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neelampatel
Joined: 03 Jul 2018
Last visit: 07 Feb 2025
Posts: 2
Given Kudos: 2
Location: India
Schools: ISB '27 (S)
GMAT Focus 1: 695 Q88 V85 DI80 
GPA: 6.1
Products:
25 Nov 2024, 01:33
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After months of preparation and two attempts, I finally achieved a 695 (Q88, V85, D80) on the GMAT Focus Edition. Being an IIT graduate, I initially thought this would be straightforward, but GMAT taught me some humbling lessons about myself.
A bit about me - I graduated from IIT Kanpur in 2020 and have been working with startups since then. The entrepreneurial exposure made me realize the value of an MBA for my career growth. Along with my professional work, I also run a Rumi poetry page on Instagram (yes, engineers can be poets too!).
Coming back to GMAT - my first attempt resulted in a 625, which was nowhere close to what I was aiming for. The 70-point improvement in just 40 days has been quite a journey, and I hope sharing my experience helps others in their preparation.
[size=100]Quant Journey (Q81 → Q88)[/size]
Being from IIT, I thought Quant would be the easiest part for me. But starting with Q81 was quite shocking! The concepts were clear - if you gave me questions without time pressure, I could solve almost everything. But during mocks and the actual exam, time management became a big issue.
My approach to Quant was fundamentally flawed at first. In a 21-question section, I noticed I was:
- Racing through some questions in under a minute
- Then getting stuck for 3-4 minutes on others
- Not having any consistent process for similar question types
- Relying too much on my mathematical intuition rather than GMAT-specific strategies
The reality was, out of these 21 questions, about 16-17 should be straightforward IF you have the right process. The remaining 4-5 tough questions need that extra time. But I was randomly deciding which questions deserved more time, leading to poor time management.
What actually worked was:
- Using the e-GMAT platform to identify exactly which concepts were taking too much time
- Going back to those specific concepts (word problems were a major culprit)
- Doing the learning activities and diagnostic quizzes step by step
- Practicing until the process became automatic - no more thinking "how should I solve this?"
This systematic approach helped me cut down solving time significantly. In my final attempt:
- Could solve medium questions in under 2 minutes
- Had enough time to fix two questions I initially got wrong
- Finished with better time management, leading to Q88
[size=100]Verbal Improvement to V85[/size]
My RC improvement came from a fundamental mindset shift. Initially, I was reading passages like I would read anything else - trying to understand what the passage was telling me from my perspective. This was wrong.
The game-changer was when I started asking myself: "Why has the author written this passage?" This shift changed everything:
- Instead of just absorbing information, I was actively looking for the author's purpose
- Main point and purpose questions became much more straightforward
- I could predict what kind of questions would come up
- No more rereading passages multiple times
For Critical Reasoning, I built on the same conscious reading approach. Earlier, while I knew I had to identify conclusions, I wasn't doing it systematically enough. Once I started reading more consciously like in RC:
- Could spot conclusions more accurately
- Pre-thinking became more natural
- Strengthening my verbal foundations helped both RC and CR
- It felt very similar to my mock experiences
- The conscious reading approach held up under pressure
- Ended up with V85, which matched my preparations
After my first attempt, I found myself in a tough spot - I had no mocks left and wasn't sure how to proceed. When I started taking mocks on the e-GMAT platform, my first score was quite poor. At that point, I was seriously thinking about quitting GMAT altogether.
This is where having a mentor (In my case Rida) made all the difference. After that disappointing mock, we had a chat where she pointed out that I had just made silly mistakes. She encouraged me to take another mock the very next day, and I scored much better. Sometimes you just need someone to give you that push and tell you it's possible when you're doubting yourself.
The other major benefit was having a structured approach. My mentor would tell me exactly what to do each day - which topics to focus on, what practice to complete. This made me feel accountable. Earlier, I wasn't being very disciplined, but now with someone tracking my progress, I had to stay on track.
This combination of moral support and structured guidance helped me achieve my 70-point improvement in just 40 days.
[size=100]Test Day Insights & Key Learnings[/size]
I chose to tackle the exam in Quant → DI → Verbal order. Quant started well though I did get stuck on two questions. Thankfully, I had enough time at the end to go back and fix these - a luxury I never had in my first attempt. This itself showed how much my time management had improved.
The DI section taught me a hard lesson. Around question 8 or 9, I got fixated on a particularly tricky problem and spent over 8 minutes on it. Despite this setback, I managed a decent D80, but it was a stark reminder that time management can make or break your performance.
Verbal went much like my mocks - another testament to how practice under exam conditions really pays off.
Looking back, my biggest realization wasn't about math formulas or grammar rules. The GMAT tests how you think, not just what you know. In my first attempt, I approached it like any other exam - focusing on concepts and knowledge. But my improvement only came when I understood my thinking patterns and adapted them to what the exam demands.
To those preparing for the GMAT: don't underestimate the importance of process and time management, even in your strong areas. Being good at math or having strong English skills isn't enough - you need to adapt your thinking to the GMAT format. And when you have a bad moment during the exam (like my DI time management issue), don't let it affect the rest of your performance. Each section is a fresh start.
All the best!
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