After I decided to take up the GMAT, I was looking for a perfect course that would help me achieve my goals. I watched a few webinars of E-Gmat and also took the opinion of some of my friends. Finally, after a lot of research and reading the reviews in GMAT Club I decided to enroll in the e-gmat course. First, I signed up for a free trial just to check it out. I felt very positive about the way the concepts are taught and signed up for the full course. I would like to say about a few things which make e-gmat the best course online.

Verbal:

SC - Hands down, e-gmat is the best in this aspect. The SC concept videos, application files, and practice quizzes are so helpful in learning the concepts. Visually, the style of animation and the pace of teaching will make you get immersed in the content. The detailed explanations in the application files and practice quizzes really help the student in understanding where he/she went wrong. Particularly, the meaning-based approach is so brilliant that it increases the student's accuracy to the next level.

CR - Previously, I had little experience in critical thinking questions while preparing for CAT but I always used to stumble in some questions. I did not know why a particular answer is right and why a particular answer is wrong. The egmat rethinking strategy helped me in this aspect. Again, the explanations for every question are on-point and help us to think in the right direction.

RC- Again, this was my weak area during my CAT preparation. I did not know what to do about this. That's when egmat came to my rescue. RC Key Reading strategies taught in the egmat course helped me cross this hurdle. I always used to try reading the RC fast and then answer the questions but it is not the right approach. Egmat RC strategy explained how we must take enough time to understand the passage, take notice of tricky little details, and map the passage on the whole. This helps in reducing the time taken to complete the passage as a whole along with questions.

Verbal Scholaranium:
I must say this is the best practice arena for a student who wants to master the concepts of verbal in GMAT. The custom quizzes, ability quizzes, and cementing quizzes help us in identifying the gaps in our concepts. I particularly liked that if we don't score above 75% in medium difficulty and above 55% in Hard difficulty questions, then we need to watch the videos again if possible and go through the application files. This particularly helped me for my second attempt. I identified gaps in my concepts and worked on them.

Quant 2.0
The quant course if done right will fetch you a Q51 for sure. I can assure you that. The diagnostic quizzes, the concept files, and the practice files are very well structured that the concepts get cemented in your brain. I will recommend the egmat quant course for anyone weak in quant.

SIGMA-X Mocks:
Sigma-X mocks come very close to the actual mocks. Though they do not follow the same algorithm by the official mock, they are adaptive in nature. They point out the weak areas where you can improve.

Also, the kind of support we get during the entire preparation journey is awesome. Our queries are answered at the earliest. Most of our doubts get solved by the already existing comments under each question.

Last but not least talking about the LMT Program, Atreya helped me in the final leg of my preparation. He identified the key areas where I was lacking and helped me with personalized plans and strategies to get to my goal.

Finally, I would say egmat is the most structured preparation course I have ever enrolled in. Prepare diligently with the help of this course and success is guaranteed.

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I started the E-Gmat course after attending a few EGMAT webinars on Youtube. I had enrolled into the GMAT Online version of EGMAT.

The thing that stood for me the most were the CR and SC videos on the website. They are very carefully curated and use the best examples. The tests within the module also are good and have very detailed explanations. The query resolution is very fast (in my case ~7-8 hours).

But the crown jewel is actually the verbal and the quant scholaranium. These are very good practice resources and are a little difficult than the actual GMAT. These problems very well capture the essence of the concept and have very good and detailed explanations (Some have 12-17 min detailed and comprehensive explanations).

The Sigma-X mocks are good practice and have some useful insights too.

All in all, i felt that EGMAT was worth every penny and earns my highest recommendation.

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I came across eGMAT when I attended some of the free webinars hosted by them on CR and RC. After attending those webinars and taking the free sigma mock, I booked a strategy consultation with their expert. I decided to enroll in the course as I really liked the analysis of my cold mock provided in that call.

Through the analysis, I knew that I had to focus more on Sentence Correction than on the other verbal sections. So, I went through all the concept and practice files for SC and followed the meaning-based approach to solve questions in Scholaranium later. eGMAT’s SC curriculum is very extensive and helped me get a solid grasp of the major topics asked in the exam.

