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So first off, I'm usually not cool about sharing scores. I'm a tad superstitious at times and don't want to invite unwanted attention.
However, I did want to post my experience/journey/story on the GMAT purely because it may offer some helpful advice to others, be it in terms of what's helpful or, more importantly, what not to do.
Part I) New Beginnings
Pursuing an MBA has always been a personal goal of mine, so whether or not it's required for my job is immaterial; I'm simply not willing to give up on my dreams.
The story begins on December 31st, 2010. I'm celebrating New Years with some close friends and we're hosting a big party at our hotel suite. Before the crowd arrives, a couple of us got together to make our resolutions. A cheesy tradition? Sure, but also one that surprisingly works for me. Up until this point, I had always talked about pursuing my MBA, but hadn't taken the necessary action of, you know, starting to study for the GMAT or anything. Hence, this became my resolution -- to essentially get the ball rolling on the business school process.
And then basically nothing for a while.
Sometime in mid-January, I ordered two GMAT books -- the Kaplan Premier and the Official Guide, two books with which I believe 99% of the people here must be familiar. I read a little into the format of the test (e.g. what "data sufficiency" is, etc), then took a diagnostic GMAT with Kaplan. It was a non-CAT practise test, whatever that's worth.
Score: 630
Part II: And The Studying Begins Now!
It's roughly mid-February at this point and I've scheduled the exam for the second week of May on Saturday. I've always believed in aiming high in life, so I set my GMAT goal at 750, which meant I needed to add 120 points to my score within three months. And it was all going to be self-study.
So here's a little background on me: I'm a bit lazy and I love to go out, two qualities that really don't lend themselves well to studying. I essentially went through college (undergrad: UC Berkeley) trying to get away with as little studying as possible. I received a lot of advice from people who did well on the GMAT telling me to devote significant time to studying and to essentially stop going out drinking on weekends. Three months without this should be easy enough, right?
Well, it turns out that even if you want to study, life still continues on around you. Your close friends still have birthdays, March Madness still goes on, India still wins the World Cup (WOO!), etc. So it's a lot more difficult than it sounds to not go out. So I essentially tried to compromise -- cut down on going out to once a weekend.
Lesson Number One: Focus on studying, but don't give up your life entirely for the GMAT -- it will only make you more stressed and more tense.
So when I was studying, I was studying at the public library. Having not been to a library in several years, I was in for a shock: they're loud and only open for a few hours at a time (literally four hours on Sundays). Make the most of that time.
I found the Kaplan Premier to be really helpful in exploring the exam fully. Their strategies really worked for me and the math refresher was very useful. It was also really easy to bomb through without wasting too much time. Also, their practice CATs were great, but more on that later.
Weekend studying only got me so far, however, so I had to add some weeknight studying to the routine. Even if just an hour, it was worth a library trip. This way, I wasn't spending several days with no GMAT prep.
Lesson Number Two: Make GMAT studying a part of your routine. One hour a day, five days a week is more valuable than five hours a day, once a week.
As it got to late March/early April, I added some more studying material. I bought the GMAT Club app for the iPad. It's tremendously useful app that has math lessons, as well as companions for the official guide to log your answers (very helpful when creating an error log, but more on that later). Most significantly, though, it has a ton of tough practice questions. And if you're capable of multi-tasking, you can do practice problems while lounging around and watching a movie or a sports game. In some odd way, this helped me to maintain focus even when distracted.
I also used the Kaplan 800 book. The questions on the OG were getting too easy for me (pro tip: this is because they're actually ordered by difficulty, a fact I did not discover until three weeks before the exam). I've read the reviews around here and the general consensus seems to be pretty negative. I, however, thought it was nice to have some difficult practise questions, especially on the reading comp and critical reasoning sections.
Lesson Number Three: Working on easy questions builds your confidence. Working on difficult questions builds your knowledge. Strike a balance.
Part III: Crunch Time
So it's less than a month until the exam, meaning it's clearly time to step up the studying. Try as I may, though, I'm still not capable of stopping myself from going out on weekends, so I have to amp up my studying strategies. One solution that worked for me was to come into the office on a Saturday and just study in an empty conference room.
It's also time to start taking the practice CATs. Kaplan came with four CATs and there are a bunch of free ones out there (Knewton, Princeton Review, etc). There are also the two GMATPrep ones, which are both very helpful (in that they're real questions) and useless (in that they don't have explanations). Dealing with the time limits really brought new struggles into the equation. Now it's not just solving problems or answering questions -- it's the time. More specifically, it's the twin problems of sitting for 2.5 hours straight (3.5 with the AWA) and the time limits for each section.
