I just Beat The GMAT!

Hello All,

I wanted to share my GMAT experience because I always found posts from other people to be interesting, motivating and helpful. So I hope my experience will do the same for others.

I first took the GMAT back in 2011 without much preparation and scored 580. This time around, wanting to apply for a PhD in business I needed to do much better so after about a month of self-studying I decided a prep course would be a good investment. Below, I will highlight the most important parts of my preparation and what I learned from them.

- Actual GMAT score (July 15): 710 92nd percentile. Quant 45 (63%), Verbal 44 (98%). IR 6 (67%). AWA 6.

- Prep course: Veritas Prep on-demand course.

Prep time: 3 months. About 3-4 hours per day with a day off per week. I also stopped studying during 10 days due to a family trip.

First let me start with my prep course. I found the Veritas prep on-demand course to be very useful overall. I think the strategies presented are solid and and the skill-builder lessons are great for brushing up on basic knowledge. I am very happy with my verbal score and give much of the credit for that to my Veritas Prep course. On the other hand, I am not as happy with my Quant score and here is how I think my prep course contributed to that. I think that the curriculum is solid and the strategies are sound. The part I feel has the most room for improvement is the HW problems. I think the average level of difficulty of quant problems in the Veritas books is rather easy. Sure, there are some hard problems but I think there should be more of those. Also, on the Veritas CAT´s I always scored higher (on quant) that I did on official mba.com CAT´s. So again, not quite satisfied with the level of difficulty on the quant side of Veritas problems.

Now let's move into my overall prep strategy, I will discuss what I think worked well and what I wish I would have done differently. As mentioned before, the Veritas prep on demand course was my main prep tool. I followed the curriculum as suggested and it was definitely helpful. I also think that taking full CAT's (AWA, IR, Q&V) was very helpful in building endurance and seeing what were the things I needed to work on the most. Timed practice was also essential to improve speed and pacing. The OG 13 and Manhattan quant OG 13 companion were also important on my quant preparation. I wish I would have gotten this two books earlier. Another resource I used was the GMAT prep exam extension pack (for official CAT's 3 and 4). Well worth the investment. These official CAT's are as close as you can get to the real GMAT so the more you have the better.

Another thing that worked well for me, particularly for quant, was to "dump" a few questions to stay on top of pacing. There are questions that you are likely to get wrong no matter what so if you can learn to identify them, guess, and move on quickly, you will have more time to spend on the questions you are likely to get right. When I was able to "dump" questions appropriately during CAT's, my quant score improved. On my last GMAT prep CAT I scored 49 in quant. That is part of the reason I am not completely happy with my test day score of 45. In reality, I think I started using the OG 13 and Manhattan companion a bit too late so I wasn't as ready as I wanted to be for quant.

One last thing I want to mention is the importance of endurance for the verbal part of the exam. By the time you get to verbal you will be tired and that, I think, is one of the biggest hurdles to overcome for this section. What I think helped me to do well in the verbal section was 3 things mainly. 1: The strategies I learned during my prep --> knowing what question types to expect and how to tackle each. 2: Endurance and pacing, especially through taking full CAT's --> you ability (or inability) to focus will play a key role in the verbal section. 3: I think it is important to eat some sort of snacks during the breaks to keep yourself from getting tired --> for my first break I had an orange, some grapes, and a few nuts. During my second break I ate a snickers bar a some more nuts. I think that helped me keep my focus through the end.

I hope my experience is helpful to others, I'd be happy to answer any questions. Also if you have experience/knowledge of business PhD admissions I'd love to hear from you. Since most people take the GMAT to pursue an MBA, there isn't much info out there about business PhD admissions.

Thanks!

Thank you for your insight, Rich!
I also want to thank you for your advice and tips throughout my prep!