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21 Apr 2023, 15:03
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Hey all! After reading several debriefs on various forums while working towards my GMAT goals, I wanted to share my story and how I went from a no-prep 670 (46Q/35V) to a 770 (51Q/45V) over about 15 months.
I come from a STEM background from a strong undergrad university. I have a very strong math background. For the SATs, I received multiple 800 math scores, both on the standard test and the subject tests. My verbal skills were much weaker. I have historically scored in the ~80th percentile for reading/writing sections for standardized testing. My initial target GMAT score was 780 as I thought I could achieve that. More reasonably, I was hoping to score at least a 750. Based off of my strengths and weaknesses, I had the following gameplan:
1) Grind out Quant immediately to guarantee at least a Q50. I felt that I was capable of a Q51 due to my math background but did not want to spend too much time on Quant since the difference between a Q50 and Q51 was 10 points. I would gain more points putting time into Verbal than marginally improving my Quant.
2) Build the fundamentals for Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning. I had the core skills required to do well in these sections, I just needed to understand how the GMAT approaches these sections and learn the typical question patterns.
3) Pour all remaining time into Sentence Correction. To put it bluntly, I’m bad at Sentence Correction. I did not have a strong grasp of the core rules for Sentence Correction and would use my ear too much. Once I felt comfortable with Quant and the other two verbal sections, I felt that I would gain the most points by investing time into SC.
Attempt #1 (January 2022 – May 2022) – 720 (Q51/V35)
To set myself up for success, my friends and I created a study group and met weekly to go over GMAT questions and strategy. My friends were very strong in verbal and relatively weaker in Quant, I was the opposite. This group was the key to my GMAT success as it helped motivate me and provided verbal insights that were not intuitive for me. Through our GMAT research, our group felt that Target Test Prep was the most efficient way to build up our base skills.
We collectively grinded through the Expert+ track for Target Test Prep. I spent 15+ hour weeks to go through question by question and completed Target Test Prep in a bit under 3 full months. I don’t believe this timing is reasonable for most. TTP is Quant heavy and with my math background, once I relearned several of the skill sets, I zoomed through the material. I averaged a 93% correct rate with an average speed of 1:10 per question, which greatly sped up the time it took to go through the material. For Verbal, TTP did a great job at walking through the fundamentals for all 3 sub-sections. The Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning sections made a ton of sense and I saw myself scoring highly in both sections. TTP provided a great foundation for Sentence Correction, but it just was not clicking for me fully. The TTP sentence correction questions are very hard. My friends (who scored V42+ each) on the actual GMAT also struggled to get more than 50% of the TTP hard questions correct. I found overall that TTP elevated my Quant score to at least a Q50 on any given test day and that I had a 50/50 chance of scoring a Q51. After my experience, I feel that TTP can help anyone score a Q50 on the test itself. The gap between Q50 and Q51 seems to be much harder to necessarily teach. I believe scoring a Q51 can only come with extensive practice or through naturally strong math skills. Additionally, TTP exceeded my expectations for RC and CR as I felt that I had all the fundamentals required to score highly. TTP did meet my expectations for SC by providing a strong foundation for SC, but I felt that I still needed to spend significantly more time to lock in a high SC score. Lastly, while I only spent under 3 full months going through the entirety of TTP, I feel that for most people it would take 4-5 months. My speed at the math problems greatly sped up how much time I spent on TTP.
Post TTP, I felt my big weakness was still SC. To improve on this I went through several resources such as OG (Verbal only), Manhattan Prep SC, GMAT Ninja Youtube Videos, GMAT Club SC, and Advanced OG SC. My thought for SC during this study session was to just practice to get more familiar with the concepts. I found all of these resources very helpful, with no particular resource standing out too much from the rest. One thing I did notice was previous users compiled several documents of old SC questions that were great just to grind through. I leveraged excel documents of hundreds of GMAT questions and some word documents that I found to work through that helped me a lot. After all of this prep, I took 4 Official Practice Tests before my Official Test. I scored 750 (Q51/V40), 760 (Q51/V41), 760 (Q50/V41), and 740 (Q50/V39). I did not practice IR at all and read several essay templates on the AWA before taking the real test at the end of May. I scored a 720 (Q51/V35) on the real test. During the test I felt terrible on my Quant and Verbal pacing. In my practice tests, I normally finish the Quant section with around 15-20 minutes remaining. I knew this wouldn’t hold true for the actual GMAT, but I was surprised that during the test itself I was rushing towards the end. I was shocked to see a Q51 as I thought I did much worse. I also felt extremely rushed during Verbal. I found the SC harder than what I was practicing and it showed in my ESR.
