Appearing for the fourth time wasn't easy. After the previous unsuccessful attempts, it was devastating, took a lot of courage and a lot of support from my husband and family. They believed in me and had the confidence that I could kill the beast (that's what the GMAT was for me).

I have done a Post-Graduation in Finance from India; worked with CRISIL (India's premier credit rating agency) and settled in USA after marriage. I was among the 3 candidates from 250 to be chosen for the job in CRISIL. Writing this not to boast but just to let know that an exam is not a replica of a person’s capabilities and how to handle rejection and stand up after breaking down completely.

The GMAT taught me that, never imagined would have to give a fourth attempt, when have excelled at everything else in life.

I know 610 isn’t as good as 700 but for me it is an achievement, the much needed success to get back the belief in myself.

I am writing this post for people who are strugglers like I am and are thinking what to do next, or what is it that they are not doing right. Why me? Trust me, I asked these questions to myself every time and finally I was able to answer them.

Let me start with my fourth attempt:

I appeared on 11th July, 2013. On the exam day, I was a nervous wreck and was scared to death. Just didn’t want history to repeat itself and there it was a blessed 610 - 40 in Quant and 34 in Verbal. Finally, the hard work paid off.

I was so happy to see a 34 in verbal as it was the section that gave me the wonderful 400s everytime. I thought I was good at English but the GMAT changed my perspective. Never was I able to get above 20. For the 34, I would really like to thank e-GMAT verbal prep and the downloads on GMAT Club. I took it 20 days before my exam, after I contacted Rajat, asked him what would be the best option and when my husband finally made the decision for me as I wasn't ready for taking up a new course just 20 days prior. But e-GMAT really helped me gain a lot of confidence in my weakest section.

For Details:

The course that they have is structured very well. It really makes you see details that you have not seen. It is truely said that what you see is what you remember better then what you read. e-GMAT follows this. I finished all the videos of SC, RC and CR within 13 days. They also have practice files (which were really helpful).

For SC: The SC videos are just too good. I was always good at SC but the e-GMAT videos helped me to understand the intricacies and gave a few shortcuts that really helped during the exam. For the first time I was able to look at the question, know what was wrong and mark the answer straight away. This saved a lot of time. It basically showed me how to find the mistakes and how to correct them without even looking at the choices. Something I was not able to do in my previous attempts.

For CR: I hated the inference and the assumption questions. Thank God I didn't get any on the exam day but e-GMAT made these very simple. I used to always get confused between two answers and invariably mark the wrong ones. I know many people face this, but the course I took thought me how to not choose the wrong answer and how one word in the choice can make it incorrect. e-Gmat has a process called pre thinking, I wasn't able to master it due to shortage of time but in some questions during the actual exam it really helped me to mark the answers as I could pre think them.

For RC: This was my biggest problem. But again the videos of e-Gmat helped me a lot. They taught me how to take notes, what kind of answers can be for the questions asked and again how to pay attention to each and every word in the choices. For example: if there is a passage on: cure of some diseases and in one of the answer choices they say cure of all diseases you eliminate that choice. It is very obvious that you would do that, but GMAT has a tendency to frame answer choices in a way that make you mark the wrong one. I did that and I am sure many would be able to relate to this.

Apart from the e-GMAT videos I also downloaded all the 700+ files from the GMAT Club free download areas. These also helped a lot in my practice, and helped me get better.

My three attempts; what went wrong:

My first attempt was on May 29, 2012. I was confident and thought I could get a 600 easily, but I ended up with a 480. I did not take any classes, just downloaded materials from websites and studied from Kaplan (which was not helpful at all). The first time material wasn’t right and I took it rather lightly.

The University I was applying to said it would give me a chance to appear again. On July 2, 2012 I retook the test and scored a mere 400. I was devastated and lost on the admissions. I decided that I was not going to try again, but being on an H4 visa and having no plans to go back to India did not leave me a choice but to reappear. Analyzing on why I scored 80 points lower, I realized that I was scared, under time pressure, and focused too much on marking the right answer rather than focusing on the questions and answer choices.

Third attempt: This time I went as far as going back to India taking classes and appearing there. But the classes I took concentrated more on quant then on verbal (which was my weakness, quant was never that much of a problem), they gave me a lot of tests which I started appearing for one week before the exam. My performance on the tests was average I scored a 600-640. Thinking that this time I would get a 600 I went for the GMAT on January 17, 2013. I was very nervous during the exam and was really scared for verbal...I ended up with a 490. I was in tears and lost all my confidence. I didn't know what had happened.

After coming back from India, now I had taken it on to myself. I had lost all my self respect. I told my husband that this time I am going to fight it and get over with it.

In my previous attempts I was scared, under pressure, lacked on confidence and was so focused on marking the right answers that it resulted in a bad performance. Also, the material for the first two attempts were not up to the mark. Studying smartly is very important.

