Sheer hard work. 8 months prep. Mock 550 to GMAT 720

Question

GMATClub forum has enormously contributed towards my development, and I wish to share some insights from my GMAT journey. I will try and keep the debrief objective

Background

Indian, studied Biotechnology in London and worked with a NGO in development sector for 1 year. Currently in Bahrain after an unsuccessful online venture,  Craftila  in Bangalore.

Pre-GMAT Level
 
I started my GMAT prep in the month of September 2012. Prior to that, I had not studied mathematics for 7 years and being a non native speaker, my English was not commendable.

GMAT scoreline
 
I performed all CATs with IR and AWA sections

Manhattan 6 CATs
GMATPrep 2 CATs
Veritas prep 1 Free CAT

https://piyushj.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Piyush_jain_gmat_small.png

GMAT 1st Attempt : Bangalore, 5th May 2013 : 640 (Quant 49, Verbal 24, IR 6, AWA 5.5)

One month Break

GMATPrep 2 CATs (repeat)
Economist 1 CAT free
Platinum 1 CAT free
Stratus Prep 1 CAT free
Kaplan 1 CAT free
Manhattan 2 CATs (repeat)

GMAT 2nd Attempt:  Bahrain, 9th July 2013: 720 (Quant 49, Verbal 40)

Preparations material

Manhattan Strategy Guides 5th edition
Official Guide 13th edition
Official Guide 2nd edition Verbal and Quant
OG IR question bank
GMATPrep Question Bank 1
GMATPrep CAT questions, more than 500+ official questions (Courtesy  whiplash2411 )
 Magoosh Premium 
Powerscore CR Bible
10 LSAT papers
 AWA guide  by Chineseburned
Kaplan 800 (CR & RC only)
 GMAT club tests on free days  (Quant only)

Quantitative Reasoning section

Although I was able to score in the low 40s, in order to raise my score to high 40s or even 50, I concentrated on timing and accuracy rather than solving extremely hard questions. You have to understand that GMAT quant section is more about mental strength and consistency.

What worked for me

Solved 20 timed questions in each sitting.
Reviewed even right answers and tried to find multiple ways to solve the same question.
Identified common DS & PS traps.
Developed the mentality to pull out from a question.
Developed a few guessing techniques.
Maintained a book for error log, common formulas, number properties, etc. and reviewed the same each weekend.

Verbal Section

This section almost felt like moving a mountain, however I now believe that it is possible. I struggled in literally each type of verbal question. As adviced by a number of instructors, practice as much as possible from the official questions. Although official questions are limited, if studied carefully they bring forth enormous learnings.

Sentence Correction (SC)

Manhattan SC guide along with  RON's  explanations of the GMATPrep questions is the real deal. I believe that I must have read the Manhattan SC guide thrice before I got a good hang of the rules and was able to naturally apply them in the official questions.

What worked for me

Practiced Practiced Practiced and maintained an error log.
Scanning answer choices vertically.
Initially focussed on finding and understanding errors in all answer choices.
Later, did not get bogged down in small errors such as idioms, pronoun ambiguity or rare exceptions.

Critical Reasoning (CR)

Prior to reading the Powerscore CR bible, I did not have a strategy to attack CR questions. The Powerscore CR bible in my opinion is one of the best books as it completely alteredt my thinking when faced with a CR prompt and equipped me with a number of tools to attack such questions. Also, I believe there are insufficient 700+ official questions and hence  practiced relevant CR questions from LSAT papers , particularly assumptions questions.

What worked for me

Faithfully followed the Powerscore CR bible and trusted that with practice, I will be able to solve tough CR questions in under 2 minutes.
Went through wrong options to understand how they affect the argument.
Identified common CR traps and wrong answers such as opposite, out of scope, percent, etc.

Reading Comprehension (RC)

This section again demanded a lot of patience and handwork. I don't even remember the number of passages I must have read to get comfortable with alien and boring matter. A number of GMAT prep companies advice students to read reputed journals and magazines, however I focussed on getting as many RC articles under my belt from different sources such as OG, LSAT, mocks, etc.

What worked for me

I focussed heavily on the passage and less on note taking, mostly writing only initials of complex term or name, and years.
Initially in my prep took time to understand the passage.
Pre-thinking the purpose of the passage before answering the questions. Mostly I ask myself, why did the author bother to write this passage.
Learnt to move on in case of tough RC inference question.

