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Apr 2601:30 AM EDT
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Learn how Keshav, a Chartered Accountant, scored an impressive 705 on GMAT in just 30 days with GMATWhiz's expert guidance. In this video, he shares preparation tips and strategies that worked for him, including the mock, time management, and more.
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Apr 2512:30 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.
Apr 2711:00 AM EDT
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Hi Aspirants,
On one of those days, when I was steering through the ups and downs of GMAT prep, I made a promise to myself that once I am through this, I will pen down my experience and will do my bit to provide guidance to those who need it. And now, when I am one month into the MBA program at IIM Indore, after scoring a 710 in GMAT, I am reminded of that promise and hence I am putting down my experience, which was actually quite eventful, and hoping that this effort may provide some idea about what and what not to expect on this journey.
When I started my preps, the first task was to identify the materials to be referred. Just after a little effort you will come to know that there is a heap of options and the task is to choose the best one out of those. Believe me that this first step is a very crucial one as once you take up a course, you have to commit yourself to it and jumping through courses and materials will make things very stressful. Then how to choose it? The answer is that assess where you stand, because everyone has a different need. Take the official test, if the score is near 50 percentiles, then you need to go ahead with some brush-up’s of the verbal and quant initially and then only go towards the advanced level. One more suggestion in this case is that you keep at least 6 months for preparations.
In the beginning, do not go to official guides for practice but save this resource for last stages of preparation. You can take self-paced courses at the start. These courses will take you from easy to advanced level practice materials and will usually start with concept building. Never skip the easy and medium-difficulty part. These two parts will coach you to dissect and see the problem from the right perspective and hence will equip you with most important skills to crack GMAT. Medium level problems are the ones which will actually take you almost to the doorstep of high score and hence you cannot afford to get these wrong.
There are many good courses out there, you will get to know about top ranked courses along with reviews on many threads on GMAT Club. I took a package from Experts' Global. It was a complete package, which came with 15 mock test and hence was a “good and value for money” package. While this course did a very good job of preparing the strong foundation for both quant and verbal and giving a good number of mock practices, I found it a little lacking in terms of advanced level, near-real GMAT problems, hence a good option but needs to be complemented with some other material (strictly a personal opinion; these things work differently with different people). I complemented my preparation with official guides, official mocks from mba.com, manhattan mocks, and questions from gmatclub.
So, if you have done fairly good in the free official mock test or you have gone through the early stage of practice as mentioned above, move towards the advanced stage. Practice all sorts of questions in a timed setup and make a habit a solving a good number of questions in a stretch. Remember that in gmat you will have to keep your cognitive function at a sharp level for a good amount of period and hence inculcate that in practice stage itself. Solve as much mocks as possible. Keep official mocks for later stages as those ones will give you a closest idea of your actual standing in terms of scores. Manhattan mocks will give a very tough practice but that practice will help a lot and will develop a better understanding of difficult questions. Do not worry about low scorers in manhattan mocks (My scores were always between 530 to 640). Do not get very excited with the scores of official mocks, though most of the times they are accurate but nothing can match the real questions and real presssure conditions of the gmat exam and hence keep in mind that those scores could be little inflated. Solve the official guide problems at this stage. Initially keep the mocks less frequent and later increase the frequency when you are well through the official guides. Resources that could be used at this stage are official guides, official mocks from mba.com, manhattan mocks, and questions from gmatclub. Use these resources judiciously as these are few of the most trusted ones and can rapidly turn into a scarce resource.
Now few finer points which may make a lot of difference:
So, this was a start from my end. I might have forgotten to mention a thing or two, I will update if I come across any such idea. Do ask, if anyone has any kind of doubt, query ... I will try to reply at earliest. I will be happy to contribute if my effort can help someone to see things clearly, for I remember how I kept on stumbling over various confusions all through my GMAT journey.
On one of those days, when I was steering through the ups and downs of GMAT prep, I made a promise to myself that once I am through this, I will pen down my experience and will do my bit to provide guidance to those who need it. And now, when I am one month into the MBA program at IIM Indore, after scoring a 710 in GMAT, I am reminded of that promise and hence I am putting down my experience, which was actually quite eventful, and hoping that this effort may provide some idea about what and what not to expect on this journey.
