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16 Aug 2015, 10:01
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Final Score: 760 (Q51, V41, A6.0, IR8)
I have used Gmatclub forums immensely during the last 4-5 months of my prep, be it the awesome debriefs or the excellent resources and exam analysis shared by the members. Having cleared the GMAT hurdle, I would like to share my 2 cents on how one should tackle the GMAT.
Background: I’m a 23-year old Indian male, and have been working in Singapore since the last couple of years. I graduated from one of the IITs, and moved to Singapore right after my graduation. I appeared for my GMAT last week, and managed to get a score I was aiming for. Please note that this was my 2nd attempt at the GMAT. I appeared for the first time around July but didn’t score high enough.
My prep timeline/overview: Started GMAT preparation in April. I estimated that I would need around 3 months for the prep. So I booked an appointment in July.
Prepped for around 3 months before my first attempt in July 1st week.
For Verbal, I purchased the e-Gmat verbal online course to improve my Verbal skills and followed the OG and Verbal review books religiously. I made sure to revise regularly all my mistakes in the questions in OG Verbal sections.
I also solved ~100 qns each from the Comprehensive SC, Comprehensive CR and Comprehensive RC guides shared on Gmatclub. They contain all the past Gmatprep questions, so are a great resource if you’re out of official questions.
For Quant, I relied mostly on the Gmatclub Math tests and also the other mock tests. Tracked my (silly) mistakes and revised them to smoothen them out. Solved all quant questions in the OG.
For AWA, I followed the guidelines posted by user chineseburned on Gmatclub. The guide by chineseburned is gold standard. I made sure to not skip the AWA section during most of my practice mocks: that really helped in the practice. Following the template and owing to my typing speed, I was able to easily clock more than 500 words on my essays.
For IR, I relied only on the mocks and made sure that I didn’t skip the IR section during my practice mocks.
I focused on verbal concepts for 2 months, following e-Gmat and OG. Practiced questions under timed conditions. I was pretty bad when it came to doing a question under 2 minutes initially. However, with practice things got better. Towards the end, I was able to bring it down to around 1.5 mins for SC, and 2 mins for CR & RC questions.
Mock tests: I purchased the Manhattan tests. The quant section is way difficult than that expected on the real GMAT. It is good for building concepts but not a great representative of the type of questions asked on the real test. Verbal sections are at par with the real GMAT.
I gave ~20 mocks in total. I appeared for them as if I was giving the real exam. Initially, it was extremely difficult and frustrating to focus for 4 hours straight. So, I forced myself to adapt by appearing for mocks every week 1.5 months before my test day. Eventually, they helped in building the stamina and discipline needed to crack the exam. I believe stamina and focus are the key factors affecting your exam performance. So, it’s of utmost importance to build them up by getting as much practice as possible under strict time constraints.
That being said, amongst all the mocks I gave, Gmatprep resembled actual exam the most. Make sure to use them only after you’ve optimized your timing and accuracy and have given a few other mocks. Gmatprep scores most accurately represent your real exam scores.
MGMAT1 600 (Q45, V28)
MGMAT2 680 (Q46, V37)
MGMAT3 710 (Q48, V38)
MGMAT4 680 (Q47, V35)
MGMAT5 680 (Q48, V35)
MGMAT6 780 (Q51, V45)
GMATPrep1 720 (Q50, V37)
GMATPrep2 730 (Q50, V38)
GMATPrep3 770 (Q51, V44)
GMATPrep4 760 (Q51, V42)
VeritasPrep 650 (Q47, V32)
Economist Gmat 680 (Q50, V34)
GmatPill Test1: 730 (Q51, V39)
GmatPill Test2: 740 (Q50, V41)
Gmatclub Math Tests: Gave around 10 tests and managed Q50 on most of them.
Key takeaways:
Building stamina and speed: Gmat is all about time management and ability to perform under pressure and is very well designed to test both of these skills. I practiced individual questions and gave mini tests for around 2 months before taking practice mocks.
