A challenging, but wonderful journey to GMAT 720 (Q49/V39):
Thank you, Gmat Club
Firstly, I wan to thank all the members of the GMAT club community. I have been a member of GMAT community for 4 years now, but I never imagined that I would be writing for this community one day because my GMAT experience has been challenging, but rewarding at the end. This post is dedicated to Retakers, especially non-natives ones, who want to give up on their dream score or business schools. Please, don’t quit!
My Background
I old a master degree in statistics and another one in financial engineering. I have been working since 2016. In December 2014, I took my first GMAT exam, but I was very disappointed on the test day because I got 610 (Q46, V29). I was especially disappointed but my Quant score because it was too low for someone with my background (statistics/ quant finance) and I did not know how to justify such a low quant score, even in my optional essays. Thus, I decided to prepare more seriously and to retake the exams in 3 months.
I purchased Gmat Club tests and began to take quant tests, one test every week. My preparation was strongly focused on the Quant section because I thought that raising my Quant score to Q50 or Q51 would help me reach my dream score (700) more easily than attempting to raise my verbal score above V35.This time, I allocated the remaining 2 weeks of my preparation to verbal. However, this strategy was flawed because I did not understand how the GMAT algorithm works. On March 12, 2015, I appeared again for the gmat exam and scored a disappointing 650 (Q50, V28), mainly because my verbal score was very low. I was so disappointed that I decided to postpone my GMAT ambition and to focus on starting my career.
First set of lessons learned:
• If you want to get a good score (>700), you MUST also get good subsection scores, especially in the verbal section.
• It is very important to use official questions and exams wisely. Use them from the middle of your preparation or at the very end. This is especially true for the Official mock exams because their number is very limited (6). In my case, I wasted a lot of official questions and exams because I did not prepare well before taking them. I was repeating the same errors again and again because I thought improvement come only through practice while mastering the fundamentals is much more important
• Quality is much better than Quantity. Thus, pay careful attention to the preparation materials you use, if you don’t want to lose time, energy, and money.

Three years later, in 2018, I decided to restart my GMAT because I had not abandoned my ambition to move to a b-school. Thus, retaking the GMAT was a mandatory step given my low previous score. However, this time, I did not want to lose my time and money for nothing. I read a lot of reviews about the GMAT course providers on the GMAT CLUB. I was attracted by the high number of reviews E-GMAT had received and decided to attend a free GMAT preparation strategy session which changed the perception I had of the Gmat exam. For me, the most important takeaways were:
• GMAT is a test of ABILITY, not JUST a test of accuracy. Gmat test your ability to solve difficult question. The higher the difficulty level of the questions you solve, the higher your sectional score will be. Thus, focus on clearing the fundamentals to build good sectional ABILITIES
• You must adopt a VERY STRUCTURED approach in question solving and, in your preparation, if you don’t want to waste your time.
After attending a few verbal and quant E-GMAT webinars, I finally decided to subscribe to their GMAT ONLINE package. It was the most decisive decision I made during all my GMAT journey. My feedback regarding their platform and its contents are the following:
 Platform presentation and organization: The people at EGMAT have done a very great job because their platform is organized very well. The GMAT PLANNER is a very wonderful tool because it helps you build and/or get an idea of the sets of subsection score required to obtain a given total score. Furthermore, at the beginning and end of each lesson on the platform, the user can take an ABILITY test to get an idea of the evolution of his skills and continue confidently in his preparation. Finally, E-GMAT’s SCHOLARANIUM is a powerful tool that allow the student to take subsection-focused ABILITY tests an get detailed analytics on his/her weaknesses
 Sentence correction: the meaning-based approach of EGMAT has been a life changing concept for me as it helped me tackle the most difficult sentence correction question with confidence. Thanks to this approach, I was able to raise my SC percentile ranking from 63 percent to 86 percent in my last official exam
 Critical Reasoning: Prior to E gmat, the approach I used for CR was very unstructured. I used to guess most of the time. Using E GMAT platform, I was discovered the concept of Pre-thinking which is applicable to any CR question and helped me raise my percentile ranking from 45 to 76 in my last exam.
 Reading comprehension: Prior to E GMAT, I used to lose confidence any time I was faced with a passage out of my comfort zone (Economics) and guessed. Then, I discovered E-GMAT 7 reading strategies which where very helpful, especially for a non-native English speaker like me. I was able to solve more difficult question and, finally, I raised my reading comprehension percentile ranking from 47 to 83!
 Quantitative section: Overall, E-GMAT quantitative material are of extremely good quality. They are as structured as the verbal material and very similar to what you will get on the actual test. The difficulty level of the question is sometime higher than GMATCLUB tests and prepare you for the worst.
Overall, in my opinion, E-GMAT is definitely the best preparation provider for anyone who has a difficult time with GMAT verbal section. The technology behind their platform and the way the platform is organized will help any serious GMAT test takers get 700+ total score. In my case, I went from 650 (V28) to more than 700 (V39) using only E GMAT material for the verbal section.

