e-GMAT Mentorship Reviews

Hello everyone,

I am Aditya Kumar, Mechanical engineering graduate from IIT Kharagpur. I am working in an Oil and Gas Major for the last 4 years and planning to do my MBA in 2022

Although I am writing this review about my journey of GMAT preparation, I haven't reached my destination yet. I am still working to achieve my full potential and hope to get a 730-740 in future.

I started preparing for GMAT in March- April 2021 and was very confident that 2 months of preparation is more than enough to get a 720+ score. Dont know why I was so confident back then, mostly because my friends from college and some colleagues had got 700+ and I thought I am better than them :P. But I didnt know that I had big surprises waiting for me.

For my 1st attempt, I used only the offical resources for practice and Manhattan SC as additional resource for refreshing all grammar concepts. The preparation lacked discipline and structure mainly due to lack of guidance and also the covid situation which was at its peak in 2nd wave at the same time.

Although I had practiced most of the questions of official, I was not feeling confident about my ability. To check my ability and to verify my test preparadeness I bought official mocks and gave all of them. I scored 660 700 710 and 740 respectively, which seemed to suggest that I had the ability and strategy to score a 700+. Therefore after my last mock (740) I booked my test date and was super excited to give the official GMAT exam and complete this part of my MBA application.

Guess what ! I performed poorly and scored a 670 (Q49 V33) Even while giving the exam I could feel that i was not following any process, randomly marking a lot of ques and was not in the righ state of mind.
So after the completion when the screen popped up 670, it was not a surprise, to be honest I was expecting even lesser. I may have got a few guesses right I think.

So the strategy for my next attempt was very clear. First I need to identify my weak areas and then follow a structured approach. Based on the reviews on GMAT Club and some of the debrief videos on YT, I thought e-GMAT could be the right fir for me. So I reached out to e-GMAT and got a meeting with Karan who explained using the analytics of e-GMAT my weak areas, timing of ques, etc based on the mock i gave on eGMAT. To be honest, I was a bit fascinated by the insights that he drew so quickly and efficiently. I had never realised that we need to look at these many parameters to devise an effective exam strategy. I made up my mind to take up the e-GMAT course for 2months and e-GMAT was kind enough to provide a mentor to me to monitor my progress and guide me during the preparation.

So I started working with DJ, my mentor during mid July. The things we identified to work on were :-
1. CR :- I was taking a lot of time in CR and also was not following any process to solve the ques. I did all the concept files followed by the Cementing quizzes where I had to clear a certain threshold of accuracy for going to next step. DJ was very peculiar in asking me to make detailed error log as per e-GMAT strategic review.
2. RC :- Although I had decent accuracy in RC, I still followed the comprehension methods suggested by e-GMAT which helped me improve my comprehension ability. The error log which I made was reviewed by Harsha and he provided a detailed analysis on ways I could do better error logging and also on improving my ability on inference based ques. I feel the insights shared by Harsha were very helpful and really made my RC prep efficient
3. SC :- Although I was confident enough in SC and didnt do the concept files, I still did error logging as per e-GMAT strategic review and was able to narrow down my mistakes.
A big mention to Shraddha for making a video reviewing my SC error log and giving insights that I would never have taken into account.

After around 40-45 days of verbal prep and also doing quant questions (weak topics identified during the discussion with DJ), I felt the need to give a MOCK test to test my ability. So I reached out to DJ and he replied with a strict NO. Although I did not agree with his decision :P, I still followed it since he has been working with a lot of students and definetely knows much more than me about test preparation strategies.

DJ shared a test readiness plan with me, which I feel was the most critical part of the prep. According to the plan, I had to give multiple tests in each subsection - SC, CR and RC get the minimum accuracy, then only move to the sectional test (all 36 questions in 65 minutes). This was a real gamechanger as after going through all the concepts and practice I knew I have the ability to solve, but didnt know the best way of timing myself in each sub section and creating an best working strategy for the verbal section. The custom quizzes in Scholaranium was my ultimate source of practice during this phase.