After SC, I moved on to CR and went through their videos in which they mainly taught how to apply the pre-thinking approach to solve questions. Initially, I used to focus only on accuracy and used to take a lot of time in solving questions with this approach. Once I was able to get good accuracy, the timing gradually improved on its own with practice. So I would advise anyone starting with CR to trust in the process and not worry about timing yourself in the beginning.

I did not spend much time going through the concepts of RC or Quant and started using Scholaranium to attempt ability and custom quizzes. The level of analysis provided in Scholaranium is simply great. I was able to use the portal to effectively identify the areas in which I was weak and fine-tune those areas by revisiting concepts or practicing particular types of questions I was frequently getting wrong such as Boldface or Modifiers.

Sigma-x Mocks provided by eGMAT are very good estimators of the actual exam and may be considered more accurate than official mocks. The verbal section is of almost the same difficulty level as the actual exam’s section whereas Quant could be a little bit tougher than the actual exam(Quant of official mocks is a lot easier than the actual exam). Also, the mocks are adaptive and you get an ESR-like analysis of every mock.

Apart from their study material and tests, eGMAT also provided one-to-one mentorship and paired me with Atreya. The mentorship was objectively the best part of the course as he not only provided me with weekly plans but also helped me analyze my mocks properly. He also encouraged me to schedule the exam sooner when I was not confident that I was fully prepared.

The eGMAT portal is also very well made and I did not face any difficulty or encountered any bugs while using the portal. The support on the “Ask an Expert” forums is also very prompt and I always received replies in less than 24 hours

Overall, I would genuinely recommend eGMAT for anyone appearing for the GMAT for their great tests, course material, mentorship, and support.

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After about 2 months of self-preparation using the OG as the bible, I took the GMAT. I had thought that I would be able to force my brain to learn the algorithm of how to pick the right answer simply by solving hundreds of questions, training the neural network, as it is called in this age of AI. I was disappointed as I scored a 680.

I had not given up hope but could not improve much because I was stuck to the "Solve More Questions to Get It" strategy. One day while scrolling the web I came across e-GMATs website and instantly booked a meeting with a strategist who pointed out quite methodically that one of the main problems in my strategy is that I don't have any solid foundation. He explained how e-GMAT could solve that problem (especially in verbal). That was an eye-opener and I jumped on-board.

I would want to list down the the most important points in my GMAT journey to a 730 score with e-GMAT.

1. One of the most important factors was Atreya. He was my mentor in the Last Mile Program who helped devise hyper specific objective based preparation methods so that I do not aimlessly go through each and everything. Atreya analyzed my performances consistently and kept pushing me to improve by focusing relentlessly on the areas which require improvement. This worked wonders as I was able to sharpen my SC and RC skills in almost no time. Thanks Atreya.

2. The course material by e-GMAT is fabulous. It is by far the best way to learn any concept. My verbal skills improved from V33 to V41 purely because of this learning methodology whereby you read about a topic, understand the underlying process, solve some questions to completely grasp it. In no time it becomes your second nature. The process skills imparted by the e-GMAT course is simply unparalleled. I cannot emphasize enough how important the process skills are for SC and prethinking for CR and e-GMAT is the best platform to hone these skills.

3. The Scholaranium 2.0 is their testing platform where you can cement your abilities by creating different types of quizzes. The analytics it gave me about my performance were deeply insightful and the wealth of questions it had was more than enough to have a good handle on any section.

Combined with Atreya's tailored guidance and seamless experience using the scholaranium and course material, I would say e-GMAT does what others would take years to do. Highly targeted and scientific approach to learning for a specific goal. Go for e-GMAT for accelerated improvement of your GMAT Skills.

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Shweta helped me a lot to understand what my week points were and how should I go about improving the same. Shweta was always super supportive on both academic and emotional quotient

Her verbal diagnosis was on point and really helped me narrow down on what was important for me. The course content was relevant and gave great mental models to solve with. The content was up to date and the type of questions covered were exhaustive.