This was a game changer for me. I was just getting comfortable with the quant section and now I discover that I'm running out of time because I get bogged down on one or two problems and end up rushing at the end of the exam to answer all questions before time is up.
Lesson Number Four: Start working on your timing early on. A certain question may be possible to solve in six minutes, but it may not be worth the time suck. Learn when to make an educated guess and move on.
Scores were all over the board. My first Kaplan CAT was a 750, but the second one was a 660. Scores on the other CATs varied from 710 to 740.
Oh, also one more tip I forgot. Manhattan sells a pad and marker set on Amazon for $12 that's very similar to the actual pad and market on the real test. There is a pretty significant difference between pencil and paper and this. Pay the money! It's worth it!
It's also around this point that I ditched the iPod when taking practice tests. I used to constantly listen to classical music when studying in the library, but I realized that I was just getting used to having background noise that wouldn't be there on the real thing. I don't know how much difference this makes.
Part IV: One Week
One week until the exam, scheduled for Saturday the 14th. What the hell do I do? I ditched the practice questions and focused almost exclusively on taking CATs. Basically, every day I would do a CAT and then write down what I got wrong in my notebook, along with why I got it wrong (I ended up writing "READ THE QUESTION, IDIOT" a lot). A week prior, I also discovered the GMAT Club Flashcards set, which was very helpful in creating a half page cheat sheet for me to look at the morning of the exam.
CAT scores at this point are improving, but still too volatile. GMAT Prep was 750 and 750, Veritas CAT was 730, Kaplan CATs were 800 (must have been broken) and 740.
Exam is schedule for a Saturday, so I call in sick (with my boss' permission) on Friday and stay home. Thursday night, I take a practice test and watch some tv and go to bed early.
Friday morning, wake up, laze around a little bit, then do some practice problems (no CAT) at the library for a couple hours. Work out a little bit at the gym, then watch a movie and bed. I don't know if I'd recommend this for everyone, but I took some melatonin at night so that I could get a good night's rest. I ended up getting nine hours of sleep the night before a huge exam.
Lesson Number Five: Spend the day before keeping your mind fresh, but relax and don't stress yourself out. This isn't college; you can't cram the night before
Saturday morning, visited the temple before going to the exam (I'm a very religious person) and got to the prep centre an hour early. They let me start early, so I quickly reviewed my cheat sheet and started right away.
I was too nervous to eat during breaks, but I made sure to visit the restroom on every single break and splash water on my face to stay alert. Math section I, surprise, ran low on time and finished with twenty seconds left (somehow, I managed to get the last problem right in ten seconds... it was like a buzzer beater for exams). Some of the questions felt way too easy, so I started to worry in the back of my mind that I had been getting them wrong. Verbal went by with nary a hitch.
Lesson Number Six: Don't overanalyze the questions. You've been studying so much that some questions just feel so intuitive as to appear deceptively easy.
Got my score, was a little surprised, but VERY happy. Naturally went out and partied since I had not gone out drinking in an entire three weeks. Celebrated it big and enjoyed the rush.
Part V: The Future
Where do things go from here? Well, I'm going to take a short breather, then start hitting the apps when they come out. As of right now, my application list will be HBS, Wharton, stanfurd, Haas (Cal), UCLA, and Chicago. This may change, but I plan on continuing to aim high.
I plan on contributing for some GMAT stuff and posting in the MBA section regularly.
Now, since I've been rambling on this entire post for no reason... here are some things that may be worthwhile doing differently:
1) Make an error log. Seriously, I have no idea why I never did this. The closest thing I did was mark which questions I got right and wrong on the CATs and the OG
2) Don't dilly-dally when it comes to studying. There were many, many times I only got an hour at the library on a weekday because I wasted time watching tv when I got home instead of eating a snack and going directly to the library.
3) Probably go out a little less. I know I've pressed on the importance of balance, but I may not have taken the studying seriously enough. It's not just the time out, it's the time spent recovering the next day.
4) Seriously, realise that the questions in the OG are in order of difficulty. I didn't do any hard questions until the day before the exam. Don't be me.
I'm sure more ideas will come to me and I'll edit this post, but that's it for now. Let me know your thoughts!
However, I did want to post my experience/journey/story on the GMAT purely because it may offer some helpful advice to others, be it in terms of what's helpful or, more importantly, what not to do.
Part I) New Beginnings
Pursuing an MBA has always been a personal goal of mine, so whether or not it's required for my job is immaterial; I'm simply not willing to give up on my dreams.