Test Day

Attempt 1 (640 Q49 V24): Although I was confident about my preparations, I did experience anxiety on the test day. My AWA, IR and Quant went fine, but I experienced restlessness in the verbal section. It is difficult to replicate the test day emotions.

I normally write a small timing table for each quant and verbal section that serves as benchmark, however on the test day, I twice misread the verbal timing table and was completely off time. My body went in panic mode and all questions seemed difficult and never ending.

Lesson learnt: Stay Calm!

Attempt 2 (720 Q49 V40): This time I learnt by heart the timings table. I did 3 weeks of prep, mainly taking all the available free CATs in-order to build my mental strength. I also purchased the GMATPrep question pack 1 and performed timed mixed question set. Highlights from attempt 2;

Having gone though the emotions before, I was very calm during the entire exam
Got couple of very difficult word problem at the end of the quant section, which might have lowed by quant score.
Number properties dominated my quant section, faced only 1 question each from Geometry and Combinations.
Took all my breaks.
Did not get any bold face questions in my verbal section. PS note, do not judge your performance while performing the test.
CR was dominated with inference, assumptions and evaluate.
Being a biotech graduate helped because I got two science passages, including one about some biology species.
Parallelism helped me solve lot of SC questions, however I did face few one worded questions.

I will be writing my feedback on individual CATs and the prep sources mentioned above in a later post. I would like to thank all the instructors and students on the forums for selflessly contributing to the community.

I would love to answer any queries. Wish you all good luck for your prep.

--
 Piyush Jain

atultiwari27 · Answer

Congrats on a great score :-D

I have a question regarding GMAT prep question pack.. How good representative are these questions when compared to the real deal? I have my exam in 20 days..Should I go ahead and buy those??

saidyuti · Answer

Congrats!!
How was SC - I hear from forum members that it is much tougher than the OG and GMATPrep? Mostly meaning based??
Did you guess any of the questions - verbal?

fozzzy · Answer

How would you rate the passages on the actual GMAT? Were they long? Out of the mock tests you have taken veritas / manhattan etc which test was an accurate predictor and was close to the real exam?

jainpiyushjain · Answer

Apologies for the late reply, for some strange reasons I did not receive any mails from Gmatclub about posts reply. Will try and answer the queries in a single post.

I whole hearty believe that GMATprep questions pack 1 is a good representation of actual test day GMAT questions. All questions in the set are stimulating and bring forth enormous knowledge. For each question type, you have option to choose easy/medium/hard questions and you can perform timed set of varying difficulty to test your consistency and time management. Also, each questions comes with official answers and there is support for few on forums too. High recommend it. Good luck for your exam.

With regards to level of difficulty, I found the questions on the actual GMAT were at par with high level questions from OG & GMATPrep. And yes, meaning was a big component of my SC questions along with couple of idiom questions (single worded questions). I would highly recommend from personal prep that you place as much emphasis on meaning as you place on grammar. There is no harm in understanding meaning of wrong answer choices too, even if you get a answer correct. The idea is to train the mind.

I got 3 short but dense passages and 1 long passage. Both Veritas question bank and Manhattan CATs offer similar passages however, veritas RCs are slightly long. During your prep, there is no harm in training your mind to stay focussed when faced with long passages.

The short passages are dense and it is essential to understand the passages well to solve inference questions. I felt, Gmatprep question set 1 had very similar had RC questions compared to the actual GMAT RCs. Good luck for your prep.

vinstargazer · Answer

Hello Piyush,

I wanted to know about "timing table for each quant and verbal section that serves as benchmark"
What is this timing table? can you share your timing table. 
If its sometign that will clearly keep on track while racing towards end of Quant and Verbal sections, then it will help me a great deal . 
Thanks
Vin

	Manhattan Prep: $99 Bonus Score Higher on Your GMAT Exam. Guaranteed.
	Target Test Prep - Save up to $599 $400 Discount + $99 Bonus GMAT Club Tests
	e-GMAT: 60% Off on GMAT Focus Get to 735+ from any starting point
	Magoosh increases your score, guaranteed - 15% off ALL Magoosh GMAT plans with code GMATCLUB15 + Free GMAT Club Tests.
	Experts' Global - ~~$1720~~ $960 End-to-End GMAT Prep + App Support: 150+ Videos, 2000+ Questions, 15 FLTs +
	GMATWhiz - $299 ~~$499~~ Experience the course through a free trial.
	GMAT Club Tests - Free Included with every course purchase of $149+ View all deals

Sheer hard work. 8 months prep. Mock 550 to GMAT 720

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards