I was introduced to DJ 3-4 months before I gave my GMAT. He has constantly supported, motivated, and guided me through this journey.
DJ helped me pinpoint my weaker areas, formulate strategies to overcome the same and face my fears head-on(quant lol)

Thanks to the plans set by DJ, I gave ample mocks and quizzes to feel confident on my test day. There were strict timelines set by him and he motivated us to follow through.

Even though in my first attempt I have scored a 690, I am confident with DJs help I would be able to improve on this further.

With DJ and my cohorts support, I felt not so alone on this journey. Kudos to egmat for this initiative and to DJ for being a great mentor!

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Their verbal course is a good one if you are a non native speaker. In depth solution is given as well. The material for verbal is great, especially SC. It covers all you need in a detailed manner. And the pre-thinking approach in CR was also highly helpful. They take quizzes before and after each topics. That is very helpful as well during your preparation.

Scholaranium helps you to practice different difficulty level questions. Quant seems okay but go for verbal for sure.

They also conduct webinars, which are very very helpful. One should attend the webinars to get the improvement in scores.

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I started my GMAT journey late January so I had four months to study before my first exam on May 18. On the test date, I went there just to find out that the test center was closed (even though I was receiving all confirmation emails normally), so I rescheduled the test for 2 days later in another location (6 hours away from the city I live in). I took the test and got a 700 (35V, 49Q).

In these first 4 months I studied mainly with MPrep theory for verbal and quant and question bank from OG. My OG mocks were around 710-730 so I expected something closer to 710-720. And after the test, I felt that I had exhausted my study materials and even though I wanted to retake the exam, I didn't know where to begin or where to focus.

So, in early June I contacted eGmat, since I knew my biggest weakness was Verbal. We discussed my test performance (with the ESR) and I went through all the theory through their platform, but now what really changed was not the concepts per se, but how to apply their method (pre-think, don`t skim, etc...) and stick to it. A month later, I took a new mock and got a 750, which got me very excited.

That's when I contacted their Support to make sure I was ready to reschedule the test. In the following 15 days, Ashutosh worked closely with me, providing me guidance on where to focus and reviewing my progress every two days. My main weakness by then was CR, that I needed an extra focus to make sure I was going to excel in the test day. A week before the test I took another mock, which I scored 740. This made me feel confident that was really ready.

I took the test again July 18 and got a 730 (39V, 50Q) and felt so relieved! Now I`m working on the app process.

I can confidently say that eGmat was an exceptional part of my study improvement for two main reasons: (1) the mocks are HARD, but somewhat similar to test day, (2) they go deep into sticking to the method and that was a key differential + their quizzes are great for further practice (specially medium and hard questions, that are tough to find).

The handholding aspect is a must have if you like to study alone, but want some guidance during the process. I really appreciated Ashutosh support and feedback during the process. It gave me an extra energy to keep studying specially during the final days before the test.

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eGMAT’s mentorship programme is, hands down, one of the best products out there. The programme provides you with personalised support from one of eGMAT’s mentors, who will guide you every step of the way to ensure that you keep up with your prep and that you have all it takes to crack the exam.

Let me tell just how this works in real life and how each of the components of the programme translated to my personal case:

• Initial call. I had a call with my Archit Bhargava, my eGMAT mentor, who asked me enough questions to understand how my journey had been until then, what my goals were, and were my strengths and areas for improvement were. It was amazing to see how, by asking the right questions, he could quickly arrive at the key issues that we needed to work on. This call was the base for creating the roadmap we would follow over the following months

• Weekly milestones. Based on our initial call, Archit provided me with an overall roadmap that translated into very concrete, day-specific milestones. What’s great about this milestone-driven plan is that it gives you a very strong sense of direction and accomplishment: you wake up and you know exactly what you need to do, and as you complete the milestones, you get a true sense that you are confidently moving forward. This moves you away from “oh so what should I focus on today? Algebra or Critical Reasoning?” or “I feel I have been studying for long enough now, maybe take a mock?”

• Weekly touch base. Every week, my mentor would reach out to ask the status of my milestones, and we would iterate to adjust the plan for the next week, calibrating for new developments, availability and goals. My particular situation was that work was quite unpredictable at times, so the fact that we iterated and readjusted the plan on a weekly basis was great for me – just what I needed to keep moving at an optimum pace

• Strategy Hurdle sessions. Once every 2-3 weeks, we would do a one-hour session with other members of the programme and our mentor. In those sessions, we would go over issues that go beyond the actual content, but that definitely add up to your overall performance: key pitfalls students find along their GMAT prep journey and how to overcome them, time management during the exam, how to balance between a demanding personal and work life and the need to study consistently, and so on. These sessions were great in that we were presented with real life examples of other people (who I could definitely relate to more than once), and we got the chance to share with others who were going through the same situation as us

