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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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28 Oct 2025, 09:28
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Hi everyone,
I'm Venkatesh, a software engineer from Bangalore with about 5 years of experience. I recently scored a 685 on the GMAT with V86, Q84, DI82, and I wanted to share my journey with all of you, especially those juggling demanding jobs while preparing for this beast of an exam.
When I started this journey, I had no idea how I'd balance my interests (reading, trekking, gaming, music) with GMAT prep while working full-time. Turns out, maintaining these hobbies was actually the secret to my success - but more on that later.
As an engineer, I thought quant would be my strongest suit and verbal/DI would be my biggest challenges. Boy, was I in for some surprises! After researching various prep options and spending considerable time on ChatGPT and Google Gemini comparing courses, I chose e-GMAT primarily for their reputation with non-native speakers and their structured approach to building from fundamentals.
The Working Professional's DilemmaLet me paint you a picture of my prep environment: I'm commuting daily on the Bangalore Metro (if you know, you know - the pushing and shoving is real), working full-time as a software engineer, and here's the kicker - there's a 50-story building being constructed near my house with hydraulic rock breakers going all day. It literally felt like someone was hitting me with a hammer in the head throughout my prep!
Initially, I tried to be a hero and study every single day. Big mistake. I was burning out fast and this is where e-GMAT's tracking system became invaluable. The platform tracks every single day how many hours you've studied against your personal targets (which you set based on your schedule). The visual cues - green when you hit targets, red when you don't - made patterns impossible to ignore.
Looking at my execution tracker on e-GMAT, I consistently saw that Thursdays were red. The data was staring at me - Thursdays weren't working. So I made a radical decision - I completely removed Thursdays from my study schedule. No guilt, no "just 30 minutes," complete rest. This way, I was fresh for Friday (WFH day), Saturday, and Sunday when I could put in 5-6 hours. My mentor Abha and I discussed this data-driven approach, and she supported this decision completely.
Here's my biggest realization: It's not about working harder, it's about working smarter. I only studied 2-3 hours on weekdays, but it was completely focused time. The platform's tracking helped me identify bad patterns and optimize my schedule. Decisions are easier to make when you have data. Having hobbies actually helped because when I sat down to study, I was genuinely focused - not burned out from trying to study 24/7.
Data Insights: DI82 DI was my absolute nightmare when I started. In my first mock, I had 6-7 questions left with no time, completely panicking. I severely underestimated the sheer volume of data you need to process and how quickly you need to figure out which direction to go.
The breakthrough moment came when I learned e-GMAT’s “Owning the Dataset” approach: spend MORE time upfront understanding the dataset. It's like the pre-thinking we do in verbal, but for data. Before even looking at the questions, I'd spend time really understanding what each tab in MSR contained, what the graphs were showing, what story the data was telling.
For MSR specifically, not all questions need data from all three tabs. Once I started "owning" the dataset first, I could quickly identify which tabs were relevant for each question. This strategy transformed DI from my weakest section to one where I finished with time to spare.
The other game-changer was finding quality practice material. Let me be real - good DI questions are incredibly rare online. You either find ridiculously hard ones that would never appear on the actual GMAT, or completely irrelevant formats. e-GMAT's questions were spot-on representative of what I saw on test day.
I must have done 4-5 sectional DI mocks, initially struggling with time but gradually developing an internal clock. I learned to identify which questions to tackle first, and which might need more time. By test day, despite my timer malfunctioning (more on that disaster later), I still managed DI82!
The V86 JourneyAs a non-native speaker, I thought verbal would be my biggest mountain to climb. I started around V81, which wasn't terrible, but those last 5-10% improvements are exponentially harder than the first 80%.
CR
CR was about execution for me. I knew the concepts but kept falling into the "almost there but not quite" trap. The pre-thinking approach was transformative - instead of diving into answer choices, I'd spend a few seconds after reading the question thinking about what kind of answer I'm looking for.
My mentor Rashmi identified through diagnostic quizzes that boldface and inference questions were my weaknesses. I hadn't even realized different question types needed different strategies! Once I learned to group similar question types (assumption, strengthen, weaken all have similar approaches), everything clicked.
RC
Here's my biggest RC insight: Be excited about the passage! I know it sounds weird, but it works. After reading the first two lines, I'd literally write down the topic and tell myself "Hey, we're talking about [topic] today, pay attention!"
I stopped timing myself for 3 minutes and panicking. Instead, I'd read as fast as I could while ensuring 100% comprehension. Yes, the first question might take 5 minutes total, but questions 2-4 would take 30-40 seconds each because I actually understood the passage.
Pro tip: I read The Economist religiously during prep. Not for knowledge, but because they have the most boring articles that would put anyone to sleep. If I could stay engaged with an article about Hungarian municipal bond rates, I could handle any GMAT passage!
Q84This is embarrassing, but remember when I said quant would be easy because I'm an engineer? Well, test day proved me wrong - Q84 instead of my consistent Q90 in mocks.
What happened? During the actual test, the person next to me was doing their verbal section and reading passages ALOUD. I'm not kidding. Every single passage, out loud. It completely threw me off my game during quant.
But here's the thing - because I had taken multiple sectional mocks, I still pulled off a decent score despite the distraction. The extensive practice meant my fundamentals were so solid that even when rattled, I could perform.
The Platform ExperienceLet me get specific about what worked:
1. Real-time tracking: As a software engineer, I live by agile practices and immediate feedback. The platform tracked every minute studied against my personal targets. When I saw patterns (like Thursday failures), I could course-correct immediately.
2. Gradual difficulty progression: Scholaranium had this brilliant two-level system. First two cementing quizzes in "relaxed mode" (no time pressure), then exam simulation. By the time I took my test, I had done enough quizzes. Test day felt natural, not scary.
3. Interactive learning: After exhausting days at work, the last thing I wanted was boring videos. The platform had animations, perfect pacing, and immediate mini-quizzes after each concept. If I got something wrong, I knew immediately, not a month later.
4. Application files: These were 60-minute sessions with just 4 questions - so 8 minutes of questions and 52 minutes of detailed explanations. That's the level of depth we're talking about.
Test day was... interesting. I started with Quant, and as I mentioned earlier, my loud-reading neighbor really impacted my performance there (Q84 instead of my usual Q90).
Despite the rough start, I managed to recover during Verbal and was feeling good about my performance. But then came DI - my final section. The pressure was real because I knew I'd done well in Verbal and didn't want to mess it up now.
Then disaster struck: the timer stopped working during DI. I could see remaining time but not which question I was on. It became a blind sprint against time. The first two DI questions really threw me off, and I had this "impending feeling of it's going so well, I don't want to determine my score here" that made me overly cautious.
But here's what saved me: I had a gladiator mindset. As I told myself before the exam, "I'm going to fight for every single question, every single second." No giving up, no getting completely rattled.
The extensive prep – the sectional mocks and cementing quizzes on e-GMAT - meant even when things went wrong, my autopilot was good enough. When I saw 685 on the screen, I was thrilled! Despite all the challenges, the preparation had paid off.
To everyone grinding through this journey while managing work and life - you've got this. Be strategic, be consistent, but also be kind to yourself. Sometimes the best study strategy is knowing when not to study.
Happy to answer any questions!
Best,
Venkatesh