Attempt #2 (June 2022 – December 2022) – 720 (Q50/V37)
I knew I wanted to take the GMAT again, but I planned to work remotely from June-August and did not have the right environment to study for the GMAT. I don’t think I looked at the GMAT these months. I planned to start back up again in September, but couldn’t will myself to truly commit myself to studying outside of a 2-3 hours a week. In November, I put the pressure on myself by booking an exam date to force myself to study again. As a result of this poor approach, I really did not study for the test for effectively 5 months. Because of this, I spent a week or two just catching up to my previous point in Quant/Verbal.
During November and December, my sole focus was SC. I spent my time going through the Manhattan Prep SC book again and working through Advanced OG SC questions. I put little to no time towards other sections. I felt that my core understanding for SC greatly improved the second time going through Manhattan Prep SC and that core concepts were finally sticking. I took the last two Official Practice Tests and re-did one of the practice tests scoring the following – 750 (Q51/V40), 780 (Q51/V47), and 770 (Q51/V45). Elated based on these tests, I took the GMAT at the end of December. I scored 720 again with a Q50/V37 split. Honestly, I was disappointed with myself. I again felt rushed during Quant and Verbal. In my ESR I saw improvements in my RC with a perfect score, slight improvement with my SC, and a drop in my CR.
Attempt #3 (January 2023 – April 2023) – 770 (Q51/V45)
After the second attempt, I was frustrated and wanted to wrap up my GMAT experience. I made a gameplan to work through CR for 2 weeks in January and then spend time on SC until I felt comfortable enough to schedule a third test. I worked through the Manhattan Prep CR book and found it helped improve my fundamentals. After this, I worked through the Manhattan Prep SC book for a third time to improve my fundamentals. With the help of friends, I spent countless hours grinding through SC questions and not just trying to get the right answers, but working through exactly why each answer is wrong and asking myself what/if anything could be changed to make the sentence right. I think this last approach is what greatly improved my SC understanding. I grinded GMAT Club SC questions and found that the majority of questions I would receive on an official test were of medium difficulty. It was important for me to knock out the medium difficulty questions consistently rather than experience slight improvements in hard questions. After I felt good about my SC improvements, I booked my exam for early April.
Two weeks out from the exam, I decided that since my issues were predominantly timing, that it would make the most sense to grind out several practice GMAT exams. I purchased the Manhattan Prep CAT exams and worked through the OG exams again as I had forgotten pretty much all of the questions at this point. From March 27th through April 7th, I did 10 CAT exams. I started off with 2 OG exams and 4 Manhattan Prep exams. The Manhattan Prep Quant is incredibly hard. Despite this, I felt that these were the best Quant Cat exams for me as I felt that it was more similar to my test day experience with Quant. On the Manhattan Prep exams, I consistently scored lower than the OG exams, scoring approximately 730-750. After this prep, I worked through the OG exams. On the last 5 OG exams, I scored either a 770 or 780. My timing and rhythm for taking the exams improved drastically during this time period and I was ready for the test.
On the test day, I zoomed through the Quant section. I had about 10 minutes remaining on the last question. With this, I did not submit the last question until about a minute left. I spent this time decompressing and mentally preparing myself for the verbal section. For the verbal section, everything flowed very well. I did not feel stuck and felt that I had great timing. I felt confident in my answers for SC and breezed through all of the CR. At the end of this, I still had 5 minutes remaining. I felt that going through 10 CAT exams right before taking the test was the key for me to improve timing and confidence the day of. My exam results reflected this, I scored a 770 (Q51/V45). In my ESR, I calculated that I got 3 Quant wrong and 3 Verbal wrong. I went perfect on the CR and only got 1 wrong on the SC. This was a massive improvement versus my first test where I calculated that I got 5 SC wrong. I got 2 wrong on the RC which was a surprise since I usually performed much better. I received an 8 IR and a 5 AWA, both scores were sufficient for me.
General Takeaways
1) TTP is a fantastic Quant resource and helped me lock in a Q51 for 2 of the 3 official tests I took. I would recommend this resource for anyone looking to get better at Quant.