After going through the test readiness phase, I moved to the sigma X-mock. I found the quants to be a bit tougher than official, but verbal was exactlly to the point. I gave 1 mock in every 3-4 days and analyzed all the questions irrespective of right or wrong in the same error log module that I used during prep. By the end of my prep I scored a 750 in sigma X-mock which fuelled me to book a date for my 2nd attempt.

Although my second attempt did not go as planned and I faltered in areas which had actually become my strength by the end of the prep, I still managed to score a 700 (Q49, V35).

I am analyzing my ESR with DJ now and hopefully will be able to edit this review in future.

Till then cheers and keep preparing !

Thanks
Aditya

Read More

First Attempt 670 (Q-50,V-30)
I started of my Prep for GMAT around November 2020. In the initial days of my Prep I used only the GMAT official content and GMATClub for my studies. After giving 2 mocks(640-650) in a span of 1 month, I realized my scores in weren't improving at all I was stuck around V27 and 28 and had some major flaws in my concepts in sentence correction. After talking with few of my peers, I booked a session with Egmat to get a review on my preparation and they made me realize that I do a lot of scope to improve on my verbal skills. They even gave me a peek through the egmat platform. After going through similar calls with different services and some reviews from my peers I decided to go ahead and buy the egmat subscription. In the next month of my Prep using the egmat platform I learnt about the right approach to solve any SC or CR and how to eventually save on time by making this approach a habit. I Gave my first online attempt in the month of Feb and score a 670 (Q-50 and V-30).

After few weeks of introspection, I realized that during my prep I didn't concentrate much on learning from my mistakes. I used to prepare the error logs but never took them seriously or read them properly and in repeated the error. Considering that I Still have time left for my applications and my score can be improved I took on to give my second attempt.

Second Attempt 660(Q-49, V-31)
Before starting any of my prep I first gave the 1 Sigmax mock and scored a 690. This made me realize that Yes I can score good on the GMAT. I just need have some patience and work effectively. Considering my learnings and the type of data analytics provided by scholarenium on egmat. This time I went straight to Egmat for assistance with my Gmat Prep. Seeing my SigmaX mock score and the potential to improve Egmat assisted me a mentor Dhananjay(DJ).Before beginning any of my prep, I connected with DJ and discussed with him what I feel are my weakness , where did I fail in my first attempt. DJ Carefully listened to me and then assured me that we can work together in bits and pieces to overcome my weaknesses. We started of with RC prep. Realizing that Humanities is a major category I faced issues in, DJ advised me to read through articles on Humanities of WSJ , The Washington Post or NYT and draw a summary of those writings in my words. Initially it was too boring to read such lengthy articles and drawing summaries from them. But as I made this my daily habit I could see my RC scores improving and the time taken to solve a RC also decreased . After tackling RC we moved on to CR and SC. DJ helped me design custom quizzes to concentrate specially on my weakness and made me Strategically review each and every quiz even if I got all my questions right. The strategic review process developed by Egmat helped me understand the smallest of the errors I was making like not visualizing the answer choices properly or not creating sentence structures for a SC and helped me avoid repeating those errors. With the help of the scholarenium platform I was able to visualize what Question Type are my weaknesses . After consecutively scoring a 730 and 740 in my sigmax mocks and official mocks, DJ advised me to go ahead and book a Date for my GMAT since I was peaking my performance. I went on and booked a GMAT at Test center for 11th August . I gave my 2nd attempt and scored a 660 (V-31, Q-49). I had gone completely blank during my Verbal section and couldn’t think properly on applying the proper approaches to the question. Seeing the score drop from my first attempt I was completely dejected. I took a break for a day and convinced myself that it was just not my day and I deserve much better scores. I ordered my ESR and had a session DJ to understand what went wrong and how to prepare . He helped analyze my mistakes and gave a short plan on my reattempt.

Third attempt 710 (Q-49, V-36)

This time I decided to my attempt within 2-3 weeks, since I was already doing well and just had few mistakes to work on. I took on solving questions from GMAT Club and writing few mocks and scored an 730 and 720 . After gathering the confidence I went on to book the GMAT for 7th Sept and scored a 710 (Q-49, V-36).


