I would like to start by thanking my mentor Deepak for guiding and supporting me throughout my prep journey with e-GMAT. I do not think that my score of 710 would have been possible without his mentorship.

I started my GMAT prep in Feb 2020 with an aim to take the GMAT by end of April 2020; I figured that a time frame of almost 3 months should be good enough to get a top score. Having been a good student all my life, I really thought that this was an achievable target.

I began my prep by solving all 4 books from Kaplan – including GMAT 800 which is supposed to be a book on advanced-level questions. I found the questions from all books to be quite easy and cruised through all the books in less than a month. Once I had solved all the questions in all the books, I took a Kaplan mock test in which I scored 690. In the following days, I took another couple of mocks and scored 670 and 680. I was not even breaching the 700 mark and needed to change my preparation strategy. But at this point, I realized that I was all out of prep material and would need to buy a new course. By a stroke of luck I came across an e-GMAT webinar, which led me to purchase the entire course.

About 5 days after I started studying from the e-GMAT course I received an email from Deepak asking if I would like to enroll under the mentorship program. Seeing no downside to having a dedicated mentor, I gladly agreed.

Deepak gave me a day-by-day planning of the tasks that I would have to do, every week. These activities could be learning concepts, taking cementing quizzes or taking practice quizzes. In case I encountered any problems, or felt like I needed additional practice of a particular topic, I would shoot an email to Deepak and he would quickly re-work my study plan. It was amazing to have this kind of personal attention for an exam which is mostly self-prep.

While following Deepak’s study plan, I encountered some problems. For my critical reasoning prep, I wasn’t scoring well in quizzes even after spending enough time on the concept files. I wasn’t even able to pre-think, a skill that is quite important to be able to crack the CR section of the GMAT. So I notified Deepak of the issue and immediately he re-worked my study plan to give me more practice for CR.

Another issue was that I felt very fatigued with the prep and Deepak, being the excellent mentor that he is, gave me a confidence boost by reassuring me that I was actually doing well. This may seem trivial but trust me such boosts go a long way.

Deepak also conducted fortnightly strategy huddles in which he would discuss topics pertinent to taking the GMAT. These huddles not only helped me improve my approach to taking the test (for example, better time management), but also helped me interact with members of my cohort, most of whom were in the same boat as I.

I took Deepak’s guidance from April to June 2020 and I was able to take the GMAT within 10 days of my target date.



Test day experience

On the test day, I was mostly confident of my capabilities. I had put in the work so there was no reason to worry. Moreover, I was extremely well-rested and had two 700 or higher scores from my mock tests.

Coming into the test, I had taken 2 mocks from e-GMAT, scoring 750 and 700 respectively. I just chalked off the lower score to disturbances while I was taking the test. In hindsight, I should have taken another test to be sure of my prep level.

My test center was terrible. It was very dirty. There was a carpet which was full of dust. The bathroom was a short walk away from the test room and was also dirty. The air conditioner was not able to cool the room. The test administrator entered the test room a couple of times to try and get the air conditioner to work better, resulting in disturbance while taking the test. The keyboards were not convenient for typing and many times more than one key got pressed when I was writing my essay. The keyboards were also below a certain height - resulting in typing inconvenience. There was a lot of lag in the system as well - after selecting a choice, I would have to wait a few seconds for the radio button to reflect my choice. Finally, there were monkeys right outside the center's main door. This was an extremely poor testing experience for me.

I scored 710 in the exam. Q49, V39, IR 8, AWA 6. I’m mostly happy with the score, but feel like I could’ve scored better in a decent test center.

To conclude, I would like to say that GMAT prep is a marathon and not a sprint. So, please keep enough time for your prep, and even time to re-take the test if necessary. You may do everything right but the wrong test center may also ruin your score. If possible, check out the test center beforehand. Focus on the test-taking strategies rather than trying to get every question right. Sometimes, skipping questions is better for your score than sticking with them. Invest in good prep material. If possible, reach out to your friends who might have taken the GMAT and ask about their experiences with different prep materials.

