First attempt on 12th Aug 2014- One month of Verbal preparation, Quant is my favorite subject and I keep doing it regularly so didn't prepare specially. Managed to score 680. I prepared from MGMAT guides for Sentence correction, Critical Reasoning, Reading Comprehension. I couldn't manage time to revise sentence correction. It is very important to learn the concepts and apply SC rules properly. It is very much a matter of logic than grammar. I went through the free videos on Egmat site and realized I had not prepared that well conceptually.
Q50
V31
IR8
AWA6
Since I intend to apply for a top university PHD in Finance/Accounting program decided to prepare for my retake. Being a working professional, I knew I wont be able to give the necessary time for my preparation. I decided to join Egmat Verbal Live prep course. I started going through the videos and learn the concepts properly. I understood strategies and how to approach the GMAT after attending Egmat's strategy session. I started giving quant mocks and verbal mocks on GMAT club website. I was doing consistently well on quant scoring 50 and 51 on the mocks. I must say the analytics offered by Gmat club is simply amazing. The problem area was verbal and my inconsistency made me nervous. I knew I have to improve my verbal to score high on GMAT. There was little room for improvement in Quants made me more anxious. I had to get Q51 alongwith increasing my verbal score. My verbal mock score was hovering around 31 and went upto 35 but wasnt able to score consistently decent score. I realised that I wasnt applying the process learnt from the SC course of Egmat. Verbal is not my strong area and posts saying that avg improvement of GMAT score is minuscule increased my tension.
I prepared from Advanced Manhattan guide for Quants as I wanted to get that Q51. I gave my mocks regularly. Also I observed that my verbal accuracy reduced whenever I wasnt studying regularly. I decided to reduce my workload and study religiously for my GMAT. In the last week I took leave and put in lot of efforts in my preparation. I took notes, revised whatever I studied. As I read MGMAT SC guide I understood a lot of concepts which I hadn't understood previously. Couple of days before the actual test I appeared for my last verbal mock and I scored 25. I was devastated. I dont know if that was the right thing to do. Couple of hours later I reappeared and scored 34. I wasnt sure about my performance and was worried about my inconsistency. Also I had exhausted all my mocks and so I reset the question pool. May be I had seen the questions before and analysed my mistakes and that influenced the score of 34, all these things were on my mind.
The day arrived 24th Oct 2014. I was anxious and I quickly revised the concepts on my way to the exam center. I wrote my AWA pretty decent. Integrated reasoning I was doing pretty well at the half way mark. 6 questions I solved in 15mins. Unfortunately I couldn't answer the last question due to paucity of time. During the break I told myself this is my time and gave Quant and could complete all the questions with 5mins pending. Except for 3 questions which I guessed rest was well answered. In this break after the quant I was again nervous because this was what going to make or break my score. I decided to go little slow in the first half of the Verbal questions. In couple of questions I lost focus and my application to my mind, not having enough time to reappear for GMAT and in that time I strengthened the argument where the question was to weaken the argument. This is a complete No No and would suggest everyone appearing to GMAT to keep calm and stay focused. Knowing that you have marked a wrong answer makes matter worse. As I was going slow on initial question I had to rush in the 2nd half. In hindsight I should have balanced the timing a little better.
Finally I answered the last question at the last second and hit the submit button and started praying. First thing I saw was the 730 score and I was relieved more than happy.
Q51
V37
IR7
Hope this journey helps you with DOs and DONTs in your GMAT preparation and exam appearance.
Thanks