A huge shoutout to DJ and the entire Team at Egmat. DJ, has been like a mentor who motivated me when I was getting anxious before booking on my GMAT dates. After failing on my second attempt I was completely dejected and was in no mood even to order an ESR, But DJ pinned me 2-3 times day via mails that I should at least order ESR and have a look at my mistakes, that’s when I gathered courage to go ahead and take a 3rd attempt. Egmat has been really helpful through-out my Journey and course is really very well designed especially for Verbal. The Scholarenium platform and the Strategic review process have been really helpful in spotting errors perfectly and working on them. GMAT is an exam of Learning from your mistakes so getting your error logs and the Strategic review process right is the key success.

My learnings- Be Patient, Learn from your Mistakes, Do not Rush and Believe in yourself.

Read More

I had already attempted the GMAT three times - getting scores of 720, 740, 740. I needed that extra jump for my target schools to stand out given the extremely competitive Indian demographic. I tried several other platforms before settling down on E-GMAT.
Right from the start. they were super helpful. I loved their precision targeting strategy. While we focused on improving my Verbal score, we also subsequently worked on Quant areas that could boost up my score.
I never did pre-thinking before, specially in RC, which was an immense help. The scholaranium tests and diagnosis helped me chart out my path ahead and work on my weak areas.
Atreya was super helpful and would push me to take mini mocks every week, analyze it and then recommend the next steps ahead.
The Sigma-x mocks were a game changer too and i took all of them before my final exam.
I wish I had just started with e-GMAT at the very start but I'm grateful that at the end, I found the right place!

Read More

The whole GMAT prep has been a roller coaster ride, and E-GMAT has played an integral role in the journey. I had used the product in the past around Oct'20 but did not leverage their support during that time. The product in itself is a complete package especially scholarinium, which gives you detailed knowledge of your weak areas, timing issues, and performance comparison with other students. It really helped me to self-pace my study. I will not get into how good is their product, because that has been covered my most of other folks in the reviews out there.

I reached out to E-GMAT support in Jun'21 after I score 710 on GMAT, but the score was revoked after my complaint about the issues faced during the online GMAT exam. I was in a hurry so I took another attempt without following the complete instruction sent by the E-GMAT team. I scored 680 this time, and it was in person exam at the center. That was really heartbreaking since I had scored 710 already and knew that I could do better.

This time I got on a call with DJ (GMATNinja of exam strategies). It was a half an hour call, and we went through my 680 ESR. He pointed out timing issues and other weak areas. I will admit that whatever he said was simple advice, but I never really focused on those issues diligently. He prepared a plan based on my weakness, and I religiously followed it. The step-by-step plan made by DJ helped me focus on areas such as RC, geometry and etc. really boosted my confidence. I reattempted the exam and scored 710. Again, a few technical issues which caused a delay of 1.5 hr in the middle of the verbal section and some other technical craps.

One piece of advice for most of the folks is that please utilize the platform as well as their mentorship/support to the greatest extent possible. I felt that the support is really good and prompt and helpful in keeping you on track.

PS: I am planning to reattempt the exam around Dec before second-round deadlines, and I will definitely reach out to the e-gmat team before starting the prep.

Read More

I’d just given an official attempt scoring myself a 700. Given I was touching upwards of 750 in my mocks but was not able to translate the same in my official attempt – I felt quite disappointed. I approach Atreya from e-GMAT for last mile support in GMAT. Him and the e-GMAT offered me unparallelly set of questions and high-quality topic wise study material that helped me improve 30 points in a month.

e-GMAT’s self-leaning modules are quite comprehensive and offer in depth understanding of concepts by offering examples with detailed solutions. The cementing quizzes helped me identify my baseline performance in respective sections and Atreya was kind enough to help me build an error log and to device a customized strategy plan to improve on my weaker topics.

Apart from practicing from their high-quality question bank, Scholaranium 2.0, the meaning based approach preached by e-GMAT helped me refine my approach towards solving, improving accuracy as well as speed.

Their Sigma-X Mocks offered under their comprehensive package were also quite accurate in their capacity and offer sectional performance insights, like what ESRs offer. Something quite helpful in planning out strategy for the D-day.

The support, as well as motivation, offered by Atreya and team was quite helpful in helping me improve. I would like to recommend e-GMAT to fellow test-takers.