Shout out to Deepak for being an amazing mentor and friend.

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I started using the E-Gmat online course and realized that with the video content, I need some guidance to proceed on this journey. To my benefit, Egmat reached out to us for the mentorship program looking at the account history and that I have always reached out to the support team for help.
It was one of the best decisions to enroll with E-gmat for the mentorship program as while preparing, you constantly need to know whether the efforts you are putting are going in the right direction or not and the next step from there on. The mentorship program has been highly beneficial for me because of various reasons. Firstly, every week there is a day wise milestone plan made with your mentor basis your current performance and your goal. Having daily milestones is very effective as consistency is the biggest key while preparing for the Gmat exam.
Next, constant feedback is given on every quiz and every test taken. The biggest benefit for me was Dhananjay helping me out analyze my mock tests and point out error on timing, accuracy and sub sections, post analysis of performance of the previous week, the next week plan was chalked out.
Interactions with the cohort and peer learning has been another benefit. With the conducive environment created by Dhananjay, we were all able to share our experiences and help each other out. We also used to have weekly training sessions on different topics to solve common problems such as managing time, mental health, consistency etc.
Finally, Dhananjay was available to guide me all the time. I could reach out to him anytime of the day and he would just ask me to set up a zoom call and connect! For me, the biggest problem while studying GMAT is stress management. My performance throughout the study was excellent but there was always a problem on the test day due to anxiety issues while giving the test. Dhananjay helped me overcome this by making me give tests in harsh conditions (Lesser time for more difficult questions) so that I practice overcoming the panic situations as well.
On the test day, I could see a huge difference in the way I was handling questions and managing time. The idea to focus on meaning based approach in SC and the pre-thinking on CR really helped me solve the questions. I could see a huge difference in my level of preparation and confidence from the previous exam taken. Only because of getting one complete RC passage incorrect in the end, I could not score well on my Verbal section. Nonetheless, Dhananjay helped me start again by focusing only on the weak areas and improving my score further. I am all set now to appear for another exam very soon.

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My GMAT story started in October 2019 with my initial score 520 (Manhattan tests). Following the advice of my friend, I started my prep using MGMAT books. Though I thoroughly went through almost all the books in the collection, diligently doing all exercises, by the end of March 2020 I could not score above 540. Along the way, I also solved a ton of OG questions, almost exhausting the question bank in OG, OG Verbal and OG Quant.

Definitely, something was drastically wrong in my prep and I needed professional help. After analyzing most popular courses and reading a number of debriefs, I decided to stay with E-Gmat.

My journey with E-Gmat started with construction of a study plan for the entire course based on my initial score. What I liked about E-gmat plan is that every GMAT area needs to be covered in sequence. I clearly missed this point in my previous prep, and in a single day I could study Sentence Correction and Algebra, the approach that was obviously wrong. My pleasant surprises with E-gmat did not end at this point and I was admitted to E-Gmat mentorship program, which is basically study assistance by professional live GMAT instructor. Along with study plan developed by the E-gmat system, my mentor, Archit, every week was developing for me a detailed plan for the coming week, in which he stated what exact areas I needed to study and how many hours. Such a structured approach is very motivational and pushes you to study consistently with no pauses. What is more valuable is that Archit analyzed my progress and pointed when I needed to return back and to learn a concept again. Doing so, he made sure that I did not leave spaces in my conceptual understanding.

As for the E-gmat course itself, it is very self-sufficient so that you don’t need any other books or materials. For every topic, it has brilliant videos, which teach all the concepts needed for GMAT. But the best thing was that after learning a concept, you watch a video showing how this concept is used in the context of GMAT like questions and how to solve these questions with a step-by-step guide. Finally, you are offered a quiz to cement your knowledge and skills. Only upon successful solving the quiz, you are allowed to move further. Thus, bit by bit, the course builds your GMAT abilities. Going along the way, I understood that I had had a lot of flaws in my conceptual knowledge and totally wrong approach in application of those concepts.

