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GMAT: from 530 to 700 (Q 48 V37) IR: 4…….. 
AWA: 5.5
I write to give back to this awesome club. It was always there for me and the content helped me reach my GMAT goal.
Background:
Latin American Engineer working in the US
Material used:
I had no budget so I tested my luck on all of these to identify the most effective ones.
-Manhattan SC and advanced quant
-Powerscore CR Bible
-Magoosh subscription
-E-gmat subscription
-Manhattan LSAT passages
-GMAC exam bundles
-GMAC practice questions
-OG 16
-The Economist and NYT
Test Scores:
GMAT PREP 1: 530 (Q 36 V 27) Aug 26th
GMAT PREP 2: 610 (Q 44 V 30) Sep 9th
MGMAT 1 : 640 (Q 44 V33) Sep 23rd
MGMAT 2: 610 (Q41 V32) Oct 14th
GMAT PREP 3: 650 (Q 47 V 33) Nov 4th
GMAT PREP 4: 670 (Q 47 V 33) Nov 11th
GMAT PREP 5: 700 (Q 48 V 38) Nov 18th
GMAT PREP 6: 660 (Q 47 V 32) Nov 25th
GMAT PREP 1: 680 (Q 47 V 35) Dec 2nd
Real thing: 700 (Q 48 V37) Dec 10th
During this time, I worked 6 days and 70 hours per week. I only had one day to rest/do mock tests, all the other 6 days of the week I worked during the day and devoted 2 hours of hardcore study EVERY night. The days off in which I did not take a mock test I studied around 2 and half hours in the morning and 2 and a half in the afternoon. I tried to do the least number of mocks possible based on GmatClub recommendations.
My diagnostic test was 530 but I believe this score is very deceptive. In verbal I literally clicked what sounded best in my head and in quant I did not remember the area of a circle, the basic triangle properties or any formulas for anything. I think that is the reason why I improved so consistently in verbal throughout my prep and why I jumped from 36 to 44 in quant in just a couple of weeks
As you can see, October was a low month. This is because I had a couple of weeks of vacation and I was very distracted. These factors affected the test I took that month and broke my study routine. The experience also confirmed that I had to be 100% into the test during the study time, otherwise my score would suffer.
Length of study:
I spent two weeks investigating my target scores and schools. During these two weeks, I designed my testing strategy described below. This was extremely useful time since it was the foundation necessary to undertake so many months of study with reduced social life. Having a clear strategy and clear goals helped me push through the toughest moments of this journey. The actual GMAT study time after these two weeks was around 16 weeks. I believe that this is sufficient time to go from mid 500s to high 600 with my amount of time commitment. I would calculate another full month to achieve low 700s consistently. I strongly disagree with outdated posts that claim three months or less to achieve this kind of improvement. Unless you are a genius with very strong problem solving skills or a very good standardized test taker, the reality is that more than 3 months is necessary to improve more than 150 points. Nevertheless, it is 100% possible by anyone to achieve this improvement…. It all depends on the sacrifices willing to do and the amount of hard work.
General Strategy:
My strategy changed throughout the 16 weeks. The key factor was to constantly evaluate what worked and what didn’t. Switching to automatic mode is the worst thing you can do and is a recipe for score plateau.
I started with magoosh which I believe was an excellent first step since I saw the videos and practiced using the magoosh database. As I got more comfortable with the material I switched my attention in verbal to Manhattan SC and to CR powerscore. I think both books are great but multiple reads are necessary to secure all the content. By the second read, I was able to understand clearly most of the concepts and develop strategies to tackle each type of problem. After a month, I started practicing with the manhattan exams. I took two of them. I think they are very accurate exams. My only problem with them is SC. Most of the sentences I received were overly simplistic and very direct. GMATPREP questions would be trickier and would distort concepts more efficiently. After all this prep with almost no official questions on me, I started to switch from concept mode to practice mode. I reduced the amount of conceptual review and increased OG practice. As I got used to question types, I constantly increased my score after doing the switch. I already knew the concepts well, I just needed to learn how to apply them. The only section that was still not clicking was SC (I’ll explain later why and how I managed).
