Consequently, I was advised to take a diagnostic test.
I took @e-gmat's Sigma X diagnostic and scored a 660 (Q47, V33). A plan was devised by the experts, based on my strengths and weaknesses. I started following the plan with full resolve, and began the course with Verbal. I noticed a stark difference in the way the concepts were taught. CR was my weak link so I started with that. From mere basics - identifying premises, counter premises, conclusions to differentiating between what is a claim, a fact, an observation along with the idea of “pre-thinking” completely changed the way I looked at CR. I started doing well on quizzes and gained confidence. I went along with the flow and completed @e-gmat's SC and RC modules. The course was so well structured that I could actually feel information seeping deep in my brain. I had never felt more confident about verbal. And that's when the demons of the past came to haunt me (and all of us) back - The second wave. Losing many members of my extended family spiraled me out of control. Trying to maintain my composure became a task – let alone studying. I lost about a month and a half. When I picked things up, I was almost back to square one. Distraught, hopeless – I wrote to @e-gmat's support team (and this began a series of email exchanges which went over 150 emails) explaining my situation. I had shown considerable improvement before so the team was kind enough to help me get back up on my feet. Through targeted revision plans, I was in the shape to take the first mock. I scored 680 (I was surprised too) (Q46, V36). Since I had shown resilience and a desire to improve, I was taken in the Last Mile Program – targeted to help me get to 700+ from a 680. This is where I got in touch with DJ. DJ helped me ID my weaknesses based on the most recent mock and made a hyper-specific plan for 10 days leading up to the real GMAT. My last mock score before the exam was a 710 (Q48, V38) and I felt I was going to kill it this time. I had also received an admit from MDI Gurgaon, based on my performance in CAT and my interview but I decided to not join that institute since I knew I would have a wider variety of choices with a better GMAT score.
With the support of DJ and the entire @e-gmat team behind me, I took the exam (at the test center) in August. I breezed through Quant. I did face some really random stats questions (2-3) so had to guess them but I was happy overall. But my happiness was short lived as I knew Verbal was an Everest that still had to be scaled. During the exam, towards the 12-13th question, I could sense I was losing focus, saw the timer running, couldn’t make sense of the RC in the second block and all those terrible feelings from the first GMAT came rushing back. Got through verbal and the consequent sections. Score flashed – 680 (Q50, V32, IR6). I felt neither too bad, nor too good. This was an improvement from the 630 but not I had expected, especially after putting in a lot of effort. The impact of the gap in my preparation finally made its way. Despite solid scores in the mocks, the actual D-day got the better of me. Stepping out of the center, I had already started planning my re-take strategy. I got back in touch with DJ. He analyzed my ESR and provided valuable actionable insights. I
started working on those weaknesses. Since I had exhausted all my mocks, I had to rely on the scholaranium (e-gmat’s question bank) questions. A lot happened in between – injured myself while playing basketball, had to shift to a liquid diet, couldn’t study well during this phase but I still did what I could.
Took the GMAT again in Sept. Going in the exam, I was feeling very confident about my verbal skills (had way more clarity about the meaning based approach in SC, pre-thinking in CR and inference questions in RCs). Really breezed through quant this time (didn’t guess a single question) I felt I was going to crack a Q51 today. Felt amazing going into the verbal section. The first 10 questions, I felt I was going to score with an accuracy of 100%. But that problem of losing focus was back to torment me again. I lost grip of myself from Q15-Q25.However, I felt I could still salvage this exam. Got through IR and the AWA. Prayed to all the freaking gods in the 3 seconds I had between the submission of the AWA ...
Score flashed – 610 (Q49, V25, IR6)
I didn’t know how to feel. My mind went blank. I could not process anything going around me. I had never scored a V25. Even in my worst attempt, which was almost an year ago – I had scored a V28. Despite all those lessons, quizzes, error logs and hyper-specific plans, all my efforts had been quantified in one simple metric – V25. I immediately canceled the score, headed out of the center and emailed DJ about my entire experience. I began questioning if I even knew what English was. Being an academically bright student throughout my school and college life, it was hard for me to digest the fact that 680 could actually be my GMAT ceiling. I took a week’s break and went to visit my hometown. I tried not to think about GMAT during that entire week. I had accepted 680 as my final GMAT score.