Some pointers on the course overall:

SC is very detailed and special at egmat; Concepts were precise and you are just required to apply them to the real GMAT questions (nothing more nothing less)
I had previously used other resources and coaching notes but the difference with egmat was that they only focus on what is actually asked in the exam and not random concepts. This helped reduce a lot of stress for me and kept my game plan simple; High focus on a meaning-based approach was unique and honestly the most important skill in solving hard questions

RC course is also pretty exhaustive and structured, practise questions are brilliantly designed and actually super engaging; The nuanced paragraph reading techniques are novel but very effective.

CR is also very well designed for everyone, the pre-thinking approach was a game-changer for me; The hard level questions on the platform were very close to what I saw in the exam - this was super helpful for my test readiness.

Loved the quant curriculum as well; The hard questions are really stimulating and thought-provoking. The solutions provided were detailed and really helpful for my conceptual growth
The 24/7 forum support was beautiful and actually saved me a lot of time; The overall question bank is the closest you can get to real GMAT experience

The sigma mocks were great and scholaranium was an amazing tool to track and monitor progress. I would recommend this course to everyone and special thanks to Shweta for his support.

I highly highly recommend egmat and specially Shweta for anyone looking to score 700+ on GMAT

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I started with the GMAT Preparation way back in 2016, when I enrolled myself for an in-class GMAT preparation course. The course was for about 2 months, and I spent another 4 months trying to figure my way to at least a 700 in the official mba.com mocks. After about 6 months of preparation, I was confident about Quant (I anyway have an engineering background, so Quant wasn’t an issue) and SC. With absolutely no approach, I faltered majorly on CR; I wasn’t clear on the reason to eliminate the incorrect answer choices, and even after looking through the solution, I got really confused between the answer choices. I anyway booked a test date because I thought my Quant, SC and to some extent the RC section will get me at least a 700. On the test, I took really long to answer the SC question, so I had to leave 1 RC passage completely, and as expected faltered on the CR section; hence, scoring a 660 (Q49, V35).
Fast forward to May 2020, when I decided to retake the GMAT. I took the e-GMAT course, and spent considerable amount of time to understand the concepts and learn the strategies that could be applied to each question in Verbal or Quant. I was surprised and relieved to know that there is a platform that has decoded the strategies for how to approach each question in the Verbal section, especially the CR questions. e-GMAT gave me the concepts and strategies that built in me the confidence to get the approached questions right.

e-GMAT strategies

- The SC course is extremely well structured and details out all the grammatical concepts that one would require to get a GMAT SC question right. The meaning based approach emphasised by e-GMAT makes it easier to solve the harder level questions.

- e-GMAT helped me tackle the section that I absolutely hated –CR. The concept files gave me a well- structured approach to solve any CR question that comes my way. This approach helped me score a 98th percentile on my GMAT exam. The course provided me with a process to break down the argument into premise and conclusion, to create a falsification scenario, to pre-think, and to correctly analyse answer choices. I was better able to comprehend the information and analyse how each particular answer choice affected the argument.

- The reading strategies taught as part of the RC and MC concept files helped a lot to improve my ability to comprehend the passage and arrive at the correct answer choice

- Quant course gives all the concepts required for the test. E-GMAT’s quant questions are a little harder that the official GMAT questions, preparing you for the 700+ level questions on the exam. The solutions are very detailed and easy to follow. Because of the hard level questions that I practiced on the e-GMAT, I was extremely confident when I approached the quant section in my exam and was able to manage time well, with 5 minutes to spare at the end of the section