• Individual calls. We conducted individual calls with my mentor as we saw fit. In these calls, we discussed the overall status of the prep, any roadblocks I was finding, and potential solutions to overcome them. Whatever the topic of the discussion, the fundamental principle was this: “how do we adjust the plan so that your prep is advancing, effective, and sustainable?”. Basically, we looked for ways to keep moving forward and avoid being stagnated, ensuring that what we did actually allowed me to learn what I needed to learn, and that the pace was sustainable given other areas of my life (for example, work)

Overall, a great opportunity to learn in a truly personalised way. If you are willing to commit to your prep and invest the time it takes to get your target score, this is really good value for money.

Personally, I am sincerely grateful to eGMAT and the mentoring programme – they were a key part of my being able to move from 620 to 760!

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I recommend egmat for anyone preparing for GMAT. Verbal was my weak section. Egmat's SC module elucidated tough grammar concepts. Also focusing on meaning helped increased my accuracy in SC.
Egmat's proprietary method of pre-thinking assumptions for CR before going to answer choices Improved my accuracy in CR. The quality of their questions as well as the entire e-learning module is high.
Their reading comprehension module taught me to read actively.
Its very hard to find high quality verbal questions to practice. I feel Egmat team has done a very good job of putting together some high quality questions on scholarium to further hone your skills.
Similarly the Quant module and scholarium questions were at par with official questions.

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First of all, I wish to congratulate e-GMAT for making such a well rounded courses. I was a repeat client of e-GMAT as I had already used it 4 years back for my first attempt, so I knew exactly what to expect from it.
SC is definitely the highlight of the course. e-GMAT specifically focuses on the foundations, which becomes very helpful in solving the more difficult question.
CR - The pre-thinking technique took some time to master but after mastering it, solving questions became very simple(scored 44 in CR)
RC - I was good at RC, so I didn't spend time preparing it.
Quant - Number theory was excellent, however I felt more theory in the advance topic would have been helpful.

Scholarium : It is the best part of the course, all the questions are very well explained and are of real good quality.

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I was able to improve my GMAT score from 610 to 700. The course helped me to cement the concepts, and the timed tests and unique questions helped me to get better and better in test taking.
The pre-thinking approach to CR questions helped me to predict the answer even before looking at the answer choices, this certainly helps to eliminate the difficult looking options.
The approach taught by the SC course helps one to identify the deterministic errors and eliminate the incorrect choices in less than 1.5 minutes.
Last but definitely not the least, the Quant course explains all the concepts, the approach, and also the way a particular concept could be tested on the GMAT.

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I would like to start by thanking my mentor Deepak for guiding and supporting me throughout my prep journey with e-GMAT. I do not think that my score of 710 would have been possible without his mentorship.

I started my GMAT prep in Feb 2020 with an aim to take the GMAT by end of April 2020; I figured that a time frame of almost 3 months should be good enough to get a top score. Having been a good student all my life, I really thought that this was an achievable target.

I began my prep by solving all 4 books from Kaplan – including GMAT 800 which is supposed to be a book on advanced-level questions. I found the questions from all books to be quite easy and cruised through all the books in less than a month. Once I had solved all the questions in all the books, I took a Kaplan mock test in which I scored 690. In the following days, I took another couple of mocks and scored 670 and 680. I was not even breaching the 700 mark and needed to change my preparation strategy. But at this point, I realized that I was all out of prep material and would need to buy a new course. By a stroke of luck I came across an e-GMAT webinar, which led me to purchase the entire course.

About 5 days after I started studying from the e-GMAT course I received an email from Deepak asking if I would like to enroll under the mentorship program. Seeing no downside to having a dedicated mentor, I gladly agreed.

Deepak gave me a day-by-day planning of the tasks that I would have to do, every week. These activities could be learning concepts, taking cementing quizzes or taking practice quizzes. In case I encountered any problems, or felt like I needed additional practice of a particular topic, I would shoot an email to Deepak and he would quickly re-work my study plan. It was amazing to have this kind of personal attention for an exam which is mostly self-prep.

While following Deepak’s study plan, I encountered some problems. For my critical reasoning prep, I wasn’t scoring well in quizzes even after spending enough time on the concept files. I wasn’t even able to pre-think, a skill that is quite important to be able to crack the CR section of the GMAT. So I notified Deepak of the issue and immediately he re-worked my study plan to give me more practice for CR.

Another issue was that I felt very fatigued with the prep and Deepak, being the excellent mentor that he is, gave me a confidence boost by reassuring me that I was actually doing well. This may seem trivial but trust me such boosts go a long way.