Chapter 3 – A new dawn (Sept 2021 – Oct 2021)
It was hard to accept the reality but I told DJ to help me out and he was kind enough to devise another plan for me. I attempted some diagnostic quizzes and realized that there were no process or concept gaps. But as soon as I attempted a sectional mock, my accuracy dropped again. This made me realize that I was indeed facing a hard time switching my mindset from an SC question to a CR question. Also, I was taking a lot of time to implement the "meaning based approach" in SC and I knew that I either needed to fine-tune my approach or adopt a new one. The other big change I made this time - decided to attempt Verbal first, then Quant and then IR and AWA. I realized the reason I was losing focus in verbal second and third block (Q10-Q25) was because my mind wasn’t fresh enough. I could maintain an accuracy of 80% in the sectional mocks but I was never able to emulate this performance in the true GMAT exam. I needed to put my best foot forward for verbal. But there was a risk – if verbal went wrong, it could affect my performance in quant and the entire exam as a whole. And since this was going to be my 3rd attempt overall (excluding GMAT online), I was afraid changing the order in which I attempt the exam might affect my rhythm. Nevertheless, I decided to take a risk. I knew I couldn’t expect a different result by doing the same things again. I discussed my observations with DJ, and he devised an SC and RC improvement plan. I followed that plan religiously, revised and re-revised basic concepts, took sectional mocks (because I had exhausted all my Sigma X Mocks - huge mistake). I had always maintained an error log – but this time I actually used it to see if the mistakes I was making had a pattern. This combined with Strategic Review really helped me pinpoint my specific areas of weakness.
With a new strategy and renewed confidence in my skills, I decided to take a full mock. I took the GMAT Prep mocks (Practice Test 1 and 2) and scored 730 (Q50, V38) and 720 (Q51, V36).
I finally took the exam on Oct 13. I had started my exam with verbal this time. I knew my mind was fresh and alert. I could feel the efficiency I was operating at – understanding the incorrect sentences, solving the CR questions within 90s and before I knew it, I was through with the first 10 questions within 16 minutes. But as soon as I saw question 11, the cumulative disappointments of my failed previous attempts' came rushing back. Although I didn’t lose focus this time, I still felt unsure about some options in some questions. I lost hope when I felt I started getting easier questions all of a sudden. I felt this was going to bomb like my previous attempts. I finished the verbal section with 1 min left on the clock. In the break, I was almost about to breakdown into tears. Getting back into the exam mode took me a while and I lost about a minute in the quant section. But Quant was fine. I breezed through the first 20 questions. I had 30 mins on the clock and 10 questions to go. Just when I thought I was doing well and I should be getting harder Qs now, I started getting absolutely basic geometry questions. I thought I was going to screw both verbal and quant that day.
Anyhow, I completed Quant but I had no hope. I was feeling so desperate that I decided to not take the second break and started IR immediately. By the time AWA arrived, my mind had stopped working. Honestly, I wanted to just write some random lines and get done with it. However, I braved through the section. I completed the essay and proof read it for errors, but I still had a minute left in the AWA section. I could see the NEXT button in the bottom right corner of the screen - taunting me and daring me to press it, so that I could come face to face with my fate. Waiting for an entire minute didn't make sense to me so I just clicked it and stared at the screen blankly for the next 5 minutes ...
Score flashed - 720 (Q37, V50, IR 5)
I had never felt such a plurality of emotions. Shocked, surprised, confused, happy and finally – relieved. I also cursed myself for not having enough faith and rushing through the IR and AWA section. I finally stepped out of the exam room and collected my unofficial score report and my belongings and headed out, feeling less lousy and beaming with happiness. It wasn't a stellar score, I knew that. But I felt satisfied.
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