Guided approach towards GMAT

I started off with my preparation in April 2021. The biggest challenge for me was to break the inertia of not studying for 6 years during the course of my professional life. I have a 6-day working schedule, so tsking out ample amount of time to study was challening. I started off with Manhattan guide of Quant because I had been from Engineering background and Quant flows easily for me. After some time I realised that it got quiet boring for me to go through the concepts from that book. I consulted one of my friends and he suggested me to take an eGMAT course. I read many reviews of e-GMAT on GMAT Club and found it quiet interesting.
I enrolled in the Q+V course in May-21. I did a mistake of not taking a sigma-X mock at the beginnning, so I am not aware where I stood before I started off with the course. I started off with Sentence correction in Verbal course. The course was very detailed and comprised of everything required for the SC course. The forum of e-GMAT is an excellent feature. All the previous doubts asked are available on the form. So if any doubt arises in the topic, I found them discussed on the forum previously. There is a ready reference of all the doubts other students have regarding the topic/module that is being studied. I made very detailed notes of SC which eventually helped me to revise all the concepts of the module at a go. While going through the course, I realised the English we used in the normal conversation s way too flawed. The main punch line for the SC is the meaning based approach. I firstly learnt to understand the meaning of the sentence by breaking it into small chunks and then check for grammatical errors in the sentence. It took me about a month to complete the course. I practiced SC from scholaranium and used strategic review to analyse the mistakes I was doing. The strategic review is also an amazing process to analyse mistakes. It actually points out where you are faultering. I used it to improve on SC.
I further did CR modules. CR is a logic based analysis in which there are 2-3 elements linked with each other. We need to analyse those linkages and find the must-be-true situations for the conclusion to hold true. Accordingly, for the strengthener and weakener questions we need to hit one of those linkages to make the argument strong and weak respectively. e-GMAT gave a very clear idea of how to attempt a CR question. The main punch line for CR is pre-thinking. Just take around 15-20 seconds after reading the passage to apply negation test. This really helped me to reach the assumption of a given passage. I faced problem when I pre-thinked well and the answer choices didn't have any suitable choice matching my pre-thinked assumption. I used to panic and mark any option randomly in those cases. I used scholaranium a lot to counter this problem in CR. Of course, strategic review is again a saviour. It points out exactly where you falter. So I was good at pre thinking, but bad at analysing and visualising the answer choices. There is much of probability that the answer choice won't match the pre-thinked assumption. So main thing I learnt was to not to panic and try to visualise what answer choice is pointing onto.
I further did RC modules. RC is a very scoring area. e-GMAT mainly outlined how to comprehend the passage at one-go. So, the key to attempt RC is to read the passage with full involvement and again breaking the sentences into smaller chunks to understand the idea presented by each sentence. The key-words play a very important role in deciding such roles. So if you comprehend the passage properly by may be making very short notes, you dont need to come back to the passage while attempting the questions. I faced problem when the passage was out of my interest area like biology or humanities. I found it boring and didn't read the details through it and eventually faultered in the questions.Also, I was taking a lot of time to complete one passage with all the questions. Its just that you need to believe that whatever is aked in the question is right there in the passage. You just need to read and comprehend the passage properly. So once I came out of the comfort zone and read the passage with full compassion and made short notes while reading, I was able to solve the RC questions in minimal time while it took me 5 minutes to read the whole long passage.
Even though I was good at quant from childhood, I decided to revise all the concepts at one go from e-GMAT modules. They were quiet comprehensive and you may personalize the study plan according to your strong and weak areas in Quant. I took quiet a bit of time to complete quant from the e-GMAT modules. I realised few of my weak areas and spent more time on it to improve overall accuracy of quant.
After completing quant and its practice, I gave my first sigma mock ang got a 680 in the mock. There were few areas in both verbal and quant which I neede to fix. I revised all the areas I faultered and again gave a mock and score 650. It was quiet shocking for me. Specially in verbal, I was struggling a lot with the timing. I was able to complete 30 questions and randomly guessed last 6 questions due to time constraints. It was just one week from exam and the results shook me up.
Dhananjay came to my rescue. He told me that I am having process related gaps in SC and CR which need to be fixed. He also advised me to reschedule the GMAT by around 20-30 days. I took a day to think and decided to reschedule the exam. I postponed the exam by a month. DJ
helped me to identify the areas I needed to work on. While solving the SC problem, I wasn't focusing on the sentence structure. I worked on the sentence structure and practiced with OG questions. Initially the timing to complete a SC question increased from 1.5 to 2.5 minutes for me but eventually as I got used to with the process, making the sentence structure and solving the problem became a habit to me. It actually helped me to understand the intended meaning of the sentence and to identify the errors(grammatical and logical) in the sentence very easily.
Accordingly, I made an error log to identify the conceptual and process related gaps and kill the gaps appropriately.
For CR, DJ advised me to follow revision B module. I revised all the application files of the CR course and then solved questions from scholaranium. I further made an error log to identify the gaps. Also, he asked me to make a video of how I solve a CR question. DJ reviewed the same and told me that I am pre-thinking well and visualising the answer choices also. I need to work on negation test. I wasn't negating the statement properly. I worked on negation test of conclusion and answer choices. Eventually, I got better at solving CR.
For RC, I was taking quiet a bit of time to complete the passage. I practiced the comprehending part of the passage for some time and realised that the time to attempt the questions decreased.
I finally gave a mock and scored 720. I was still struggling with time in verbal in the last 2-3 question but I gained confidence that I can improve it further with a strategy. I decided to break the complete set of questions in verbal in equal parts and allocated time to the questions. I practiced it on GMAT club test and found that I improved my time management of verbal section.
For IR section, I just did the OG questions. I found them enough for practicing the real GMAT like IR questions. IR is a mix of verbal and quant.I found spending 1-2 days for IR was enough for me.
For AWA, I read on 7-8 passages on GMAT Club and Manhattan to get an idea of how a passage is written. I practiced 3 passages and found it enough.
Exam day experience: I had exam anxiety and slept barely for 4 hours before my exam. I meditated in the morning. I had headache due to lack of sleep but I was determined that I wont let it interfere during my exam. I just tried to pacify myself of all anxieties by deep breathing.I gave my exam in order - Q-V-IR-AWA. This order worked for me because the exam anxiety in the beginning gets down with my strong area- Quant; mind gets warmed up and I can concentrate better. I admit that if I would have slept for 4 more hours,the score would be at least 20 points more, but I managed to get a 710.(Q49-V38-IR6-AWA5)

Tips:
1. There is a lot of self control needed while doing such a preparation. I meditated intermittently to keep myself calm. One can follow the same.
2. In SC, look on the meaning first. Don't jump blindly for grammatically correct choices. There may be more that one choice which is grammatically correct but doesn't convey the intended meaning.
3. In SC, try to make sentence structure. It shall make your work easier to understand meaning and identify errors.
4. In CR, try to visualise the linkages between different elements and then prethink to reach on the assumption. Finally dont panic if you dont find the pre thinked assumption in the choices. Just visualise the choices keeping in mind the linkages.
5. In CR, try to check for must be true cases. There may be some cases that are necessary but not sufficient or sufficient but not necessary. Try to rule out such cases.
6. In RC, try to comprehend the passage as much as you can. Make very short notes to keep key words in mind. This will save your time in solving question related to the passage.

Thanks giving: e-GMAT has a big role to play in getting to that score. The forums have been amazing. The SMEs reply promptly to all the queries. For me, DJ made final fixing to push me further towards the score. I am very grateful to the complete team of e-GMAT.