Events & Promotions
|
|
GMAT Club Daily Prep
Thank you for using the timer - this advanced tool can estimate your performance and suggest more practice questions. We have subscribed you to Daily Prep Questions via email.
Customized
for You
Track
Your Progress
Practice
Pays
Not interested in getting valuable practice questions and articles delivered to your email? No problem, unsubscribe here.
Apr 2308:00 PM PDT
-09:00 PM PDT
Video explanations + diagnosis of 10 weakest areas + 150+ short videos + study plan!
Apr 2301:30 AM EDT
-02:30 AM EDT
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.
Apr 2512:30 AM EDT
-01:30 AM EDT
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.
Apr 2610:00 AM EDT
-11:00 AM EDT
The Target Test Prep course represents a quantum leap forward in GMAT preparation, a radical reinterpretation of the way that students should study. Try before you buy with a 5-day, full-access trial of the course for FREE!
Apr 2711:00 AM EDT
-12:00 PM EDT
Prefer video-based learning? The Target Test Prep OnDemand course is a one-of-a-kind video masterclass featuring 400 hours of lecture-style teaching by Scott Woodbury-Stewart, founder of Target Test Prep and one of the most accomplished GMAT instructors
Apr 2808:00 AM PDT
-11:00 AM PDT
Whether you are just beginning your MBA journey or fine-tuning your path to a 700+ score, GMAT Day is designed to give you a competitive edge.
02 Jan 2026, 01:42
Kudos
Bookmarks
Hello everyone,
Despite currently struggling with the logistics of applications, I want to take the time and provide my debrief and experience with the GMAT. Maybe it is helpful to some people. If any of you have questions, I will be happy to answer as well.
1. My Background
2. How I started (1st Phase of Exercises)
3. Knowledge improvement
4. 2nd phase of exercises
5. Fluctuations in the sections
6. Exam
1. My Background
I was a student at a (for Germany ́s standards) top tier university, finished there in 2024 with what would be a GPA of 4.0 and honors. Did not really like the degree there, but I finished it nonetheless. After, I took a year to do internships, and realized that I had totally missed out on doing the GMAT. Most of my fellow students had done it in the summer after graduation, I meanwhile had not even started to be aware of it until December of that year. Given that the "big schools" have their deadlines around January, the applications for autumn 2025 were ruled out.
2. How I started
Well, I created an account at mba.com, bought myself the question pack, and just started work, no plan really, whenever I could. 1000 Questions fly by super quick though, so after some time I had done them all and they would start to repeat. I tried doing one of the free mocks, and it gave me a result of 505. Needless to say, I was disappointed, being used to high performance for all my life.
3. Knowledge improvement
Around summer last year I got frustrated. I noticed there was no point in continuing to just do questions for the sake of shutting down my guilty feelings. Doing questions had become a comfort, because I would not have to actually "study" in the sense of learning hard concepts or formulas. But I finally gave in, started learning small concepts (YT was helpful for this, especially the Quant guides from Aron Khumar (apologies if spelled incorrectly). Things like Euler ́s theorem and Fermat ́s theorem, once you get them down, essentially mean that one will nail every remainder questions. Concepts around mixtures taught by Khumar mean that weighted averages are no problem anymore, no matter the context. This was a really good phase in terms of outset.
4. 2nd phase of exercises
I started working heavily on GMATclub. First without the adaptive quiz, just filtering for questions, later with the adaptive quiz (super worth it btw). By today, I have done 6000 questions, and I think I once reset my question statistics on the forum, so it might be higher. But time was nagging me. After all, the january deadlines for many programs were approaching quickly, and I was very hesistant to register for the exam. So I bought the additional 4 mock exams, and tried to get more comfortable with the exam setting.
5. Mock exams and fluctuating section scores
The first mock in exam conditions (although I did cheekily add pauses because I ran out of time; DONT DO THIS) was a 675. I was, finally, happy with my quant performance, but noticed that during all these months of prep, I had spent the vast majority on quant, and way less on verbal and data insights, and let me tell you, this was showing. Data Insights was mediocre at best, and a failure at worst.
