Path to 710 with e-GMAT and DJ

Where do I start... Hmm... Let me start with a little background. I am from an Engineering background who has been dealing with math all his school, college life. I also had good English teacher in school which helped me get good grades in 10th and 12th grade. Most of you might have guessed where I am getting to by now. Yeah... I thought I could just brush up my concept and be ready to crack the GMAT. I gave a mock to establish a baseline. Got a 620 (Q46, V29). I studied for 2 months on Verbal and Quant concepts for GMAT and gave a mock again. Got a 650 (Q46, V34). Looking at the score, I was too disappointed. Didn't know how to proceed.

One fine day, I came across the e-GMAT website. Signed up for free consult with Dhruv. He showed me the results of one the students. I was particularly impressed by the analysis and the numbers that they had. I absolutely didn't think that verbal could also be approached through numbers. He then asked me to give a mock and did some analysis. Found out my weak topics and guided me on how to approach them. I right away brought the course and made a personalized plan. Gave myself a target date and started working on it. One thing that stands out is the approach taken while teaching the concepts. Like it is said, a strong foundation leads to a strong building, e-GMAT brought this to life. Each of its concept is based on building the concepts ground up - be it RC or be it Geometry. It doesn't focus on any tips and tricks that one needs to memorize. If one is clear with the basic concepts, handling of 700-level questions becomes much easier.

What I liked most about the course:

> Quant: It starts right from the basics (for ex: it even explains what a triangle is). Every module follows a step by step approach. I found this method especially effective as I used to skim through the question and miss the important details. The question bank is slightly difficult than what you would find on an actual GMAT but it makes sure we are well prepared for anything that the GMAT throws at us.

> Verbal: Here again, it starts from the basics (for ex: Starting from sentence structure for SC). Going through this help get the attention to detail. This comes in handy in verbal since presence or absence of one word can completely change the meaning of the sentence. The meaning based approach in SC, Breaking down the argument and pre-thinking in CR, and individual paragraph summaries in RC were the standout concepts/approaches for me.

I'll elaborate a little more on the analysis, data points that are available for our disposal here. On the scholaranium 2.0, we are able to check topic level accuracy, time taken per question classified at the difficulty level and recency of the attempts. This helps to understand weaker topics, subtopics which need refinement - by going back to the concept/application file and giving custom quizzes just on these topics. Once you get good enough score in these custom quizzes, the confidence level gets back up which is instrumental in an exam such as the GMAT. This is also true to the Sigma - X mocks that e-GMAT offers. I have not seen a block level analysis on any other mock test (which is very close to the ESR that GMAT provides except that Sigma - X mocks have much more depth to the numbers). The analysis tell us the topics that we spent more than average time on and how to improve that. This played a very important role in understanding what went wrong in the mock and how to improve in the next one.

Coming to the support from the e-GMAT team, it is simply outstanding. I will go so far to say that it would have been impossible for me to get 700+ had there not been a support from the e-GMAT team, especially Dhananjay (DJ). He played a role of a mentor in the preparation as well as a motivator. I felt particularly down after scoring low on one of the mocks and was partly demotivated. DJ believed in me and motivated me to do better. He drafted a plan for me, made a video explaining the next steps and was available anytime I needed some support. There was some issue with my passport, which meant I had to delay giving the GMAT, during which time my course access expired. DJ went out of his way to get that extended and help me revise for the exam with a 8-day plan before the exam. I am currently working with DJ for my second attempt to improve the score further(I will edit this review with my second attempt score). This is all possible with the support and mentor-ship from DJ.

In conclusion, I feel that e-GMAT provides a holistic approach to the GMAT exam and would recommend it to anyone planning to give the GMAT.