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Apr 3001:30 AM EDT
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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.
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May 0306:30 AM PDT
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Verbal trouble on GMAT? Fix it NOW! Join Sunita Singhvi for a focused webinar on actionable strategies to boost your Verbal score and take your performance to the next level.
10 Mar 2016, 07:12
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I'm relieved it's over! I have been "studying" (rather, doing practice problems here and there 
) since the summer, but realized if I didn't actually sign up to take the test I'd never end up doing it. I finally signed up giving myself a little under a month to prep and I'm glad I did because actually having the test on the calendar was way less stressful to me than wondering when I'd be ready just to take it.
27 year old white female, undergrad dual degree program from top-30 university with a BS in chemistry and a BEng in chemical engineering. Undergrad GPA very rocky - experienced death of a parent early on in college and did not handle grief well, was ultimately academically dismissed and spent a year out of school halfway through my program. Pre dismissal GPA horrendous (obviously), post-dismissal GPA in the 3.8 range (including all of my engineering classes and higher level math and chem; unfortunately the bad grades are on the easy stuff I should have done great on). I am a control systems engineer at a process automation company, at the local office of a major F100
I downloaded the Veritas app for my phone, purchased the Kaplan Premier book, downloaded the Official Guide PDF, and utilized questions posted in the forums here.
Kaplan Book: I really hardly used this because the book was enormous to lug around and I did most of my studying out of my apartment. I did find the refresher sections for the math helpful, and the practice problems seemed to be similar in difficulty to the actual test. The online stuff expires after a year which I didn't realize, so this is one of those times that my lazy way of dragging out studying forever hurt me in the end; by the time I was ready to get serious, everything had expired.
Veritas App and Website: I found the Veritas math questions to be insanely hard. I got a 650 on a practice test I did using their site after having gotten a 750 using the official GMAT software a week or two before, mainly due to a massive different in the number of quant questions I missed. I went through all their practice math questions on the app whenever I could (even waiting for friends at bars) and I'd say I got about 50% right pretty consistently. It was really discouraging although I do think I got something out of it because it helped prepare me for some tougher questions.
Official Guide: The refresher sections were very brief and not much help. In particular, I had a tough time with combinatorics and didn't find their sections on it to be of much, if any, use. There are a ton of practice problems which are great though and I tried to go through them during downtime at work.
GMAT Club!: I think this place is what helped me the most. Shout out to Bunuel who posts and compiles the hardest questions and offers super in depth explanations for the problems. I would go to the 700+ difficulty tag and just make my way through the questions. I did the same for sentence correction and critical reasoning although with not nearly the same amount of thoroughness. As a sort of last minute thing in the week before, I went through the 150 Hardest and Easiest questions for PS and DS and felt like that prepared me pretty well.
750 (42V 50Q 8IR) GMAT prep software (3 weeks out), 650 Veritas (2 weeks out)
Clearly, I got a lot out of just doing practice problems. I didn't pay any money for a course and I'm grateful for that. I think the problems helped me so much because the GMAT is really more a test of how you think as opposed to what you know. Seeing patterns in questions and realizing that there's always an easier way to do things helped me really wrap my mind around the problems before doing them, rather than spending time doing calculations that ended up being unnecessary.
I think it is very possible to put together your own course with the plethora of materials available here and at minimal cost in the form of books etc. It really depends on how you learn best, and who is funding your studying. My work would not pay for a course and so I just couldn't justify the cost out of pocket, particularly since I've always felt I learn better on my own.
I wish I had practiced verbal a little more but I just wasn't terribly concerned about it, and I was surprised that I found it so difficult the day of the test. I devoted so much of my time to quant problems that I really dismissed how tough the SC and CR parts can be!
Timing is important. I actually ran out of time on the IR section so practicing that just to get a feel for timing might have been helpful. I got an 8 so it wasn't an issue, but it did kind of set a bad tone for me for the rest of the test where I was constantly checking the clock and fretting about not having enough time. As a result, I probably clicked "next" on problems when I should have rechecked them or thought longer about it.