When I started my preps, the first task was to identify the materials to be referred. Just after a little effort you will come to know that there is a heap of options and the task is to choose the best one out of those. Believe me that this first step is a very crucial one as once you take up a course, you have to commit yourself to it and jumping through courses and materials will make things very stressful. Then how to choose it? The answer is that assess where you stand, because everyone has a different need. Take the official test, if the score is near 50 percentiles, then you need to go ahead with some brush-up’s of the verbal and quant initially and then only go towards the advanced level. One more suggestion in this case is that you keep at least 6 months for preparations.
In the beginning, do not go to official guides for practice but save this resource for last stages of preparation. You can take self-paced courses at the start. These courses will take you from easy to advanced level practice materials and will usually start with concept building. Never skip the easy and medium-difficulty part. These two parts will coach you to dissect and see the problem from the right perspective and hence will equip you with most important skills to crack GMAT. Medium level problems are the ones which will actually take you almost to the doorstep of high score and hence you cannot afford to get these wrong.
There are many good courses out there, you will get to know about top ranked courses along with reviews on many threads on GMAT Club. I took a package from Experts' Global. It was a complete package, which came with 15 mock test and hence was a “good and value for money” package. While this course did a very good job of preparing the strong foundation for both quant and verbal and giving a good number of mock practices, I found it a little lacking in terms of advanced level, near-real GMAT problems, hence a good option but needs to be complemented with some other material (strictly a personal opinion; these things work differently with different people). I complemented my preparation with official guides, official mocks from mba.com, manhattan mocks, and questions from gmatclub.
So, if you have done fairly good in the free official mock test or you have gone through the early stage of practice as mentioned above, move towards the advanced stage. Practice all sorts of questions in a timed setup and make a habit a solving a good number of questions in a stretch. Remember that in gmat you will have to keep your cognitive function at a sharp level for a good amount of period and hence inculcate that in practice stage itself. Solve as much mocks as possible. Keep official mocks for later stages as those ones will give you a closest idea of your actual standing in terms of scores. Manhattan mocks will give a very tough practice but that practice will help a lot and will develop a better understanding of difficult questions. Do not worry about low scorers in manhattan mocks (My scores were always between 530 to 640). Do not get very excited with the scores of official mocks, though most of the times they are accurate but nothing can match the real questions and real presssure conditions of the gmat exam and hence keep in mind that those scores could be little inflated. Solve the official guide problems at this stage. Initially keep the mocks less frequent and later increase the frequency when you are well through the official guides. Resources that could be used at this stage are official guides, official mocks from mba.com, manhattan mocks, and questions from gmatclub. Use these resources judiciously as these are few of the most trusted ones and can rapidly turn into a scarce resource.
Now few finer points which may make a lot of difference:
- Take mocks in gmat like situations and preferably at the same time of the day as that of the planned test.
- There is no "fit for all formula" to crack gmat, do not lose heart if something does not work out, keep improvising, take guidance, keep moving.
- Do not take claims (such as 'clear gmat in 1 week/month) on face value. Normally it takes time, so do not act in haste or else one can end up taking unsuccessful attempts and consequently losing confidence. Assess yourself and plan accordingly.
- Do not get depressed at any cost. It is never over unless you think it is over. It took me a number of attempts to reach my desired score. When I was at best of my practice and was scoring 700+ constantly in official mocks, I took the exam and scored just 640. I was shattered and it took a lot of effort even to start thinking about gmat but fortunately I took it again after a couple of months and scored 710. I realised that there are some days which are just not made for you. Therefore, don’t think about the disasters too much, just think and contemplate on where you can work a little more.
- Keep a log of your mistakes and make conscious effort to not to repeat a mistake.
- Work on your strengths as well as on weaknesses. Balanced efforts towards these two aspects will push you towards your goal. For example, my quant was not very good and hence I worked hard to take it at to a certain level but then I also realised that high score in verbal will be the key to the overall high score so I made a drastic improvement in that area.
- Take a good sleep/rest before test. Try to have a balanced life during preparation, it helps a lot towards the cognitive functioning of the brain.
- Perseverance matters a LOT. Time and again you will think that you cannot do it, that time perseverance and discipline will only help.
So, this was a start from my end. I might have forgotten to mention a thing or two, I will update if I come across any such idea. Do ask, if anyone has any kind of doubt, query ... I will try to reply at earliest. I will be happy to contribute if my effort can help someone to see things clearly, for I remember how I kept on stumbling over various confusions all through my GMAT journey.
11 May 2024, 09:50
Kudos
Bookmarks
Hi YoAt.
Nice work!
Also, those are some great tips. I especially like this one.
Nice work!
Also, those are some great tips. I especially like this one.
Quote:
Congrats, and may all go well for you with school and everything else.
