760 on the first attempt – 140 points improvement with e-GMAT Mentorship

eGMAT’s mentorship programme is, hands down, one of the best products out there. The programme provides you with personalised support from one of eGMAT’s mentors, who will guide you every step of the way to ensure that you keep up with your prep and that you have all it takes to crack the exam.

Let me tell just how this works in real life and how each of the components of the programme translated to my personal case:

• Initial call. I had a call with my Archit Bhargava, my eGMAT mentor, who asked me enough questions to understand how my journey had been until then, what my goals were, and were my strengths and areas for improvement were. It was amazing to see how, by asking the right questions, he could quickly arrive at the key issues that we needed to work on. This call was the base for creating the roadmap we would follow over the following months

• Weekly milestones. Based on our initial call, Archit provided me with an overall roadmap that translated into very concrete, day-specific milestones. What’s great about this milestone-driven plan is that it gives you a very strong sense of direction and accomplishment: you wake up and you know exactly what you need to do, and as you complete the milestones, you get a true sense that you are confidently moving forward. This moves you away from “oh so what should I focus on today? Algebra or Critical Reasoning?” or “I feel I have been studying for long enough now, maybe take a mock?”

• Weekly touch base. Every week, my mentor would reach out to ask the status of my milestones, and we would iterate to adjust the plan for the next week, calibrating for new developments, availability and goals. My particular situation was that work was quite unpredictable at times, so the fact that we iterated and readjusted the plan on a weekly basis was great for me – just what I needed to keep moving at an optimum pace

• Strategy Hurdle sessions. Once every 2-3 weeks, we would do a one-hour session with other members of the programme and our mentor. In those sessions, we would go over issues that go beyond the actual content, but that definitely add up to your overall performance: key pitfalls students find along their GMAT prep journey and how to overcome them, time management during the exam, how to balance between a demanding personal and work life and the need to study consistently, and so on. These sessions were great in that we were presented with real life examples of other people (who I could definitely relate to more than once), and we got the chance to share with others who were going through the same situation as us

• Individual calls. We conducted individual calls with my mentor as we saw fit. In these calls, we discussed the overall status of the prep, any roadblocks I was finding, and potential solutions to overcome them. Whatever the topic of the discussion, the fundamental principle was this: “how do we adjust the plan so that your prep is advancing, effective, and sustainable?”. Basically, we looked for ways to keep moving forward and avoid being stagnated, ensuring that what we did actually allowed me to learn what I needed to learn, and that the pace was sustainable given other areas of my life (for example, work)

Overall, a great opportunity to learn in a truly personalised way. If you are willing to commit to your prep and invest the time it takes to get your target score, this is really good value for money.

Personally, I am sincerely grateful to eGMAT and the mentoring programme – they were a key part of my being able to move from 620 to 760!