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Well i have been using e gmat online course for a month now.The entire course flow is terrific.One can easily understand the basic as well the advance concepts.I had previously scored in gmat with self prep but after learning the concepts here i feel i had some concept gaps due to which i could not score earlier.The quant as well as verbal course is thorough and exhaustive,but it is really required to score high on the gmat.The support is also good,all your doubts will be answered or you can easily find them in the help section.Will recommend to all indian students instead of joining any tution class.
Will post my new scores once i give the exam again!
Cheers!

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A detailed post of my preparation is here: https://gmatclub.com/forum/my-journey-from-690-to-720-to-750-q50-v42-importance-of-analytics-293406.html

I will keep it brief for this review.

I found e-gmat course to be very comprehensive in that it covers all the topics and subtopics in both verbal and quant. The course content is organized very well to gradually build and improve your skill in a particular topic - be it quant or verbal.

The verbal section of e-gmat deserves a special mention because of the below reasons:

1. I found e-gmat verbal course very methodical in its approach while teaching concepts. For example, sentence correction lessons start with basic building blocks - verbs / nouns / modifiers and then move gradually into complex structures such as 'noun' + 'noun modifiers'.

2. Course teaches you how to dissect large sentences and understand the meaning to spot errors quickly. Most importantly, the course teaches grammar in simple words. All the esoteric words and grammar jargon are avoided while teaching sentence correction

3. THE BEST course for CRITICAL REASONING. I couldn't find better critical reasoning questions than the ones I saw in e-gmat. The CR section of the course is designed very cleverly. It gradually builds the concepts starting from premise, conclusion, intermediate conclusion and then moves to inference, assumption etc. If you practice 3 step process, your accuracy in critical reasoning improves magically. My accuracy/ability in critical reasoning was upwards of 80% after completing this course. Believe me - scoring 80% and above in tough critical reasoning questions will give you immense confidence.

3. Reading comprehension strategies presented are awesome. I should say none of those are new, but what this course does is - it teaches you how to trick your mind in to believing that the RC passage is very interesting. You will automatically start paying more attention and grasping the passage quickly. Strong foundation in critical reasoning and ability to understand complex sentences quickly are the key skills needed for scoring high on reading comprehension. e-gmat course builds both these skills gradually in SC and CR sections.

4.SCHOLARANIUM - I need not talk about this. It is the most widely celebrated testing platform and for a reason.
Overall, the course gives you 200% return on investment.

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My GMAT Journey was extremely long and hard but e-gmat was a very valuable resource for me. The videos are extremely well done and the way the platform is build makes it easy to follow the course very smoothly. I also used the live webinars that were incredibly helpful in both Quant and Verbal.
In Quant the problems are sometimes too difficult and could make you feel that you are not making progress, but if you keep your head focused and try to understand what you did wrong, they will help you improve significantly.
In verbal, the strategies that they use to teach each section are very logical and efficient. You need to spend some extra time at first but it will definitely pay-off.
I will recommend e-gmat to everyone without any doubt.

