From 470 to 700 - Debrief from a Peruvian Non-native Speaker

Hello everyone there!

After a long journey, I’d like to share with you a debrief of my journey in the preparation in the GMAT. This have been a tough process with a lot of ups and downs

I started preparing on December 2021, so it’s been almost 1 year and a half until I got my final score. This probably doesn’t fit with everyone else’s timeframe in the forum, but probably there are some non-native speakers (Latinos like me) who will find this insightful for their preparation

Let me tell you a little bit about me: I’m from Peru, majored in Industrial Engineering and nowadays working as a Product Owner in Retail Banking for SME (my career is really versatile here and it’s not weird finding industrial engineers in every working field such as consulting, finance, consumer products, technology, manufacturing and nonprofit/government)

I have a special interest with Entrepreneurship and it was in the last years of my career where I decided to dive deeper on this. That’s when I started to look at role models in that specialty. I found that USA was a good place to find what I was looking for and that’s how I met some Peruvians in Silicon Valley. I asked them what they did in order to get closer to that entrepreneurial environment and every response had something in common: a prestigious MBA and the importance of the GMAT in this goal. By then, my outlook had become clear.

It was on December 2021 when I decided to finally put hands on and started to look for options to prepare. That’s when I realized that there were not many options in Peru: 2 academies dominate the market share and neither of them offer a choice I feel comfortable with (they are mostly focused on shortcuts and hacks to ace GMAT). After some days of research, my co-worker who got 690 told me that he had good results in Verbal in an online course called E-GMAT. I was skeptical that an online course could help me towards my goal, but I decided to give it a chance.

I was in awe after taking the Master Comprehension course. It was a total different approach in every section of Verbal. They were focused on – indeed- comprehend and understand what the question was asking for. I knew at that moment that GMAT was not going to be an easy exam, but rather a marathon. So, I took my first Sigma-X Mock to have a baseline and ended up with a 470

Overview of the course:
Completing the course took me longer than expected principally because my English foundations were not good. Happily, the course included every aspect for a non-native speaker. It is incredible how detailed the topics are and the quantity of exercises you can find there. Let me highlight how useful the feedbacks of the E-GMAT forum are too! (thanks Harsha, Stacey an Shraddha). I left TONS of question in their forum and every one of them got answered with a depth of detail. Taking an online course instead of a “live” one was never a problem.

In the math side, even though I had more foundations in numbers, I felt that GMAT Quant questions needed a total different strategy. Apart from that, it was my first time solving problems in English. Never had I focused before on solving math problems focusing on the details of the statement and trying to no get “caught” on those classic GMAT traps (for example: not evaluating all the scenarios). E-GMAT made my life easier by setting an approach for every type of question. This was really helpful for me in order to not “review” the problems in ALL the different angles possible but maintaining a fixed strategy and perfectioning it. Finally, it was amazing getting to know stats of my performance in a really precise way in each area. This made evident where I needed to invest more hours!

To sum it up, I’m really happy that this course had everything I needed in order to ace the GMAT. It covers every aspect of the topics in a holistic manner. Not only do the E-GMAT team focus on the quality of the questions, but also they have created a process in order to gain proficiency (cementing, ability quizzes, test readiness and their owns mocks are part of this). Having this depth of content was awesome for someone with my profile who needed to learn every topic.

About Scholaranium:
You can’t imagine the amount of effort I invested to succeed taking the cementing quizzes. These questions are TOUGH and really INSIGHTFUL in your preparation. But be sure about this: if you handle these cementing quizzes, you CAN surely move forward to the next topic.

I loved Scholaranium from E-GMAT (even though it gave me sleepless nights hahaha). The quality of the questions from the experts is amazing. That’s not something you are going to see on other platforms where they mostly “adequate” OG questions.

Last Mile Push:
On March 2023, I decided to finally schedule my GMAT. After taking 4 consecutive mocks in Kaplan and scoring 680 consistently I felt frustrated for not being able 700. That’s when I decided to wrote to Rajat Sadana from E-GMAT. He answered really fast and assigned Rida Shafeek to guide me in this road.

Rida is amazing. She landed a first plan for including these points:

• Refining Math Topics (GEO, Probabilities, Combination, Permutations)
• Ensuring Test Readiness in every topic with a plan of exercises for every week (this helped in getting used to solve mixed questions in a timed environment)
• Specific tips in every sub-section where my performance was not good in the Sigma X-Mocks

This plan encouraged me to practice in a more structured way to gain more test readiness and build stamina. That approach helped me to gain that muscle to solve mixed topic questions and to practice time management. She suggested increasing the number of questions solved every day (and practicing verbal and quant in the same day). This helped simulating the GMAT experience a lot. Once the day of the exam arrived, it felt really natural for me to solve 60+ questions in 2 hours.

Sadly, my first official exam was not good. I ended up with 630 (Q49 V26). I was totally discouraged here. All the time invested felt useless and I started doubting about my abilities (“probably I was not good enough for this exam?” – the kind of questions that arrived in my head). I noticed Rida with this score and she did help me a lot trying to identify the flaws of my exam. We were both at shock since my last 2 Sigma X-Mocks gave me in average a score of 680. I found that I need more guidance in CR as well as improving strategy in the day of my exam regarding time management.

There were 3 principal areas to focus for my next attempt:

1. Critical Reasoning
2. Time Management
3. Aggression in the first section (without compromising accuracy)

Time management was the key in my last month of preparation. Rida identified some bad practices in my mocks and she suggested me to change my strategy by using a time matrix. It worked!

Rida and the E-GMAT team also helped me scheduling a session with one of their verbal experts: Harshavardhan (Harsha) because - even after practicing CR – I was struggling with the questions. We had call of more than 1 hour where he deep dived on my approach towards CR. This session was mind-blowing. It’s amazing having the opportunity to talk with an expert on a topic like him. He made it evident where I need to focus the majority of time with a really detailed diagnosis. Until that session, I didn't know my mental process doing CR exercise could be split in 7 parts (for example: visualizing, understanding, details, falsification question, pre-think scenarios, analyzing options). Only after noticing that my biggest flaw was at analyzing options, then I could focus on a more intentional way on that side. He recommended to practice this in untimed manner and, only after feeling more comfortable with process, then I could go back with a timed environment. It worked!

From a personal and mental perspective, it was awesome having that mentorship support during the last stage of my preparation. GMAT has been a tough exam for me (a total rollercoaster) and Rida helped me in not giving up in these last moments when I started to feel frustrated, stuck and discouraged. Mental attitude and confidence play a big role in the day of your exam.

Let me share with you the results of my mocks and official exams in a chronological way:

470, Q30 V26 - Dec 7th 2021 (Sigma X-Mock)
620, Q41 V34 - Apr 7th 2023 (Sigma X-Mock)
710, Q48 V39 - Apr 9th 2023 (Sigma X-Mock)
660, Q46 V34 - Apr 15th 2023 (Sigma X-Mock)

630, Q49 V26 - Apr 16th 2023 (GMAT Official Exam)

660, Q48 V32 - Jun 11th 2023 (Sigma X-Mock)
680, Q49 V32 - Jun 18th 2023 (mba.com Mock)
690, Q48 V37 - Jun 25th 2023 (mba.com Mock)

700, Q49 V36 - Jun 26th 2023 (GMAT Official Exam)


Ok, this went longer than I expected. If you are still here, I hope this debrief could help on your journey. Thanks to the E-GMAT team for creating such a wonderful product in the market. I hope to contact you soon with more news about my MBA Journey.

Sincerely,
Kevin