Mentorship by DJ
After I restarted my GMAT prep, I needed someone to guide me through the process and suggest me how best to plan my study schedule given a hectic job. I had already read a lot of positive reviews about how he helped students get to their targeted GMAT score, and so I was elated when I got to know that DJ was assigned to me as a mentor. He was a constant support and motivated me throughout the process. He analysed my Sigma-X mock test and highlighted how I could improve on my weak areas in both the Verbal and the Quant section. DJ provided me with a structured approach and weekly plans that included reviewing certain concept files, giving cementing quizzes, and creating custom quizzes to be solved within a time less than the standard time (This helped incredibly with managing my time on the test). He also shared the section wise error log, which is worth all the efforts it takes to fill it. The error logs give you an indication of the repeated errors one makes and suggests a corresponding corrective action, ensuring that you do not repeat your mistakes.
Skill Data on the e-GMAT Platform – The best way for you to analyse your performance
I first bought the e-GMAT course in May 2020, and again in March 2021, and I was surprised by the updates to the platform. Scholaranium 2.0 provided all the possible data points that one would need to analyse the areas of improvements. The skill data provided distribution by difficulty levels, time, concepts, median time, etc and this was incredibly helpful because then I could focus specifically on topics that needed improvement.
Takeaways:
- It all comes down to applying what you have learnt. I have seen myself getting a fairly easy question wrong because I failed to apply the strategies suggested by e-GMAT in its course. On the other hand, I could easily solve extremely complex and hard to understand arguments, by using the step-by-step strategies.

- I started with the GMAT prep again in May 2020, completed the course by August 2020, but then my GMAT Prep was on-and-off for about 6 months because I switched jobs and wanted to concentrate my efforts entirely on the new projects. This was a HUGE mistake. In January 2021, when I decided to get back with the Preparation, I had to start all over again. Hence, taking breaks between your preparations is a very bad idea and you will just end up exhausting yourself. It will double the overall time and effort required for you to reach your targeted score, so one should be consistent with his/her preparation.
e-GMAT is the best source for your GMAT Preparation and I would highly recommend it. I have already recommended e-GMAT to everyone who has spoken to me personally about the GMAT exam, and I hope this review helps you make a decision about the GMAT program that will get you to your targeted score.

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Egmat has very carefully curated content that has all the relevant aspects of the exam covered. The allied services offered by Egmat to ensure your exam success are also commendable. I finally scored a 770 on the GMAT that I gave in August 2021.

I shall list down the relevant positives and negatives:

Positives:

1. Value for money: The course is much cheaper than any other GMAT Prep company of comparable content quality. The course also covers IR (which is often absent from many such GMAT prep courses).

2. Thorough Verbal Course: The verbal course covers all bases. It is comprehensive in every way possible. The Master Comprehension module is a great starter and the course flows from SC to CR to RC in a seamless manner. Initially, a lot of candidates lack the patience to read a long RC passage (atleast I was very impatient back then and used to get bogged down by a complex and/or long RC passage) and the logic of administering SC followed by CR and finally followed by RC is a great strategy, in my opinion. SC course added the most value to my preparation (I did not know the relevant rules, nor was I very skilled at intuitively identifying the errors) by providing me a systematic way to approach questions. With time, the process was not really something that I needed to ensure for myself, it came naturally just after reading the stimulus. CR provided me a new way to approach the questions (prethinking is very important for Assumption, Strengthen questions otherwise you'll waste a lot of your time and you might end up getting the question wrong). RC course is ok to just go through, I did not follow it through-and-through.

3. Good Quant Course: Quant course is good as well. The summary pointers help a lot. For most Indians, I believe, it shall just be a revision of elementary maths that we were taught in school. I played the videos on 1.5x or 2x and solved a few questions to solidify my understanding.

4. Scholaranium: Great set of questions, and an amazing analytical representation of your abilities as you keep solving on the platform. Although I am guilty of solving fewer questions than I was expected to :P, I really liked the Scholaranium 2.0. Amazing work by the team on that.

5. The Guidance and the LMT Program: The newly started LMT program is indeed great. The continual support that I got from the entire team (and specifically from Aditee Biyani) was commendable. Aditee helped me plan the study and helped me get started with the various crucial steps in my preparation. I wasn't a great student per se (sorry Aditee) because I did not follow all the advices diligently, but I always made sure that I was thorough with my understanding of the concepts. Egmat team has always been supportive. Their commitment to candidate-success is inspiring, to say the least.