When I went for the fourth attempt, although I was scared, I was confident and this time I took each question as it came being more focused and well versed with the basics and the intricacies, with smarter and better practice.

In the end I would just like to add that GMAT has thought me to be courageous, patient, handle rejection as well as pressure and strengthened my never-give-up attitude. Beating the GMAT is not very simple but it's not very difficult either--it just has to be done the right way. Also, I would like to thank e-GMAT and my family for standing by me through this one.

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I took my GMAT for the first time in Oct '12 and again in March '13. I am planning to take it for the third time in Oct '13. When I took my GMAT for the first time, my verbal came out to be my weakest area. After reading various reviews on trusted GMAT sites, e-GMAT came out to be the obvious choice. I went for the Verbal Live Prep. I completed 70-80% of the course and appeared for the GMAT. I saw a 5 point increase in my score from 20 to 25. I am now preparing to complete the entire course and I am sure I will improve my score by 8-10 points further!
The structure of the course is very well planned and with diligent preparation. A multi-fold increase in your score is guaranteed. Go for it!

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After being a member on gmatclub for a while, I started looking for a course that was comparable in price and quality. I had seen a number of great posts from e-gmat and after doing the course math it was almost a no brainer to go ahead and purchase their verbal online course.

I was particularly interested in the SC and CR sections of their course. As a non-native I used to make a number of silly SC mistakes that woud drive me nuts. In a short amount of time, I was able to go through a number of the SC videos in the course and those were just as great as the gmatclub posts from the e-gmat gurus. There are a variaty of SC concepts, some of which I thought I had an above average understanding and a chance of getting answers correctly. Well, after seeing the videos I definitely could see why I used to make a number of careless mistakes. The concepts and explanations in the course, although I felt at times were meant for 1st graders, definitely solidified my understanding and boosted my confidence.

The great part about the course was that it also allowed me to use grockit for practice. This is where I was able to benchmark knowledge gained from the e-gmat tutorials vs. timed accuracy. Jokes aside, but I'm willing to admit that after some serious and focused practice I was like a hound dog sniffing through the sentences and was quickly and easily able to spot patterns and mistakes (I was scared :) ).

I was only able to go through limited RC, CR and IR because I got preoccupied with work but some of the videos I saw were great, as well. Definitely, the major and even a number of miscellaneous concepts are covered in the course and have I had more spare time on my shoulders I would have loved to go through all the material in the course.

My only negative memories are with some of the web site navigation. I found it a bit confusing at first with the way the Dashboard was represented. Anyways, once you get the hang of it, it is not of any negative impact for the skills you gain for what you paid.

Overall, it's a great bang for the buck and the people from e-gmat have definitely put a great amount of effort for the great concepts, material and explanations provided in the course.

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I used e-GMAT online course extensively for the verbal section. I targeted for 100% accuracy in SC to achieve higher score in this section; and e-GMAT was helpful in pushing towards that. RC and CR sections of this course are also very helpful to improve your scores.

e-GMAT course makes the verbal section much more logical and understandable. This course removed much of guesswork that I earlier used in this section. I found the e-Gmat method of audio visual method along with pre and post tests after each concept much more helpful than just reading books. This course helped me in pushing my verbal score from 35 (mock) to 41.

I highly recommend this course for non-natives.

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My GMAT journey started sometimes in August 2011. I took the gmat in December 2011 , and it was heartbreaking for me; I scored miserably. In fact, my verbal score was such a mess that I decided to seek some help. After reading such great review about e-gmat, I decided to sign up for the verbal online , and my accuracy went from 20% to 70% . The e-GMAT SC course is what drilled the meaning approach in my mind and I am so thankful to the e-gmat team for their patience and support. GMAT verbal now makes more sense and I definetly have the tools to tackle this portion of the GMAT exam. Wish me luck for my upcoming GMAT exam.

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I wrote GMAT thrice and every time i came out of the exam centre i was disappointed, had my shoulders down, and felt as if i was unfit to crack GMAT. Here are my scores-- 570,590, and 600.

But after going through many reviews on Gmat Club, i found that E-Gmat customers are doing well in GMAT, especially non-native speakers, in verbal section. My weak area is verbal and everytime i was scoring in twenties in that section. So, i have decided to sign up for E-Gmat Verbal Live Prep and started my journey with E-gmat on october-2-2012.

As suggested by E-Gmat tutors i planned my schedule as follows.

1) As quant is my strength, first i worked on my weak areas and got ready with quant in first month ( october ).
2) Once we register to the course, we can attend the whole course 4 times. So, in the first few months i worked only on SC and made sure that i get 90% of the questions correct. ( Dec to mid-jan ).
3) Then i started preparing for CR ( mid-jan to feb ).
4) Then RC ( March ).
5) Then i formed a 30 day schedule. I took 5 mock tests every week.( April ).
6) After taking 2 mock tests i scheduled my REAL GMAT TEST. ( May 8th ).
7) I took my last Mock on may 5th and scored 720 in GMAT PREP 2.

