A long and not so smooth journey to 730

I started my rather long journey of GMAT studies in August 2020. At first, I took a course from another test prep company. In December 2020, I took my first attempt and scored 640. After that, I came across E-gmat. My friends had also recommended me this course. I scheduled a consultation call with them and I bought the Verbal and Quant package. Fast forward to November 2021, I took the test again and I scored a 730 (V41,Q49).

When I started preparing from E-GMAT, I had to unlearn some concepts, especially in Verbal, and learn some new tricks in Quants. E-GMAT course is very intensive but at the same time, it helps you have that strong concept base. What made E-GMAT stand out for me was the course structure , the practice questions , and a clear path forward.

Highlights about Verbal course :

The Verbal course is just phenomenal. It covers all the concepts that you need to know in the GMAT exam. It is structured in a very coherent manner and it is very easy to follow from one sub module to another. The course starts with the Master Comprehension course which gives us essential reading strategies which make our life so much easier !

Sentence Correction module was a very helpful module. The concepts taught as a part of this course didn't seem like rocket science, this was because the course is very student friendly and easy to follow through. Especially the Meaning based approach taught in Sentence Correction module is the only way I feel that one should approach this question type. I have honestly tried using other methods like elimination. But, from what I have observed and applied in the actual test , only the Meaning based approach works ! And it works absolutely flawlessly.

The Critical Reasoning course was an eye opener for me personally because having taken the GMAT once before , I never knew the step by step approach that one needs to follow to solve the CR questions. Before the E-GMAT course , I used to jump into the CR section without having any strategy or framework in my mind. The E-GMAT CR course teaches the very Step by Step process which is needed for getting a high accuracy on the CR questions. The Prethinking approach is the most helpful takeaway from the entire section. As it is taught in the course , we must fight the urge to jump straight into option choices before analysing the argument. I cannot emphasize enough on importance of following the step-by-step approach! It is just that great :)

The Reading Comprehension section was especially helpful for me since I was not an avid reader and had never read so many fact-heavy and inference-heavy passages in my life before. The key reading strategies, if followed to the details, will help you to reduce the reading time and at the same time will increase your comprehension ability exponentially.

To conclude, If I had realized it sooner that the methodologies and the step-by-step approach taught be E-GMAT is the only way forward, I would have cut my preparation time in half. But as it is said, better late than never! Honestly, the day I realized that if I apply the process skills taught to me during the course exactly as they have been taught to me , my time management problems disappeared and my accuracy started improving.

Highlights about the Quant 2.0 course:

This course is genuinely the only thing you need for GMAT Quant. There is absolutely no reason to refer to other sources once you have taken this course and have seriously gone through the course. The Quant 2.0 module is a module in which you can adapt the course as per your expertise. The course gives personalized feedbacks along the way, which I think was the most important part of my preparation. The GMATSkills files and Practice Files covered all the tricky ways in which the questions could be phrased.

Mid August 2021 , I was also selected for the Last Mile Program(LMP) . I was assigned a mentor to guide me through till my target score. Mr Atreya Roy was my mentor and he guided me at every step. He also provided me personalized feedback and gave me a list of actionable steps. He also analysed my mocks and provided me a video mentioning the entire analysis and the areas of improvement. He also shared detailed plan of improvement. He was my point of contact for the entire 3 months and he helped me with any queries I had during this time :) I would say LMP is a really nice initiative to help students get where they wish to be!!

Finally , I would like to say that the team of experts at E-GMAT is extremely helpful and they respond to any queries that you may have in the least time possible. Each question in E-GMAT has a separate discussion thread and most of my questions were already answered ! Even If I didn't have any query , just going through the discussions gave me so much more insights into different ways of solving the problems.

The SIGMAX mocks are really close to the actual GMAT. The quality of verbal and quant questions are very similar to the quality of questions in the actual test. The Quant questions specifically are very close in terms of concepts tested and the difficulty level. For me , the test taking experience was rather smooth because I had already taken the SIGMAX mocks and I didn't feel that the actual test was a whole different game. Overall , the feedback provided after every mock was very informative and it guided me towards the next steps.

I would say that had I taken the e-gmat course earlier , my prep time would have been reduced by more than half. This is a one stop solution for the GMAT !!