To increase speed your first strategy should be to optimize your performance on individual questions. For example, on the quant section, try to do each question under 2 mins. I found DS to be trickier that PS, so my average DS time was over 2 mins and my average PS time was under 2 mins.
Once you've mastered the individual questions, start giving small tests of each section (10-15 qns per test) to see if you're able to extend your timing strategy to a set of questions. If you're able to get more than 80% of the qns right consistently, it's time to move on to the 4 hour mocks!
Make sure that you take the full mocks and don’t skip the essays or IR and on the same time slot of the day as if it were your real exam. This is the only way how I leveled up my stamina and focus to needed for the 4-hours straight. Refine your strategy with every mock, figure out what went wrong and areas where you can improve. For me the verbal section was bottlenecking my score, so I spent 80% of my time on improving the tactics to approach verbal qns.
For those who plan to re-take: I was extremely disappointed when I wasn’t able to do well in the first time. So I decided to retake. In my first take, I scored the maximum on IR. AWA and quant sections. However I thoroughly screwed up the Verbal section and it killed my overall score. I panicked during the verbal section after spending around 4 mins on a CR. It was purely due to anxiety, and I skipped 1 RC passage and didn’t do so well on the remaining questions.
Please note that as per the rules by GMAC, there should be at least 1 month of exam gap between your last and your next exam. So I had no choice to wait for at least a month before the retake.
A "Never give-up attitude" is essential. It felt bad when I didn’t do well on my first take, even after studying hard for 3 months straight. I knew I had got my fundamentals right because I was consistently scoring 700+ on the mock tests. So, it hurt when I scored low on the first take. But I booked an appointment again 40 days later in Aug.
During the 40 day gap, I chilled out for a few days and got back to my prep. I gave a couple of mocks 1 week before the test, just to get in the test-taking mode. I mostly revised the verbal concepts and re-did the questions I had solved before. I solved the OG sentence correction section again. And revised all the questions that I had gotten wrong in other sections. This time I focused deeply on the concepts, as to why a particular option is right and why the other 4 are wrong. Studied for a couple of hours everyday for the last 3 weeks before the re-take.
I have used Gmatclub forums immensely during the last 4-5 months of my prep, be it the awesome debriefs or the excellent resources and exam analysis shared by the members. Having cleared the GMAT hurdle, I would like to share my 2 cents on how one should tackle the GMAT.
Background: I’m a 23-year old Indian male, and have been working in Singapore since the last couple of years. I graduated from one of the IITs, and moved to Singapore right after my graduation. I appeared for my GMAT last week, and managed to get a score I was aiming for. Please note that this was my 2nd attempt at the GMAT. I appeared for the first time around July but didn’t score high enough.
My prep timeline/overview: Started GMAT preparation in April. I estimated that I would need around 3 months for the prep. So I booked an appointment in July.
Prepped for around 3 months before my first attempt in July 1st week.
For Verbal, I purchased the e-Gmat verbal online course to improve my Verbal skills and followed the OG and Verbal review books religiously. I made sure to revise regularly all my mistakes in the questions in OG Verbal sections.
I also solved ~100 qns each from the Comprehensive SC, Comprehensive CR and Comprehensive RC guides shared on Gmatclub. They contain all the past Gmatprep questions, so are a great resource if you’re out of official questions.
For Quant, I relied mostly on the Gmatclub Math tests and also the other mock tests. Tracked my (silly) mistakes and revised them to smoothen them out. Solved all quant questions in the OG.
For AWA, I followed the guidelines posted by user chineseburned on Gmatclub. The guide by chineseburned is gold standard. I made sure to not skip the AWA section during most of my practice mocks: that really helped in the practice. Following the template and owing to my typing speed, I was able to easily clock more than 500 words on my essays.
For IR, I relied only on the mocks and made sure that I didn’t skip the IR section during my practice mocks.
I focused on verbal concepts for 2 months, following e-Gmat and OG. Practiced questions under timed conditions. I was pretty bad when it came to doing a question under 2 minutes initially. However, with practice things got better. Towards the end, I was able to bring it down to around 1.5 mins for SC, and 2 mins for CR & RC questions.