The story begins on December 31st, 2010. I'm celebrating New Years with some close friends and we're hosting a big party at our hotel suite. Before the crowd arrives, a couple of us got together to make our resolutions. A cheesy tradition? Sure, but also one that surprisingly works for me. Up until this point, I had always talked about pursuing my MBA, but hadn't taken the necessary action of, you know, starting to study for the GMAT or anything. Hence, this became my resolution -- to essentially get the ball rolling on the business school process.
And then basically nothing for a while.
Sometime in mid-January, I ordered two GMAT books -- the Kaplan Premier and the Official Guide, two books with which I believe 99% of the people here must be familiar. I read a little into the format of the test (e.g. what "data sufficiency" is, etc), then took a diagnostic GMAT with Kaplan. It was a non-CAT practise test, whatever that's worth.
Score: 630
Part II: And The Studying Begins Now!
It's roughly mid-February at this point and I've scheduled the exam for the second week of May on Saturday. I've always believed in aiming high in life, so I set my GMAT goal at 750, which meant I needed to add 120 points to my score within three months. And it was all going to be self-study.
So here's a little background on me: I'm a bit lazy and I love to go out, two qualities that really don't lend themselves well to studying. I essentially went through college (undergrad: UC Berkeley) trying to get away with as little studying as possible. I received a lot of advice from people who did well on the GMAT telling me to devote significant time to studying and to essentially stop going out drinking on weekends. Three months without this should be easy enough, right?
Well, it turns out that even if you want to study, life still continues on around you. Your close friends still have birthdays, March Madness still goes on, India still wins the World Cup (WOO!), etc. So it's a lot more difficult than it sounds to not go out. So I essentially tried to compromise -- cut down on going out to once a weekend.
Lesson Number One: Focus on studying, but don't give up your life entirely for the GMAT -- it will only make you more stressed and more tense.
So when I was studying, I was studying at the public library. Having not been to a library in several years, I was in for a shock: they're loud and only open for a few hours at a time (literally four hours on Sundays). Make the most of that time.
I found the Kaplan Premier to be really helpful in exploring the exam fully. Their strategies really worked for me and the math refresher was very useful. It was also really easy to bomb through without wasting too much time. Also, their practice CATs were great, but more on that later.
Weekend studying only got me so far, however, so I had to add some weeknight studying to the routine. Even if just an hour, it was worth a library trip. This way, I wasn't spending several days with no GMAT prep.
Lesson Number Two: Make GMAT studying a part of your routine. One hour a day, five days a week is more valuable than five hours a day, once a week.
As it got to late March/early April, I added some more studying material. I bought the GMAT Club app for the iPad. It's tremendously useful app that has math lessons, as well as companions for the official guide to log your answers (very helpful when creating an error log, but more on that later). Most significantly, though, it has a ton of tough practice questions. And if you're capable of multi-tasking, you can do practice problems while lounging around and watching a movie or a sports game. In some odd way, this helped me to maintain focus even when distracted.
I also used the Kaplan 800 book. The questions on the OG were getting too easy for me (pro tip: this is because they're actually ordered by difficulty, a fact I did not discover until three weeks before the exam). I've read the reviews around here and the general consensus seems to be pretty negative. I, however, thought it was nice to have some difficult practise questions, especially on the reading comp and critical reasoning sections.
Lesson Number Three: Working on easy questions builds your confidence. Working on difficult questions builds your knowledge. Strike a balance.
Part III: Crunch Time
So it's less than a month until the exam, meaning it's clearly time to step up the studying. Try as I may, though, I'm still not capable of stopping myself from going out on weekends, so I have to amp up my studying strategies. One solution that worked for me was to come into the office on a Saturday and just study in an empty conference room.
It's also time to start taking the practice CATs. Kaplan came with four CATs and there are a bunch of free ones out there (Knewton, Princeton Review, etc). There are also the two GMATPrep ones, which are both very helpful (in that they're real questions) and useless (in that they don't have explanations). Dealing with the time limits really brought new struggles into the equation. Now it's not just solving problems or answering questions -- it's the time. More specifically, it's the twin problems of sitting for 2.5 hours straight (3.5 with the AWA) and the time limits for each section.
This was a game changer for me. I was just getting comfortable with the quant section and now I discover that I'm running out of time because I get bogged down on one or two problems and end up rushing at the end of the exam to answer all questions before time is up.
Lesson Number Four: Start working on your timing early on. A certain question may be possible to solve in six minutes, but it may not be worth the time suck. Learn when to make an educated guess and move on.
