Here are the major milestones from my GMAT prep journey...

1. I took my first diagnostic exam and got a 530. I was pretty disappointed. As the editor of my school journal and an engineering major, I didn't necessarily think I was going to ace the test my first try but I also didn't think I was going to have to fill a gap of 200 points to reach my goal score.

2. I spent 4 fruitless months studying on my own with MPrep books. At this point, I had plateaued to around 660 (Q44/V38). Quant-wise: I was spending all my time trying to understand the NUANCES of the HARDEST quant questions. Afterall, the questions weren't hard, I just needed enough time. I couldn't figure out why I could understand complex engineering calculus but not a simple GMAT trig question. Verbal-wise: I honestly had no idea what I was doing. I spent every night doing bricks of 10 questions and making literally 0 point progress from my initial diagnostic exam. Not going to lie, by this point I thought maybe I wasn't cut out for the GMAT...

3. I finally bite the bullet and signed up with Mike. After 3 months, I jumped 70 points and scored a 730 on my first official GMAT exam! I ACTUALLY cried in the car on my way home that's the amount of relief I felt. Quant-wise: Mike helped me realize how ridiculous it was I was spending insane amounts of time on the hardest questions and then shooting myself in the foot on the easy questions. Verbal-wise: Mike taught me to eliminate answers based on clear grammatical mistakes, which means, sometimes the most incoherent answers may still be grammatically correct!

Honestly, Mike is a life saver! His help allowed me the freedom to apply to virtually any MBA program I want to and the time to finally see my family and friends again. I'm forever grateful - thanks Mike!

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The team at GMAT Ninja are real professionals when it comes to GMAT prep, and take a tailored approach to their tutoring strategies and studying recommendations to best suit the individuals they're working with.

I worked with Mike Maietta for about a month prior to taking the GMAT for the first time. Mike started by analyzing the problem sets I had already done independently, and asking me the right questions to hone in on the areas I had been struggling with. Although I was fortunate to be starting off in a good spot (710 and 730 on previous practice tests prior to tutoring), Mike helped identify low hanging fruit in sentence correction and certain categories of quant where I was struggling, so that we could spend our time most efficiently. During tutoring sessions, Mike was able to figure out my thought process on questions I was getting wrong, and helped show me techniques to improve my percentage on these particular problems. I took the exam twice after working with Mike, and was able to get a 750 each time.

Working with Mike and GMAT Ninja gave me a lot of confidence when I first sat for the exam, and I was extremely pleased with the score improvement. I would highly recommend GMAT Ninja to anyone who is looking to improve their score, and willing to put in the time and effort to do so.

If you need another reason to work with GMAT Ninja, they write their own word problems for their worksheets, most of which are hilarious and entertaining. I would've had a hard time imagining I would ever be smiling while studying for the GMAT!

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The pattern of questions is similar to original GMAT exam. Level of difficulty is higher compared to GMAT test which helps in attempting the official test easily. Expert's Global's mock are quite better than official MBA mocks. The score we get in mocks are nearby to the original test with +- 20 points.
USP in verbal is I guess the RC section. If anybody wants to score high in RC, the rc section is best and one should thoroughly attempt the rc quetions.

Quant is good but some questions are repetitive that can be skipped.

IN all if you want to score high or want 100+ improvement then the course is a good go for you.
my first attempt was 600 then using the platform I achieved 700 then with more effort i achieved 740.

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I can't recommend TTP enough. Coming from a zero quantitative background, I studied for 4 months with a group of education professionals. The result of my first two attempts was disappointing for my aspirations: I scored 640 and 680 (with a Q42 in both). I knew that my Quant section had to go up in order to achieve a higher overall score but I didn't feel comfortable nor did I grasp every topic from the basics. I decided to start a flexible plan with TTP, set a target score of 46-48 in Quant, and went through every section, exercise, and practice test. After 3 months, I was confident enough to give the GMAT a new try and managed to get a 710 (Q47, V42)! TTP rocks.

