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Abchen1238
Joined: 09 Sep 2019
Last visit: 29 Apr 2021
Posts: 2
Given Kudos: 1
Location: United States (CA)
Schools: Booth '22 (A) Yale '22 (A$)
GMAT 1: 780 Q50 V47
GPA: 3.15
Products:
Updated on: 29 Sep 2019, 02:47
Originally posted by Abchen1238 on 28 Sep 2019, 22:32.
Last edited by Abchen1238 on 29 Sep 2019, 02:47, edited 4 times in total.
Last edited by Abchen1238 on 29 Sep 2019, 02:47, edited 4 times in total.
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GMAT Debrief:
Whew! Just finished my GMAT and have a small headache. Short-time lurker here and first time test taker. 780/50Q/47V/IR8. Here's my story!
Background:
I'm a mechanical engineer (native English speaker) who's been out of school for 3 years now. Top 3 engineering undergrad in the US. Struggled with some issues during college so low GPA (3.1) which is ironically still above average for my major.
Needed a high GMAT to offset this, so that was my motivation for aiming high. Was planning on retaking anything under a 750.
I've always been an avid reader, and used to read stuff like Time Magazine, National Geographic, WSJ, etc since I was in grade school. Nowadays I mostly read Reddit, which was probably a bad influence on my initial Verbal scores.
I decided in July that I wanted to apply this year, so my GMAT story started in the beginning of August. So that makes it about two months from start to finish.
GMAT Journey:
Starting beginning of August, I read through all the Manhattan GMAT books (the whole set). This was useful in as far as I didn't know anything about the format of the GMAT, what Data Sufficiency was, or what was tested. This was rather casual, and I only spent maybe 5 hours/week doing this. Towards the end of August, I started going through the Manhattan Advanced Quant book, and was getting around half of the problem sets right. Since I had an engineering background, a lot of the concepts weren't hard to grasp, it was just something I didn't have exposure to. At the same time, I downloaded the Magoosh GMAT app and started doing their free verbal problems on my phone whenever I had a little bit of time.
Once I finished going through the Manhattan books, I felt I had a decent grasp of what the GMAT tested and went in for my cold diagnostic with the GMAC Practice CAT--690/45Q/39V/7IR. I did this on my 15" laptop, so I had trouble reading the small text on the long passages. Also, I ran out of time on the quant section and ended up getting the last 9 questions wrong. Timing on the quant section was a definite area to improve upon, as well as sentence correction, in which I got 8 questions wrong, which was surprising because English and writing have always been two of my favorite subjects.
Overall, I wasn't too worried because I still had 3 weeks left and up until that point I had not really started studying hardcore yet. I decided to sign up for the GMAT at the end of the month to set a hard deadline for myself. This was also around the time I discovered GMATClub.
The Grind:
After a week of slightly harder prep, I went in for my first Manhattan CAT, in which I got a 630/39Q/37V/7IR. This was a big wake up call as that was a number I did not want to see or even think about. I took this CAT at around midnight after a full day of work so I wasn't at my freshest, and again I had timing issues on math, getting the last 10 questions wrong. The verbal part was weird because the questions were so different than the official ones, and they all seemed like they were just trying to trick you into picking incorrect answers that are open to interpretation. I hated the explanations for the questions I got wrong because the questions were so vague and again open to interpretation. I decided at this point to not do any more Manhattan CATs.
The low 630 definitely made me panic a bit about the upcoming GMAT, as I only had 2 weeks left. I started reading through GMATClub for good online prep courses and decided to try out Target Test Prep for the five day trial. I instantly fell in love with the format and was very excited about the whole structure of it. I felt like I was actually learning the material and improving every problem set, something that wasn't the case using the Manhattan books. I definitely benefited from the interactive learning style and started to put in a lot of time--I finished the first six modules in under a week, averaging 5-6 hours a day of quant prep and getting around 85-100% of the problem sets correct. After every module, I felt like I had mastered the concept and was doing the hard problems in less than a minute.