My study plan was designed for 3 months, from April to June, and on June 17 I took my first attempt. Even though my official mocks showed the result of 700-710 (my target score), I could score only 630. I believe the test center experience played a major role in spoiling my score, since I was required to wear face mask and gloves, which brought a lot of discomfort and distractions. As for the questions, there were pretty similar to official mock tests and E-gmat tests, with the exception of RC passages, which turned out to be more complicated and were all from Humanities, my weakest area.

Right after the test, Archit analyzed my ESR report and immediately designed new study plan for the next 20 days, till the next attempt. This time the plan set forth the task of solving quizzes containing only hard questions and diligent work with the error log. No new learning was needed.
On July 9, in my second attempt I scored 680. Even though, I did not hit my target, I still possess very good chances for enrolling my dream business school, which now depend on other criteria. All in all, I could achieve 140 points improvement within 3 months from end of March (540 – Manhattan mock) to beginning of July (680 – real test).

I would like to express my gratitude to all who stand behind E-gmat project and sincerely thank my mentor, Archit, who was very attentive to my progress and provided with priceless advices along the way. I want to thank Rajat and Payal for creating it all and designing brilliant classes and materials. May your project flourish so that you continue to change life of many many students, who previously struggled with GMAT!

Best regards,
Alexander

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I started my GMAT journey one year ago - July 2019. I just graduated college. I started off using Manhattan Prep's books. I thought studying 2 hours a day from the book and doing the books’ problems were enough but boy was I wrong. I took my first GMAT around November and at that time was shocked at how poorly I did. I knew I needed a new method. I started to take official prep tests and continued on my self studies. I took the GMAT again in March and was also disappointed. I knew that this time I needed help. I have always independently studied for exams during college and so asking for help took me off guard but it was one of the smartest decisions I made to improve my gmat score.
I started to browse gmat club and looked into more resources. As I was looking through gmat club forums I noticed that egmat provided very clear and useful answers to many of these questions. I also signed up for one of e-gmat’s free weekend webinars. I was impressed with the instructors tips and wanted more! I signed up for their emails and luckily was approached by a tutor via email. We scheduled a time to chat and I instantly knew this was the program for me.
I was asked to take a mock test on their platform and on the 1-1 chat I was given a mock diagnosis. It made me realize that succeeding on the GMAT is more than just understanding the tested concepts. Doing well on the GMAT requires strong "procedural" knowledge. It requires time management, mental stamina, and efficient approaches. I learned that conceptual knowledge and procedural knowledge come hand in hand. If you strengthen your conceptual knowledge you are able to make quicker decisions on the GMAT and also strengthen your test taking abilities to complete questions accurately and on time. My biggest weakness on the GMAT was not finishing on time and leaving for example only 5 minutes for 7 questions at the end.
The E-GMAT mentorship program was more than what I could ask for. The mentorship program is organized in a peer group fashion lead by one e-gmat instructor. My instructor was DJ. Once a week DJ and I would chat virtually and discuss what is going well, not going well, and a game plan for that week. Evaluating best next steps, DJ would then send me my milestones for each day of that week. A milestone for example was completing 5-6 sections of the e-gmat course and reaching 80% on the concept questions. These milestones were a game changer. Having a benchmark to measure myself against a) motivated me to complete the necessary daily preparation and b) set me up to challenge myself to higher standards. I also appreciate DJ's patience and encouragement. DJ was always happy to answer my questions and even encouraged me to reach out to him more frequently! He was very responsive and considerate as he would even work later to accommodate our differing time zones. DJ was also very honest with me and I knew he had my best interests in mind. Further, each Sunday the cohort would meet virtually to discuss GMAT strategies. We also had a running whats’app group in which we all would share best practices, questions and solutions. I built relationships with a few of my peers, helping one another with our weak spots.
Overall, the e-gmat mentorship allowed me to effectively tackle the gmat. E-gmat provided me with the peer support to motivate me to stay in the game and the resources to build a strong time management approach and stamina to leverage my conceptually knowledge to do well on the gmat.

