720 after getting lost at the test centre during break

Initial preparation by myself:

I started to seriously focus on GMAT in May 2022. I had just moved to a new country and was settling into a new job, while juggling a bunch of extracurricular activities. Having gone through the Official Guide already, I knew I needed help to get an attractive score for a top b-school, help particularly in Verbal. While I enjoyed solving CR questions, I was quite slow with RC and SC was my worst enemy. I often felt confused even after reading SC solutions as I lacked the appropriate knowledge of gmat SC rules.
I began researching options and found a lot of positive reviews for e-GMAT, so I decided to put my bet on it. I had scheduled my first exam on July 28th. I had roughly 2.5 months to prepare. In those 2.5 months I went through all the verbal concepts in e-gmat, completed the advanced OG book, and tried all the official mocks. I was repeatedly scoring 740, 750 in the official mocks with Q50s and V40s. I felt really pleased. I thought I would be done and dusted with gmat in no time. Gee, was I wrong. My official score of 680 (Q47, V35) glared back at me. I was mortified. I didn’t even reach 700.

Targeted Improvement with the help of e-gmat mentor:

I wrote to e-gmat asking for guidance on my strategy for re-attempting it. That’s when Rashmi, my strategy mentor came into my life like an Angel. I also realized I had under-estimated GMAT quant. The quant in the official guides and mocks is actually a lot easier than the real exam. This had taken me off guard. I also realized I needed to practice applying SC concepts better as I was often guessing between 2 options.
Rashmi helped me identify weak areas and prepare an improvement plan to go over the concepts I needed help in. It was then that I started using Scholaranium (e-gmat’s question practice tool) too. Rashmi helped me prepare customized tests to cement the concepts I learnt. Scholaranium is honestly a wonderful tool that has a large pool of gmat-style questions categorized based on difficulty, sub topic etc. You have a lot of flexibility to cater your practice to your specific needs. Scholaranium’s pool of hard quant questions actually reflect the difficulty level of the kind of questions you’ll face on test day. I had scheduled my exam for November. In between preparation I had a few obstacles like a knee injury, covid, travels related to family emergencies etc. Although we hadn’t completely finished the improvement plan I decided to still give it a shot and attempt the test as I was hoping I could apply for this upcoming application cycle. I scored 700 (V38, Q48).

Final attempt:

I was happy to reach 700s, but I wanted to improve it further. I came to know about e-gmat’s last mile push program - an intensive 30 day focussed plan. Rashmi made my life easier by laying out each day’s plan and tracked my progress through interactive dashboards. It felt motivating to see the plan ahead of time and encouraged me to meet each milestone on the targeted date. The last week of the plan, we spent doing a couple of sigma mocks in which I scored 740 (Q48, V42) and 750 (Q49, V42). I felt a lot more confident with verbal and started enjoying SC questions too. I went through the SC concept files multiple times to solidify my understanding of the process and rules. I was able to eliminate each option on solid grounds a lot more confidently. I ended up scoring a 720 (Q48, V41).

Introspection:

In hindsight I feel I could’ve improved my quant a bit more, but I am happy with the 720 and extremely happy with the V41. Also during the actual exam after my break I got lost in the test center and wasted ~4 minutes of my time for verbal while I found my way back to the correct room. So didn't expect to get a good score as I was writing it. :P

Product Strengths:

-Great mentors to be by your side and give you individual attention
-Wonderful Verbal Concepts course
-Great pool of questions reflecting actual GMAT standard in an organized manner so that you can curate your practice
-PACE enabled quant course to help you focus on subsections you need.

Would make the product better:

-Bigger pool of quant hard questions as most of the GMAT qns are of that difficulty.
-SMEs give timely responses, but the responses are not always helpful. But I enjoyed reading all the previous doubts/conversations from other students and even most of the responses from the SMEs are good.
-Revisit the actual content of the qns. I encountered qns that confirm to gender stereotypes which was a bit disheartening. I did mention this to the team citing specific examples. They responded positively and said they will look into it. So I'm hopeful this will change soon :)