I decided I was going to get through as much of TTP as possible, even if that meant not doing CATs because it was more important to master the material than practice it incorrectly. I would go through all the questions I got wrong and really understand the concepts, and I would redo the wrong questions the next day to make sure the concept stuck. I did this for the two weeks leading up to the test, doing in total 82 tests with about 15 questions per test, so ~1200 questions. The large number of questions was great because I got to see my mistake patterns in a condensed format; for example, I was getting a lot wrong due to carelessness in reading the question stem (not reading if X were a possible integer, cannot equal zero, etc)
At the same time, I needed to improve my sentence correction, and fast. I had all three of the OG books, but ended up not reading through them because I was spending the time after work doing Target Test Prep. I decided to just learn sentence correction through the practice problems on the GMAC app, as well as reading the explanations on GMATClub. I would do these questions during breaks at work, at lunch, etc. From reading through the explanations on GMAT club, I started to learn about the fundamentals of SC on the GMAT, which ultimately only tests stuff like pronouns, modifiers, idioms, etc.
All the concepts start repeating after a while. After going through a bunch of these for a week, I was starting to get my accuracy up to 80%.
Avoiding Burnout:
For the last week before the test, I decided to finish learning some problem areas like combinations and probability, as well as finish all the GMAC SC questions. By now I was getting around 90% of the SC questions, and was learning all the material I needed to know for the Quant section, but I was also burning out. In two weeks I had done 6 hours of studying per weekday and 10-12 hours per day on the weekends, totaling around 100 hours in two weeks, of which most was math. This was just the time at home--I also averaged 40 GMAC app verbal questions per day before I got home.
I decided I needed to finish mastering combinations and probability because that was my weakest area, and then I would take a break. My test was on Saturday, so starting Tuesday I stopped hardcore studying, only doing one or two math sets per day and watching GMATNinja videos instead. This turned out to be a great idea because GMATNinja had great verbal/test taking strategies that definitely helped me and I got to recover my mental stamina leading up to the test. I think it's very important to have this 'tapering' period as I used to be an athlete and taking the GMAT is very much a mentally athletic undertaking--just as it's important to taper before competitions to allow your body to be in peak shape, so it's important for you to do the same with your brain. (I still don't know if this sentence is grammatically correct)
I caught up on sleep leading up the test, but had trouble sleeping the night before. I woke up with a splitting headache and did not feel that great going into the test. At this point, I didn't know what level I was at because I did not do any CAT's for the 3 weeks leading up to the test.
I went for a walk, meditated a bit, took a short nap right before the test, and then drove to the test center.
The test itself was interesting. I started with Verbal and I did not feel I had the clarity of mind I was capable of. This led to quite a few problems I wasn't sure about, and I had to reread the RC passages 3-4 times before I understood everything. Also the SC questions were weird, they weren't that similar to the GMAC questions on the app. Did not think I did that well on this section, but the questions weren't impossible to answer. The Quant section was surprisingly easy after all the TTP prep I had done, and I was lucky that I finished mastering combinations and probability because there were a number of those. Time management was not an issue because I had mastered the fundamentals and did not need to spend more than 3-4 minutes on any one problem, and had others that I could do in 30 seconds. I thought after that section that I earned at least a 50 if not a 51. If I had better clarity of mind, I probably could have scored even better in Verbal.
When I saw the final score, I was ecstatic as all my grinding had paid off!
Overall, it was a wild month of prep and I definitely have some stuff that worked and some that didn't. Here's a further breakdown of what I did and my thoughts on each.
Prep:
I bought a number of prep materials, some of which worked and some of which were a waste of money, at least for me
1) TARGET TEST PREP
Cannot say enough good things about this program. Scott, you're a hero. I got TTP about 2 weeks before my test, so I was behind on the timeline. This teaches you all the fundamentals in a way that other prep materials do not. It also drills you so those concepts stick. 45Q to 50Q in two weeks.
2) OG Books
I bought all three OG books but ended up only doing the questions on their app. I strongly recommend only studying Verbal through the GMAC material, as the other ones don't provide accurate questions and a lot of times just make questions vague to trick you and not teach you anything after. I also purchased all the GMAC prep tests but ended up only using one.
3) Manhattan Set, Advanced Quant, and CAT
I really did not think these helped that much. I learned the format of the test and the basics of what would be tested, but that could have been achieved through reading the OG. The Manhattan CAT's sucked for prepping as the Quant is too hard and Verbal too vague.
I also didn't think Advanced Quant helped me master the harder material because they only presented the concepts but didn't provide enough material to drill them. I think all of these were ultimately a waste of time.