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I had the most terrible time last couple of months because of a family member's ill health. I had a few weeks of preparation before the exam date and this was my second attempt at taking the exam. I was extremely wary about the whole process but I enrolled myself in the e-GMAT online course. I'll be honest when I first went through the master comprehension course, I didn't believe in the process at all, It seemed too easy to do and that made me think it won't be very effective. I thoroughly enjoyed going through the SC and CR lessons, I took a couple of lessons a day regularly and did a bit of quants every day as well. The RC section always through me back ( In the test I did this section the best) and I tried different shortcuts during my preparation to get to the right answer but ended up failing. Towards the end I followed the e-GMAT process, though long and simple, it ended up being the most effective.

Every concept in the verbal section are explained clearly and there's always the ask expert column to seek out more help. I attended quite a few free webinars of e-GMAT as well before my second attempt. The webinars, the clear explanations on the course made me a little confident in the verbal section. This time around, I did show less focus on quants and that proved in my end score as well.

On the exam date, I strictly stuck to the process taught in the course. I took time reading the RC passages and understanding the meaning of every sentence I read. At the end of the verbal section, I knew I did better than the last time. The relief you fee when you know you did well in a section is difficult to explain. That relief is because of e-GMAT and I am extremely grateful for the help they gave and continue to give me.

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When I first started my GMAT prep a few years ago, I din’t do much research and joined one of the Branded GMAT coaching centers, which only taught the RULES to follow to get an answer correct. I diligently followed their course work and gave my first GMAT and it turned out to be THE BIGGEST DISASTER.
I took a break for a while and then resumed my preparation on my own with the help of GMAT Club, yet I dint see much improvement in my scores and learnings. I then met a buddy in one of the Gmat club's Study Buddy Groups, many thanks to him. This friend told me about E-GMAT, I attended one of its webinars and immediately enrolled with it.
I love the methodical structure and the logical approach of E-GMAT’s material. The explanation of every question is very detailed and lucid.
Verbal – The entire course is programmed in such a way that a beginner can start from basics and end up solving the most difficult question that GMAT can throw at us. The beauty of the course lies in the APPLICATION FILES, PRACTICE FILES, OG FILES, and the files’ explanations. These files have 650-750 level questions and push us to solve every question applying the 3-step Analysis with more ease and diligence.
The 3-Step analysis for CR, RC and SC amazingly worked for me. This approach forces us to stick to the process and which in turn lets us to answer the question correctly and confidently. On the other hand, SCHOLARAIUM is another major platform, which helps in honing our skills.
I would definitely recommend E-GMAT Course.

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Subscribe to EGMAT Verbal course. Their great content is great and the analytics are pretty engaging. Tried and tested by yours truly. You will encounter two options, the Online Prep and the Live Prep. The difference between the two is that the Live Prep has additional three hour webinars on the weekends. No new concept is taught in these webinars, only the application part is strengthened by solving 4-5 questions collectively. Choose whichever option you like.

GMAT Verbal consists of three subsections – SC (Sentence Correction), CR (Critical Reasoning) and RC (Reading comprehension). I would suggest that you start off with SC (time to complete approx. 4 weeks), after which your brain will probably get fried up and thus for pain relief, go to RC (pretty lame stuff, finishes in about a week) and at last take up CR (approx. 4 weeks). This entire time calculation depends on the assumption that you will be spending a quality 2 hour period each day on study and maybe double of that on the weekends.

On the EGMAT platform, you will encounter Concept files (which teach the theory), application files (IMO the most important since they teach you the application of the concepts learnt earlier via 3-4 questions), and practice files (questions from the EGMAT Scholaranium database). After this, there are topic wise questions to be solved from the Official Guide (OG) and the Verbal Review (OG VR).
In a nutshell here’s the Verbal approach for you - Concept < Application < Practice < OG < OG VR. Do this topic wise in each subsection (e.g. SC / CR / RC) and move ahead. By doing this you will comprehensively finish the topic wise content of the Verbal section.

At the same time, please, for the love of god, maintain an error log. An error log is simply a collection of questions which you attempted incorrectly. All the questions on the EGMAT platform have excellent in-built analytics so there is no need to log those. But the ones which you get wrong on the OG and the OG VR, do put them in. My preferred way is to take a picture or a snapshot and then paste it on a power point presentation. Make a small text box as to what you need to remember or where you faltered. Do this for the Quant section too.