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The Mentorship program allowed me to be consistent in my preparation. The GMAT tests on a wide variety of subjects and one can get scattered in their preparation. In fact, I had a GMAT version of FOMO while studying: I would be working on geometry and then think that I need to be working on SC only to open CR guide… it has been helpful to have a trustworthy mentor 1-with good grasp of the content, 2-who can analyze my scores and 3- then suggest a study plan accordingly.
Furthermore, the weekly plans DEFINITELY improved my consistency giving me a checklist to challenge every week, even when it didn’t seem I could pull it off. I did not have to dedicate little time that I had on strategizing my preparation; I would just have to look at my daily tasks and start working. This allowed me to make the most of the e-GMAT resources within the timespan I had to prepare.
The mentorship program also entailed Strategy Huddles (zoom meetings) with themes spanning from motivation, success stories, mental health, work organization, study tips... and we had a Whatsapp group to stay in touch with the cohort, share questions, discuss solutions and encourage & congratulate each other. The community feeling definitely helped.
Finally, my mentor arranged a call the day before the exam for the last min prep, motivation and test-taking strategies.
For all the reasons above, and if you want to make sure you cover all the aspects of GMAT prep, I highly recommend the e-GMAT course & mentorship program.

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I was not very structured in the early days of my preparation. The mentorship program ensured that I am sticking to a schedule and the preparation is done in a more organized way. The schedule and milestones were tailormade to my preparation style and customized basis my work requirements. This ensured that I’m completing all milestones every week.

DJ has been a lot of help throughout the period not only guiding on the milestones but also taking a lot of personal interest in ensuring that I am on the right track. He helped me realize some important gaps by analyzing the mocks together and preparing customized quizzes to close specific gaps. He kept me motivated throughout the period and it’s always good to know that there is someone else vested in your preparation as well.

The cohort helped in keeping a level of competition in the preparation and a forum where doubts, information and ideas can be exchanged. This also ensured a level of engagement in the cohort. The weekly sessions helped in getting access to some preparation tactics and addressing GMAT exam related queries.

Overall the mentorship program has been a lot of help in guiding me to my score and would like to thank DJ and the team for the opportunity. I would recommend the program to everyone looking for a structured way of preparation.

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I’d like to start by thanking my instructor, Deepak Bansal, and E-GMAT for assisting me with achieving my GMAT target score and bringing me one step closer to my dream school.

I joined E-GMAT mentorship program after a long year of studying for the GMAT exam. Initially, I aimed to send my application in 2019, but because I failed to achieve an acceptable GMAT score I pushed my application to 2020. When I started, I was all over the place – I purchased books of 3-4 different companies and mixed them all up. I did not have a firm strategy and my biggest weakness was consistency. After about 8 months of ups and downs, I decided to try enrolling E-GMAT course, which, in a hindsight, was a game-changer for me.

Soon after signing up for the E-GMAT course, I happened to speak with Deepak Bansal, an aspiring instructor of E-GMAT, who analyzed my situation and gave me some insightful advice. I realized how inefficient I was with my study plan. Soon thereafter, along with several students from all over the world, I joined E-GMAT Mentorship programs under Deepak’s supervision.

Even though I’m a young professional who works 5 days a week, Deepak assisted me with committing and studying on a daily basis. Some of my biggest challenges were:
*Consistency – to study on a regular basis without pauses
*Organizing – to have a game plan in terms of what to study every day
*Feedback – to understand what do I do right and what do I have to improve
Deepak assisted me with each of those challenges by providing me with a study plan and a time schedule that fits my lifestyle. This schedule was updated from one week to another based on my achievements.

On test day I felt I was very prepared. I was confident in my skills and I knew I can achieve a high score. Eventually, I successfully scored 710 (Q50 / V46), which is 70 points higher than the first official score I received and more than 100 points higher than the first several mocks I took. This is a huge achievement for me and I feel that Deepak and E-GMAT have a significant role in my journey.

