My journey from 650 to 710!

My GMAT journey began in 2021 when I started preparing using an online teaching course from a private institution. Within 5 months of preparation, I took the GMAT and scored a 650 (Q 48, V 31). I was definitely unhappy with the score and was sure that I needed to re-attempt. Post that, I tried to prepare again by myself using the available resources but due to lack of consistency and a guided approach, I never went forward with another attempt. Just when I almost gave up on GMAT, a friend who got success with eGMAT suggested that I give it one last shot. That’s when I signed up for the eGMAT (GMAT Online 360) course.

Once I signed up, the onboarding process started. At first, I gave a SIGMA-X mock and I understood where I stand and how far I am from my goal. I was then assigned a Strategy Expert, Akash, who analyzed my entire mock and gave me a way forward about how I should start with my course. First, I prepared a customized day-by-day study plan for myself which gave me visibility and a guided approach on how much time I need to dedicate each day. I initially started with Verbal as it was my weakest area. The eGMAT Master Comprehension helped me strengthen my basics. The structured approach - Practice File, Application Files followed by the Cementing Quiz- is where eGMAT excels at. At every stage there’s a threshold for Medium and Hard difficulty which you need to clear to progress forward. In case you fail to follow that, the strategy expert is just an email away and will share an improvement plan for you based on where you stand. There’s a similar approach for Quant as well. The eGMAT P.A.C.E module helps you save significant time with Quant and helps you focus on your weaker areas. After almost 4 months of prep, I took the GMAT and scored a 710 (Q49, V36)!

Here’s are some aspects of eGMAT that helped me:

1) Dedicated strategy expert: Akash, my strategy expert was more like that one person who helped me understand where I faltered and what I needed to focus on. Analyzing my mocks was one thing I was amiss and he was available to analyze each mock and suggest areas of focus and improvement.

2) Sigma-X mocks: The post analysis that these mocks provide is very similar to how your ESR would look like. It gave me an idea which quartile was bad for me, helped me figure out where I took the most time and how was the progression during my mock. This actually gave me visibility on what I need to focus on in my next mock and areas of improvement too.

3) eGMAT Scholaranium: The collection of questions for each subsection, the quality of questions and the level of each question - all of this together especially for Verbal stands apart and gives you ample of questions to practice, review, and replay questions. You can also create custom quizzes to focus on weaker topics and also get topic wise breakdown of your performance.

4) The eGMAT approach: The sentence structure approach for SC, the pre-thinking approach for CR or strategies such as keyword and predictive approach for RC - you might consider it time consuming but as you keep on practicing it becomes a part of your approach while solving questions and makes the approach very structured.

Overall, the eGMAT course is definitely a course one should look at incase you’re struggling with your prep (especially Verbal) and need a guided approach. However, it does demand consistency and applying whatever you learn to get the desired results. I would suggest that you don't rush through the course and give it enough time during your prep journey and only when you’re confident about a particular subsection, move forward to the next. I expected my prep would end in 2 months since it was a re-attempt but I finished it in 4 months. It will be frustrating at times, but hold on to it and don’t give up, and you won’t be disappointed. And one last piece of advice: please maintain an Error Log, it definitely helps!