690 to 730 in 2 months...crossing the 700 mark!!

Hi Guys!!
I first tried my hand at GMAT on 17th June 2014 and ended up with a score of 690(q49,v34). Although 690 is a pretty decent score, I decided to retry since I am from a fairly competitive background (Indian) and my GPA (3.1) is not very high. The first thing I did after my first attempt was to analyse the mistakes I committed during my test prep and the events on the test day that led to a lower than expected score. This is what I came up with:

PREP RELATED MISTAKES

1) I did not stick to a fixed process in verbal section. This led to a lot of going back and forth and was very exhaustive.

2) At times I relied too much on gut feeling while solving SC questions. This was a big mistake. Questions on the real test are quite tricky. Also, by the time I got to verbal I was quite exhausted and could not solve questions based on gut feeling.

TEST DAY MISTAKES

1) I got almost no sleep the night before my exam. I don't know what happened, may be I was too stressed, but for whatever reason I could only manage to sleep for 2-3 hours. In the morning I had a headache and felt like I was hung over.

2) Although I took the 8 minute breaks in the mock cats, I hardly ever got off my chair. So those 8 minutes felt too long. But on the D day 8 minutes felt like 4 minutes. The procedures and everything consumed some time and the locker was a bit too far from the testing area. Another mistake, I forgot to check the time before leaving for the 2nd break. I ended up arriving 2 minutes late. Although a 2 minute delay is not a big deal, back then I just panicked and could not solve the first 2 questions( both SC) and had to guess the answers.

3) I got really exhausted in the verbal section. Had to read and re read passages just to understand the facts. I realized I was going to bomb this section and it was all downhill from there.

REMEDIAL MEASURES

1) I adopted fixed methods for approaching SC, CR and RC questions. In SC I used the egmat approach. I started to read the sentence first in order to understand its meaning. Then I used to break the sentence based on its structure and apply SC rules to each part. For CR I first read the stem and adopted the standard approach for that type of question. For example, for assumption question I used to look for logical gap between premise and conclusion. Then I used to pre think an answer and finally I evaluated each option. For RC making mental summary of each para and the whole passage is a great approach that I learnt from egmat tutorials.

2) I stopped using gut feeling on SC questions and rejected options only on solid grammatical or meaning related grounds. This improved my accuracy and made me more confident.

3)Instead of taking 8 minute breaks, I started to take 4 minute breaks during my mock cats. Also, I started taking some light snacks during the breaks.

4) The night before the test day I did some light workout, hoping that it will help me sleep better. But unfortunately I still could not sleep. Finally, at 11:30 I went to a liquor store and drank a bottle of strong beer. Thank God it worked!! I was able to sleep for 6 hours. Felt fresh after waking up.

5) I also bought a bottle each of red bull and 5 hour energy for emergency use. Guess what? This time I foolishly spent a lot of energy in the IR section. Also, I made a major mistake in the AWA and had to make several corrections in the end. In the break I drank half a bottle of 5 hour energy. I also ate a peanut butter sandwich. Same drill for the 2nd break as well. 5 hour energy worked really well. Felt no sugar crash or jittery feeling. Also, I was able to focus really well.

Overall, I was really confident this time. Apart from a few hiccups in the quant section, the second attempt was a lot better than the previous one. Verbal questions were really tricky but my approach helped me a lot this time. I did not panic and patiently solved each question till the the end. Finally saw the score : 730( q49, v41, IR6). With a little more focus I could have scored 50 on quant, considering that I was able to finish the section 6 minutes before time. But apart from that, I have absolutely no regrets.

STUDY MATERIAL USED

1) OG13, OG12, and OG11(just for sc).
2) MGMAT guide for SC.
3) Egmat verbal live prep (it's way better that online prep)
4) GMAT club test series (a must for those who want 49+ in quant)
5) Veritas free question bank ( really good for practicing difficult SC questions)
6) Official verbal review 2nd edition. I did not find quant review very challenging.
7) A collection of GMAT prep questions I found on GMAT club. Use this only when you are done with the 2 free tests or else it will lead to skewed scores.
8) GMAT prep exam pack 1 and question pack 1.
9) Thursdays with Ron videos ( for RC and CR). Started my prep with these.
10) A collection of 700-800 level CR questions I found on GMAT club. Again, Use this only when you are done with mock cats as it contains a lot of questions from MGMAT and GMAT prep.

MY MOCK CAT SCORES

MGMAT
CAT 1=690
CAT 2=690
CAT 3=680
CAT 4=650( THE FIRST TIME I TRIED A MOCK IN THE AFTERNOON)
CAT 5=640( THE FIRST MOCK AFTER MY 1ST GMAT ATTEMPT. A REAL BUMMER)
CAT 6=720
CAT 1A=720
CAT 2A=740

GMAT PREP

TEST 1 660
TEST 2 720
EXAM PACK TEST 1 720
EXAM PACK TEST 2 720
TEST 1 REPEAT 750
TEST 2 REPEAT 750
EXAM PACK 1 REPEAT 750
EXAM PACK 2 REPEAT 780(1 DAY BEFORE MY SECOND ATTEMPT)

Hope you guys find some useful tips from my experience. All the best!!

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