Read More

I had initially prepared only from the official guide and a few advanced GMAT Club questions, but my GMAT Prep score hadn't budged a lot from the 740 GMAT Prep score that I had got in my first attempt without any preparation. I then realized that I needed something that would point out specific areas of improvement and help me work on them. I then signed up for the eGMAT last mile program course, and here are the several ways the course helped me:

1. A key struggling point for me was SC. I simply did not know the rules because I hadn't studied any sort of theory in depth. The self learning modules of eGMAT solved this by giving crisp rules of SC, and as a result I started achieving 80-90% accuracy in every test thereon. 10/10 would recommend if you are struggling with SC.

2. The second area that I was struggling with was time in Verbal. This was mainly being driven by an average time of around 140 seconds in CR questions, although with decent accuracy. The eGMAT experts helped a lot here by going a step beyond and taking out time to address my issues specifically. It turned out that there was a flaw in my approach towards CR questions, making my method very inefficient. Next, I could cement the correct approach through the practice questions.

Specifically it was Harsha (Verbal Expert), and Aditee (Mentor) who guided me through CR, enabling me to cut down at least
15-20 seconds on my time.

3. The Sigma-X mocks were of a huge help as I could accurately see where I stood in terms of my performance. The level kind of matched the actual GMAT questions. My last score on the third mock was 760, which was very close to my actual score of 770.

4. The explanations of most practice questions (~80%) was on point, but even if it wasn't, you could get your doubts answered. Although, areas of improvement for eGMAT here could be their TAT (which sometime stretched to over 3-4 days) and the quality of replies of a few of their experts.

5. The most important thing by far was the detailed analytics that eGMAT gives out for your performance on all questions. This was of a huge help since I could see where exactly I was struggling, and what was the low hanging fruit for me to improve. This is something that is extremely important for people who want to push their score that extra bit.

TLDR: I was pretty happy overall with the eGMAT Course. Within a month it helped me identify weaknesses and work on them, and gave me that much needed improvement of 30 points.

Read More

I came across eGMAT when I attended some of the free webinars hosted by them on CR and RC. After attending those webinars and taking the free sigma mock, I booked a strategy consultation with their expert. I decided to enroll in the course as I really liked the analysis of my cold mock provided in that call.

Through the analysis, I knew that I had to focus more on Sentence Correction than on the other verbal sections. So, I went through all the concept and practice files for SC and followed the meaning-based approach to solve questions in Scholaranium later. eGMAT’s SC curriculum is very extensive and helped me get a solid grasp of the major topics asked in the exam.

After SC, I moved on to CR and went through their videos in which they mainly taught how to apply the pre-thinking approach to solve questions. Initially, I used to focus only on accuracy and used to take a lot of time in solving questions with this approach. Once I was able to get good accuracy, the timing gradually improved on its own with practice. So I would advise anyone starting with CR to trust in the process and not worry about timing yourself in the beginning.

I did not spend much time going through the concepts of RC or Quant and started using Scholaranium to attempt ability and custom quizzes. The level of analysis provided in Scholaranium is simply great. I was able to use the portal to effectively identify the areas in which I was weak and fine-tune those areas by revisiting concepts or practicing particular types of questions I was frequently getting wrong such as Boldface or Modifiers.

Sigma-x Mocks provided by eGMAT are very good estimators of the actual exam and may be considered more accurate than official mocks. The verbal section is of almost the same difficulty level as the actual exam’s section whereas Quant could be a little bit tougher than the actual exam(Quant of official mocks is a lot easier than the actual exam). Also, the mocks are adaptive and you get an ESR-like analysis of every mock.

Apart from their study material and tests, eGMAT also provided one-to-one mentorship and paired me with Atreya. The mentorship was objectively the best part of the course as he not only provided me with weekly plans but also helped me analyze my mocks properly. He also encouraged me to schedule the exam sooner when I was not confident that I was fully prepared.

The eGMAT portal is also very well made and I did not face any difficulty or encountered any bugs while using the portal. The support on the “Ask an Expert” forums is also very prompt and I always received replies in less than 24 hours

Overall, I would genuinely recommend eGMAT for anyone appearing for the GMAT for their great tests, course material, mentorship, and support.