Negatives/Improvements:

1. The verbal course gets repetitive at many places and can seem very slow at times. I often wished there were a 'play faster' button so that the video pace could be increased to 1.25 or 1.5x.

2. I feel that the SigmaX mocks did not reflect the actual score range for me. I always scored in the 670-690 range in the mocks (I did not take too many, to be honest). I happened to score 770 on the actual GMAT. This might be a personal thing because I have seen that SigmaX mocks are reasonably accurate for other candidates. But I have just put it here so that some people, who might end up taking the course, remain warned and don't worry too much about the SigmaX mock scores. I'd suggest to use these mocks more for the Strategic Review and to work on the ability improvement.

3. The questions in the scholaranium are 'like' the official questions, but the official questions, I felt, were slightly different. And no, it is not about easier or harder questions, the official GMAT questions (which you get in OGs or Official GMAT Prep mocks) are just slightly differently. Egmat Scholaranium is an excellent place to build ability but it is more important to give an official mock or two to get a feel of actual GMAT questions.

All in all, if you are thinking if you should buy the Egmat course, I'd say, go for it! The course shall only add value. I have not tried any other course, but I am satisfied with my experience with Egmat and I think you shall benefit from the course as well. The course is so structured that anyone, from a 550 level to a 700+ level, shall be able to improve his/her ability.

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DISCLAIMER AND VERBIAGE ALERT
1. A score of 710 may not mandate a debrief especially when there is hardly anything new I can add with respect to preparation tips, test taking strategies, motivational words etc. Notwithstanding, I am writing this debrief for two reasons primarily. First, to put on record my gratitude and indebtedness to all those who have knowingly or unknowingly helped me in my short GMAT journey. Second, I ve noticed that there are very few debriefs from people on the wrong side of 30/early 40s presumably because very few are crazy enough to go for an MBA that requires GMAT at this stage of their life and career. But I know that, for reasons of their own, such daredevils, though few and far in between, do exist. Therefore, being someone from such a demographic looking to transition from the armed forces into the civil world, my debrief is primarily aimed at those who might be contemplating GMAT while handling high pressure jobs and weighing the pros and cons of doing an MBA and/or making a career switch in the prime of their lives (20s may seem like the prime of one’s life but believe you me it’s not ;)).

OF NO RELEVANCE TO MAN OR BEAST – STILL ...
2. My first brush with GMAT was about a year ago when intrigued by the time and effort one of my senior was putting into his GMAT preparation, I took the GMAT prep mock just to see what the big deal was. I bombed quant without even getting to attempt 5-6 ques and got 640 with a V39, which I subsequently realized is not bad for someone who had not even heard about SC, CR and RC till before the test. After that, though I enjoyed the experience, promptly forgot all about GMAT till early this year when I started seriously considering hanging up my uniform. Someone who had already treaded the path advised me to get a good GMAT score irrespective of whether I use it or since getting one at short notice if required would be impossible. He also told me that based on past track record, a score in the late 600s would be sufficient for my experience and profile. I took the first advice but chose to ignore the second since I have always been a ‘go big or go home’ sort of guy and I naively assumed that I could easily get at least 730 if I worked on my quant and SC. Only time would prove how wrong I was.

3. Started by attending a few free weekend webinars by various prep companies and the ones by e-gmat really stood out. Liked their free trial and on a whim subscribed for the full course - one of the best decisions of my GMAT journey. It took me some time to build up a tempo and a fixed routine and my earnest preparations started in early Apr. After that I didn’t take a single cheat day till the exam except for a week’s vacation to recharge my batteries 10 days before the exam.