Specific Strategy:
Quant: Practice, practice, practice! My quant score plateaued around 47-48 after familiarizing with the topics and practicing a lot of questions. I knew I had to change something to avoid this plateau which happened around two weeks before the actual test. My bet was to try the Manhattan prep Advanced quant book to try to reach for the 49-50 Q but this backfired horribly. Looking back, I would avoid the book and buy the GMATCLUB questions to practice for one month.
Also, Stacey Koprince's articles were essential to analyze mistakes. Google her name for the info.
Verbal:
SC: Like I said, SC was not clicking for me. I tried magoosh, manhattan and OG questions. I was getting very confused trying to find a balance between finding the answer and identifying each part of the sentence and its purpose. If I identified every grammatical structure, I would take 2 and a half minutes to answer each question but if I tried to speed up the process I would mess up and my accuracy would drop. This lead me to E-gmat. The course is very well designed to teach application and in combination to Manhattan SC concept clarity came to me very quickly. My tipping point was the modifier module on E-gmat. It helped me understand the difference between which modifiers and ing-modifiers / with and without commas. The concept is explained in the manhattan book but for some reason I just did not get it. E-gmat helped me build up concept clarity and shoot mi SC score up considerably.
CR: Nothing special here, read the powerscore book and try to focus your attention in the conclusion of the argument. Also, be prepared for each type of question and constantly practice negation/variation technique. Be careful when practicing this section. The amount of quality questions outside the scope of GMAC is very short and repeating the arguments is nonsensical.
RC: Contrary to popular believe, CR was the section I improved the most during my GMAT prep. I went from 25 to 40 during my 16 weeks. But how is not pretty. I read ALL the economist articles in this time. Again, ALL. I also read some NYT. To warm up the engine before test day, I practiced LSAT passages the last month of my prep. The best description I have read in this forum about the LSAT passages is that they are like GMAT passages on steroids. They helped me avoid plateau and boost my overall verbal score.
Notes and valuable resources:
Created and maintained an OG error log. It was useful to identify weak areas and to close knowledge gaps but it helped to a point… after I reached Q47, practicing my OG mistakes did not improve my quant score as radically. Found that error log was less useful for the verbal questions and not worth the maintenance.
Advice:
-If you are reading this and you have not started preparation, consider this the beginning of your two week period before actually starting prep. Stop fantasizing about getting a good gmat and applying to b-school, you need to set your goals and strategy as quick as possible so that you can tackle this monster.
-Understand yourself. My study plan is not universal, it applies to 0 % of test takers. You need to adapt what you see fit from this madness into your specific study plan. Whatever happens, don’t go into auto mode. Time will pass and you will practice problems get some wrong some right, think you will not make the same mistakes again and ultimately fail to achieve your goal. I constantly hit barriers and broke them by switching things up and keeping an innovative routine.
-Anyone can achieve any score in the GMAT. The time required will obviously vary but for average people like me, I would say that 4-5 months are require to peak your score. This is assuming controlled variables like consistent study and deep focus during study time. To be honest, I do not know what happens after 5 months and I do not want to know.
Mixed feelings:
Manhattan Advanced Quant: Started the book at Q47 and clearly did not pay off. I think I would have been better off prepping with GMAT CLUB’s quant questions.
IR: I followed forum advise and prepped during my last week for IR. I had scored around 5-8 during mocks but clearly this was not enough to pull me through. Part of my collapse was time management. I got to the final two questions with two minutes left and on top of that they were my graph questions which are generally very easy for me but these were slightly harder and with the time constrain I could not finish them.
PSDT: overall, I think all of the resources I used were great, I would not say that one of them alone will guarantee an score improvement of 170 but together they are very very powerful.
Thanks for reading
AWA: 5.5I write to give back to this awesome club. It was always there for me and the content helped me reach my GMAT goal.
Background:
Latin American Engineer working in the US
Material used:
I had no budget so I tested my luck on all of these to identify the most effective ones.