4) E-Gmat
I bought 6 months of E-Gmat two weeks before the test but ended up only using five hours of it. So that was a couple hundred down the drain. I think the sentence correction stuff is really good in that it's almost like a TTP for verbal except the videos were low quality and the interface was just not that well built. I did learn about nouns and verbs so if that got me one additional question right on the test, maybe it was worth it. Not a bad resource and I would have done more of it if I had time. Maybe that would have brought my verbal up to a 50.
5) Magoosh App
Tons of free questions, and the RC and CR questions are pretty good! In hindsight, the hundred or so RC and CR questions I did on this app in August probably allowed me to focus on other stuff in September. The SC questions are way too easy compared to the real thing.
I recommend this if you exhaust the above material.
CAT scores:
GMAC Practice CAT 1 (9/6/19): 690/45Q/39V/IR7
Manhattan CAT 1 (9/13/19): 630/39Q/37V/IR7
10 unused (5 GMAC, 5 Manhattan)
Actual score: (9/28/19) 780/50Q/47V/IR8
Final Thoughts:
690 to 780 in three weeks. I think the 690 was misleading because up till that point I did not study that much and did not know SC or Quant fundamentals outside of what I remembered from high school. If I had finished the Quant section, I might have gotten a 48 and if I knew SC fundamentals, my verbal would have been closer to 45. But still, I buckled down and did 100+ hours of studying in two weeks, and went in and performed how I needed to! I'm not saying that this is possible for just anyone as I know a lot of people spend a long time studying and still don't get their target score. The biggest thing I would say is learn the fundamentals and master them, and once you do the real thing will be a breeze. There's really no way around putting in the time and I was only successful because I had a strong base from my high school and college education. I didn't keep an error log but the GMAC app logs your incorrect questions, so I reviewed those for verbal. For math I just made sure to keep drilling till I internalized the concepts.
In my opinion, if you don't master the material, then doing CAT's for any reason other than to identify weak areas is just practicing applying incorrect concepts. Learn to apply right concepts.
The second thing is physical preparation. I made sure to catch up on sleep in the three days leading up to the test, and made sure there were no stressors in my life. I meditated, stretched before the test, got my anxiety out of the way the day before, and treated this like how I would an athletic competition. Rest your brain!
Whew! Just finished my GMAT and have a small headache. Short-time lurker here and first time test taker. 780/50Q/47V/IR8. Here's my story!
Background:
I'm a mechanical engineer (native English speaker) who's been out of school for 3 years now. Top 3 engineering undergrad in the US. Struggled with some issues during college so low GPA (3.1) which is ironically still above average for my major.
Needed a high GMAT to offset this, so that was my motivation for aiming high. Was planning on retaking anything under a 750.
I've always been an avid reader, and used to read stuff like Time Magazine, National Geographic, WSJ, etc since I was in grade school. Nowadays I mostly read Reddit, which was probably a bad influence on my initial Verbal scores.
I decided in July that I wanted to apply this year, so my GMAT story started in the beginning of August. So that makes it about two months from start to finish.
GMAT Journey:
Starting beginning of August, I read through all the Manhattan GMAT books (the whole set). This was useful in as far as I didn't know anything about the format of the GMAT, what Data Sufficiency was, or what was tested. This was rather casual, and I only spent maybe 5 hours/week doing this. Towards the end of August, I started going through the Manhattan Advanced Quant book, and was getting around half of the problem sets right. Since I had an engineering background, a lot of the concepts weren't hard to grasp, it was just something I didn't have exposure to. At the same time, I downloaded the Magoosh GMAT app and started doing their free verbal problems on my phone whenever I had a little bit of time.
Once I finished going through the Manhattan books, I felt I had a decent grasp of what the GMAT tested and went in for my cold diagnostic with the GMAC Practice CAT--690/45Q/39V/7IR. I did this on my 15" laptop, so I had trouble reading the small text on the long passages. Also, I ran out of time on the quant section and ended up getting the last 9 questions wrong. Timing on the quant section was a definite area to improve upon, as well as sentence correction, in which I got 8 questions wrong, which was surprising because English and writing have always been two of my favorite subjects.
Overall, I wasn't too worried because I still had 3 weeks left and up until that point I had not really started studying hardcore yet. I decided to sign up for the GMAT at the end of the month to set a hard deadline for myself. This was also around the time I discovered GMATClub.
The Grind:
After a week of slightly harder prep, I went in for my first Manhattan CAT, in which I got a 630/39Q/37V/7IR. This was a big wake up call as that was a number I did not want to see or even think about. I took this CAT at around midnight after a full day of work so I wasn't at my freshest, and again I had timing issues on math, getting the last 10 questions wrong. The verbal part was weird because the questions were so different than the official ones, and they all seemed like they were just trying to trick you into picking incorrect answers that are open to interpretation. I hated the explanations for the questions I got wrong because the questions were so vague and again open to interpretation. I decided at this point to not do any more Manhattan CATs.
The low 630 definitely made me panic a bit about the upcoming GMAT, as I only had 2 weeks left. I started reading through GMATClub for good online prep courses and decided to try out Target Test Prep for the five day trial. I instantly fell in love with the format and was very excited about the whole structure of it. I felt like I was actually learning the material and improving every problem set, something that wasn't the case using the Manhattan books. I definitely benefited from the interactive learning style and started to put in a lot of time--I finished the first six modules in under a week, averaging 5-6 hours a day of quant prep and getting around 85-100% of the problem sets correct. After every module, I felt like I had mastered the concept and was doing the hard problems in less than a minute.
I decided I was going to get through as much of TTP as possible, even if that meant not doing CATs because it was more important to master the material than practice it incorrectly. I would go through all the questions I got wrong and really understand the concepts, and I would redo the wrong questions the next day to make sure the concept stuck. I did this for the two weeks leading up to the test, doing in total 82 tests with about 15 questions per test, so ~1200 questions. The large number of questions was great because I got to see my mistake patterns in a condensed format; for example, I was getting a lot wrong due to carelessness in reading the question stem (not reading if X were a possible integer, cannot equal zero, etc)
At the same time, I needed to improve my sentence correction, and fast. I had all three of the OG books, but ended up not reading through them because I was spending the time after work doing Target Test Prep. I decided to just learn sentence correction through the practice problems on the GMAC app, as well as reading the explanations on GMATClub. I would do these questions during breaks at work, at lunch, etc. From reading through the explanations on GMAT club, I started to learn about the fundamentals of SC on the GMAT, which ultimately only tests stuff like pronouns, modifiers, idioms, etc.
All the concepts start repeating after a while. After going through a bunch of these for a week, I was starting to get my accuracy up to 80%.
Avoiding Burnout:
For the last week before the test, I decided to finish learning some problem areas like combinations and probability, as well as finish all the GMAC SC questions. By now I was getting around 90% of the SC questions, and was learning all the material I needed to know for the Quant section, but I was also burning out. In two weeks I had done 6 hours of studying per weekday and 10-12 hours per day on the weekends, totaling around 100 hours in two weeks, of which most was math. This was just the time at home--I also averaged 40 GMAC app verbal questions per day before I got home.
I decided I needed to finish mastering combinations and probability because that was my weakest area, and then I would take a break. My test was on Saturday, so starting Tuesday I stopped hardcore studying, only doing one or two math sets per day and watching GMATNinja videos instead. This turned out to be a great idea because GMATNinja had great verbal/test taking strategies that definitely helped me and I got to recover my mental stamina leading up to the test. I think it's very important to have this 'tapering' period as I used to be an athlete and taking the GMAT is very much a mentally athletic undertaking--just as it's important to taper before competitions to allow your body to be in peak shape, so it's important for you to do the same with your brain. (I still don't know if this sentence is grammatically correct)
I caught up on sleep leading up the test, but had trouble sleeping the night before. I woke up with a splitting headache and did not feel that great going into the test. At this point, I didn't know what level I was at because I did not do any CAT's for the 3 weeks leading up to the test.
I went for a walk, meditated a bit, took a short nap right before the test, and then drove to the test center.
The test itself was interesting. I started with Verbal and I did not feel I had the clarity of mind I was capable of. This led to quite a few problems I wasn't sure about, and I had to reread the RC passages 3-4 times before I understood everything. Also the SC questions were weird, they weren't that similar to the GMAC questions on the app. Did not think I did that well on this section, but the questions weren't impossible to answer. The Quant section was surprisingly easy after all the TTP prep I had done, and I was lucky that I finished mastering combinations and probability because there were a number of those. Time management was not an issue because I had mastered the fundamentals and did not need to spend more than 3-4 minutes on any one problem, and had others that I could do in 30 seconds. I thought after that section that I earned at least a 50 if not a 51. If I had better clarity of mind, I probably could have scored even better in Verbal.
