GMAT is one of the most complex exams I’ve ever taken.
Though I didn’t take an initial Diagnostic test, I believe my baseline was around Q49 V28 ~600~

Background
I had my schooling from a small, below-avg. school in Rajasthan, India, where kids use to speak Hindi. My English- speaking skills as well as writing skills- was terrible. But I’d really good analytical skills. Had my engineering degree from one of the NIT’s. I knew I was not the brightest students, but I knew have superior degree of perseverance. With time and some patience, my ability to preserve in tough time has always worked for me.

Phase 1 – Quant
Quant was not issue for me from the beginning. With official guidebook content, I was able to score Q50 in Quant. My strategy was always simple. DO SOLVE AS FAST AS YOU CAN IN QUANT! With my 7 attempts at GMAT, I’m now sure at this point that the engine is biased towards speed (if you’re accurate enough). If your speed is fast enough, example 1:30 minutes/question, the system will reward you with easy, point scoring questions even if you do 2-3 questions wrong in first 20 questions. Engine will punish you with higher order difficult questions if you’re slow and accurate.
But one thing specifically I’ve noticed that if I tried to get perfect Q51 score, which was in fact possible for me, I got Q49 all the time. This was because in order to do everything perfect, I would slow down. Engine will not only count your accuracy but at the same time timing too! This is such an important factor that I (and many people) till the end do not believe it! Also, if you take extra time (say more than 2:30 minutes+) you’ll start to get tougher questions (if you’re accurate). This loop will screw your timing and will cause you to score lower than your potential. This has happened to me multiple times in the exams. Well, I got 3 times Q49 and 4 times Q50. So, I can attest that!
So, in the end, I gave up on Q51 and tried to make sure that at least I get Q50.

Phase 2 – Verbal
My Achilles Hill!
Where should I start! My source of 2-year long misery!
It was stupid of me to naively start the verbal without understanding the concepts behind it. My foundation was not strong at all. I thought I would easily conquer the verbal by practicing questions. I was fool.
Long story short, I spent ~8 months~ wasting time. Learning concepts from questions through practicing, not the other way around.
At this point, I’ve given gmat my score was 680, Q50, V32. My SC was quite weak. I thought with more practice and concept, I can make my score go up. I was stupid. I didn’t realize that I had hit my verbal upper limit, and my English skills kind of peaked at V32.
This time, I learned all the concepts through various material available online and I gave the exam in next 2 months. I thought now my score would go up. Unlike last time, this time I had exam stress. Even after a rigorous preparation, my score got down. 650, Q49, V29.

At this time, I was also down. I took a month off.

~Next 6 months~
I took coaching material such as Manhattan prep and E-gmat and gave exams again.
But that was also not a great help. By the way, the Manhattan prep exams are really good.
In the meantime, I’ve given GMAT 3 more times. Similar stories, sometimes I did poorly in CRs, sometime in SCs, and sometime in RCs! I tried to fix one specific thing; another thing was in shambles.
The score wavered from 650 to 700.
I was frustrated and wanted to quit.
This standardize test has been nothing but a source of misery!

I took a month off.

Phase 3 - Verbal
At this point, I realized there were some basic things, I was constantly doing wrong.
I came across Sunita Mam’s videos on YouTube. I really enjoyed watching her teaching basic things on YouTube video. I decided to give her a try and take a personal tutoring from her to help me fix issues specific to me!

I’ll be honest, I was not after content at all. I have seen thousands of questions at this point. I just wanted her to see me solve the verbal questions.
Honestly, I needed someone to handhold me this time.
I was tired, exhausted, and frustrated from GMAT already!


She taught- DON’T TAKE THIS EXAM AS PAIN. YOU’LL NEVER CLEAR IT THAT WAY!
She taught me that I had this innate habit to skip words in RCs while reading. This would lead to meaning loss as well as wrong meaning inference at the same time. This was such a big issue for me, even Infront of her, I was doing this basic mistake, trying to skim through passage. Also, I tried to get more engaged with RCs and took some minor notes for reference.
In SCs she asked me to apply the similar strategy as in RCs, to read very slowly, not to skip words, and try to understand the meaning at the same time. Try to identify all the errors in first sentence itself. Find definite errors first and eliminate those options immediately. Compare remaining SC choices based on meaning. Don’t believe your ears, they are not your friends in SC. Stick to structured approach till the end!
In CRs she asked me to go with structured approach, that’s it! What’s the author’s logic? Identifying the conclusion as well as how Author reached that conclusion. To answer the CR properly, locking the conclusion in right way is so, so IMPORTANT. This will save your from selecting out of scope options choice. Even if you can’t pre-think the answer, just have the conclusion locked in mind, so that author won’t be able to divert you through flimsy answer options.

In my 6th attempt after 6 weeks of training, I decided to give exam again. But his time, I was too stressed already. I was performing well in mock test, but there was a degree of exam pressure, which I felt constantly. I scored 660 in the exam. I felt terrible at this point.
I didn’t talk to anyone for whole week. What I have not tried. Even after months of tutoring, this was the result.
Sunita mam called. She asked me what happened? I narrated the whole story.
She calmly said -THAT’S OKAY! DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT MUCH. THIS IS JUST AN EXAM. TAKING STRESS WON’T HELP YOU OUT HERE! JUST LET IT BE! TRY AGAIN ONCE YOU’RE READY!

I took her advice positively, took a week off and started back.
At this point, I stopped thinking much. I started prep again.
This time the enemy was not the GMAT! It was the exam pressure that I was unable to channel.

Somewhere I read this famous quote by Edmund Hillary.
“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves...”

I think it all came down to motivation at this point.
Sunita Mam helped once a week with preparation, but this time fight was with me, myself.
I tried to develop regular routine – Sleep, Exercise, Eat, Work, Study, Sleep. And I sticked to it.
6 weeks passed me by so quickly. But I was in the flow and didn’t think much.
Before exam night, I had good night sleep and ate lightly.
I gave the exam 7th time.
The only change in the strategy was – Just as in Quant, I’ll dominate the Verbal.
The strategy worked till first 15 questions but after that I realized that I was getting difficult questions and I was slowing down. CRs were really tough. SCs were okay. In RCs, I tried my level best not to skim the paragraphs. I had to rush in the last 4 questions (2 SCs and 2 CRs)
It just doesn’t matter at this point. I stopped worrying and started doing things in a structured approach, that’s it.
Same strategy for the Quant. Well, I finished quant 12 minutes earlier this time. I was surprised, how come questions were so easy.
Had my breaks in between.
And finished the rest of section.

But as soon as I was finishing the AWA, I started to get anxious.
After submission, I just closed my eyes for few seconds and was preparing myself for the worst!
Q50, V40 -730
Seriously, I never dreamed of V40. I couldn’t even believe it! I still don’t believe it! MY STRATEGY OF DOMINATING VERBAL JUST AS QUANT WORKED. Engine rewarded me for the first time for both accuracy and speed in Verbal. I walked out of the test center and yelled loudly! This was such a long and tortuous journey for me.
Got in my Car, and called my buddy first, who was with me in this journey all along! Both of us were feeling ebullient and numb at the same time.
I drove home and blasted hype music all along!

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This is literally a one stop shop for obtaining an elite GMAT score. When I describe it to my peers, I liken it to having a personal coach who will take your of your nutrition, exercise routine and program structure - All you need to do is show up.

It is a long course, no doubt about it, and at times can feel endless. As long as you can commit, put in the hours (having a time tracker on the main dashboard helps immensely with this) you will get decent results.

By the time it came round to start on the official practice tests, I was amazed at the scores I was getting.

Overall a no BS, straightforward program that will get you results if you stick with it.

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e-GMAT has created an outstanding platform that caters to millions of students and at the same time felt a personalised one for me. It understood where all I can falter, what is the right way to think and what I might be doing but is not to be done. Most importantly, it focused on the basics and the core process, NO SHORTCUTS. This helped me to build the confidence that I will be able to tackle questions of all types and levels during the main exam.

The course is very much structured and saves number of hours for any student. Meaning based approach in SC and Pre-thinking in CR do wonders to solve any question. Scholaranium is a very good tool for doing quizzes and analysing one’s skills deeply. Also, the team provides constant support and guidance throughout the journey. I have mailed them for everything that came up to my mind: asking about what study strategies to follow, what are my weak areas, what improvement plan to follow etc. Special mention to Rida Shafeek, my mentor and Abha Mohan who helped me with the improvement plan. e-GMAT team has always been there to help and support, especially when my course plan was getting over on 9th Jan 2023 and they extended it till 18th Jan as per my scheduled exam.