-Manhattan SC and advanced quant
-Powerscore CR Bible
-Magoosh subscription
-E-gmat subscription
-Manhattan LSAT passages
-GMAC exam bundles
-GMAC practice questions
-OG 16
-The Economist and NYT
Test Scores:
GMAT PREP 1: 530 (Q 36 V 27) Aug 26th
GMAT PREP 2: 610 (Q 44 V 30) Sep 9th
MGMAT 1 : 640 (Q 44 V33) Sep 23rd
MGMAT 2: 610 (Q41 V32) Oct 14th
GMAT PREP 3: 650 (Q 47 V 33) Nov 4th
GMAT PREP 4: 670 (Q 47 V 33) Nov 11th
GMAT PREP 5: 700 (Q 48 V 38) Nov 18th
GMAT PREP 6: 660 (Q 47 V 32) Nov 25th
GMAT PREP 1: 680 (Q 47 V 35) Dec 2nd
Real thing: 700 (Q 48 V37) Dec 10th
During this time, I worked 6 days and 70 hours per week. I only had one day to rest/do mock tests, all the other 6 days of the week I worked during the day and devoted 2 hours of hardcore study EVERY night. The days off in which I did not take a mock test I studied around 2 and half hours in the morning and 2 and a half in the afternoon. I tried to do the least number of mocks possible based on GmatClub recommendations.
My diagnostic test was 530 but I believe this score is very deceptive. In verbal I literally clicked what sounded best in my head and in quant I did not remember the area of a circle, the basic triangle properties or any formulas for anything. I think that is the reason why I improved so consistently in verbal throughout my prep and why I jumped from 36 to 44 in quant in just a couple of weeks
As you can see, October was a low month. This is because I had a couple of weeks of vacation and I was very distracted. These factors affected the test I took that month and broke my study routine. The experience also confirmed that I had to be 100% into the test during the study time, otherwise my score would suffer.
Length of study:
I spent two weeks investigating my target scores and schools. During these two weeks, I designed my testing strategy described below. This was extremely useful time since it was the foundation necessary to undertake so many months of study with reduced social life. Having a clear strategy and clear goals helped me push through the toughest moments of this journey. The actual GMAT study time after these two weeks was around 16 weeks. I believe that this is sufficient time to go from mid 500s to high 600 with my amount of time commitment. I would calculate another full month to achieve low 700s consistently. I strongly disagree with outdated posts that claim three months or less to achieve this kind of improvement. Unless you are a genius with very strong problem solving skills or a very good standardized test taker, the reality is that more than 3 months is necessary to improve more than 150 points. Nevertheless, it is 100% possible by anyone to achieve this improvement…. It all depends on the sacrifices willing to do and the amount of hard work.
General Strategy:
My strategy changed throughout the 16 weeks. The key factor was to constantly evaluate what worked and what didn’t. Switching to automatic mode is the worst thing you can do and is a recipe for score plateau.
I started with magoosh which I believe was an excellent first step since I saw the videos and practiced using the magoosh database. As I got more comfortable with the material I switched my attention in verbal to Manhattan SC and to CR powerscore. I think both books are great but multiple reads are necessary to secure all the content. By the second read, I was able to understand clearly most of the concepts and develop strategies to tackle each type of problem. After a month, I started practicing with the manhattan exams. I took two of them. I think they are very accurate exams. My only problem with them is SC. Most of the sentences I received were overly simplistic and very direct. GMATPREP questions would be trickier and would distort concepts more efficiently. After all this prep with almost no official questions on me, I started to switch from concept mode to practice mode. I reduced the amount of conceptual review and increased OG practice. As I got used to question types, I constantly increased my score after doing the switch. I already knew the concepts well, I just needed to learn how to apply them. The only section that was still not clicking was SC (I’ll explain later why and how I managed).
Specific Strategy:
Quant: Practice, practice, practice! My quant score plateaued around 47-48 after familiarizing with the topics and practicing a lot of questions. I knew I had to change something to avoid this plateau which happened around two weeks before the actual test. My bet was to try the Manhattan prep Advanced quant book to try to reach for the 49-50 Q but this backfired horribly. Looking back, I would avoid the book and buy the GMATCLUB questions to practice for one month.
Also, Stacey Koprince's articles were essential to analyze mistakes. Google her name for the info.
Verbal:
SC: Like I said, SC was not clicking for me. I tried magoosh, manhattan and OG questions. I was getting very confused trying to find a balance between finding the answer and identifying each part of the sentence and its purpose. If I identified every grammatical structure, I would take 2 and a half minutes to answer each question but if I tried to speed up the process I would mess up and my accuracy would drop. This lead me to E-gmat. The course is very well designed to teach application and in combination to Manhattan SC concept clarity came to me very quickly. My tipping point was the modifier module on E-gmat. It helped me understand the difference between which modifiers and ing-modifiers / with and without commas. The concept is explained in the manhattan book but for some reason I just did not get it. E-gmat helped me build up concept clarity and shoot mi SC score up considerably.
