Thank you gmatclub & e-GMAT

Background: I am a married 32-year-old individual working in India’s biggest manufacturing enterprise in the energy sector for 10+ years. I was completely out of touch with exam preparation. I started with a score of 560( Q46 & V21) in the eGMAT SigmaX mock. I would recommend that you try eGMAT for its data-driven analysis.
Preparation:
1. Quant: I started with a score of 46 and always scored above 49 in all the mocks after going through the basics. (except some GMAT club practice tests). Please take my advice in this context.
· Resources: Inline with commandments of Slingfox (https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmatclubbing-administered-770-50q-45v-86239.html) build a very solid foundation in GMAT centric maths. Even if you have a very solid background in Maths, it is worthwhile to refer to Manhattan GMAT Maths books and refresh your basics. These guides are enough to reach a score of 48/49. For more advanced concepts, refer to GMAT MATH BOOK in downloadable PDF format by Bunuel and be grateful. I would refer Manhattan Advanced GMAT Quant for cementing the score of 50/51.

· Practice: I solved all the OG questions using the GMAT club error log (very important to use a timer). If you are looking for Q50/51 score, solve the most difficult questions of any source on GMAT club with error log & timer.

· Practice Test: Build your Math Muscles with GMATClub Tests. DO NOT TRY THIS BEFORE FINISHING THE BASICS. These are one of the hardest questions available on quant. Initially try to solve without a timer and don’t get disheartened if you cannot solve questions even in 10-15 minutes. I found most of the questions much harder than Official prep questions.

· Actual Exam: I found actual GMAT Online quant questions were much lengthier and harder than official questions. It served me very well that I had attempted almost 20 GMAT club quant tests.

2. Verbal: I started with an ability of 16% in Sentence Correction, 16% in RC, and 63% in CR as per eGMAT Sigma X mock. Harshit recommended me the e-GMAT course for verbal and I cannot thank him enough.

· Course: eGMAT Online Verbal course is very structured and comprehensive. I religiously followed the order in which I needed to study the individual sections. I believe that it is the best course for SC. I devoted 2 months totally to the Sentence Correction module. The animated modules of eGMAT improve upon the efficiency of a student and for this reason, the retention ability remains on a higher side. The success of Sentence Correction is your ability to understand the meaning, logic and learn core skills. The 3-step approach to SC is extremely helpful. eGMAT sentence correction course takes the journey from basic concepts to advanced skills very smoothly.

In CR, Structure and pre-thinking steps gives a solid understanding of the argument. In RC, the solution technique for Inference questions was best. In my opinion and as in my case, you will have to practice a lot (I limited my practice to official questions of GMAT only on GMAT club). You can also attempt LSAT questions.

The team at e-GMAT is extremely helpful. Payal always promptly responded and helped me. The eGMAT team is very friendly and really invests in your preparation.

I owe an increase of 15 points in my verbal score (from my mock score to actual score) solely to e-GMAT. The process and structure of the course really helped me improve my skills. The way the concepts are taught, I am sure I will carry this knowledge throughout my MBA as well.

· Practice: Practice on Scholaranium. The quality of the explanations is very high. The level of data insights on your accuracy & ability is pure gold.

3. AWA: Like me if are not good at writing and you are happy with a score of 5 or 5.5, just go to this page 1 or 2 days before the actual exam and write one AWA answer based on these templates (https://gmatclub.com/forum/how-to-get-6-0-awa-my-guide-64327.html).

4. My Story: I started my preparation in Sep’20. After 3 months of preparation was ready to book the exam in Dec’20/Jan’21, but fate had some other plans for me. I got Covid-19 in December and it took me one and half months to recover and regain my strength.

I started preparing for GMAT again from the last week of Jan’21. In Feb and March, my work schedule went crazy. I could hardly study for 1 hour or less during this time. With a proper study of 4-5 hours in April & May, I booked the GMAT exam on 17th June at Hyderabad Test Centre. One week before the scheduled exam, my scheduled test was canceled by Test Centre without providing any reason (I assumed that it must be owing to Covid-19).

