2 years to 730

Strengths:

Sunita Mam is an excellent tutor. She is very supportive and will go deep down to understand very specific type of mistakes that you do in your Verbal. She will try to make you cognizant of those errors and will work with you session by session to help you improve on your mistakes.

GMAT is one of the most complex exams I’ve ever taken.
Though I didn’t take an initial Diagnostic test, I believe my baseline was around Q49 V28 ~600~

Background
I had my schooling from a small, below-avg. school in Rajasthan, India, where kids use to speak Hindi. My English- speaking skills as well as writing skills- was terrible. But I’d really good analytical skills. Had my engineering degree from one of the NIT’s. I knew I was not the brightest students, but I knew have superior degree of perseverance. With time and some patience, my ability to preserve in tough time has always worked for me.

Phase 1 – Quant
Quant was not issue for me from the beginning. With official guidebook content, I was able to score Q50 in Quant. My strategy was always simple. DO SOLVE AS FAST AS YOU CAN IN QUANT! With my 7 attempts at GMAT, I’m now sure at this point that the engine is biased towards speed (if you’re accurate enough). If your speed is fast enough, example 1:30 minutes/question, the system will reward you with easy, point scoring questions even if you do 2-3 questions wrong in first 20 questions. Engine will punish you with higher order difficult questions if you’re slow and accurate.
But one thing specifically I’ve noticed that if I tried to get perfect Q51 score, which was in fact possible for me, I got Q49 all the time. This was because in order to do everything perfect, I would slow down. Engine will not only count your accuracy but at the same time timing too! This is such an important factor that I (and many people) till the end do not believe it! Also, if you take extra time (say more than 2:30 minutes+) you’ll start to get tougher questions (if you’re accurate). This loop will screw your timing and will cause you to score lower than your potential. This has happened to me multiple times in the exams. Well, I got 3 times Q49 and 4 times Q50. So, I can attest that!
So, in the end, I gave up on Q51 and tried to make sure that at least I get Q50.

Phase 2 – Verbal
My Achilles Hill!
Where should I start! My source of 2-year long misery!
It was stupid of me to naively start the verbal without understanding the concepts behind it. My foundation was not strong at all. I thought I would easily conquer the verbal by practicing questions. I was fool.
Long story short, I spent ~8 months~ wasting time. Learning concepts from questions through practicing, not the other way around.
At this point, I’ve given gmat my score was 680, Q50, V32. My SC was quite weak. I thought with more practice and concept, I can make my score go up. I was stupid. I didn’t realize that I had hit my verbal upper limit, and my English skills kind of peaked at V32.
This time, I learned all the concepts through various material available online and I gave the exam in next 2 months. I thought now my score would go up. Unlike last time, this time I had exam stress. Even after a rigorous preparation, my score got down. 650, Q49, V29.

At this time, I was also down. I took a month off.

~Next 6 months~
I took coaching material such as Manhattan prep and E-gmat and gave exams again.
But that was also not a great help. By the way, the Manhattan prep exams are really good.
In the meantime, I’ve given GMAT 3 more times. Similar stories, sometimes I did poorly in CRs, sometime in SCs, and sometime in RCs! I tried to fix one specific thing; another thing was in shambles.
The score wavered from 650 to 700.
I was frustrated and wanted to quit.
This standardize test has been nothing but a source of misery!

I took a month off.

Phase 3 - Verbal
At this point, I realized there were some basic things, I was constantly doing wrong.
I came across Sunita Mam’s videos on YouTube. I really enjoyed watching her teaching basic things on YouTube video. I decided to give her a try and take a personal tutoring from her to help me fix issues specific to me!

I’ll be honest, I was not after content at all. I have seen thousands of questions at this point. I just wanted her to see me solve the verbal questions.
Honestly, I needed someone to handhold me this time.
I was tired, exhausted, and frustrated from GMAT already!


She taught- DON’T TAKE THIS EXAM AS PAIN. YOU’LL NEVER CLEAR IT THAT WAY!
She taught me that I had this innate habit to skip words in RCs while reading. This would lead to meaning loss as well as wrong meaning inference at the same time. This was such a big issue for me, even Infront of her, I was doing this basic mistake, trying to skim through passage. Also, I tried to get more engaged with RCs and took some minor notes for reference.
In SCs she asked me to apply the similar strategy as in RCs, to read very slowly, not to skip words, and try to understand the meaning at the same time. Try to identify all the errors in first sentence itself. Find definite errors first and eliminate those options immediately. Compare remaining SC choices based on meaning. Don’t believe your ears, they are not your friends in SC. Stick to structured approach till the end!
In CRs she asked me to go with structured approach, that’s it! What’s the author’s logic? Identifying the conclusion as well as how Author reached that conclusion. To answer the CR properly, locking the conclusion in right way is so, so IMPORTANT. This will save your from selecting out of scope options choice. Even if you can’t pre-think the answer, just have the conclusion locked in mind, so that author won’t be able to divert you through flimsy answer options.

In my 6th attempt after 6 weeks of training, I decided to give exam again. But his time, I was too stressed already. I was performing well in mock test, but there was a degree of exam pressure, which I felt constantly. I scored 660 in the exam. I felt terrible at this point.
I didn’t talk to anyone for whole week. What I have not tried. Even after months of tutoring, this was the result.
Sunita mam called. She asked me what happened? I narrated the whole story.
She calmly said -THAT’S OKAY! DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT MUCH. THIS IS JUST AN EXAM. TAKING STRESS WON’T HELP YOU OUT HERE! JUST LET IT BE! TRY AGAIN ONCE YOU’RE READY!

I took her advice positively, took a week off and started back.
At this point, I stopped thinking much. I started prep again.
This time the enemy was not the GMAT! It was the exam pressure that I was unable to channel.

Somewhere I read this famous quote by Edmund Hillary.
“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves...”

I think it all came down to motivation at this point.
Sunita Mam helped once a week with preparation, but this time fight was with me, myself.
I tried to develop regular routine – Sleep, Exercise, Eat, Work, Study, Sleep. And I sticked to it.
6 weeks passed me by so quickly. But I was in the flow and didn’t think much.
Before exam night, I had good night sleep and ate lightly.
I gave the exam 7th time.
The only change in the strategy was – Just as in Quant, I’ll dominate the Verbal.
The strategy worked till first 15 questions but after that I realized that I was getting difficult questions and I was slowing down. CRs were really tough. SCs were okay. In RCs, I tried my level best not to skim the paragraphs. I had to rush in the last 4 questions (2 SCs and 2 CRs)
It just doesn’t matter at this point. I stopped worrying and started doing things in a structured approach, that’s it.
Same strategy for the Quant. Well, I finished quant 12 minutes earlier this time. I was surprised, how come questions were so easy.
Had my breaks in between.
And finished the rest of section.

But as soon as I was finishing the AWA, I started to get anxious.
After submission, I just closed my eyes for few seconds and was preparing myself for the worst!
Q50, V40 -730
Seriously, I never dreamed of V40. I couldn’t even believe it! I still don’t believe it! MY STRATEGY OF DOMINATING VERBAL JUST AS QUANT WORKED. Engine rewarded me for the first time for both accuracy and speed in Verbal. I walked out of the test center and yelled loudly! This was such a long and tortuous journey for me.
Got in my Car, and called my buddy first, who was with me in this journey all along! Both of us were feeling ebullient and numb at the same time.
I drove home and blasted hype music all along!