E-GMAT – ALL YOU COULD ASK FOR AND THEN SOME

4. Egmat was everything I could ask for in a course. It is highly customizable based on one’s performance at each level. The various performance parameters and data points ensure that you neither overestimate nor have any self doubts about your abilities. I used to think I was god's gift to grammar and comprehension but e-gmat showed me that I knew squat about SC. But it also told me that RC and CR were more up my alley may be because reading between the lines, critical analysis and paraphrasing came very naturally to me due to what I do professionally. I also realized that I had to first unlearn maths and tackle it from a totally new perspective for Quant. I followed a roughly 70(Quant)/30 (V)% time management split with about 80% of the 30% verbal time for SC. It's therefore ironic that CR and to some extent RC, which I considered my trump cards, let me down in the actual exam. More on that later.

5. I also happened to be lucky that Quant 2.0 was launched round about the time my preparations were peaking and it really helped me shift gears. The detailed explanations and entire format of pedagogy was something I had never seen before and were simply mind blowing. Scholaranium 2.0 was another revelation. Just when you think you are through and almost ready for GMAT, it delivers a sucker punch and literally knocks you out. Only option is to dust yourself, keep your bruised ego aside and keep learning. The deep dive analysis of each aspect is simply amazing and to be frank mind boggling at first. That’s when I happened to be approached by e-gmat for their last mile program by Dhananjay, DJ. He helped me make sense of the various data points and was the ideal pace setter, never letting me relax but also never letting me get totally out of breath. His customized plans for taking tests on the scholaranium, analysing the data and time management techniques helped me a lot. Thanks DJ for everything and so sorry that I couldn’t live upto your (and my) expectations. Special shout out to the resident verbal and quant experts Shradha, Shwetha and Atreya who are amazing amazing teachers from whom I learnt a lot courtesy their webinars. Only wish each webinar covered different questions.

6. My advice to all present and future e-gmat students would be to trust the process and not try and short circuit or game the system. Payal, Rajat and the other architects of e-gmat curriculum are visionaries and there’s a method to their madness. Average difficulty level of Questions on e-gmat and more so on scholaranium are definitely a notch higher than actual GMAT and sometimes it can be bit demoralizing to not see the expected % accuracy. Also don’t miss the wood for the trees and get too obsessed with the scores on scholaranium or other tests. Remember these are all means to an end that is the final GMAT score. Last but most important advice - keep reaching out to the e-gmat support team. They are a wonderful team. I actually got offered the mentorship opportunity with DJ when I wrote to the team to review my initial scholaranium performance.

GMAT CLUB – THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING
7. Where do I even get started about the wonderful GMAT club community? It has truly been a godsend. To the moderators - apologies for being a wallflower and only taking without giving anything back in return. Bunuel, GMAT Ninja, other moderators and regular contributors are doing yeoman service to the GMAT aspirants without expecting much in return. if I were to pick just one thing other than e-gmat that helped me the most in my entire GMAT journey it would the GMAT NINJA lecture series on SC. They were pure gold and I am still in awe of his humility, crystal clear explanations and even his wonderful sense of humor. Other than his surname, which I could never grasp, each and everything he spoke is still imprinted in my mind.

UNSOLICITED ADVICE
8. My advice to GMAT aspirants with professional/personal commitments similar to mine:-

(a) Make a plan and stick to it. Irrespective of how tired one is try and spend 1-2 hrs daily and 4-5 hrs on weekends.

(b) Try not to exceed 3-4 months prep time coz the above pace may not be sustainable due to other commitments which can only be stalled for so long. Further, laws of diminishing returns might start kicking in.

(c) Get your family on board. Like mine, your spouse also may be working with his/her own professional and personal commitments. So, like most things in a married life, it would be impossible to embark on this journey without your partner's support. No more kid’s tennis/soccer classes during weekend, Saturday night family board games, grocery shopping or whatever it is that keeps the family ecosystem in balance. Make kids, if big enough, a part of the process. My 10 yr old son used to watch GMAT Ninja videos with me and the younger 7 yr old was my water boy, errand runner and biggest cheer leader.

(d) Announce your plan to people who matter at work . keep your boss informed. Even more important take your team and subordinates in confidence. They will have to deal with the extra delegation.