Read More

DISCLAIMER AND VERBIAGE ALERT
1. A score of 710 may not mandate a debrief especially when there is hardly anything new I can add with respect to preparation tips, test taking strategies, motivational words etc. Notwithstanding, I am writing this debrief for two reasons primarily. First, to put on record my gratitude and indebtedness to all those who have knowingly or unknowingly helped me in my short GMAT journey. Second, I ve noticed that there are very few debriefs from people on the wrong side of 30/early 40s presumably because very few are crazy enough to go for an MBA that requires GMAT at this stage of their life and career. But I know that, for reasons of their own, such daredevils, though few and far in between, do exist. Therefore, being someone from such a demographic looking to transition from the armed forces into the civil world, my debrief is primarily aimed at those who might be contemplating GMAT while handling high pressure jobs and weighing the pros and cons of doing an MBA and/or making a career switch in the prime of their lives (20s may seem like the prime of one’s life but believe you me it’s not ;)).

OF NO RELEVANCE TO MAN OR BEAST – STILL ...
2. My first brush with GMAT was about a year ago when intrigued by the time and effort one of my senior was putting into his GMAT preparation, I took the GMAT prep mock just to see what the big deal was. I bombed quant without even getting to attempt 5-6 ques and got 640 with a V39, which I subsequently realized is not bad for someone who had not even heard about SC, CR and RC till before the test. After that, though I enjoyed the experience, promptly forgot all about GMAT till early this year when I started seriously considering hanging up my uniform. Someone who had already treaded the path advised me to get a good GMAT score irrespective of whether I use it or since getting one at short notice if required would be impossible. He also told me that based on past track record, a score in the late 600s would be sufficient for my experience and profile. I took the first advice but chose to ignore the second since I have always been a ‘go big or go home’ sort of guy and I naively assumed that I could easily get at least 730 if I worked on my quant and SC. Only time would prove how wrong I was.

3. Started by attending a few free weekend webinars by various prep companies and the ones by e-gmat really stood out. Liked their free trial and on a whim subscribed for the full course - one of the best decisions of my GMAT journey. It took me some time to build up a tempo and a fixed routine and my earnest preparations started in early Apr. After that I didn’t take a single cheat day till the exam except for a week’s vacation to recharge my batteries 10 days before the exam.

E-GMAT – ALL YOU COULD ASK FOR AND THEN SOME

4. Egmat was everything I could ask for in a course. It is highly customizable based on one’s performance at each level. The various performance parameters and data points ensure that you neither overestimate nor have any self doubts about your abilities. I used to think I was god's gift to grammar and comprehension but e-gmat showed me that I knew squat about SC. But it also told me that RC and CR were more up my alley may be because reading between the lines, critical analysis and paraphrasing came very naturally to me due to what I do professionally. I also realized that I had to first unlearn maths and tackle it from a totally new perspective for Quant. I followed a roughly 70(Quant)/30 (V)% time management split with about 80% of the 30% verbal time for SC. It's therefore ironic that CR and to some extent RC, which I considered my trump cards, let me down in the actual exam. More on that later.

5. I also happened to be lucky that Quant 2.0 was launched round about the time my preparations were peaking and it really helped me shift gears. The detailed explanations and entire format of pedagogy was something I had never seen before and were simply mind blowing. Scholaranium 2.0 was another revelation. Just when you think you are through and almost ready for GMAT, it delivers a sucker punch and literally knocks you out. Only option is to dust yourself, keep your bruised ego aside and keep learning. The deep dive analysis of each aspect is simply amazing and to be frank mind boggling at first. That’s when I happened to be approached by e-gmat for their last mile program by Dhananjay, DJ. He helped me make sense of the various data points and was the ideal pace setter, never letting me relax but also never letting me get totally out of breath. His customized plans for taking tests on the scholaranium, analysing the data and time management techniques helped me a lot. Thanks DJ for everything and so sorry that I couldn’t live upto your (and my) expectations. Special shout out to the resident verbal and quant experts Shradha, Shwetha and Atreya who are amazing amazing teachers from whom I learnt a lot courtesy their webinars. Only wish each webinar covered different questions.

