TTP Reviews

Sharing my experience with the GMAT in case it's helpful for anyone else's prep! 1st score: 695, 2nd and final attempt: 725.

I originally decided to start studying for the GMAT in late summer of 2024. In order to meet deadlines, I gave myself 2 months to study, with a 2 week buffer built-in in case of a retake. In retrospect, it probably would've been helpful to build more time, especially because 2 weeks to regroup and drill down on any concepts I was struggling with is pretty tight, but I just tried to be super disciplined in the 3 months leading up to my first test date in the hopes that any retention momentum would carry me across the finish line.

I'm historically solid with standardized tests, but it became quickly clear from my initial diagnostics (400 range) that I not only didn't remember/ever learn much of the quant concepts, but that I had an issue with timing. Originally, I had hoped to use textbooks, but they all just felt too static and weren't helping me fine-tune my skills or do it under real-time with progression.

I started lurking here and Reddit, and kept hearing about TTP as the gold-standard for GMAT prep. Finances were a big issue for me, but Scott and the entire TTP team were extremely generous in helping me navigate a subsidized plan that could work for me, especially under a tight timeline (I planned to only use the platform for 1 month, but later extended it to 2). Their customer service was ultimately the biggest variable on why I used them versus other adaptive services, because they were clearly invested in helping me succeed and in finding a solution that could work.

I'm so grateful, and while that was the reason I signed up in the first place, the reason I renewed for another month or stuck with the service is because of what a demonstrable difference it made on my mocks and confidence with the material. I did the whole master plan, start to finish, and it was night-and-day between trying to Frankenstein my learnings from other books or platforms versus having a one-stop place where I could measure my growth, return to concepts that were giving me trouble, and even learn some from scratch.

I basically did steady studying for all two months, with a rush near the end, and only took my first mock the week I had planned to take the official test based on the timeline I set for myself. I didn't have enough spare evenings free to take all six mocks like they recommend, so I only went with two, scored both in the low 700's, and figured that was enough to book myself into an online test.

Come first test day, I had a ton of glitches and trouble with my proctor. I was super nervous, and had started with verbal to get it out of the way, but had trouble focusing in the first section and carried that anxiety into the rest of the test. I did pretty solid in quant, but then completely ran out of time for DI. I can't complain, because I still scored a 695, but it wasn't as high as I had scored on the mocks, and didn't feel like a true reflection of my efforts the past few months.

I read somewhere that if you're debating retaking the test, you should ask yourself if it's 1) because you sincerely didn't know the material and that score is a fair measure of your performance or 2) you had test anxiety and you felt the things you struggled with weren't true to the rest of your prep/mock experience. I went with #2 and basically crammed the next two weeks to improve on the concepts I struggled with the first time. I must have done as many advanced practice q's in those 2 weeks as I had in the whole 2 months leading up combined. I took the rest of the mocks, which showed 700 as my range, and signed up for one final retake the day before I had to leave for a trip.

This time around, I took quant (my best subject) first, so I could carry more positive momentum into the rest of the test than the first time. Ironically, I struggled with 3 or 4 questions, which I had never done in my practice tests. Like I literally guessed, and was convinced at the 10-min break that I had wasted $300 on a retake just to get the same or lower score.

But then I was basically stress-free for the rest of the test, deciding at the very least, it was good practice, and 695 as my max is nothing to complain about. And low and behold, I stayed steady with timing, improved on both verbal and DI, and ended up with a 725. It goes to show that you can never tell how the algorithm is going to respond to you, and that timing and 100% completion is more important than 100% precision.

Like I said, while I'm usually a good test-taker, I mean it when I say I learned every concept in the test anew. I don't work with quant or data in my day job, and I'm probably a decade removed from the last math class I took. I had to learn every concept from scratch, and I saw my score improve by literal hundreds over my prep with TTP. It took a lot of discipline and skipping my social life to do it under that timeline, and while my score only went up by 30 points during the retake, it felt like a more honest reflection of all the hard work I put in, and ultimately that sensation was more important. I wanted to put my best foot forward, and TTP helped me do that, both in setting me up and rooting for me along the way. I am so grateful to the whole team, and would recommend anyone else in a similar boat using them.