(e) Be innovative and jugadu. I can’t access internet or smart phone at work. So used to do OG ques or take printouts of 3-4 good questions and analyse them threadbare whenever I got time in office. I started using metro instead of driving to utilise the travel time effectively. But that experiment ended before it could take off due to COVID.

(f) Be ready to press the pause button on your interests/hobbies. Forget your golf, regular runs, gym visits, book readings, Netflix, and similar me time stress busters for at least the last two months of prep.

(g) By hook or by crook manage atleast 2 weeks off from work just before the exam. If one does not have the luxury of WFH or accessing internet at work this is indispensable.

(h) Ride the wave, there will be stages within the preparation cycle when your performance will rise and dip. Identify when you are peaking and take the test then. More prep time need not always translate to better score.

(i) Internalize and verbalize your envisaged score. Be ambitious but realistic. Best way to keep yourself reminded of the same is to tell it to your kid(s). But if your kids are anything like mine do have an explanation ready if you can’t reach your target ‘coz they sure will want one. The usual shoot for the starts to land on the moon BS won’t work and may come back to bite you. I started with a 730 target, revised it upwards to 750 based on mocks and data inputs from e-gmat/DJ. The fact that the final score was nowhere near it meant either that I was deluded or that I just had a bad day.

(j) Pick one source other than GMAT club to prepare and stick to it but not blindly. There is no one size fits all solution so customise the suggested methods based on your strengths and weaknesses. For instance, common wisdom dictates SC questions in less than 1.30 mins to leave more time for RC . For me I rarely, if ever, took more than 4 minutes for a RC set and never ever felt the need to make notes for RC and CR. The time saved I used for SC.

(k) Don’t be obsessed with +700 questions. I fell into the trap and wasted some time in my prep in the middle. Stick to only your test prep and OG questions specially for verbal. Only exception is LSAT questions for CR, which I now wish I had done more of.

(l) Last 20 days if possible dedicate solely for OG and mocks. Solve OG ques on GMAT club so that one gets and idea of timing, difficulty level and of course the threadbare analysis of each ques.

TEST EXPERIENCE – IF EVERYTHING SEEMS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE , IT PROBABLY IS

9. I had initially registered for online GMAT in end Jul which ran into all sorts of trouble due to technical issues and also ended up messing up my laptop settings ( has to be a separate debrief in itself). So I booked the retest at test centre on 18 Aug ( 0800 AM) which was the earliest available date. Went for a week’s road trip with family after that and once back didn’t want to tackle anything new. So just revised my error logs and redid some OG questions. With one week left and nothing much left to do, bought the GMAT prep tests 3-6. Did one test every day and with scores of 750, 770, 770, 730, 760 ( 2 to 6), coupled with the 720 and 750 from e-gmat sigma mocks, I thought I was peaking at the right time.

10. Test day ( Pearson, Noida) couldn’t have gone any better. Just 5 mins drive from my home, excellent facility, professional staff just about everything went without a hitch. Since my brain takes some time to start ticking and since mental fatigue has never been an issue AWA, IR, Quant, Verbal sequence works best for me. AWA felt good even though I never attempted AWA even in mocks and it was only the second AWA pssage I had ever written. IR was much tougher than any of the mocks, which was good in a way since it helped me focus better in quant for which I didn’t take the break. Felt really good through out the Quant, managed to keep pace (using the Manhattan yellow pad technique) and though I encountered some lengthy and tricky ques in coord geometry and algebra during the latter stages, didn’t have to skip or guess a single question. I thought I had managed to see most of the traps in DS. All in all this was the most comfortable and confident I ever felt. Up beat, took a small break and started verbal. It also went along the same lines as Quant. RC passages were a breeze as usual and though one can never be 100% sure about SC, I felt confident about most of my choices since I could eliminate four choices on solid grounds and then select the remaining one (hat tip to GMAT Ninja) . I was not confident about only one CR quant based double negation quest where I was stuck with two choices.