6. My advice to all present and future e-gmat students would be to trust the process and not try and short circuit or game the system. Payal, Rajat and the other architects of e-gmat curriculum are visionaries and there’s a method to their madness. Average difficulty level of Questions on e-gmat and more so on scholaranium are definitely a notch higher than actual GMAT and sometimes it can be bit demoralizing to not see the expected % accuracy. Also don’t miss the wood for the trees and get too obsessed with the scores on scholaranium or other tests. Remember these are all means to an end that is the final GMAT score. Last but most important advice - keep reaching out to the e-gmat support team. They are a wonderful team. I actually got offered the mentorship opportunity with DJ when I wrote to the team to review my initial scholaranium performance.

GMAT CLUB – THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING
7. Where do I even get started about the wonderful GMAT club community? It has truly been a godsend. To the moderators - apologies for being a wallflower and only taking without giving anything back in return. Bunuel, GMAT Ninja, other moderators and regular contributors are doing yeoman service to the GMAT aspirants without expecting much in return. if I were to pick just one thing other than e-gmat that helped me the most in my entire GMAT journey it would the GMAT NINJA lecture series on SC. They were pure gold and I am still in awe of his humility, crystal clear explanations and even his wonderful sense of humor. Other than his surname, which I could never grasp, each and everything he spoke is still imprinted in my mind.

UNSOLICITED ADVICE
8. My advice to GMAT aspirants with professional/personal commitments similar to mine:-

(a) Make a plan and stick to it. Irrespective of how tired one is try and spend 1-2 hrs daily and 4-5 hrs on weekends.

(b) Try not to exceed 3-4 months prep time coz the above pace may not be sustainable due to other commitments which can only be stalled for so long. Further, laws of diminishing returns might start kicking in.

(c) Get your family on board. Like mine, your spouse also may be working with his/her own professional and personal commitments. So, like most things in a married life, it would be impossible to embark on this journey without your partner's support. No more kid’s tennis/soccer classes during weekend, Saturday night family board games, grocery shopping or whatever it is that keeps the family ecosystem in balance. Make kids, if big enough, a part of the process. My 10 yr old son used to watch GMAT Ninja videos with me and the younger 7 yr old was my water boy, errand runner and biggest cheer leader.

(d) Announce your plan to people who matter at work . keep your boss informed. Even more important take your team and subordinates in confidence. They will have to deal with the extra delegation.

(e) Be innovative and jugadu. I can’t access internet or smart phone at work. So used to do OG ques or take printouts of 3-4 good questions and analyse them threadbare whenever I got time in office. I started using metro instead of driving to utilise the travel time effectively. But that experiment ended before it could take off due to COVID.

(f) Be ready to press the pause button on your interests/hobbies. Forget your golf, regular runs, gym visits, book readings, Netflix, and similar me time stress busters for at least the last two months of prep.

(g) By hook or by crook manage atleast 2 weeks off from work just before the exam. If one does not have the luxury of WFH or accessing internet at work this is indispensable.

(h) Ride the wave, there will be stages within the preparation cycle when your performance will rise and dip. Identify when you are peaking and take the test then. More prep time need not always translate to better score.

(i) Internalize and verbalize your envisaged score. Be ambitious but realistic. Best way to keep yourself reminded of the same is to tell it to your kid(s). But if your kids are anything like mine do have an explanation ready if you can’t reach your target ‘coz they sure will want one. The usual shoot for the starts to land on the moon BS won’t work and may come back to bite you. I started with a 730 target, revised it upwards to 750 based on mocks and data inputs from e-gmat/DJ. The fact that the final score was nowhere near it meant either that I was deluded or that I just had a bad day.

(j) Pick one source other than GMAT club to prepare and stick to it but not blindly. There is no one size fits all solution so customise the suggested methods based on your strengths and weaknesses. For instance, common wisdom dictates SC questions in less than 1.30 mins to leave more time for RC . For me I rarely, if ever, took more than 4 minutes for a RC set and never ever felt the need to make notes for RC and CR. The time saved I used for SC.

