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Vinod85K
Joined: 29 Jun 2020
Last visit: 17 May 2023
Posts: 9
Own Kudos:
Given Kudos: 12
Location: India
Schools: Sloan (MIT) (I)
GMAT 1: 710 Q49 V36
04 Feb 2021, 10:04
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Hello All,
I would like to share my GMAT journey and describe how(??) I got to the 91st percentile - 710(Q49,V36).
Background:
I belong to the over represented group of Indian IT male with an engineering background.
I am 35 years old and have a family of wife and 2 daughters.
My business education dream was triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. I was in home office from March 2020 and this gave me enough time to think about my career and future opportunities.
I had left college in 2007 and had not attempted a competitive exam after that. It is also important to mention that my schooling was in Malayalam medium(in the state of Kerala,India) and until 11th grade,I didn't know what is meant by the word 'multiplication'.
My GMAT approach:
I got initial ideas about GMAT from a friend who had just finished his GMAT. My target score was 730. I picked an official GMAT review (13th edition 🙂) from a central library and started solving the questions. After about 3 weeks of preparation, I took the first official practise test and scored 650 (Q49,V29).
I was happy to score 650, but with the realisation that I need to improve my verbal skills. I continued my practise with the official review and in parallel enrolled myself into the PrepScholar GMAT course. I won't say good or bad about this course as I had not followed their study plan religiously.
After 4 more weeks,I wrote the second practise test to score 610(Q49,V25).
This was alarming to me as my verbal score had gone down.
I was far away from my target score and my biggest mistake was to just run though the questions and their answers without analysing the reason why 1 answer,the correct one, is better than the other 4.
I continued my practise and wrote the official practise test 1 after "resetting" it. The score was 750(Q50,V41). I was too much elated and became over-confident. Needless to say that it was a trap, I recommend to reset the exam only to get a feel of the exam environment and not to get a score estimate.
After this I stopped my study and practise for about 3 months as I had exhausted myself with the preparations already.
I restarted my preparation in November 2020 where my focus was on analysing my week areas.
I spent exceedingly more time on solving GMATClub verbal questions. In the first week of December 2020,I took the GMAC official practise test 3 to score a 650(Q47,V32). The next day, I took the official practise test 4 to score 690(Q49,V35).
I had made up my mind to take the exam during the Christmas vacation and even completed the slot booking formalities. But the booking didn't get confirmed because of a payment gateway problem. I considered this a bad omen😇 and decided to prepare further rigorously.
This was further supported by the fact that my score on official practise test 5 was 670(Q47,V35) and on official practise test 6 was 640(Q50,V25).
I had exhausted all my official tests and came under real pressure to understand where I am going wrong with such varying scores.
My perspective on verbal ability:
My story so far shows that I never had any structured plan for my preparation, rather I was just writing exams, hoping that my score will improve automatically. I don't know whether a structured adaptive study plan helps to score well on GMAT,because I don't have such experience😎, but I know that it is very important to solve many questions and analyse your errors to identify the areas of improvement.
I was very adamant not to pick any intensive GMAT preparation course because of the following question in my mind:
These courses may give you a lot of tips and tricks to solve GMAT questions and get a good score, but would they help you in the real world, when you are attending a company board meeting, to find assumptions in a business case without thinking about the negation scenario and falsification condition?
Nevertheless, I strongly believe that a good GMAT score is desirable,but the way you get it should be sustainable.
I may be wrong with my thought and don't want to undermine any course or coaching.
The most interesting part in my preparation:
Since I exhausted all my official practise tests,I had no way to assess my ability and get to a confident state. At this point I came across the Experts Global, 15mock test pack and it was a blessing for me. I wrote 14 of the 15 tests within a span of 1 month. My trend of getting highly varying scores in practise tests continued in the case of EG tests also,as I scored 550 as well as 750, with almost all multiples of 10 between them.
The best part about EG test was that the analytics gave me some insights into specific areas that need improvement. I never had such an insight earlier.
As I wrote more and more EG tests combined with GMATClub questions,my SC ability dramatically improved. After I completed 7 EG mock tests,
I had stabilised myself with the Quant score of 49-50.