In the initial mock I got a 610. I started my GMAT journey in October 2022 and with the recommendation of my brother I took the e-GMAT course from the start itself. I feel very happy to share that I scored a total of 720 ( V36 Q50 ) in my GMAT retake in Feb 2023. In my earlier attempt in Jan 2023, my score was 650 (V29 Q49). I felt that it did not do justice to all the preparation I had been doing for the exam and planned to give a retake as soon as possible.

Overall, I really enjoyed the journey as much as I enjoyed the result. I would highly recommend the e-GMAT course to all GMAT aspirants.

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It's a great platform to start a serious GMAT preparation. The way the concepts are taught and tested in a progressive manner creates a good learning curve to be able to solve real world GMAT questions at different levels. Especially for those who prefer a more logical approach to problem solving, the platform provides the entire decision making framework for each question to be able to learn more off of the questions on the platform. I primarily used it enhance my verbal skills, and the platform was helpful in building the foundation for the various skills tested in the test. In addition, the customer success taken up in the LMP program is great in the last phase of the journey as it helps in getting the right guidance for the target score.

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I had scored 700 twice in the gmat, when I was enrolled with another test provider. My verbal section, especially CR, had taken a hit in both the attempts. My target score was 740. After my 2nd gmat attempt (at the end of September 2022), I decided to enroll in egmat’s online course. I had watched a couple of their free webinar sessions in youtube and was quite impressed with their methodology and their process. Having scored back to back 700 in the actual test, I was starting at a higher ability. Hence I was invited to join the LMP program, when I enrolled for the course. Rashmi was my mentor in the LMP program.
CR has been my weakest area in verbal ever since I started my gmat prep. Before joining egmat, I resorted to “brute practice” in which I solved a few hundred CR questions from gmatclub, hoping that I become good at CR through relentless practice. I never had a structure or methodology while solving CR questions at that time. As a result, I did not develop the necessary skillset required to solve CR questions in the actual test, under the time constraint. I ended up performing poorly in this subsection in both my previous gmat attempts(50 percentile on both occasions).
At the start of the LMP program, rashmi laid out the verbal plan which was very effective and which targeted my weak areas, notably CR. She emphasized the importance of prethinking while solving CR questions and to trust the process, even though it might take me a while to get accustomed to it. I started out by going through the concept videos, followed by the concept files and the application files. True to it’s name, the cementing quizzes helped me to cement the process in my mind. My accuracy in CR shot up gradually with time, as I began to subconsciously apply the prethinking framework.
Even though I was pretty good at sentence correction(SC), I decided to go through the SC module as well. The SC module has been well structured and is very detailed. Going through this module once again helped me to reinforce the concepts and the meaning-based-approach methodology, which in turn pushed my SC accuracy even higher.
The quant module is at par with the best in the market. The PACE engine pinpoints the weak areas and selectively makes one go through certain subsections/concept videos which reduces the preparation time to a great extent .I was very satisfied with the concept videos and the concept files and the application files. Overall, Quant 2.0 played a vital role in pushing my quant score from a q49 to a q50.
The quality of questions in the scholaranium is top notch. They are at par with the actual gmat questions, especially in verbal. For quants, the scholaranium questions are slightly more difficult than the questions in the actual test.
The Sigma-X mock tests are very accurate and representative of the actual gmat, in terms of the quality of questions and the adaptive nature of the test. The best part of the Sigma-X mock is the detailed analysis that follows after each mock test. I found the analysis chart to be quite similar to the ESR report from the actual test.
Last but not the least, the mentorship support has been excellent. Frankly, the LMP program has far exceeded my expectations. Rashmi has guided me brilliantly throughout the course of our tenure. Her quick turnaround time in responses and her precision planning targeted at my weak areas helped me to boost my score in both quant and verbal. She kept track of my progress and performance through the available data in the platform and suggested improvement plans accordingly. She intervened from time to time to ensure that I was on track with the set plan and provided moral support whenever I felt down and out after a poor quiz/mock performance.
Finally, I was able to hit my target score of 740(q50,v40) .
In the end, when you trust reliable data and take cues from it, the result shows.
Overall my experience with egmat has been fantastic and I would highly recommend their course to any diligent student out there.