CR: Nothing special here, read the powerscore book and try to focus your attention in the conclusion of the argument. Also, be prepared for each type of question and constantly practice negation/variation technique. Be careful when practicing this section. The amount of quality questions outside the scope of GMAC is very short and repeating the arguments is nonsensical.
RC: Contrary to popular believe, CR was the section I improved the most during my GMAT prep. I went from 25 to 40 during my 16 weeks. But how is not pretty. I read ALL the economist articles in this time. Again, ALL. I also read some NYT. To warm up the engine before test day, I practiced LSAT passages the last month of my prep. The best description I have read in this forum about the LSAT passages is that they are like GMAT passages on steroids. They helped me avoid plateau and boost my overall verbal score.
Notes and valuable resources:
Created and maintained an OG error log. It was useful to identify weak areas and to close knowledge gaps but it helped to a point… after I reached Q47, practicing my OG mistakes did not improve my quant score as radically. Found that error log was less useful for the verbal questions and not worth the maintenance.
Advice:
-If you are reading this and you have not started preparation, consider this the beginning of your two week period before actually starting prep. Stop fantasizing about getting a good gmat and applying to b-school, you need to set your goals and strategy as quick as possible so that you can tackle this monster.
-Understand yourself. My study plan is not universal, it applies to 0 % of test takers. You need to adapt what you see fit from this madness into your specific study plan. Whatever happens, don’t go into auto mode. Time will pass and you will practice problems get some wrong some right, think you will not make the same mistakes again and ultimately fail to achieve your goal. I constantly hit barriers and broke them by switching things up and keeping an innovative routine.
-Anyone can achieve any score in the GMAT. The time required will obviously vary but for average people like me, I would say that 4-5 months are require to peak your score. This is assuming controlled variables like consistent study and deep focus during study time. To be honest, I do not know what happens after 5 months and I do not want to know.
Mixed feelings:
Manhattan Advanced Quant: Started the book at Q47 and clearly did not pay off. I think I would have been better off prepping with GMAT CLUB’s quant questions.
IR: I followed forum advise and prepped during my last week for IR. I had scored around 5-8 during mocks but clearly this was not enough to pull me through. Part of my collapse was time management. I got to the final two questions with two minutes left and on top of that they were my graph questions which are generally very easy for me but these were slightly harder and with the time constrain I could not finish them.
PSDT: overall, I think all of the resources I used were great, I would not say that one of them alone will guarantee an score improvement of 170 but together they are very very powerful.
Thanks for reading
Raunak_Bhatia
20 Dec 2016, 11:01
Kudos
Bookmarks
Congratulations!!! great score. I am on the same boat and would be giving it a shot in 15 days probably. What made the difference for you in the last 30 days? I see you score jumped from 650-700, so was it because of the Gmatprep mocks? Do you recommend them as a must have?
09 May 2018, 20:27
Kudos
Bookmarks
Hello,
I've found your story and it is quite similar to mine...well I hope it is at least by the time my story is finished.
I noticed you took several practice tests. I just took one myself using the official GMAT prep software. I've noticed that the software only tells you which answers you got right or wrong and gives you the correct answer. However, it doesn't give you any sort of explanation to the questions nor does it give a specific type of question you are answering (ex: a rate problem within the problem solving of quant).
How were you able to identify your strengths and weaknesses if the practice tests only told you the right answer, but not the exact type of question nor provided any explanation of how why the answer is what it is?
Thank you,
Alex
I've found your story and it is quite similar to mine...well I hope it is at least by the time my story is finished.
I noticed you took several practice tests. I just took one myself using the official GMAT prep software. I've noticed that the software only tells you which answers you got right or wrong and gives you the correct answer. However, it doesn't give you any sort of explanation to the questions nor does it give a specific type of question you are answering (ex: a rate problem within the problem solving of quant).
How were you able to identify your strengths and weaknesses if the practice tests only told you the right answer, but not the exact type of question nor provided any explanation of how why the answer is what it is?
Thank you,
Alex