I felt confident that i could get a good score but didnt dare to predict it. Finally after writing the exam i saw a 710( Q49, V39 ). I was very happy because i got 88 percentile V39 in verbal, which is more than 83 percentile Q49.

WHAT MADE THE DIFFERENCE:

1) E-gmat has a structured way for the non-native speakers to do well in verbal.
2) As soon as i completed a section, for example SC, i practiced SC in GROCKIT ( we shall get our account created once we register to VERBAL LIVE PREP ). This really has a huge impact.
3) The way E-gmaters approach SC will for sure increase the accuracy in SC section. ( Meaning based approach ).
4) Come what may-- Follow your schedule religiously. We shall excel for sure.

I improved my score by 110 marks. I recommend all the non-native speakers, who are weak in verbal, to join E-gmat because results are for sure. I wasted more than RS 1,00,000 for my coachings and exams. I dont want others to fall in the traps of unworthy coaching centres.

Finally, I thank all of you, who read my long post. Thanks alot RAJAT, PAYAL, and ARCHANA. You people made me cross the 700 barrier.

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From my own personal experience, If anyone is looking for concept building, or for a score improvement on the verbal section, then e-GMAT Verbal Live Prep is the ideal course for the person. The simple language used to clarify the concepts makes it an ideal platform for non natives to build a good understanding.

The 3 step process preached, in the course and at e-GMAT, is one of the most simple and innovative method. The concepts and the process to apply the concepts differentitates e-GMAT Verbal Live Prep from its competitors in the Industry and have vastly benifited me.

The course offers the most comprehensive free material offered in the industry and has an extensive question bank focusing around the concepts and official questions. The instructors Shraddha, Payal, Rajat and Chiranjeev are world class. They are easily available on public and private forums and are striving hard to simplify any and every problem faced by students.

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I used the e-GMAT course and was able to score 700 (Q50 V35). I took the e-GMAT SC course. It is a simply a perfect course. Its price is completely reasonable, and it really improves your SC abilities since it use several new concepts that I have never seen before. This course added another 20% to my sentence correction skills! I was introduced to this web site through one of my friends, claiming his 70% ability in SC improved to 90%, and I believe he was completely right! The course is really comprehensive, I could find out every necessary section in it.

e-GMAT uses a multimedia environment that makes it pretty easy to understand the tough problems of SC. One of main problems was that I am not native speaker; thus, I could not find out why some answer choices were FALSE AND WORDY despite being grammatically correct. This course helped me a lot since for each question it discussed each of 5 answer choices with regards to grammar and the intended meaning. Thank you e-GMAT

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This course begins with basic level and moves to advanced level. The topics are classified as per the level of difficulty and have been split into Concept files, Application files, Practice files. All the files in this course are relatively short, lasting to 20-30 minutes.
SC : The focus is on understanding the meaning of the sentence first and strategy is to divide sentence into smaller parts. The answers might be grammatically correct but logically wrong. Only when the intended meaning of the sentence is clear, I can get to the correct answer.

CR : Strategy of pre-thinking is the key for CR. I just followed the pre-thinking process as taught and not only improved my accuracy but also my timing to answer CR questions.

RC: Strategy of passage summaries at various stages of reading the passage proves enough to answer the questions correctly.

The best part is Verbal Live Prep. The live sessions are easy to understand and they cover the more challenging problems. The live sessions are very interactive and give a chance to understand the thought process of the instructors on how to use the e-GMAT process to tackle hard questions. In addition to learning from the instructors, I also learn from other attendees as they give an idea about how many different ways one can think about a particular question type.

Also Online classes are best for those who work full-time. Even if you miss any class you can access the recordings or attend the next online class from another batch as they run simultaneous batches.

Grockit one year membership is free for with Live prep course and complement the e-GMAT course well as one can practice with large question bank with quizzes and tests .

I suggest e-GMAT to all students who are struggling with verbal . ESPECIALLY FOR NON NATIVES , The strategies taught are very helpful and if followed diligently will surely improve verbal scores.

I'm already seeing an improvement in my verbal accuracy and I am now constantly scoring around 35-38 in my mock tests. My GMAT is next month, and I will reach my target score of 40.

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I signed up for e-GMAT verbal Live course late last year. I previewed several courses on the market and decided to go with e-GMAT considering the course content, teaching methodology and practice exercises. You can’t beat the price for the quality of the content you get. I’m very happy with the online content you get with the live classes. Each chapter has a quiz at the end which gauges your understanding of the topic. I felt more confident after each chapter and improved my scores after each test.

Live classes dealt difficult topics with much needed detail and the instructors concentrated more on the strategy rather than the quick short cuts. At times, I felt like the live classes were geared more towards students with prior preparation or test experience. I’d recommend smaller class size and more formal approach in the initial classes for students who start their prep with e-GMAT.

The instructors are awesome. I loved their classes on prethinking and exam preparation techniques.

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