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I studied for about 4-5 months on my own using other study materials and got a 640, but after the 9 week course and using the Manhattan material I ended up with a 710 (70 point increase!). I especially liked the structured class setup where each week there would be assigned reading and practice problems followed up by a 3-hour class where we would go over strategies and problem types that corresponded with the homework. The test is so much about strategy and my instructor, Jamie Nelson, was awesome in helping to identify the problem types and apply the different strategies to correctly answer the questions. She also provided super helpful input after each of the practice tests to help me figure out what I was getting wrong and where I should be directing my time and resources. At the end of the program, she provided an even better breakdown of where to spend the next couple weeks before my test. For anyone looking for a solid structured study plan and an insightful instructor, I would highly recommend Manhattan GMAT and Jamie Nelson.

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Quick summary:

GMAT Attempt 1 - 5th November 2020 - Q49, V36 - 700
GMAT Attempt 2 - 30th June 2021 - Q48, V40 - 710
GMAT Attempt 3 - To be given in July 2021 - I'll update my score in this review at the end of this month.

Preparation:

I am an engineer by education and work in the Venture capital industry for the past 4 years. Owing to my engineering background, I had assumed at the beginning that I'll need more preparation in Verbal than in Quant. It turned out to be partially true.

For my first attempt in November 2020, I started preparation seriously in August first week. Before that I had already spent some money on Experts Global course, given 1-2 mock tests with passive preparation, and had acquainted myself with the exam structure etc.

I started my CR prep with Powerscore CR - which was an amazing resource to start with. It was too long a read, because it explains everything in absolute detail, but it was worth it because it cleared my concepts about CR questions and how to approach them. With some practice, I could already see some improvement in CR. I was still not practicing pre-thinking though. Although I had a fair idea of what the right answers could be like.
SC - I started with Manhattan SC book. It was good for grammar basics, but beyond a point, it didn't help much. I think SC is my strongest section today and I give full credit for that to GMAT Club community. I practiced a lot of SC Questions and analyzed every choice for every error in both the questions that I did right and wrong. Over time I created a framework for myself and practiced that framework on every question. While reading the sentence itself, I was able to identify the subject, verb, and different clauses in the sentence. Then while scanning for differences in the options, I could choose between the right and wrong options. Until this time, I wasn't absolutely clear about the meaning-based approach.

RC - I will admit, I thought it will be the easiest bit and in the beginning, I didn't pay much attention to it. But by the end, RC is what became the bottleneck. I wasn't writing any notes in my RCs, I was reading the passage and comprehending up to 70% of it before I moved to answer choices. This approach, as I later found out, would not take me to V40+.

Quant - I was foolishly overconfident about this in the beginning. I thought that with little practice, I could get to Q50 and I wouldn't settle for anything lesser. But I was so underconfident about my quant preparation in the end that I got nervous in the exam. I still don't know how I managed to get even Q49.

I gave one mock every weekend for 8-9 weeks and I finished all GMAT official mocks, a few free mocks by veritas, manhattan etc. because I didn't want to leave anything before the final exam. I was scoring 710-730 in my mocks. And I was aspiring for 750+. At 700, I rejected the score then and there and decided to give the exam again.

But I took a long break for some personal and work reasons and started the preparation in March end eventually by taking the e-gmat subscription.

Second Attempt -

I started from March end/April beginning. e-gmat team recommended that I give their Sigma-X mock first, so I did and scored 670 on that, I was out of practice after 4-5 months. I wanted to improve my RC in the beginning so I spent 2-3 weeks only on RC. Finished all RC modules that e-gmat had. I was severely lacking in my RC skills which improved only once I started taking notes and practiced e-gmat's method of solving RCs. It was revolutionary for me, and I'm not being paid to say this lol.

I also knew about e-gmat's pre-thinking approach for CR and I wanted to see if it helped. After doing only a few question types with their standard pre-thinking approach, I could feel the difference. The understanding of the question and the answer that you're looking for becomes multifold once you pre-think the answer. It reduces the chances of errors, and improves speed eventually. I also started taking few notes in CR.

After that, I started focusing on my quant too. I did a couple of their modules but frankly, it was taking too much time. I was impatient and always tried to jump the gun by skipping modules here and there. It ensured that I never got the concept right and always faltered in difficult questions in almost every concept. I realized this too late. After consecutively scoring 710-740 in my mocks, I realized that I am in the same situation as the last time, and I sought help from e-gmat. Dhananjay (DJ) from e-gmat got in touch with me, helped me make sense of my scores, and prepared a broad-level plan for me to reach my target of 750. I can say that I tried to follow his plan but I couldn't take the complete value out of that mentorship. I should have reached out to him more when I wasn't getting the desired results. I started giving custom quizzes every day and took a false sense of satisfaction in decent results in them. But the reality is, GMAT is tougher because of the actual exam pressure.

I was confident that my preparation is such that I cannot score below 730. But I did. And for better or worse, I cannot settle at 710, so I will be giving my retest this month. DJ is still helping me with another customized plan and tells me that I have to follow it this time and I can reach my target score. :)

I'll let you guys know how it turns out.

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Working in management consulting, I have received many different recommendations from my colleagues on how to best prepare for my GMAT exam. However, there was one of these recommended paths that most resonated to me: the e-gmat course. After taking the enhanced GMAT online and scoring 780 (Q: 50 V: 48 IR: 8 AWA: 6) I feel that I have to pass these recommendations to all my fellow gmatclubbers.

What I liked the most?
Hyper personalization
I was invited by Archit Bhargava to be part of LMP (Last Mile Program), a program where he would support me as a mentor. I cannot thank Archit enough for his support during my GMAT prep. He analyzed every single part of the Six Sigma X Mocks I took, beginning with my initial diagnosis one, and designed personalized improvement plans for each of the sections of the exam. He helped me understand where I had conceptual gaps, where I had to focus on process skills, and what areas I had already “conquered”. Archit also supported me until my exam day, helping me overcome any fall, to arrive at the GMAT with full confidence. Also, my GMAT study plan was designed so that it worked around my tight schedule of working 11+ hs a day.
Archit designed daily milestones for me to complete, taking into account the time that I had available for studying in the different days of the week.

Approach
e-GMAT has a very structured approach to achieve test readiness. Each of the subtopics of both Quant and Verbal is structured around a three-step learning process: (1) concept, (2) process, (3) GMAT skills. This method allows one to be certain of the readiness to move to the following step, and to calibrate the time dedicated to each subtopic in a very personalized way.

Platform
The Scholaranium 2.0 is a very powerful platform. It provides as many KPIs and metrics as one can imagine to identify the process flaws and knowledge gaps at a very detailed level to know exactly what to do to improve. It keeps track of the results for the different levels of questions. With Scholaranium 2.0, one can design custom quizzes and can even choose the subtopic! For example, one can design a quiz only on hard-level questions on modifiers within the SC section. The explanation of how questions should be resolved is very detailed and allows one to identify what went wrong or to confirm a correct.

Sigma X Mocks
The Sigma X Mocks very well represent the real exam. The adaptative software makes the experience very similar to that of the GMAT. From my own personal experience, I can say these mock exams even have more difficult questions than the GMAT, which allows one to be confident that when preparing for this hard questions, one is for sure covering the difficulty that will be find in the exam. In my best Sigma X Mock I scored a 750 (Q50 V42) which translated into a 780 (Q50 V48) in the real exam.

My study mentor: Archit
My journey would not have been the same without Archit. He was there to take my phone call at whatever hour each time I felt I would not make it in time, to adapt my study plan around my crazy work schedule, to help me define concrete next steps. Archit was the game changer in my GMAT journey.

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I used Michael from GMATNinja and really enjoyed working with him. From being supportive when I needed him to and providing tough love when I needed to hear them, Michael was fantastic. Especially so because I was going through some tough personal challenges and Michael was supportive and understanding.

I was approaching the GMAT with some false preconceived notions as a test of intelligence and going by instinct/brute force. Michael explained the psychology of the test, helped me build a structured plan to study and kept me on track. This structure was especially key as I was very inconsistent in my study habits and because I was racing against time to get a decent score before the R1 application was due.

Highly recommend Michael and GMATNinja for anyone who is starting out their GMAT prep or is frustrated at not being to crack a higher score.

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I would highly, highly, highly recommend the GMAT Ninja. It is really a no-brainer, they will help you get the best version of yourself! As mentioned it is thanks to them that I got into HBS. I know for a fact that several friends to whom I recommended Charles and Mike had a similar experience and made it into their dream schools. I primarily worked with Mike in order to get the best GMAT score possible. Mike was very structured, extremely professional, and incredibly patient with me. English is my third language and thanks to him I got a 42 (96%) in the verbal section. He was instrumental in the quantitative part as well. The various techniques he taught me made me very effective at using the limited time available. Overall it was a real pleasure to work with him, we have remained in contact ever since, as on top of being the best coach he is also a phenomenal human being. Working with Charles and Mike will be amongst the very best decision you make in your life! Don't hesitate, just go for it!

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Before meeting Harry Duthie from GMAT Ninja, I had studied independently for over 6 months and was unable to cross my desired 700 barrier on my first exam attempt even though my 4 practice exam attempts were all in the early 700s. I had a real mental block as I felt I had done all I could and couldn’t figure out where I was going wrong. As someone who feels more naturally at ease with words than numbers, I was disheartened that I couldn’t once cross the V40 barrier in any of my practice tests. My confidence in my quantitative abilities was low and I struggled with silly errors.
Harry was instrumental in helping me get past my mental block. In particular, he helped me to reconstruct my thought process and make my exam technique much more efficient. Specifically:

Quant:
- He advocated a question answering process that helped me to almost entirely eradicate silly mistakes;
- He trained me to be much more intrusive and disciplined when it comes to my time management, providing me with confidence to bail on questions EARLY when I couldn’t figure out a path to answer a particular question;
- His bespoke worksheets on particular topics helped me to attack my weaknesses and learn from my mistakes
- Drilling me to work 15 hours a week+ helped me to internalise my question answering processes and eliminate weaknesses
- In the past, I would not always pick the most efficient path to answering questions. His guidance on certain question types (conversions, geometry and statistics in particular) helped me to save time on easier questions and set me up for success on harder questions
- A focus on methodology and discipline over “trickery”
- Fantastic advice on alleviating exam pressures/stresses and also eradicating any cobwebs/preconceptions about quantitative ability.

Verbal:
- Drilled into me to read for meaning not detail (but without missing important details!);
- Advocated using harder LSAT materials – these were a life saver for critical reasoning and reading comprehension. Going through passages/questions I got wrong/found difficult with Harry and having him continuously challenge my thought process was instrumental in improving my verbal scores
- Previously I was finishing verbal sections with 10/15 mins to go – Harry helped me to read in a more targeted fashion to fully utilise my time. Small tips like deep breaths before critical reasoning questions allowed me to concentrate on passages more
- Instilled critical reasoning question technique discipline – this was crucial. Test prep companies/books seem to advocate 1000s of different techniques for every time of critical reasoning question. Harry’s advice was simple – identify the conclusion precisely! It’s the key to any type of question and completely decluttered my mind!

As a result, I pushed my practice test scores from 700/710 to 740-760. I finally achieved my desired my 700+ score in the actual exam, achieving 710 (Q46, V41) vs 680 (Q43, V40) which massively helped me get into my dream business school, INSEAD.

What can’t be summarised about GMATNinja with just data however is how much they truly care about their students. Whether it was a query about MBA applications, stress, exam technique, interviews (before and after my GMAT sessions with Harry), Harry and Charles would go out of their way to get back to me as quickly as possible. To this day, 7 months on from my GMAT exam, they continue to stay in touch and offer their help which speaks volumes for their character.

I can’t recommend GMATNinja and Harry enough.

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