Curiously, the next mock I did, I changed around the order, and the situation flipped, although the 675 score stayed. Now data insights was fine, and quant was ****. I then retook a mock, and quant and data insights were decent, but verbal was ****. This was a pattern, although not a good one, because the "bad section" was not consistent. Nonetheless, data insights was most commonly the culprit (I tried other mocks as well), so I put some more emphasis on studying these questions.
After some time doing this, I retook the first mock. Now,I probably had done that mock many times by this point, but I did not want to "waste" the other mocks. However, I was happy, because a 735 was the result, and I definitely saw some other questions in the later stages due to the algorithm. This was an encouraging sign, but not enough confirmation for me to register for the exam. For that, I would need a score above 700, but in real conditions. The next day, I did the second mock, another one that I had done quit often, but not to a super high level, and I got an 805. Kind of cool to see, but yea.
Couple days later, beginning of December, I finally dared to take a proper mock exam without any aids and without me knowing the exam before, and there you go: 725. That was enough to finally convince me to book a slot for the 17th of December.
6. The exam
I felt hugely pressured, and nervous. Mainly because I only "had one shot" due to the deadlines around January and the 2-week retake period. Also, I took it at home, and the preparations for that, starting to write on the board and stuff, are just annoying and add more pressure. I did not tell virtually anyone I was taking the exam, for my peace of mind. The instructor was nice, I had to remove all the cables below my desk though, which was a bit annoying, because they were not connected to anything. I did Quant, Verbal, Data Insights, because the best scores I had gotten where with that one, and I had become fixed on that order. Quant felt horrible, I had two exceptions with like 6 minutes per question, which of course is super hard to catch up on.
Verbal had some mistakes, but I think the "shadow" adaptive algorithm meant that I was already getting harder questions. Data insights felt fine, although the end was stressful. I was not too happy during the exam, expecting maybe a 695. But the screen at the end showed up and : 745. I could not believe my eyes, and after the instructor confirmed we are done, I burst out laughing.
Crazy feeling. Currently I am stressed, because my professors are not giving me the letters of recommendation for MIT in time and the deadline is 5th January. So it may all be worthless, lol.
GMAT-Club-Forum-t7ostt5a.png [ 86.94 KiB | Viewed 767 times ]
Despite currently struggling with the logistics of applications, I want to take the time and provide my debrief and experience with the GMAT. Maybe it is helpful to some people. If any of you have questions, I will be happy to answer as well.
1. My Background
2. How I started (1st Phase of Exercises)
3. Knowledge improvement
4. 2nd phase of exercises
5. Fluctuations in the sections
6. Exam
1. My Background
I was a student at a (for Germany ́s standards) top tier university, finished there in 2024 with what would be a GPA of 4.0 and honors. Did not really like the degree there, but I finished it nonetheless. After, I took a year to do internships, and realized that I had totally missed out on doing the GMAT. Most of my fellow students had done it in the summer after graduation, I meanwhile had not even started to be aware of it until December of that year. Given that the "big schools" have their deadlines around January, the applications for autumn 2025 were ruled out.
2. How I started
Well, I created an account at mba.com, bought myself the question pack, and just started work, no plan really, whenever I could. 1000 Questions fly by super quick though, so after some time I had done them all and they would start to repeat. I tried doing one of the free mocks, and it gave me a result of 505. Needless to say, I was disappointed, being used to high performance for all my life.
3. Knowledge improvement
Around summer last year I got frustrated. I noticed there was no point in continuing to just do questions for the sake of shutting down my guilty feelings. Doing questions had become a comfort, because I would not have to actually "study" in the sense of learning hard concepts or formulas. But I finally gave in, started learning small concepts (YT was helpful for this, especially the Quant guides from Aron Khumar (apologies if spelled incorrectly). Things like Euler ́s theorem and Fermat ́s theorem, once you get them down, essentially mean that one will nail every remainder questions. Concepts around mixtures taught by Khumar mean that weighted averages are no problem anymore, no matter the context. This was a really good phase in terms of outset.