So yeah! That's my story. I never posted on here but used the material a ton so I figured I should give back, and if anyone has any questions about self prep I'll gladly answer whatever I can! Now, onto the admissions process
***edited to add AWA score (6)
) since the summer, but realized if I didn't actually sign up to take the test I'd never end up doing it. I finally signed up giving myself a little under a month to prep and I'm glad I did because actually having the test on the calendar was way less stressful to me than wondering when I'd be ready just to take it.Background
27 year old white female, undergrad dual degree program from top-30 university with a BS in chemistry and a BEng in chemical engineering. Undergrad GPA very rocky - experienced death of a parent early on in college and did not handle grief well, was ultimately academically dismissed and spent a year out of school halfway through my program. Pre dismissal GPA horrendous (obviously), post-dismissal GPA in the 3.8 range (including all of my engineering classes and higher level math and chem; unfortunately the bad grades are on the easy stuff I should have done great on). I am a control systems engineer at a process automation company, at the local office of a major F100
Books/Materials Used
I downloaded the Veritas app for my phone, purchased the Kaplan Premier book, downloaded the Official Guide PDF, and utilized questions posted in the forums here.
Kaplan Book: I really hardly used this because the book was enormous to lug around and I did most of my studying out of my apartment. I did find the refresher sections for the math helpful, and the practice problems seemed to be similar in difficulty to the actual test. The online stuff expires after a year which I didn't realize, so this is one of those times that my lazy way of dragging out studying forever hurt me in the end; by the time I was ready to get serious, everything had expired.
Veritas App and Website: I found the Veritas math questions to be insanely hard. I got a 650 on a practice test I did using their site after having gotten a 750 using the official GMAT software a week or two before, mainly due to a massive different in the number of quant questions I missed. I went through all their practice math questions on the app whenever I could (even waiting for friends at bars) and I'd say I got about 50% right pretty consistently. It was really discouraging although I do think I got something out of it because it helped prepare me for some tougher questions.
Official Guide: The refresher sections were very brief and not much help. In particular, I had a tough time with combinatorics and didn't find their sections on it to be of much, if any, use. There are a ton of practice problems which are great though and I tried to go through them during downtime at work.
GMAT Club!: I think this place is what helped me the most. Shout out to Bunuel who posts and compiles the hardest questions and offers super in depth explanations for the problems. I would go to the 700+ difficulty tag and just make my way through the questions. I did the same for sentence correction and critical reasoning although with not nearly the same amount of thoroughness. As a sort of last minute thing in the week before, I went through the 150 Hardest and Easiest questions for PS and DS and felt like that prepared me pretty well.
Scores along the way
750 (42V 50Q 8IR) GMAT prep software (3 weeks out), 650 Veritas (2 weeks out)
Things I Learned
Clearly, I got a lot out of just doing practice problems. I didn't pay any money for a course and I'm grateful for that. I think the problems helped me so much because the GMAT is really more a test of how you think as opposed to what you know. Seeing patterns in questions and realizing that there's always an easier way to do things helped me really wrap my mind around the problems before doing them, rather than spending time doing calculations that ended up being unnecessary.
I think it is very possible to put together your own course with the plethora of materials available here and at minimal cost in the form of books etc. It really depends on how you learn best, and who is funding your studying. My work would not pay for a course and so I just couldn't justify the cost out of pocket, particularly since I've always felt I learn better on my own.
I wish I had practiced verbal a little more but I just wasn't terribly concerned about it, and I was surprised that I found it so difficult the day of the test. I devoted so much of my time to quant problems that I really dismissed how tough the SC and CR parts can be!
Timing is important. I actually ran out of time on the IR section so practicing that just to get a feel for timing might have been helpful. I got an 8 so it wasn't an issue, but it did kind of set a bad tone for me for the rest of the test where I was constantly checking the clock and fretting about not having enough time. As a result, I probably clicked "next" on problems when I should have rechecked them or thought longer about it.
So yeah! That's my story. I never posted on here but used the material a ton so I figured I should give back, and if anyone has any questions about self prep I'll gladly answer whatever I can! Now, onto the admissions process
***edited to add AWA score (6)
12 Mar 2016, 19:35
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mrm398
It's amazing how serious the impact of scheduling a date is isn't it? I also did self-study for well over a month with the thought I'd schedule the test when I felt I was doing well enough and after that month basically realized it's a lot harder to run a marathon when you don't even know the distance.
Congrats on the incredible score, I think it's fair to say you essentially aced the GMAT!
13 Mar 2016, 11:11
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how many times did you take the GMAT Prep tests? also on actual exam how hard did quant get in terms of combinations, permutations? Did you do any backwards solving towards end of exam