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My journey with e-GMAT began in the beginning of March, 2020. After having done extensive research on GMAT Club, I came to the conclusion that 2-3 months of solid prep should be enough for my target score of 750. After giving the first mock test, I realised that I was weak in the verbal section (Especially SC) and needed assistance. I looked over the reviews for online courses on GMAT Club and concluded that e-GMAT would be the perfect fit for me.

For most part of March, I casually solved questions from the OG and went through some of the SC material at e-GMAT. While the material was really good, I was not very confident in my ability to apply the concepts yet. That is when I received a call from Ashutosh at e-GMAT who asked me if I'd be interested in sort of a group mentorship program wherein I'd receive more personal attention. He had gone through one of my mocks and said that by working together we could get my score to reach that 750 mark. I decided to give it a shot and I am glad I did.

For the next 2 months, Ashutosh crafted personalised weekly plans for me and constantly pushed me to achieve those targets. He helped me realise the value of cementing the concepts first rather than aimlessly attempting a large number of questions. My confidence in SC increased considerably as I then began to cement my concepts through the Scholaranium questions on e-GMAT. Scholaranium is a wonderful platform with a wide array of challenging questions and it certainly helped me get a better understanding of my strengths and weaknesses. In addition to this, the performance of my peers in the mentorship group motivated me to improve further. With the mentorship, I followed a more focused and well crafted path to my target score.

One of the biggest advantages of this program is that your mentor is always there to solve any queries you might have and will give you personalised attention. All my mock attempts were carefully analysed and I was suggested areas where there was scope for improvement. My performance in the mocks improved and I became increasingly confident heading in to the test. I took 8 mocks and the scores read : 710,730,770,770 (Sigma-X), 730 and 760 (GMAT Prep), 710 (MGMAT) and 730 (Kaplan).

On the D-Day, I was certainly more relaxed than I had expected to be. Since Quant was my strong suit, I attempted that first. Things went fine till I encountered the first few questions on the verbal section. Not being able to solve the first 3-4 questions, I flustered and ended up wasting time unnecessarily. Luckily, this panic mode did not last long and I was able to get myself back on track. Following the time management techniques recommended to me by e-GMAT helped me a lot. As I finished my test, I was incredibly satisfied to see myself achieve my target score of 750. Yes, I was perhaps a tad disappointed I didn't get a V40+ but achieving the 750 mark was the aim all along and I had pulled it off. All that hard work had paid off.

All in all, I benefited greatly from e-GMAT and its mentorship program. I would certainly recommend e-GMAT to anyone who is serious about cracking the GMAT.

Good luck to everyone reading this and I hope you all achieve your goals!

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Bit of a background of my GMAT attempts-
Attempt 1: Jul 2018- 680 (Q49, V33)
Attempt 2: Jun 2020- 680 (Q49, V32)
Attempt 3: Jul 2020- 740 (Q49, V42)
Yes, I did score the same even after 2 years. More of it in the sections below

For my second (and third) attempt I started my GMAT prep in Feb’20 and I was sold on to go with e-GMAT on the basis of sheer number of positive reviews that it has from non-native English speakers. I referred to only e-GMAT material and Official Guides for my preparation.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that e-GMAT provides a custom generated study plan for you. This became the corner stone of my preparation. In absence of a proper plan, I would end up spending hours without realising if I am going in the right direction. Although this worked for me for almost a month, I slipped on the preparation due to an official commitment which lasted for more than 2 weeks. I had lost my steam and was finding it difficult to focus my energy on GMAT prep.

Right when I needed it the most, in Apr’20 week 1, I was sent an exclusive invite to the e-GMAT Mentorship Program. It was a pilot that e-GMAT was doing with select students, based on its interactions with them on various query forums. It happened to be free for us. Only thing asked of us was honest feedback for the program, and we were offered- 1:1 Consultations with a dedicated mentor, custom milestone-driven study schedule, weekly feedbacks and course correction, strategy sessions, and admission consultation. Although I have not experienced admission consulting part fully, I can surely say that this program is all one needs to prepare for GMAT. This program hits the sweet spot between online preparation and 1:1 teaching, and delivers way beyond what one would expect.