The 14th EG mock test gave me a score of 740 which gave me confidence to give a shot at the actual GMAT.
More than analysing my wrong answers,I was analysing my mental state while writing each mock tests and identifying any distractions in between, the time of the day when I scored the best, whether I should attempt quant first or verbal first and so on.
I realised that my best scores came around 3PM afternoon every time. I picked a date when a slot was available around that time. My exam was on January 20, 2021 at 3:15PM.
GMAT online experience was not very different from what others have shared already. I was a little tensed about the AI facial recognition as my photo in the passport had no beard and moustache, but I had grown hair and beard during the pandemic. I had kept a trimmer in my room to do a quick make over in case of any problems😇. But nothing unexpected happened during the test and I had a smooth GMAT test experience.
I had read on GMAC website that the online GMAT has the fixed section order of Quant,Verbal and IR, but somehow I missed this point completely during my practise tests and I was prepared for Verbal,Quant and IR as my preferred order.
The shock of this reversed order and few tough Quant questions upfront shook me a litle bit, but I kept on backing myself thinking that I score more when I get more difficult questions.
I finished the exam but didn't keep high expectations. 5 days later, I received the email that my score is ready. I had closed my eyes after clicking on the View Score button. My eyes opened to extreme surprise as my score turned out to be 710(Q49,V36). I have nothing to write about my score as my score and GMAT's adaptive algorithm remain mysteries🙂
My key takeaways:
1. Have a target score in mind.
2. Dedicate enough time for studies.
3. Identify a study plan which works for you. It can be structured, unstructured, adaptive etc. Decide the path and own it.
4. Get enough exam practise. 166 minutes of online exam is really tiring. You need to get to the habit of sitting so long in such a draining exam environment.
5. Master at least one section in Verbal. For me the easiest was SC.
Disclaimer: I neither promote my GMAT preparation strategy nor undermine other preparatory courses. Decide the approach based on your priorities, time and money.
Foot note: I had not prepared much for IR section. I have spent only 4 hours to it. My score was 6.
I hope my story would atleast boost confidence in some people who consider 700 a magic number.
Posted from my mobile device
I would like to share my GMAT journey and describe how(??) I got to the 91st percentile - 710(Q49,V36).
Background:
I belong to the over represented group of Indian IT male with an engineering background.
I am 35 years old and have a family of wife and 2 daughters.
My business education dream was triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. I was in home office from March 2020 and this gave me enough time to think about my career and future opportunities.
I had left college in 2007 and had not attempted a competitive exam after that. It is also important to mention that my schooling was in Malayalam medium(in the state of Kerala,India) and until 11th grade,I didn't know what is meant by the word 'multiplication'.
My GMAT approach:
I got initial ideas about GMAT from a friend who had just finished his GMAT. My target score was 730. I picked an official GMAT review (13th edition 🙂) from a central library and started solving the questions. After about 3 weeks of preparation, I took the first official practise test and scored 650 (Q49,V29).
I was happy to score 650, but with the realisation that I need to improve my verbal skills. I continued my practise with the official review and in parallel enrolled myself into the PrepScholar GMAT course. I won't say good or bad about this course as I had not followed their study plan religiously.
After 4 more weeks,I wrote the second practise test to score 610(Q49,V25).
This was alarming to me as my verbal score had gone down.
I was far away from my target score and my biggest mistake was to just run though the questions and their answers without analysing the reason why 1 answer,the correct one, is better than the other 4.
I continued my practise and wrote the official practise test 1 after "resetting" it. The score was 750(Q50,V41). I was too much elated and became over-confident. Needless to say that it was a trap, I recommend to reset the exam only to get a feel of the exam environment and not to get a score estimate.
After this I stopped my study and practise for about 3 months as I had exhausted myself with the preparations already.
I restarted my preparation in November 2020 where my focus was on analysing my week areas.
I spent exceedingly more time on solving GMATClub verbal questions. In the first week of December 2020,I took the GMAC official practise test 3 to score a 650(Q47,V32). The next day, I took the official practise test 4 to score 690(Q49,V35).
