Journey to the 700 club !

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