Scores were all over the board. My first Kaplan CAT was a 750, but the second one was a 660. Scores on the other CATs varied from 710 to 740.
Oh, also one more tip I forgot. Manhattan sells a pad and marker set on Amazon for $12 that's very similar to the actual pad and market on the real test. There is a pretty significant difference between pencil and paper and this. Pay the money! It's worth it!
It's also around this point that I ditched the iPod when taking practice tests. I used to constantly listen to classical music when studying in the library, but I realized that I was just getting used to having background noise that wouldn't be there on the real thing. I don't know how much difference this makes.
Part IV: One Week
One week until the exam, scheduled for Saturday the 14th. What the hell do I do? I ditched the practice questions and focused almost exclusively on taking CATs. Basically, every day I would do a CAT and then write down what I got wrong in my notebook, along with why I got it wrong (I ended up writing "READ THE QUESTION, IDIOT" a lot). A week prior, I also discovered the GMAT Club Flashcards set, which was very helpful in creating a half page cheat sheet for me to look at the morning of the exam.
CAT scores at this point are improving, but still too volatile. GMAT Prep was 750 and 750, Veritas CAT was 730, Kaplan CATs were 800 (must have been broken) and 740.
Exam is schedule for a Saturday, so I call in sick (with my boss' permission) on Friday and stay home. Thursday night, I take a practice test and watch some tv and go to bed early.
Friday morning, wake up, laze around a little bit, then do some practice problems (no CAT) at the library for a couple hours. Work out a little bit at the gym, then watch a movie and bed. I don't know if I'd recommend this for everyone, but I took some melatonin at night so that I could get a good night's rest. I ended up getting nine hours of sleep the night before a huge exam.
Lesson Number Five: Spend the day before keeping your mind fresh, but relax and don't stress yourself out. This isn't college; you can't cram the night before
Saturday morning, visited the temple before going to the exam (I'm a very religious person) and got to the prep centre an hour early. They let me start early, so I quickly reviewed my cheat sheet and started right away.
I was too nervous to eat during breaks, but I made sure to visit the restroom on every single break and splash water on my face to stay alert. Math section I, surprise, ran low on time and finished with twenty seconds left (somehow, I managed to get the last problem right in ten seconds... it was like a buzzer beater for exams). Some of the questions felt way too easy, so I started to worry in the back of my mind that I had been getting them wrong. Verbal went by with nary a hitch.
Lesson Number Six: Don't overanalyze the questions. You've been studying so much that some questions just feel so intuitive as to appear deceptively easy.
Got my score, was a little surprised, but VERY happy. Naturally went out and partied since I had not gone out drinking in an entire three weeks. Celebrated it big and enjoyed the rush.
Part V: The Future
Where do things go from here? Well, I'm going to take a short breather, then start hitting the apps when they come out. As of right now, my application list will be HBS, Wharton, stanfurd, Haas (Cal), UCLA, and Chicago. This may change, but I plan on continuing to aim high.
I plan on contributing for some GMAT stuff and posting in the MBA section regularly.
Now, since I've been rambling on this entire post for no reason... here are some things that may be worthwhile doing differently:
1) Make an error log. Seriously, I have no idea why I never did this. The closest thing I did was mark which questions I got right and wrong on the CATs and the OG
2) Don't dilly-dally when it comes to studying. There were many, many times I only got an hour at the library on a weekday because I wasted time watching tv when I got home instead of eating a snack and going directly to the library.
3) Probably go out a little less. I know I've pressed on the importance of balance, but I may not have taken the studying seriously enough. It's not just the time out, it's the time spent recovering the next day.
4) Seriously, realise that the questions in the OG are in order of difficulty. I didn't do any hard questions until the day before the exam. Don't be me.
I'm sure more ideas will come to me and I'll edit this post, but that's it for now. Let me know your thoughts!
Posts: 226
Many Congratulations to you! I love the ideas and your lessons 
.
Will you also give some more insight on your verbal practice strategies?
.Will you also give some more insight on your verbal practice strategies?
I saw whatever works!!!! Welcome to the 99th percentile club!
_________________
_________________
agdimple333
Thank you!
Verbal was never really too much of a struggle. I attribute that mainly to my job -- I'm an analyst at a large bank. In my daily routine, I read earnings reports, press releases, and analyst recommendations.