Mock tests: I purchased the Manhattan tests. The quant section is way difficult than that expected on the real GMAT. It is good for building concepts but not a great representative of the type of questions asked on the real test. Verbal sections are at par with the real GMAT.
I gave ~20 mocks in total. I appeared for them as if I was giving the real exam. Initially, it was extremely difficult and frustrating to focus for 4 hours straight. So, I forced myself to adapt by appearing for mocks every week 1.5 months before my test day. Eventually, they helped in building the stamina and discipline needed to crack the exam. I believe stamina and focus are the key factors affecting your exam performance. So, it’s of utmost importance to build them up by getting as much practice as possible under strict time constraints.
That being said, amongst all the mocks I gave, Gmatprep resembled actual exam the most. Make sure to use them only after you’ve optimized your timing and accuracy and have given a few other mocks. Gmatprep scores most accurately represent your real exam scores.
MGMAT1 600 (Q45, V28)
MGMAT2 680 (Q46, V37)
MGMAT3 710 (Q48, V38)
MGMAT4 680 (Q47, V35)
MGMAT5 680 (Q48, V35)
MGMAT6 780 (Q51, V45)
GMATPrep1 720 (Q50, V37)
GMATPrep2 730 (Q50, V38)
GMATPrep3 770 (Q51, V44)
GMATPrep4 760 (Q51, V42)
VeritasPrep 650 (Q47, V32)
Economist Gmat 680 (Q50, V34)
GmatPill Test1: 730 (Q51, V39)
GmatPill Test2: 740 (Q50, V41)
Gmatclub Math Tests: Gave around 10 tests and managed Q50 on most of them.
Key takeaways:
Building stamina and speed: Gmat is all about time management and ability to perform under pressure and is very well designed to test both of these skills. I practiced individual questions and gave mini tests for around 2 months before taking practice mocks.
To increase speed your first strategy should be to optimize your performance on individual questions. For example, on the quant section, try to do each question under 2 mins. I found DS to be trickier that PS, so my average DS time was over 2 mins and my average PS time was under 2 mins.
Once you've mastered the individual questions, start giving small tests of each section (10-15 qns per test) to see if you're able to extend your timing strategy to a set of questions. If you're able to get more than 80% of the qns right consistently, it's time to move on to the 4 hour mocks!
Make sure that you take the full mocks and don’t skip the essays or IR and on the same time slot of the day as if it were your real exam. This is the only way how I leveled up my stamina and focus to needed for the 4-hours straight. Refine your strategy with every mock, figure out what went wrong and areas where you can improve. For me the verbal section was bottlenecking my score, so I spent 80% of my time on improving the tactics to approach verbal qns.
For those who plan to re-take: I was extremely disappointed when I wasn’t able to do well in the first time. So I decided to retake. In my first take, I scored the maximum on IR. AWA and quant sections. However I thoroughly screwed up the Verbal section and it killed my overall score. I panicked during the verbal section after spending around 4 mins on a CR. It was purely due to anxiety, and I skipped 1 RC passage and didn’t do so well on the remaining questions.
Please note that as per the rules by GMAC, there should be at least 1 month of exam gap between your last and your next exam. So I had no choice to wait for at least a month before the retake.
A "Never give-up attitude" is essential. It felt bad when I didn’t do well on my first take, even after studying hard for 3 months straight. I knew I had got my fundamentals right because I was consistently scoring 700+ on the mock tests. So, it hurt when I scored low on the first take. But I booked an appointment again 40 days later in Aug.
During the 40 day gap, I chilled out for a few days and got back to my prep. I gave a couple of mocks 1 week before the test, just to get in the test-taking mode. I mostly revised the verbal concepts and re-did the questions I had solved before. I solved the OG sentence correction section again. And revised all the questions that I had gotten wrong in other sections. This time I focused deeply on the concepts, as to why a particular option is right and why the other 4 are wrong. Studied for a couple of hours everyday for the last 3 weeks before the re-take.
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