4. 2nd phase of exercises
I started working heavily on GMATclub. First without the adaptive quiz, just filtering for questions, later with the adaptive quiz (super worth it btw). By today, I have done 6000 questions, and I think I once reset my question statistics on the forum, so it might be higher. But time was nagging me. After all, the january deadlines for many programs were approaching quickly, and I was very hesistant to register for the exam. So I bought the additional 4 mock exams, and tried to get more comfortable with the exam setting.
5. Mock exams and fluctuating section scores
The first mock in exam conditions (although I did cheekily add pauses because I ran out of time; DONT DO THIS) was a 675. I was, finally, happy with my quant performance, but noticed that during all these months of prep, I had spent the vast majority on quant, and way less on verbal and data insights, and let me tell you, this was showing. Data Insights was mediocre at best, and a failure at worst.
Curiously, the next mock I did, I changed around the order, and the situation flipped, although the 675 score stayed. Now data insights was fine, and quant was ****. I then retook a mock, and quant and data insights were decent, but verbal was ****. This was a pattern, although not a good one, because the "bad section" was not consistent. Nonetheless, data insights was most commonly the culprit (I tried other mocks as well), so I put some more emphasis on studying these questions.
After some time doing this, I retook the first mock. Now,I probably had done that mock many times by this point, but I did not want to "waste" the other mocks. However, I was happy, because a 735 was the result, and I definitely saw some other questions in the later stages due to the algorithm. This was an encouraging sign, but not enough confirmation for me to register for the exam. For that, I would need a score above 700, but in real conditions. The next day, I did the second mock, another one that I had done quit often, but not to a super high level, and I got an 805. Kind of cool to see, but yea.
Couple days later, beginning of December, I finally dared to take a proper mock exam without any aids and without me knowing the exam before, and there you go: 725. That was enough to finally convince me to book a slot for the 17th of December.
6. The exam
I felt hugely pressured, and nervous. Mainly because I only "had one shot" due to the deadlines around January and the 2-week retake period. Also, I took it at home, and the preparations for that, starting to write on the board and stuff, are just annoying and add more pressure. I did not tell virtually anyone I was taking the exam, for my peace of mind. The instructor was nice, I had to remove all the cables below my desk though, which was a bit annoying, because they were not connected to anything. I did Quant, Verbal, Data Insights, because the best scores I had gotten where with that one, and I had become fixed on that order. Quant felt horrible, I had two exceptions with like 6 minutes per question, which of course is super hard to catch up on.
Verbal had some mistakes, but I think the "shadow" adaptive algorithm meant that I was already getting harder questions. Data insights felt fine, although the end was stressful. I was not too happy during the exam, expecting maybe a 695. But the screen at the end showed up and : 745. I could not believe my eyes, and after the instructor confirmed we are done, I burst out laughing.
Crazy feeling. Currently I am stressed, because my professors are not giving me the letters of recommendation for MIT in time and the deadline is 5th January. So it may all be worthless, lol.
Attachment:
GMAT-Club-Forum-t7ostt5a.png [ 86.94 KiB | Viewed 767 times ]
mattisweb
Joined: 30 Jul 2024
Last visit: 06 Feb 2026
Posts: 33
Own Kudos:
Given Kudos: 14
Location: Germany
Concentration: General Management, Operations
Schools: Sloan (MIT) (D)
GMAT Focus 1: 745 Q88 V87 DI86 
GPA: 4.0
WE:Supply Chain Management (Student)
02 Jan 2026, 06:13
Kudos
Bookmarks
Thanks.
Quant: 6th and 8th question missed.
Verbal: 11,14,16,21,23
Data: 7,9, 19
Quant: 6th and 8th question missed.
Verbal: 11,14,16,21,23
Data: 7,9, 19
Omnoui