When I saw the final score, I was ecstatic as all my grinding had paid off!
Overall, it was a wild month of prep and I definitely have some stuff that worked and some that didn't. Here's a further breakdown of what I did and my thoughts on each.
Prep:
I bought a number of prep materials, some of which worked and some of which were a waste of money, at least for me
1) TARGET TEST PREP
Cannot say enough good things about this program. Scott, you're a hero. I got TTP about 2 weeks before my test, so I was behind on the timeline. This teaches you all the fundamentals in a way that other prep materials do not. It also drills you so those concepts stick. 45Q to 50Q in two weeks.
2) OG Books
I bought all three OG books but ended up only doing the questions on their app. I strongly recommend only studying Verbal through the GMAC material, as the other ones don't provide accurate questions and a lot of times just make questions vague to trick you and not teach you anything after. I also purchased all the GMAC prep tests but ended up only using one.
3) Manhattan Set, Advanced Quant, and CAT
I really did not think these helped that much. I learned the format of the test and the basics of what would be tested, but that could have been achieved through reading the OG. The Manhattan CAT's sucked for prepping as the Quant is too hard and Verbal too vague.
I also didn't think Advanced Quant helped me master the harder material because they only presented the concepts but didn't provide enough material to drill them. I think all of these were ultimately a waste of time.
4) E-Gmat
I bought 6 months of E-Gmat two weeks before the test but ended up only using five hours of it. So that was a couple hundred down the drain. I think the sentence correction stuff is really good in that it's almost like a TTP for verbal except the videos were low quality and the interface was just not that well built. I did learn about nouns and verbs so if that got me one additional question right on the test, maybe it was worth it. Not a bad resource and I would have done more of it if I had time. Maybe that would have brought my verbal up to a 50.
5) Magoosh App
Tons of free questions, and the RC and CR questions are pretty good! In hindsight, the hundred or so RC and CR questions I did on this app in August probably allowed me to focus on other stuff in September. The SC questions are way too easy compared to the real thing.
I recommend this if you exhaust the above material.
CAT scores:
GMAC Practice CAT 1 (9/6/19): 690/45Q/39V/IR7
Manhattan CAT 1 (9/13/19): 630/39Q/37V/IR7
10 unused (5 GMAC, 5 Manhattan)
Actual score: (9/28/19) 780/50Q/47V/IR8
Final Thoughts:
690 to 780 in three weeks. I think the 690 was misleading because up till that point I did not study that much and did not know SC or Quant fundamentals outside of what I remembered from high school. If I had finished the Quant section, I might have gotten a 48 and if I knew SC fundamentals, my verbal would have been closer to 45. But still, I buckled down and did 100+ hours of studying in two weeks, and went in and performed how I needed to! I'm not saying that this is possible for just anyone as I know a lot of people spend a long time studying and still don't get their target score. The biggest thing I would say is learn the fundamentals and master them, and once you do the real thing will be a breeze. There's really no way around putting in the time and I was only successful because I had a strong base from my high school and college education. I didn't keep an error log but the GMAC app logs your incorrect questions, so I reviewed those for verbal. For math I just made sure to keep drilling till I internalized the concepts.
In my opinion, if you don't master the material, then doing CAT's for any reason other than to identify weak areas is just practicing applying incorrect concepts. Learn to apply right concepts.
The second thing is physical preparation. I made sure to catch up on sleep in the three days leading up to the test, and made sure there were no stressors in my life. I meditated, stretched before the test, got my anxiety out of the way the day before, and treated this like how I would an athletic competition. Rest your brain!
29 Sep 2019, 08:55
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Congratulations ! Great achievement ! Thanks for sharing my experience so I learn more prep strategies
Wish you the best in your next challenge
Wish you the best in your next challenge
TheUltimateWinner
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29 Sep 2019, 09:27
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Thanks for the nice debrief. Do you have any suggestion for RC part?
All the best for your application in top-notch university.
All the best for your application in top-notch university.