2) TTP provided a great foundation for verbal, but I still felt that I need more for SC. GMAT Club, OG, Advanced OG, Manhattan Prep, and GMAT Ninja are all great resources that I leveraged to get better.
3) Studying with friends was huge for me. My friends helped keep me motivated and helped me maintain a studying rhythm. I would highly suggest finding others to study with if possible.
4) I found that I had extra time on Quant. Instead of ending the section early, I would sit on the last question and wait until the end to decompress. I felt that this was important to mentally prepare me for the next section.
5) Taking a multi-month gap in studying extended my GMAT prep time. If I had been more consistent with studying and did not walk away from the exam for about 5 months, I felt that I could have gotten a similar score on the GMAT within 7-8 months of starting versus the 14 it did take.
6) Taking a ton of practice exams and building a rhythm gave me a lot of confidence. If you’re struggling with timing, I think cramming a lot of exams towards the end might be the right strategy.
7) Also on timing, making a timing table at the start of the section was huge for me. For Quant, I would write the question numbers 8/16/24/31 with corresponding times of 47/32/17/5. Having this written down and not having to think about pacing was a great mental relief. For Verbal I wrote 9/18/27/36 with corresponding times of 50/35/20/5. For IR I wrote 4/8/12 with corresponding times of 22/14/5.
8) For Verbal, I made a matrix of the options A/B/C/D/E. For tough verbal questions, I would use a row in this table to mark answers that were blatantly wrong with a dash and use a different marker for answers that may be right. I felt that this helped greatly clarify where my head was at especially when I was stewing on a problem
9) Lastly, for IR, there is a calculator button that you can use. I did not realize that this existed until my 3rd official test and felt like such a fool. Though you don’t really need the calculator, I felt that it was useful to know that it was there.
That’s my journey! Reading through reddit and GMAT Club posts of people’s stories and approaches was incredibly useful for me in charting my path to the score I wanted. I hope my debrief was as helpful. Best of luck to all on reaching your GMAT goals!
Posted from my mobile device
I come from a STEM background from a strong undergrad university. I have a very strong math background. For the SATs, I received multiple 800 math scores, both on the standard test and the subject tests. My verbal skills were much weaker. I have historically scored in the ~80th percentile for reading/writing sections for standardized testing. My initial target GMAT score was 780 as I thought I could achieve that. More reasonably, I was hoping to score at least a 750. Based off of my strengths and weaknesses, I had the following gameplan:
1) Grind out Quant immediately to guarantee at least a Q50. I felt that I was capable of a Q51 due to my math background but did not want to spend too much time on Quant since the difference between a Q50 and Q51 was 10 points. I would gain more points putting time into Verbal than marginally improving my Quant.
2) Build the fundamentals for Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning. I had the core skills required to do well in these sections, I just needed to understand how the GMAT approaches these sections and learn the typical question patterns.
3) Pour all remaining time into Sentence Correction. To put it bluntly, I’m bad at Sentence Correction. I did not have a strong grasp of the core rules for Sentence Correction and would use my ear too much. Once I felt comfortable with Quant and the other two verbal sections, I felt that I would gain the most points by investing time into SC.
Attempt #1 (January 2022 – May 2022) – 720 (Q51/V35)
To set myself up for success, my friends and I created a study group and met weekly to go over GMAT questions and strategy. My friends were very strong in verbal and relatively weaker in Quant, I was the opposite. This group was the key to my GMAT success as it helped motivate me and provided verbal insights that were not intuitive for me. Through our GMAT research, our group felt that Target Test Prep was the most efficient way to build up our base skills.