I immediately scheduled the test again on 23rd June and it was canceled again by the Test Centre.

I really wanted to finish off the exam when I was scoring high in official GMAT prep. I was exploring the option of the GMAT Online Exam. I read a lot about the online experience on GMAT club and it helped.

GMAT Online Exam Requirement:
Physical Whiteboard: I ordered one physical whiteboard from amazon but the quality was average and I received a damaged product You must order very good quality fine-tip marker.

Duster: I struggled a lot for getting a good quality duster and could not get a good quality duster. I ordered and checked these dusters. They were useless. I tried other dusters too from a local shop. I stuck a bundle of cotton cloth on three dusters and used them. In quant, I am a step by step solver kind of person, so I write a lot, it was not supposed to be an issue at the test center, but it became an issue in GMAT online exam. As I had limited space of whiteboard to write and I had to erase many times during Quant section, non-availability of good quality duster did cost me at least 2-3 minutes in the quant and 1-2 minutes in verbal section.

Backup wifi connection: Arrange for a good wifi connection as the primary connection. I would suggest that you arrange for a backup connection too. I arranged one backup jiofi device (4G Hotspot device in India). It is better to be prepared with backup wifi or a Hotspot device. I did not need a backup connection during the actual exam. I showed the backup device to the instructor online and he had no issues with it.

GMAT Online Experience: The experience was good but not great. The exam started smoothly. I went for both scheduled breaks after Quant and Verbal.
· Difficulty Level: I felt that Quant was super difficult compared to GMAT official prep questions. However, the GMAT Online exam was forgiving and I scored 50.
Verbal was also very difficult for me. I had improved my RC accuracy to 90% and solved most of the 700+ RC official passages on the GMAT club, but I was stumped by the difficulty level of RC. I got short but very convoluted RC passages and questions were very difficult too. It was very difficult to eliminate even 2/3 answer choices. CR & SC were difficult too.

· System Hanging Issue: This was one teething problem throughout the exam - the system was hanging for a few seconds whenever I clicked the answer or submitted the answer. I was using a Lenovo legion 8 GB Intel i-5 laptop with Windows 10. I lost approximately 2-3 minutes on each section due to this issue. It was very frustrating.

During AWA also, the system was hanging and I lost more than 2-3 minutes. It did not matter that I lost time in AWA but it was frustrating to wait for few seconds for the text to appear on screen after typing.

Overall, the experience of GMAT Online was average. Finally, I completed the exam and a score of 720 appeared. I breathed a sigh of relief!! I was expecting a lower score!!

Final Advice:
1. Value your time and choose the right material/course for yourself: There is a lot of material available for GMAT preparation and research very well before you commit your time. The eGMAT team is very friendly and really invests in your preparation.
Aim high. Track & monitor your performance (Use two types of error logs)
One type of error log to track your ability, accuracy & timing. I used the gmatclub error log
The second type of error log is a simple excel sheet to keep the list of mistakes and learning. This type of error log comes very handy in identifying blind spots and mistake patterns. I cannot recommend this enough.
Persevere – Be ready to hit few bumps along the way. But persevere and Do not lose hope. Book the exam only when you are ready and have already scored at least 20-30 points higher than your target score in the official GMAT prep mock.
Read slingfox Test Day Tips!

Thank you Note: Thank you gmatclub team for managing such a wonderful website and the quality of content is top-notch!

Thank you eGMAT team for one of the best verbal courses! Special thanks to Payal for her prompt response to my queries!

Thank you for reading this long debrief!!

Extra:
Do yourself a favor and visit these pages for the best stories/advice ever:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/best-gmat-stories-period-98512.html?fl=menu
https://medium.com/@sankalpgarg/my-gmat-exam-strategy-f937630f0bbf
https://gmatclub.com/forum/from-520-in-mocks-to-740-in-actual-gmat-282814.html)