(k) Don’t be obsessed with +700 questions. I fell into the trap and wasted some time in my prep in the middle. Stick to only your test prep and OG questions specially for verbal. Only exception is LSAT questions for CR, which I now wish I had done more of.

(l) Last 20 days if possible dedicate solely for OG and mocks. Solve OG ques on GMAT club so that one gets and idea of timing, difficulty level and of course the threadbare analysis of each ques.

TEST EXPERIENCE – IF EVERYTHING SEEMS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE , IT PROBABLY IS

9. I had initially registered for online GMAT in end Jul which ran into all sorts of trouble due to technical issues and also ended up messing up my laptop settings ( has to be a separate debrief in itself). So I booked the retest at test centre on 18 Aug ( 0800 AM) which was the earliest available date. Went for a week’s road trip with family after that and once back didn’t want to tackle anything new. So just revised my error logs and redid some OG questions. With one week left and nothing much left to do, bought the GMAT prep tests 3-6. Did one test every day and with scores of 750, 770, 770, 730, 760 ( 2 to 6), coupled with the 720 and 750 from e-gmat sigma mocks, I thought I was peaking at the right time.

10. Test day ( Pearson, Noida) couldn’t have gone any better. Just 5 mins drive from my home, excellent facility, professional staff just about everything went without a hitch. Since my brain takes some time to start ticking and since mental fatigue has never been an issue AWA, IR, Quant, Verbal sequence works best for me. AWA felt good even though I never attempted AWA even in mocks and it was only the second AWA pssage I had ever written. IR was much tougher than any of the mocks, which was good in a way since it helped me focus better in quant for which I didn’t take the break. Felt really good through out the Quant, managed to keep pace (using the Manhattan yellow pad technique) and though I encountered some lengthy and tricky ques in coord geometry and algebra during the latter stages, didn’t have to skip or guess a single question. I thought I had managed to see most of the traps in DS. All in all this was the most comfortable and confident I ever felt. Up beat, took a small break and started verbal. It also went along the same lines as Quant. RC passages were a breeze as usual and though one can never be 100% sure about SC, I felt confident about most of my choices since I could eliminate four choices on solid grounds and then select the remaining one (hat tip to GMAT Ninja) . I was not confident about only one CR quant based double negation quest where I was stuck with two choices.

11. All in all, I was super confident and thought the test had gone as good as, if not better than my GMAT prep mocks. So I was totally shocked when the screen flashed 710 (Q48, V39)) . For a moment I did consider rejecting the score but then better sense prevailed since it really doesn’t matter in the larger scheme of things and based on my profile and experience, this should be enough even if I decide to apply somewhere. But my delusions of grandeur about my GMAT abilities have been shattered to smithereens

ESR HELP - LAYING THE GMAT GHOSTS TO REST

12. Once back, I mentally revisited most of the questions I could recall to visualise what could have gone wrong but I really couldn’t pinpoint anything other than the one CR ques. So hoping to solve mystery got the ESR though I ve absolutely no intention of taking the test ever again. The ESR ( attached for reference) shows about 5 ques wrong in Quant (mostly DS with 1,1,1,2 wrong in each quarter I guess) so must be some silly mistakes and/or GMAT DS traps which I failed to notice and I can reconcile with that. But, I also seem to have got about 6 ques wrong in Verbal (1,2,1,2 split) . I have absolutely no clue which the 5/6 ques other than the aforementioned CR are. If they were SC I could still have understood but %ile shows most are CR and one/two RC. Also based on what little I ve seen in other ESRs I thought my splits would translate into a slightly higher score than 710. Though DJ has been kind enough to analyse and make some sense of it I would be grateful if any of the other specialists here can throw some light on my score vis-à-vis ESR only so that I can get some closure.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS NOT SO WELL

13. To summarise, the short GMAT journey was exhilarating though the actual destination left a lot to be desired. I did get involved much more deeply than I initially thought I would and even if plain statistics reveal that I wasted my time without much improvement, ( V 39 baseline and V39 final), I would like to believe that I learnt a lot from the experience and any other day the score could have been different. Anyways in the end GMAT did get the better of me and though DJ has been asking me to retake the test I think its time for me to burn my bridges. Thanks for the ride everyone and may each and every member of this wonderful GMAT club community encounter fair winds and following seas in all his/her personal and professional future endeavors.