Deepak also conducted fortnightly strategy huddles in which he would discuss topics pertinent to taking the GMAT. These huddles not only helped me improve my approach to taking the test (for example, better time management), but also helped me interact with members of my cohort, most of whom were in the same boat as I.

I took Deepak’s guidance from April to June 2020 and I was able to take the GMAT within 10 days of my target date.



Test day experience

On the test day, I was mostly confident of my capabilities. I had put in the work so there was no reason to worry. Moreover, I was extremely well-rested and had two 700 or higher scores from my mock tests.

Coming into the test, I had taken 2 mocks from e-GMAT, scoring 750 and 700 respectively. I just chalked off the lower score to disturbances while I was taking the test. In hindsight, I should have taken another test to be sure of my prep level.

My test center was terrible. It was very dirty. There was a carpet which was full of dust. The bathroom was a short walk away from the test room and was also dirty. The air conditioner was not able to cool the room. The test administrator entered the test room a couple of times to try and get the air conditioner to work better, resulting in disturbance while taking the test. The keyboards were not convenient for typing and many times more than one key got pressed when I was writing my essay. The keyboards were also below a certain height - resulting in typing inconvenience. There was a lot of lag in the system as well - after selecting a choice, I would have to wait a few seconds for the radio button to reflect my choice. Finally, there were monkeys right outside the center's main door. This was an extremely poor testing experience for me.

I scored 710 in the exam. Q49, V39, IR 8, AWA 6. I’m mostly happy with the score, but feel like I could’ve scored better in a decent test center.

To conclude, I would like to say that GMAT prep is a marathon and not a sprint. So, please keep enough time for your prep, and even time to re-take the test if necessary. You may do everything right but the wrong test center may also ruin your score. If possible, check out the test center beforehand. Focus on the test-taking strategies rather than trying to get every question right. Sometimes, skipping questions is better for your score than sticking with them. Invest in good prep material. If possible, reach out to your friends who might have taken the GMAT and ask about their experiences with different prep materials.

Shout out to Deepak for being an amazing mentor and friend.

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I took the e-GMAT and was absolutely amazed with my results.
I started off with a 570 in my first mock with a Q36.
I mainly used the course as a learning tool and focused my practice on OG material (even though Scholaranium was absolutely great).
Let's go by parts:

Verbal: e-GMAT's material for verbal is great, especially SC. It covers all you need in a detailed manner. And the pre-thinking approach in CR was also highly helpful.

Quant: quant is where I needed to focus the most. e-GMAT's approach is to really sink in the concepts and show you how to apply them in the questions, rather than just teaching you each type of questions and its trick. And that's the thing, when you learn the concepts and you come across a question that you don't even know how to start, if you know the concept, write it down and it might just lead you down the right path.

Overall my experience with e-GMAT was as great as it could be, and I would 100% recommend it to my close friends who are considering taking the GMAT test.

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Attempt 1 – GMAT 670 (V33, Q49)- Jan 2019
I gave my first GMAT attempt after scoring 700 on official GMAT Prep, hoping I can convert that to 750 on the actual test. But what I’d failed to consider is that unlike normal tests (where I perform better in pressure) GMAT is something different. There were a lot of things that led to my downfall during my first attempt, but I believe following few to be the major ones:
1. Not having clarity of the GMAT scores I want – I thought anything above the magic 700 barrier will be amazing. And for some candidates this might be the case, but for the kind of MBA schools I was targeting, I didn’t realize that Indian MBA male with 700 is below average.
2. Not focusing enough on official GMAT prep – After completing my official GMAT prep, I immediately went online to find more questions. I didn’t understand the concept of quality over quantity at that time.
3. Not completing E-GMAT Scholaranium- After several referrals from my friends, I bought the E-GMAT verbal course. And in a word, it was an “amazing” course. But my only regret is that I didn’t use it to my advantage completely. I only considered the course as an online grammar tutorial for SC questions, I completely skipped the CR and RC part and again jumped straight to the questions.
Scholaranium has a great set of 400-500 questions for Verbal. But to my surprise, I could hardly score 50% correct in the medium and hard category. But I disregarded my failure as the questions being too hard (and so I needn’t bother myself with the results). So, in the end I completed only about 150-200 questions.
4. Not doing enough practice tests – I completed only 2 full length official prep tests and that’s it. In my opinion, this was my biggest downfall as the biggest problem I faced during my actual GMAT was pacing and time management.
5. Not using GMATClub Quant tests – I was a bit overconfident on my Quant skills (coming from an IIT) that I almost skipped quant prep. And the thing that I regret most is not using the GMATClub quant test (that came free with an E-gmat subscription). These tests are by far the best resources one could use to score Q51. These tests are harder, lengthier, trickier but just by a bit. If one can score Q50/Q51 in these tests, actual GMAT quant will be a piece of cake.

