GMAT 715 - 675 to 715 - with e-GMAT

Question

Nothing looked broken at 675. The last 40 points came from finding the handful of blocks that were.

Where do 40 more points even live at the 95th percentile?

In April I scored a 675 (V84, Q86, DI80) on my second attempt. That is a score plenty of people would tell you to keep. My first attempt was a 595 in December, prepared with another company, and honestly, it was fine. The failure was mine. I learned the concepts but never practiced enough or tracked my data, so I had no idea what to drill. That gap is exactly why e-GMAT fit me. Nobody had to reteach me the material. I needed to see precisely where I was stuck, because you cannot carpet-bomb your way from 675 to 715. There is nothing left to flatten. You need coordinates.

The map said: blocks, not sections

Here is what the data showed, because the fixes were surgical. On the surface, my hard Critical Reasoning sat at a healthy 80 percent in Scholaranium, e-GMAT's question bank and analytics engine that grades you down to the question-type level. One layer deeper, the picture split. Assumption, Evaluate, Strengthen and Weaken questions were at 90, while the Inference block sat at 50. The same weakness showed up on the other side of the exam too, since a good chunk of Data Insights is inference in disguise. In quant, hard Word Problems kept coming back weak no matter how solid the section looked overall. So: three sections that looked fine, and a handful of blocks quietly leaking points. Fixing that short list was the entire retake.

Verbal: 84 to 89

On my very first mock, before any prep, I scored a 475 and verbal was my lowest section. On test day it was my strongest. Your weakest section really can become your strongest section. Reading comprehension came in strong for me, so the work was CR. Between the 595 and the 675 I went through e-GMAT's Critical Reasoning course, which taught me to break an argument down and find the gap or assumption before reading the answer choices. That habit, plus slowing down completely and rebuilding for accuracy before worrying about timing, pushed the argument-family blocks to 90. Inference was the holdout at 50, and the block data would not let me pretend otherwise. So I drilled inference sets on their own, forcing myself to work out what the facts actually guarantee before touching the options. And because e-GMAT's CR questions run harder than the official ones and its RC passages run longer, the real exam felt easier. I read faster and was not intimidated. V84 to V89.

Quant: the honest section

Of the four quant modules in the e-GMAT course, Number Properties, Word Problems, Algebra and Advanced Topics, the first two were my weakest coming in. Timed practice is what kept surfacing the exact categories. The fix was not volume. When hard Word Problems kept missing, I went into the worked solutions on every miss, and half the time the lesson was that my method was clumsier and slower than it needed to be. Absorb the cleaner setup, log the miss in an error tracker, re-drill the block. My rule: a mistake made twice is fine, but a third time means you are not focusing while solving or reviewing. By late July, hard Word Problems sat at 80, and three of Number Properties' four hard blocks were at 80 or better, with divisibility the one that stayed stubborn. Honestly: I finished at Q84, down from April's Q86, even though my quant mocks had been sitting in the 88 to 90 range. Anxiety crept in early on test day and probably cost me a medium question. The drilled base kept one wobble from becoming a slide.

Data Insights: moved to first, on purpose

DI went 80 to 83, around the 95th percentile. Two fixes here, one mechanical and one behavioral. The mechanical one: the inference drilling from verbal paid off on this side too, and I worked e-GMAT's Multi-Source Reasoning sets, which are basically case-study reading, until the analytics showed my hard reasoning block at 90. The DI course covers every flavor of the section, so nothing on test day looked unfamiliar. The behavioral one: my old order of Quant, Verbal, DI handed my weakest section to my most fatigued brain. I flipped it to DI first, Quant second, Verbal third, and took two or three mocks in the new order before trusting it. Inside the section, the discipline is asking whether a question is within your ability at that point in time. If it needs five minutes, it is not. Let it go, and do not let ego come into play, because one stubborn win means nothing if it steals four questions from the end.

Mocks bounce; the plan doesn't

Before my 595 I once crammed four or five mocks into two weeks. Don't. Space them about two weeks apart and fix the flagged weaknesses in between. Spend a day or two reviewing each one, and review for the logic rather than the question, because you will never see that exact question again. Fluctuating mock scores plus missing questions you know you own are the burnout tells. When you see them, take an intentional day or two off, so that the mocks you have left stay predictive.

The mentor in the last mile

I was in e-GMAT's Last Mile Push, the closing-phase mentorship where a mentor reads your data and catches the behavioral patterns capping your score. Its biggest gift, truthfully, was reassurance. Shubham reframed the whole exercise for me: treat every attempt, even the official ones, as a practice attempt. Walking in knowing a 675 was already in the bank, I could stay calm and simply execute. I am genuinely grateful. If you are a retaker sitting on a decent score, look into LMP before buying yet another question bank.

If you are in the high 600s, your concepts are almost certainly fine. What remains is execution. Find the exact blocks that are leaking, fix those and only those, and on test day think like a good batsman: one ball at a time, one question at a time. The score takes care of itself. There will be ups and downs. Don't question your ability, and don't give up.

Reon · Answer

Congrats for the score and all the best with applications

pintukr · Answer

Marvellous score improvement ! All the Best for the applications..

Archit3110 · Answer

congrats for score... all the best with application

egmat · Answer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqxNI37E3wk

Congratualtions on 715 (99th percentile).. super happy that you had the courage to improve from a 475 to 715. and am proud that Shubham could help you deliver a V89 (100 percentile on Verbal)

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