Read More

I had given 2 GMAT attempts in Oct'20 and Nov'20 and scored a 700 in each, after which I decided to take a break and restart afresh at a later date. In May’21, I attended a free e-GMAT webinar related to Number properties and found the session really insightful. After going through multiple reviews and debriefs on GMAT Club, I took a counselling session with their team and found their personalized study plan approach best-suited to my requirements. In no time I took a free SigmaX mock (on e-GMAT portal), in which I scored a 680 and enrolled myself for a 3-month course. I got a personalized study plan, based on my performance in the mock and my target score, and started preparing.
E-GMAT’s self-paced course is so well designed that you’ll learn all the concepts that require most of your attention without wasting time watching videos of topics you’re already well-versed with. In verbal section, the CR and SC modules were particularly helpful for me. The CR modules progress in a manner such that they test your detailed understanding of the argument given, recommend skillful ways to pre-think the answer and provide feedback on your selected choice versus the correct answer. Before adopting the e-GMAT approach, I used to go through the answer choices first and then decide the best one, which did not always work out. WIth e-GMAT's approach, I started to pre-think potential answers and it became easier to eliminate the wrong answer choice. thus, the time spent in solving a question significantly reduced. SC modules also help you gain a very clear conceptual understanding of all the topics. In QA, all the modules had a problem based approach in which you get to solve the questions and learn the concepts accordingly. QA in particular was a huge blessing for me in my GMAT journey. In general, all of e-GMAT's modules start with a diagnostic quiz to test your current level of understanding and then guide you through the rest of the modules according to your performance. The GMAT Skills and Application based modules that contained higher difficulty level questions, allow more careful analysis of the question and answer choices to avoid any potential mistakes. Moreover, Scholaranium 2.0 helps you cement your concepts at every difficulty level and has tools for in-depth analysis of your mistakes and weak areas and accordingly decide on the further course of action. The strategic review videos and error log templates are extremely helpful for improvement. I specifically liked the prompt and detailed responses to posted queries (which, honestly, I initially thought wouldn’t be as useful).
Within a few days of starting the course, I was enrolled in their Last Mile Push (LMP), given my decent performance in practice quizzes. As part of the program, I was allotted a dedicated mentor, Mr. Atreya Roy, to help me and guide me on a daily basis. I was given daily study plans, with specified timelines, which gave a structure to my self-study regime. My performance in quizzes was constantly monitored and my study plans revised, as per the need of the hour. My mentor connected with me on a regular basis to ask about how I felt about my progress and about my next steps in learning. The prompt responses to all of my doubts made it no less than private tutoring. My mentor literally went the extra mile by motivating me whenever I scored low and help me plan my studies with adequate breaks. I got advice and key-pointers from other subject experts also until the end day for improvement in my weaker areas and it certainly helped me score well in the exam.
Not to forget, the Sigma X mocks by e-GMAT are very well created. They give you a fairly accurate idea of your potential score and analysis tools, which are very crucial to your performance in future tests.
I gave my third attempt in Jul’21 end when I scored a 690 because I got extremely nervous and panicked during the exam. I was so demotivated, but my mentor encouraged me to try once again as I had consistently performed well in my mocks. For 20 odd days, I prepared myself, not just for the exam, but also to not take stress (Atreya helped me with stress management articles as well). This time I scored a 750 (Q50, V41, IR7 & AWA6) and I was finally satisfied with my performance.

Read More

For me, Atreya helped me focus my preparation by identifying weak points and suggesting exercises to address these weak points. The suggestions were thoughtful and actionable. Atreya was always responded promptly, answering any and all types of questions. He was supportive and empathetic. I get anxious as the test day nears, and he always had some kind words to cheer me on. Thanks Atreya.

The best advice that I got from him was to focus on OG towards the end. The Scholaranium makes it easier to track mistakes and review them before the exam day. I instruction material for verbal is also great. I would recommend spending the money if you want to improve on the verbal section. Quant questions are a bit too tough and tricky sometimes.

Read More