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I had gone through one online course earlier, but my verbal was stuck between 28-32 in the main GMAT exam and multiple mock attempts. I was unable to figure out exactly where I was going wrong. Then, on my friend's recommendation, I registered for Private Tutoring Session from Ms Sunita Sihghvi of GmatWhiz. She spotted the deficiencies in my process that were leading to wrong answers in all the 3 sections- SC, CR, and RC. Then, she would slowly refine the way I should read the sentences, break them down into smaller parts, and finally arrive at the correct central idea. My verbal improved to V40 (90th percentile) in the next attempt.

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I opted for Experts Global GMAT Test Series and I can confidently say that they have the most realistic GMAT mock tests with a thorough analysis of the mocks. Starting with the strength/weakness on topics, separately for quants and verbal, to the time taken question and quarter wise. This helped me a lot to strategize and manage my time accordingly in the actual exam as well. I also got the chance to go through the GMAT shorts and surprisingly they are indeed the best content to revise and refer back to, whenever required. After giving the experts global mocks, when I started getting the consistent score, I went for the official GMAC mocks and then the actual GMAT test and scored the same. Thanks for making my GMAT journey easier @ExpertsGlobal

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I scored 730 on my first attempt. It was E-GMAT who helped me in reaching my goals. I started my journey in September by buying my E-GMAT Course 360 for 4 months. Initially I could not dedicate much time to my preparations but in the later months I committed at least 10 hours a week. Being a medical intern in a government college, it was not easy to find time and analyze how to study. E-GMAT helped me a lot by preparing a personalized study plan for me. I started my journey with 620 on my sigma x mock. I set my targets and E-GMAT helped me create a dedicated timeline to create a timetable effectively dicing my time in required areas.
The quant section was beautifully divided and broken down into topics and sub topics. The initial diagnostic quizzes in each topic helped me save a lot of time by segregating topics I was weak at needed to study vs topics I was good at. These modules, followed by practice quizzes, helped me create strong concepts. The framework for various topics and approach to the questions has been effectively covered by E-GMAT course.
The verbal section had ample of application files and quizzes to help me understand the process to approach a question and help me arrive at correct solutions. Pre-Thinking, Meaning Based Analysis, Frameworks, among other tools, were strong weapons in my arsenal which helped me conquer my verbal fear.
The strategy of dividing the preparation in three stages to effectively create concepts, cement them and then achieve accuracy was the best part about the course. This strategy helped me create a strong foundation which enabled me to score 730 on the first attempt.
I improved especially in the verbal section, from scoring V26 to V39. The Xpert analysis of quizzes and the Sigma Mock was very insightful in helping me understand my weakness and improve my score. But the guidance from the E-GMAT mentors, especially Dhruv, helped me a lot during my preparation, without whom, I would have never reached my goal.
I highly recommend the E-GMAT course. It is very useful, whether you are starting the preparation from zero, or are looking for a score improvement. On starting, kindly go through all instructions on how to best effectively use the course and follow their instructions, even if you feel that you don’t need them. It is their experience which has enabled them in creating this course, and I have realized my dream of scoring 720+ (110 points improvement from initial score of 620) with them.

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I used TTP to prepare for the GMAT and had an excellent experience doing so. The content they teach is very easy to understand and digest. I also really enjoy how their lessons are structured and tracked. It ‘gamifies’ the entire experience and makes it more enjoyable. The questions in their question bank were very similar to GMAT official questions. They have a detailed roadmap that alternates between Quant and Verbal lessons which I found really helpful (as opposed to tackling one section then the next). After 4 months of TTP, I ended up scoring 750 and getting into two out of the four M7 schools I applied to (R1 2022)!

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Target Test Prep was as helpful a resource as I could have imagined and was definitely worth the investment. I enjoy learning on my own time and TTP made it extremely easy to do so, while taking the stress out of studying. You can be assured that by the end of the course, you will be as prepared as possible to take on the test! I was able to achieve my target score entirely thanks to this program. The instructors are also highly accessible and make the content enjoyable. I would definitely recommend TTP to anyone who wants to take the GMAT!

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