Now that I think about it, I'll tell you what helped a lot: reading The Economist on a daily basis. Their writing is absolutely top-notch. Some of their articles are insanely long and full of terms and names that are brand new (for instance, an in-depth report on a Sub-Saharan African country). They make a lot of assertions in their writing. You can see how this helps prepare for the GMAT. I learn sentence structure and good writing from reading the articles. The long ones tend to help with reading comprehension. Their arguments help preare for critical reasoning.
As a side bonus, whenever I read anything online, be it an editorial in the newspaper or a sports article, I usually try to identify the flaws, be it in data analysis or whatnot. Are they assuming something not in the article? Are they confusing correlation with causation? What would be helpful to know?
Anyway, I hope that helps!
Posts: 226
thank you! All the best for your applications.
chandu4gmat
Joined: 13 Nov 2009
Last visit: 29 Sep 2025
Posts: 66
Location: India
Concentration: Finance, Marketing
GPA: 4
WE:General Management (Insurance)
Posts: 66
Many congratulations and all the best for your applications!
Hai , This is Sunil,
Pl do share , wheather you started self preparation or joined any class course ??
I am bit confused about self study and class study.
Thnx
Sunil
Pl do share , wheather you started self preparation or joined any class course ??
I am bit confused about self study and class study.
Thnx
Sunil
you freaking studied when India was winning the World Cup. How could you concentrate. I salute you for that. I would never be able to do that !!! but yeah India wonnn wohoo and we beat Pak in the semi finals wohoooo. great score. good luck, i am going to be starting my prep. hoping to give it in the Fall
vivesomnium
Joined: 09 Feb 2011
Last visit: 18 Mar 2018
Posts: 174
Concentration: General Management, Social Entrepreneurship
Schools: HBS '14 (A)
GMAT 1: 770 Q50 V47
Congrtulations
Thank you everyone for the congratulations. I hope on some level, this guide is helpful to people, be it in terms of the lessons or simply what not to do.
I did not take any classes; it was all self-directed. That's more a sign of my personality, though, as I never take classes for any standardised test, be it the SATs, SAT IIs, ACTs, or the Series exams (I am Series 7 and 66 certified). I work much better on self-study, in spite of being lazy and disorganised. I just don't like people telling me what to do.
msunil77
Hi Sunil,
I did not take any classes; it was all self-directed. That's more a sign of my personality, though, as I never take classes for any standardised test, be it the SATs, SAT IIs, ACTs, or the Series exams (I am Series 7 and 66 certified). I work much better on self-study, in spite of being lazy and disorganised. I just don't like people telling me what to do.
rpsingh
I'm pretty sure I studied an aggregate of maybe one hour that weekend. I barely slept and wore out all my blue clothes.
TX1836
Joined: 16 Dec 2010
Last visit: 10 Jan 2012
Posts: 1
Schools: McCombs '14 Booth '14
GMAT 1: 710 Q47 V41
GMAT 2: 760 Q50 V44
Great job. Congrats on the score. I know when I got mine back last weekend, I woke up the next day and was excited that I wouldn't have to open the MGMAT books ever again.
I'm strongly looking forward to lending out my books to those taking the GMAT soon. It means those damn books will occupy less space in my room!
congrats!! good that you took your new year resolution very seriously, unlike many 
onorenhjin
Joined: 22 Jun 2010
Last visit: 17 Jul 2017
Posts: 27
Status:Hardrocker
Concentration: Entrepreneurship, General Management
GPA: 3.73
WE:Engineering (Energy)
Posts: 27
Congratz and thanks for the advice.
Got my official scores in the mail, which means the AWA came in as well. 6 on that. In all honesty, I don't really have any tips as to how to prepare for this -- I spent most of my time on the test portion and only practised writing a couple times. That said, I do write a lot at work, which is why I didn't worry too much about this section.
seku
Thanks. Something about having close friends around for the New Years resolution makes me take it that much more seriously.
thanks for your tips!
themagus
Joined: 30 Apr 2011
Last visit: 27 Apr 2014
Posts: 96
Status:Married
Affiliations: MENSA India
Location: India
Concentration: Marketing, International Business
Schools: McDonough '16 (WL) NUS '16 (M)
GMAT 1: 630 Q42 V35
GMAT 2: 640 Q44 V32
GMAT 3: 660 Q47 V34
GMAT 4: 680 Q46 V37
GPA: 3.6
WE:Sales (Computer Software)
Great to know about your success!
It's really inspirational.
Good luck with the application process!
It's really inspirational.
Good luck with the application process!
Dude! I just scored a 760 2 days ago and I can relate to what you said SO MUCH....especially the part about going out and being lazy. Cheers!
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