We collectively grinded through the Expert+ track for Target Test Prep. I spent 15+ hour weeks to go through question by question and completed Target Test Prep in a bit under 3 full months. I don’t believe this timing is reasonable for most. TTP is Quant heavy and with my math background, once I relearned several of the skill sets, I zoomed through the material. I averaged a 93% correct rate with an average speed of 1:10 per question, which greatly sped up the time it took to go through the material. For Verbal, TTP did a great job at walking through the fundamentals for all 3 sub-sections. The Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning sections made a ton of sense and I saw myself scoring highly in both sections. TTP provided a great foundation for Sentence Correction, but it just was not clicking for me fully. The TTP sentence correction questions are very hard. My friends (who scored V42+ each) on the actual GMAT also struggled to get more than 50% of the TTP hard questions correct. I found overall that TTP elevated my Quant score to at least a Q50 on any given test day and that I had a 50/50 chance of scoring a Q51. After my experience, I feel that TTP can help anyone score a Q50 on the test itself. The gap between Q50 and Q51 seems to be much harder to necessarily teach. I believe scoring a Q51 can only come with extensive practice or through naturally strong math skills. Additionally, TTP exceeded my expectations for RC and CR as I felt that I had all the fundamentals required to score highly. TTP did meet my expectations for SC by providing a strong foundation for SC, but I felt that I still needed to spend significantly more time to lock in a high SC score. Lastly, while I only spent under 3 full months going through the entirety of TTP, I feel that for most people it would take 4-5 months. My speed at the math problems greatly sped up how much time I spent on TTP.
Post TTP, I felt my big weakness was still SC. To improve on this I went through several resources such as OG (Verbal only), Manhattan Prep SC, GMAT Ninja Youtube Videos, GMAT Club SC, and Advanced OG SC. My thought for SC during this study session was to just practice to get more familiar with the concepts. I found all of these resources very helpful, with no particular resource standing out too much from the rest. One thing I did notice was previous users compiled several documents of old SC questions that were great just to grind through. I leveraged excel documents of hundreds of GMAT questions and some word documents that I found to work through that helped me a lot. After all of this prep, I took 4 Official Practice Tests before my Official Test. I scored 750 (Q51/V40), 760 (Q51/V41), 760 (Q50/V41), and 740 (Q50/V39). I did not practice IR at all and read several essay templates on the AWA before taking the real test at the end of May. I scored a 720 (Q51/V35) on the real test. During the test I felt terrible on my Quant and Verbal pacing. In my practice tests, I normally finish the Quant section with around 15-20 minutes remaining. I knew this wouldn’t hold true for the actual GMAT, but I was surprised that during the test itself I was rushing towards the end. I was shocked to see a Q51 as I thought I did much worse. I also felt extremely rushed during Verbal. I found the SC harder than what I was practicing and it showed in my ESR.
Attempt #2 (June 2022 – December 2022) – 720 (Q50/V37)
I knew I wanted to take the GMAT again, but I planned to work remotely from June-August and did not have the right environment to study for the GMAT. I don’t think I looked at the GMAT these months. I planned to start back up again in September, but couldn’t will myself to truly commit myself to studying outside of a 2-3 hours a week. In November, I put the pressure on myself by booking an exam date to force myself to study again. As a result of this poor approach, I really did not study for the test for effectively 5 months. Because of this, I spent a week or two just catching up to my previous point in Quant/Verbal.
During November and December, my sole focus was SC. I spent my time going through the Manhattan Prep SC book again and working through Advanced OG SC questions. I put little to no time towards other sections. I felt that my core understanding for SC greatly improved the second time going through Manhattan Prep SC and that core concepts were finally sticking. I took the last two Official Practice Tests and re-did one of the practice tests scoring the following – 750 (Q51/V40), 780 (Q51/V47), and 770 (Q51/V45). Elated based on these tests, I took the GMAT at the end of December. I scored 720 again with a Q50/V37 split. Honestly, I was disappointed with myself. I again felt rushed during Quant and Verbal. In my ESR I saw improvements in my RC with a perfect score, slight improvement with my SC, and a drop in my CR.
Attempt #3 (January 2023 – April 2023) – 770 (Q51/V45)
After the second attempt, I was frustrated and wanted to wrap up my GMAT experience. I made a gameplan to work through CR for 2 weeks in January and then spend time on SC until I felt comfortable enough to schedule a third test. I worked through the Manhattan Prep CR book and found it helped improve my fundamentals. After this, I worked through the Manhattan Prep SC book for a third time to improve my fundamentals. With the help of friends, I spent countless hours grinding through SC questions and not just trying to get the right answers, but working through exactly why each answer is wrong and asking myself what/if anything could be changed to make the sentence right. I think this last approach is what greatly improved my SC understanding. I grinded GMAT Club SC questions and found that the majority of questions I would receive on an official test were of medium difficulty. It was important for me to knock out the medium difficulty questions consistently rather than experience slight improvements in hard questions. After I felt good about my SC improvements, I booked my exam for early April.