I had made up my mind to take the exam during the Christmas vacation and even completed the slot booking formalities. But the booking didn't get confirmed because of a payment gateway problem. I considered this a bad omen😇 and decided to prepare further rigorously.
This was further supported by the fact that my score on official practise test 5 was 670(Q47,V35) and on official practise test 6 was 640(Q50,V25).
I had exhausted all my official tests and came under real pressure to understand where I am going wrong with such varying scores.
My perspective on verbal ability:
My story so far shows that I never had any structured plan for my preparation, rather I was just writing exams, hoping that my score will improve automatically. I don't know whether a structured adaptive study plan helps to score well on GMAT,because I don't have such experience😎, but I know that it is very important to solve many questions and analyse your errors to identify the areas of improvement.
I was very adamant not to pick any intensive GMAT preparation course because of the following question in my mind:
These courses may give you a lot of tips and tricks to solve GMAT questions and get a good score, but would they help you in the real world, when you are attending a company board meeting, to find assumptions in a business case without thinking about the negation scenario and falsification condition?
Nevertheless, I strongly believe that a good GMAT score is desirable,but the way you get it should be sustainable.
I may be wrong with my thought and don't want to undermine any course or coaching.
The most interesting part in my preparation:
Since I exhausted all my official practise tests,I had no way to assess my ability and get to a confident state. At this point I came across the Experts Global, 15mock test pack and it was a blessing for me. I wrote 14 of the 15 tests within a span of 1 month. My trend of getting highly varying scores in practise tests continued in the case of EG tests also,as I scored 550 as well as 750, with almost all multiples of 10 between them.
The best part about EG test was that the analytics gave me some insights into specific areas that need improvement. I never had such an insight earlier.
As I wrote more and more EG tests combined with GMATClub questions,my SC ability dramatically improved. After I completed 7 EG mock tests,
I had stabilised myself with the Quant score of 49-50.
The 14th EG mock test gave me a score of 740 which gave me confidence to give a shot at the actual GMAT.
More than analysing my wrong answers,I was analysing my mental state while writing each mock tests and identifying any distractions in between, the time of the day when I scored the best, whether I should attempt quant first or verbal first and so on.
I realised that my best scores came around 3PM afternoon every time. I picked a date when a slot was available around that time. My exam was on January 20, 2021 at 3:15PM.
GMAT online experience was not very different from what others have shared already. I was a little tensed about the AI facial recognition as my photo in the passport had no beard and moustache, but I had grown hair and beard during the pandemic. I had kept a trimmer in my room to do a quick make over in case of any problems😇. But nothing unexpected happened during the test and I had a smooth GMAT test experience.
I had read on GMAC website that the online GMAT has the fixed section order of Quant,Verbal and IR, but somehow I missed this point completely during my practise tests and I was prepared for Verbal,Quant and IR as my preferred order.
The shock of this reversed order and few tough Quant questions upfront shook me a litle bit, but I kept on backing myself thinking that I score more when I get more difficult questions.
I finished the exam but didn't keep high expectations. 5 days later, I received the email that my score is ready. I had closed my eyes after clicking on the View Score button. My eyes opened to extreme surprise as my score turned out to be 710(Q49,V36). I have nothing to write about my score as my score and GMAT's adaptive algorithm remain mysteries🙂
My key takeaways:
1. Have a target score in mind.
2. Dedicate enough time for studies.
3. Identify a study plan which works for you. It can be structured, unstructured, adaptive etc. Decide the path and own it.
4. Get enough exam practise. 166 minutes of online exam is really tiring. You need to get to the habit of sitting so long in such a draining exam environment.
5. Master at least one section in Verbal. For me the easiest was SC.
Disclaimer: I neither promote my GMAT preparation strategy nor undermine other preparatory courses. Decide the approach based on your priorities, time and money.
Foot note: I had not prepared much for IR section. I have spent only 4 hours to it. My score was 6.
I hope my story would atleast boost confidence in some people who consider 700 a magic number.
Posted from my mobile device
04 Feb 2021, 10:35
Kudos
Bookmarks
