615 to 665, and Quant from Q81 to Q87

Strengths:

Excellent question bank, challenging practice, structured preparation, and the LMP mentorship program. Jagadish was a great mentor and provided consistent guidance throughout my preparation.

Would make the product better:

The learning modules could be made more concise and engaging, with a stronger focus on the most important concepts and less repetition.



What the platform did for me, what it did not, and why my first reaction to the score was disappointment.

When the 665 came up on the screen my first reaction was disappointment. It was better than the 615 I walked in with, but I had written 725 on my plan back in April, and the thought that went through my head in that first second was that I might have to do all of this again. The gap between those two numbers had felt large when I set it. I have always believed that if you aim for the stars you at least reach the moon. I reached the moon. I was still hoping for more.

I had already sat the GMAT once and scored a 615 before I came here. I looked at other options, TTP among them, and I chose e-GMAT because it cost less. That was the reason.

Quant is where the course earned its money for me. I went from an 81 to an 87. What did it was practising hard questions in Scholaranium, the practice engine where you build your own timed quizzes at whatever difficulty you pick. It pushed me well past the level I was comfortable at, and the effect showed up on the day: Quant felt close to a breeze. If you take one thing from this review, take that. Questions pitched above your level are what this platform is for.

That difficulty is also why the exam itself felt manageable. The Sigma-X full-lengths run harder than the real thing, and by test day the questions in front of me were not the hardest I had seen. The one caution is that it works on the scores too. Four days before my date my best mock was a 585, and I scored a 665.

Verbal is where I fell short. My target was an 87 and I got an 81, after roughly six weeks on the section. Some of that was the day itself: it was the first time I had taken Verbal as my last section with no break before it, and I felt the difference. Some of it was method. The course teaches pre-thinking, working out what a correct answer would have to do before you look at the five options. I understood the idea and I could find the gap in the argument, but under exam pressure I dropped the prediction step and went straight to the choices, because the number of things the answer could say felt endless and building that list felt too slow with the clock running.

On Data Insights I want to correct my own mock data, because it makes the story look different from what happened. One of my DI mock scores was a 66, and that was a section I had to abandon halfway through for a meeting. My DI did not improve here. I had an 81 before e-GMAT and I scored an 81 on this attempt. It was already one of my stronger sections.

The mentorship is the part I would put hardest to anyone considering this. I was on the LMP program with Jagadish, and he was there consistently: supportive, easy to reach, steady with the guidance week to week. It kept me focused and kept my confidence up when the numbers were not doing that. When I sent him a thirty-six question Critical Reasoning error log he came back with one diagnosis for the whole thing, that I was reaching the options before I had pinned down what the right answer needed to do. He was right.

At the start of August I made a call about the last stretch. My R1 deadline was fixed, I had spent a long time on modules and cementing quizzes, and what I needed was to be sitting full-lengths. So I told Jagadish I was going to take the remaining preparation into my own hands and put it all on test-taking. If I had the time again I would go slower through the modules and work them properly. What I would not change is what came after: about a week out from the exam I came back to him, and we spent the closing stretch on sectionals and full mocks with the logs read line by line. Going into the exam off the back of that week was the right way to finish.

One habit that helped was the error log. I started keeping an error log because I had seen several YouTube interview videos emphasizing how useful they are for GMAT preparation. It helped me identify patterns in the mistakes I was making and, more importantly, gave me something to refer back to so I wouldn't keep repeating the same mistakes.

I would recommend e-GMAT to anyone preparing seriously, and especially if what you want is practice above the level of the real exam so test day feels manageable by comparison. The question bank, the hard sets in particular, is good and it is what moved my Quant, and the LMP mentorship is worth taking if you are offered it. The one change I would ask for is on the learning modules: they could be more concise and more engaging, with a stronger focus on the concepts that matter most and less repetition.