Two weeks out from the exam, I decided that since my issues were predominantly timing, that it would make the most sense to grind out several practice GMAT exams. I purchased the Manhattan Prep CAT exams and worked through the OG exams again as I had forgotten pretty much all of the questions at this point. From March 27th through April 7th, I did 10 CAT exams. I started off with 2 OG exams and 4 Manhattan Prep exams. The Manhattan Prep Quant is incredibly hard. Despite this, I felt that these were the best Quant Cat exams for me as I felt that it was more similar to my test day experience with Quant. On the Manhattan Prep exams, I consistently scored lower than the OG exams, scoring approximately 730-750. After this prep, I worked through the OG exams. On the last 5 OG exams, I scored either a 770 or 780. My timing and rhythm for taking the exams improved drastically during this time period and I was ready for the test.
On the test day, I zoomed through the Quant section. I had about 10 minutes remaining on the last question. With this, I did not submit the last question until about a minute left. I spent this time decompressing and mentally preparing myself for the verbal section. For the verbal section, everything flowed very well. I did not feel stuck and felt that I had great timing. I felt confident in my answers for SC and breezed through all of the CR. At the end of this, I still had 5 minutes remaining. I felt that going through 10 CAT exams right before taking the test was the key for me to improve timing and confidence the day of. My exam results reflected this, I scored a 770 (Q51/V45). In my ESR, I calculated that I got 3 Quant wrong and 3 Verbal wrong. I went perfect on the CR and only got 1 wrong on the SC. This was a massive improvement versus my first test where I calculated that I got 5 SC wrong. I got 2 wrong on the RC which was a surprise since I usually performed much better. I received an 8 IR and a 5 AWA, both scores were sufficient for me.
General Takeaways
1) TTP is a fantastic Quant resource and helped me lock in a Q51 for 2 of the 3 official tests I took. I would recommend this resource for anyone looking to get better at Quant.
2) TTP provided a great foundation for verbal, but I still felt that I need more for SC. GMAT Club, OG, Advanced OG, Manhattan Prep, and GMAT Ninja are all great resources that I leveraged to get better.
3) Studying with friends was huge for me. My friends helped keep me motivated and helped me maintain a studying rhythm. I would highly suggest finding others to study with if possible.
4) I found that I had extra time on Quant. Instead of ending the section early, I would sit on the last question and wait until the end to decompress. I felt that this was important to mentally prepare me for the next section.
5) Taking a multi-month gap in studying extended my GMAT prep time. If I had been more consistent with studying and did not walk away from the exam for about 5 months, I felt that I could have gotten a similar score on the GMAT within 7-8 months of starting versus the 14 it did take.
6) Taking a ton of practice exams and building a rhythm gave me a lot of confidence. If you’re struggling with timing, I think cramming a lot of exams towards the end might be the right strategy.
7) Also on timing, making a timing table at the start of the section was huge for me. For Quant, I would write the question numbers 8/16/24/31 with corresponding times of 47/32/17/5. Having this written down and not having to think about pacing was a great mental relief. For Verbal I wrote 9/18/27/36 with corresponding times of 50/35/20/5. For IR I wrote 4/8/12 with corresponding times of 22/14/5.
8) For Verbal, I made a matrix of the options A/B/C/D/E. For tough verbal questions, I would use a row in this table to mark answers that were blatantly wrong with a dash and use a different marker for answers that may be right. I felt that this helped greatly clarify where my head was at especially when I was stewing on a problem
9) Lastly, for IR, there is a calculator button that you can use. I did not realize that this existed until my 3rd official test and felt like such a fool. Though you don’t really need the calculator, I felt that it was useful to know that it was there.
That’s my journey! Reading through reddit and GMAT Club posts of people’s stories and approaches was incredibly useful for me in charting my path to the score I wanted. I hope my debrief was as helpful. Best of luck to all on reaching your GMAT goals!
Posted from my mobile device
21 Apr 2023, 15:45
Kudos
Bookmarks
Congratulations on an excellent score. Hard work and a well-chalked out plan was the key.
All the Best for the applications.
All the Best for the applications.
21 Apr 2023, 16:03
Kudos
Bookmarks
Fantastic score. Thank you so much for the tips. You should remind me asking, what was your goal 15 months ago when you started on this journey? Did you aim to score this high? 😱
Posted from my mobile device
Posted from my mobile device
