585 to 750 in 2 months - what's worked & free resources

Find out how Beat The GMAT members tackled GMAT test prep with positive results. Get tips on GMAT test prep materials, online courses, study tips, and more.
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Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts
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Joined: Fri Sep 15, 2017 4:43 am
In mid-July, I got 585 in Kaplan practice test.
Today, mid-September, I just came back with 750 (Q51, V41).
Just a week ago, my score mumbled around 690-730 and I was really panicked. Just two days before the exam I finally got score over 750, which made me relieved a lot.

Below are my past mock results.

700 8/9/17 Gmat Prep 1
730 8/28/17 Gmat Prep 2
720 9/7/17 Kaplan
755 9/7/17 London Business School
720 9/9/17 Gmat Club
690 9/11/17 Economist
720 9/12/17 Veritas
760 9/13/17 Gmat Prep 3
740 9/14/17 Gmat Prep 4

Quite a lot!
I studied around 3-4 hours a day for the 2 months.

1. Free Resources

1) EmpowerGmat:
I really appreciate the two Empowerment guys. Especially Empowerment is really good at verbal. The method that guy used to crack verbal did work in actual exam. I strongly recommend you to enrol at least 1 hour to learn what strategy he uses to attack verbal.

2) Economist
Economist was especially helpful for Reading Comprehension. After learning its 'Initial Learning' strategy, I seldom struggled with scary passages. Hence it helped me save time on RC. You can renew it after 7 days passed/used up 10% lectures. Its practice questions were also quite like actual GMAT ones.

3) Veritas
Free question bank in Veritas also equipped me with real-time exam sense. Especially its Sentence Correction questions are very good, not because of their own quality rather of its difficulty, because they are ridiculously difficult. I felt real GMAT Sentence Correction was way easier, but it worked anyway because it's true that those questions helped me beat every tricky questions!

Those are what I used most, but I agree that Official Guide is a must have. For the first month of my preparation i.e. July to August I relied on OG. I think it became the foundation on which I stacked up a few more marks in Verbal.


2. What's worked

I studied with OG for the first month. Next, I started working on actual questions & mocks.
For the last one week, I did one mock every day. I had no choice but to buy Gmat Prep 3&4. Along with questions, I re-learned the strategies to attack Verbal from EmpowerGmat and Economist. I frequently used BeattheGmat and GmatClub (sorry!) to understand why this is right/wrong.
Mock everyday & useful verbal strategies did work.

3. On the exam day

I booked my exam at 8am, followed the Empower guy's advice that your brain works the most in the morning. I can't doubt so. I revised GmatPrep mock 1 to 4, and did 5 each verbal on Veritas. I selected verbal first, because I knew that it is where I have to do the best of myself.
After then? I aced my exam!

Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Jul 04, 2017 10:43 pm

by Nbagaria » Tue Oct 03, 2017 9:31 pm
sgmat9 : Congratulations for the great score :)

May you please share how you prepared for Verbal ? And any tips you want to share.

Thanks:)