I will cover my experience with e-GMAT Mentorship Program as a lot of reviews have already covered the comprehensiveness and effectiveness of e-GMAT curriculum, and I completely agree with them. Some details on the various offerings of the Mentorship Program -
1. 1:1 Consultations with a dedicated mentor- The program starts with a kick-off discussion with assigned mentor to understand the student's background, needs and aspirations. E-GMAT or Official Mock Test are recommended to understand areas requiring focus.
For me, Dhananjay (DJ) was my mentor, and I would say that I was lucky to have him as my mentor. He could really understand my issues well and guide me each and every time.

2. Weekly Study Plans- While an algorithm-generated study plan is a basic feature of e-GMAT, the Weekly Study Plans are actually made by an experienced mentor to suit your requirements. These have details of what you need to do on each day of the week. The plan would include minutest of details such as doing specific sections of the e-GMAT curriculum, taking mocks, debriefing mocks or even reading articles from specific sources.

3. Weekly feedback and course correction: Mentor takes weekly calls with the student to understand the progress made during the week, personally guide on any issues that the student faced during the week, identify any red flags in the preparation, and plan the further course of action.
While it may seem as a very basic exercise from what I have explained, believe me, the mentor goes extra mile to make sure that you are on track and motivated all along the journey. In my case, DJ reviewed my progress, at times more than once a week, and provide very detailed feedback that I would have never been able to make out on my own. He reviewed my performance on mocks, conducted detailed debriefs to understand the exact problem areas, and even guided me in understanding newspaper articles to strengthen my RC ability.

4. Strategy Sessions- As a part of the e-GMAT Mentorship Program, you are part of a 10-15 student cohort under a dedicated mentor. Topics like time management, success stories of ex-students, stress management, online GMAT features, etc. are covered by the mentor in the Strategy Sessions. These sessions are undertaken at a frequency of 1-2 per month.

5. Admissions Consultation- I had limited experience on this front as I chose to get done with my GMAT prep first. Basically, e-GMAT connects you to a pool of select consultants to kick-start your discussions on applications.

Coming to my performance on D-day(s) -

A week before my GMAT exam in June, I was consistently scoring 720-740 on all mocks- OG, e-GMAT and GC. However, I got a shocker when I scored 680 after 4 months of preparation and after getting all the personal guidance. I was in a kind of an emotional shock and lost hope on taking GMAT again.

It was this moment when I realised how much a mentor can help you get back and prepare to face the exam again. DJ was instrumental in pushing me to retake the GMAT within 15 days and in guiding me even more aggressively, almost on a daily basis. He analysed my ESR and identified clear areas of concern and how to address each one of them. The kind of feedback I got within 6 hours of receiving my ESR was phenomenal. We identified that I had spent disproportionate amount of time on first 15 questions in Verbal and that I needed to strengthen my CR ability. I guess, I would have been lost if I were left on my own after scoring a 680.

In my next attempt in July’20, I was more confident and had a clear strategy defined on how to approach the test. I could clearly see the difference this mentorship program made and helped me achieve 740 on GMAT.

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Overall I found my e-gmat experience really rewarding as I was able to improve my verbal score from V33 to V41 by following their structured approach to each question type on verbal section.
I feel to score good on GMAT, two things are really important – one is to have good fundamental understanding of the concepts and the other is to follow the correct approach. This course is structured in a way which will help you in getting good at both of these aspects. Their focus on approach and fundamentals in every single lesson will help you ingrain it in your mind.
Personally for me the SC was something which I wanted to improve upon as my current approach of splitting options into groups of 2/3 was not panning out. Therefore, I tried out their 3 step approach for SC questions. At the start, it was really difficult to follow this approach. But if you give yourself time, it can do wonders like it did for me and many others.
e-gmat helped me overachieve my target score of 730-740 and get admits from multiple schools. I would 100% recommend this course to everyone who want to improve their verbal score, enabling them to get closer to their MBA dream.

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