Thus, for the Verbal section, the resources which will give you a comprehensive preparation are –
• EGMAT – Theory + Scholaranium
• Official Guide
• Official Guide Verbal Review

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I had given my GMAT more than two years ago (miserable score :(). I had prepared for more than 6 months, exhausting all best resources available. I was scoring in 600-650 range in mocks (Q 47-49 and V 27-30) . However, I scored below 600 in GMAT,scoring 22 in verbal. I thought I was not made for GMAT, since even after preparing from all best courses available I could not score well (especially in verbal). So I left the preparation.

Last year my friend suggested me e-GMAT course based on experience. So I checked its reviews online and opted for Verbal Live Prep course.

I have used just around 50% of its content and I am already scoring 32-34 in verbal. The way e-GMAT has designed the course is mind blowing. Its interactive audio visuals are very helpful and have helped me in improving in very short duration of time.

The reviews on GmatClub about e-GMAT SC are not unfounded. My accuracy in SC has increased from 40% to 80% in a very short time. Also, its prethinking approach in CR has helped to crack most difficult Assumption, Evaluate, Strengthen and Weaken problems.

If you are planning to give GMAT, and looking for drastic improvement in short duration, here's the solution : E-GMAT!

I have reported my old score here.

I will keep you updated about my new GMAT score soon.

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I started preparing for my GMAT last year. At the inception of my prep work, I joined few local coaching centers. I found these classes to be dull and repetitive. They covered the very basics in Math and I wanted something of higher quality to achieve my desired score.

While researching for tips on GMAT CLUB, I read success stories of many aspirants and on how E-GMAT helped them crack the GMAT. I first opted for a trial session as I was a little uncertain about an online/virtual class when compared to a traditional classroom. Once I went through the whole structure of the online, I was hooked and have been using only E-GMAT for my preparation for the exam. The structured approach gave me the confidence to carry on with my preparations after many disappointing mocks.

I find the course to have an excellent structure and a good variety of questions. The questions are clearly categorized in accordance to their difficulty level (EASY, MEDIUM, HARD, VERY HARD) and the course is organized such that we start from an easy level and they slowly increase the difficulty. The very hard questions are unique and challenging. These questions trained me to think fast and helped me identify the best technique for different questions. Practicing this huge array of questions helped me sharpen my methodology.

I can vouch that E-GMAT’s verbal course is the best! In few months my V23 has risen to V34 in all the mocks and expecting it to rise more. The Scholaranium platform is the most useful tool provided by E-GMAT. It helps you customize your tests and the solutions provided for each question is very detailed and leaves very little for guess work.

The live sessions on E-GMAT will help you analyze and compare your progress with other students. I should also give credit to my very resourceful instructors. Shradha, Krishna and Payal were really good. The E-GMAT admin is also very responsive and encouraging. Any query you ask regarding the course or concept is answered within 24 hours.

I would recommend E-GMAT to anyone who is serious about cracking the GMAT and E-GMAT is a real bargain.

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e-GMAT is one of the most comprehensive resource for GMAT verbal section. For me, the SC and RC sections were most helpful both in terms of increasing my understanding of the subject and increasing my ability tackle GMAT like questions. The OG quizzes really stand out for me, the manner which all the OG questions for a given topic are all clubbed at the same place helped me to identify the different variants in which the concepts are tested in the real GMAT.

For SC
The concepts are easy to digest and once you start trusting the e-GMAT process , it does surely start to reap it's benefits. Although the process initially takes time, It took me about 2.5-3 mins to get through a SC question but with practice i was able to get that time down to 1;30-2 mins without any dip in my accuracy.

For RC
The reading strategies along with pre-thinking concept really helped me to setup a process to tackle any RC passage. As with SC initially my speed was really slow but with time i was able to read a passage with 35-40 lines comprehensively in under 4 mins.

I think the course is best suited for non-native English speaker who are not very clear about fundamental concepts.

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