11. All in all, I was super confident and thought the test had gone as good as, if not better than my GMAT prep mocks. So I was totally shocked when the screen flashed 710 (Q48, V39)) . For a moment I did consider rejecting the score but then better sense prevailed since it really doesn’t matter in the larger scheme of things and based on my profile and experience, this should be enough even if I decide to apply somewhere. But my delusions of grandeur about my GMAT abilities have been shattered to smithereens

ESR HELP - LAYING THE GMAT GHOSTS TO REST

12. Once back, I mentally revisited most of the questions I could recall to visualise what could have gone wrong but I really couldn’t pinpoint anything other than the one CR ques. So hoping to solve mystery got the ESR though I ve absolutely no intention of taking the test ever again. The ESR ( attached for reference) shows about 5 ques wrong in Quant (mostly DS with 1,1,1,2 wrong in each quarter I guess) so must be some silly mistakes and/or GMAT DS traps which I failed to notice and I can reconcile with that. But, I also seem to have got about 6 ques wrong in Verbal (1,2,1,2 split) . I have absolutely no clue which the 5/6 ques other than the aforementioned CR are. If they were SC I could still have understood but %ile shows most are CR and one/two RC. Also based on what little I ve seen in other ESRs I thought my splits would translate into a slightly higher score than 710. Though DJ has been kind enough to analyse and make some sense of it I would be grateful if any of the other specialists here can throw some light on my score vis-à-vis ESR only so that I can get some closure.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS NOT SO WELL

13. To summarise, the short GMAT journey was exhilarating though the actual destination left a lot to be desired. I did get involved much more deeply than I initially thought I would and even if plain statistics reveal that I wasted my time without much improvement, ( V 39 baseline and V39 final), I would like to believe that I learnt a lot from the experience and any other day the score could have been different. Anyways in the end GMAT did get the better of me and though DJ has been asking me to retake the test I think its time for me to burn my bridges. Thanks for the ride everyone and may each and every member of this wonderful GMAT club community encounter fair winds and following seas in all his/her personal and professional future endeavors.

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Strategy piece:

Archit helped me a lot to understand what my week points were and how should i go about improving the same. Archit was always super supportive on both academic and emotional quotient

His verbal diagnosis was on point and really helped me narrow down on what was important for me. The course content was relevant and gave great mental models to solve with. The content was up to date and the type of questions covered were exhaustive.

Some pointers on the course overall:

SC is very detailed and special at egmat; Concepts were precise and you are just required to apply them on the real gmat questions (nothing more nothing less)
I had previously used other resources and coaching notes but the difference with egmat was that they only focus on what is actually asked in the exam and not random concepts. This helped reduce a lot of stress for me and kept my game plan simple; High focus on meaning based approach was unique and honestly the most important skill in solving hard questions

RC course is also pretty exhaustive and structured, practise questions are brilliantly designed and actually super engaging; The nuanced paragraph reading techniques are novel but very effective.

CR is also very well designed for everyone, the pre-thinking approach was a game changer for me; The hard level questions on the platform were very close to what i saw in the exam - this was super helpful for my test readiness.

Loved the quant curriculum as well; The hard questions are really stimulating and thought provoking. The solutions provided were detailed and really helpful for my conceptual growth
The 24/7 forum support was beautiful and actually saved me a lot of time; The overall question bank is the closet you can get to real GMAT experience

The sigma mocks were great and scholaranium was an amazing tool to track and monitor progress. I would recommend this course to everyone and special thanks to archit for his support.

I highly highly recommend egmat and specially Archit for anyone looking to score 700+ on GMAT

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Pros:
1) Great discussion on every question i.e. you can learn from other student's points of view.
2) Good support on queries.
3) Detailed explanation of every concept.
4) Scolarinium is a great tool
5) Concept quizzes are helpful.

Things to improve:
1) RC section is easy as compare to that of the real exam.
2) Subscription time should be more than 6 months.
3) No. of tests should increase.

I liked the company's approach to focus on the concepts building, though I scored less as compared to my expectation.
I feel every course is as good as the student who is taking it but e gmat provide a good platform to learn

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