Attempt 2 – GMAT 730(V38, Q50)- Oct 2019
After my horrible failure at first attempt, I made amends and started preparing for success. I changed my studying strategy and started focusing on each sub-section individually and targeting specific mistakes.
1. Sentence Correction – I think SC is easiest and hardest at the same time. Easiest to score -if you know what you are doing, and Hardest to score – if you get confused. For SC, I mainly worked on Official GMAT prep questions, GMATClub SC top 100 700-800level questions, Aristotle GMAT SC and E-GMAT verbal Scholaranium questions. This time, I restricted myself in terms of no. of questions but instead focused on recording my errors in an error log and making sure I avoid mistake repetition.
2. Critical Reasoning – I studied CR mainly from Power bible and Manhattan CR. And I focused on each and every question type individually, mainly focusing on assumptions and Boldface (which were my weakest sections)
3. Reading Comprehension – Fortunately, I decided to follow E-GMAT method of tacking RC questions and developed the habit of taking notes and summary after each para. I realized that though it may seem excessive at first, it helps increase your consistency and accuracy .
4. Quant – I was completely devastated with my failure in Quant and decided to be extra cautious this time around. And I spent most of my time giving GMATClub Quant Tests, while focusing on reviewing each and every correct/incorrect answer choice with an expert's explanation to find out the most optimal way of solving the problem.

Test Day Experience – I was quite comfortable this time around as it was my 2nd attempt and I knew all of the procedures. I started with my quant section and completed it within time, and I was reasonably happy with myself. I went to take the optional break but to my surprise the washroom was occupied. Consequently, I spent a couple of minutes waiting outside. But when I reached my workstation I was in awe. Somehow, I managed to spend 4 minutes additional time and that was already deducted from my Verbal section time. I tried to organize my thoughts, but my brain refused to function. I sat again for 5 min in front of my first SC question trying to make sense of the foreign language in front of me. Somehow, I managed to calm myself down and complete the next 20 questions in 45 mins. But it was already too late for me, Now I needed to solve 16 questions in ~15 min. Panic started to settle again, and I knew I had to guess few of the answers. I completed Verbal, IR, AWA and instinctively knew that my score is again going to be a sub 700 failure. But to my surprise, the screen read 730 and I was happy beyond words.


Attempt-3 GMAT Online 770 (Q51, V44) – June 2020

Some of you may think that story should have ended. I thought so too. But I still hadn’t corrected one of my first mistakes – Knowing the scores I want in GMAT.
After 730, I applied to 3 top 10 US B-schools but to my surprise got interview invite from only 1 of them. And the major reason for that is I believe my GMAT score. That’s when I decided that I should make use of my time at lock-down and give one last attempt at GMAT.
Following are the few resources/steps that helped me finally beat GMAT:
1. E-GMAT Team support - With the score of 750-60 in my mind, I immediately sent my ESR to the E-GMAT team and requested their help to understand my weaknesses further. I was surprised to see that they provided me a detailed breakdown of my shortcomings and gave me a 5-step approach (along with video directions) to reach my targeted goals.
According to them I had to improve my ability in CR, SC and improve my pace during the full exam.
2. Improving Ability in CR with Pre-thinking – Although I was aware of Pre-thinking. I knew what it meant, I knew how to do it but somehow, I just though doing the questions without pre-thinking is faster. But with the help of E-GMAT resources, I was able to develop a habit of using Pre-thinking. This helped me improve my ability from 60 to 90% in CR.

3. Using E-GMAT Scholaranium- I was shocked after comparing my ESR sectional ability with Scholaranium ability %. To my surprise, they were identical. I then realized that Scholaranium questions and algorithm are so close to actual GMAT exam that improving my ability in Scholaranium will definitely translate to a better score in GMAT. With this in mind, I followed step by step plan laid out by E-GMAT team and could achieve my target score in ~ 30 days.

4. Practicing Full-length official mocks – I now finally understand why everyone praised Official GMAT prep mocks so much. They are the one truly reliable indicator of the score. And so, I purchased Official Mocks (3-6). And I tried a couple of strategies while giving the mock exams – such as going fast for first half, slow for first half, skipping last RC and so on. I finally found a strategy tailor made for me and finally decided to book the official GMAT.

GMAT Online Experience – Although I was a bit nervous of doing the exam from my home and that too without the much-needed optional break between Quant and verbal. But I decided to go for it anyway. And to my surprise, it was a pleasant experience. Fortunately, no technical glitch, no bad experience with customer service, nothing bad happened on the test day. Finally, after 3 days of waiting I got my official score. And with a sigh of relief, I realized that after 1.5 years and 3 attempts this story’s finally over.

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