I just Beat The GMAT!

To Beat the GMAT, Make It PERSONAL


I am a 28 year old telecom engineer (in Delhi) who has risen steadily in
the technical ladder of the industry.Having explored the technical aspects of my field,
I want to now get into the business aspect of the same - specifically in Marketing field.
And hence the need for MBA.

When I started preparing for GMAT, I had a score of 730+ in mind.And I got it - 740 (Q49, V41).

Here is how I did it -

April - Started Preparing

April - May - I reviewed IMS notes. For those of you who don't know this, IMS is pretty much a standard for CAT in India. These notes were decent enough to get one's feet wet in the GMAT pool (yes, GMAT is a pool - very well contained!!).

June - July - I was not satisfied with my verbal performance. At that time one of my colleagues at work recommended e-GMAT courses. I went through the free trial and liked how the concepts were taught. In June and part of July, I went through the SC and CR courses. I found the course to be very precise, to the point, and enjoyable. The thing that helped me the most was the detailed explanation of SC and CR questions. It took my understanding to the next level.

RC was not as much of a problem for me since I am pretty well-read. To practice, I did OG and RC-99 from Aristotle. For RC, I can say this much - reading, reading, & reading. It is by far the most essential thing. And again read as if you have to summarize the entire passage in front of an audience. That is what I used to do...Also, I have read quite a lot here that one must read from wsj and economist. While these are excellent sources, any good Indian newspaper publication is also good. In fact I found CSR (Competition Success Review) to be pretty good.

Being a working professional, time was always less for GMAT preparation. To add to it my 3-hr daily commute (I live in South Delhi and work in Gurgaon!!). For this, GMATClub mobile app really came to rescue. I could utilize my commute time solving questions! Also, BTG flash cards were a handy dandy way of revising stuff.

Oh yeah...for Quant - I just focused on OG. And I was consistently getting 48-49 in Quant. So all my attention was on Verbal...

July - August - By this time I was scoring consistently around 700-720. Initially I had scheduled for GMAT in July itself. But I was not satisfied with this score. I wanted to score beyond 730...So I wanted to push that V37 to beyond 40. This was a difficult push. Just as a shot in the dark, I reached out to e-GMAT and bingo I got really specific guidelines from them. I followed those guidelines and reviewed the SC and CR courses again. This time I focused only on the questions. I also did OG 3rd time. This really helped me clear out some of the fuzzy things in my mind. To top it all, I did their live sessions that there were offering in August. These sessions really gave me that much needed push. I could see where I was faltering in the difficult questions related to modifiers, parallelism, and Verbs and also improve my approach in CR. I could appreciate even more the power of pre-thinking for CR questions.

August 29 - D-Day - 740 (Q49, V41)
Regrets - Quant preparation. I wish I had focused a bit more on quant. I could have gotten 50 or 51 and that could have gotten me to beyond 750...But I don't want to sound grumpy right now. I am very happy with my score. But this is more of a suggestion to those of you who are at 49 level. If you think you can take your quant prep up a notch, definitely do that.
Take-aways - Do not settle. If you have set your mind at a certain goal, make sure you achieve that. I did not settle for 710 score. I made sure I got what I had planned - 730 + score.
My plans ahead - Oh BTW, I forgot to mention. I am expecting a baby in the next 3 months. I decided to take the GMAT before the baby so that when the right time comes, I can only focus on the application process. I will be applying for the Fall - 2014 session.

Congrats. you are truely an alrounder

er.aparna wrote:To Beat the GMAT, Make It PERSONAL


I am a 28 year old telecom engineer (in Delhi) who has risen steadily in
the technical ladder of the industry.Having explored the technical aspects of my field,
I want to now get into the business aspect of the same - specifically in Marketing field.
And hence the need for MBA.

When I started preparing for GMAT, I had a score of 730+ in mind.And I got it - 740 (Q49, V41).

Here is how I did it -

April - Started Preparing

April - May - I reviewed IMS notes. For those of you who don't know this, IMS is pretty much a standard for CAT in India. These notes were decent enough to get one's feet wet in the GMAT pool (yes, GMAT is a pool - very well contained!!).

June - July - I was not satisfied with my verbal performance. At that time one of my colleagues at work recommended e-GMAT courses. I went through the free trial and liked how the concepts were taught. In June and part of July, I went through the SC and CR courses. I found the course to be very precise, to the point, and enjoyable. The thing that helped me the most was the detailed explanation of SC and CR questions. It took my understanding to the next level.

RC was not as much of a problem for me since I am pretty well-read. To practice, I did OG and RC-99 from Aristotle. For RC, I can say this much - reading, reading, & reading. It is by far the most essential thing. And again read as if you have to summarize the entire passage in front of an audience. That is what I used to do...Also, I have read quite a lot here that one must read from wsj and economist. While these are excellent sources, any good Indian newspaper publication is also good. In fact I found CSR (Competition Success Review) to be pretty good.

Being a working professional, time was always less for GMAT preparation. To add to it my 3-hr daily commute (I live in South Delhi and work in Gurgaon!!). For this, GMATClub mobile app really came to rescue. I could utilize my commute time solving questions! Also, BTG flash cards were a handy dandy way of revising stuff.

Oh yeah...for Quant - I just focused on OG. And I was consistently getting 48-49 in Quant. So all my attention was on Verbal...

July - August - By this time I was scoring consistently around 700-720. Initially I had scheduled for GMAT in July itself. But I was not satisfied with this score. I wanted to score beyond 730...So I wanted to push that V37 to beyond 40. This was a difficult push. Just as a shot in the dark, I reached out to e-GMAT and bingo I got really specific guidelines from them. I followed those guidelines and reviewed the SC and CR courses again. This time I focused only on the questions. I also did OG 3rd time. This really helped me clear out some of the fuzzy things in my mind. To top it all, I did their live sessions that there were offering in August. These sessions really gave me that much needed push. I could see where I was faltering in the difficult questions related to modifiers, parallelism, and Verbs and also improve my approach in CR. I could appreciate even more the power of pre-thinking for CR questions.

August 29 - D-Day - 740 (Q49, V41)
Regrets - Quant preparation. I wish I had focused a bit more on quant. I could have gotten 50 or 51 and that could have gotten me to beyond 750...But I don't want to sound grumpy right now. I am very happy with my score. But this is more of a suggestion to those of you who are at 49 level. If you think you can take your quant prep up a notch, definitely do that.
Take-aways - Do not settle. If you have set your mind at a certain goal, make sure you achieve that. I did not settle for 710 score. I made sure I got what I had planned - 730 + score.
My plans ahead - Oh BTW, I forgot to mention. I am expecting a baby in the next 3 months. I decided to take the GMAT before the baby so that when the right time comes, I can only focus on the application process. I will be applying for the Fall - 2014 session.

Great debrief
Advanced congrats for the baby...

What was your daily schedule like, I mean how many hours everyday did you put in ?

You must celebrate and patt yourself, Congrats for your baby and great score..

er.aparna wrote: July - August - By this time I was scoring consistently around 700-720. Initially I had scheduled for GMAT in July itself. But I was not satisfied with this score. I wanted to score beyond 730...So I wanted to push that V37 to beyond 40. This was a difficult push. Just as a shot in the dark, I reached out to e-GMAT and bingo I got really specific guidelines from them. I followed those guidelines and reviewed the SC and CR courses again. This time I focused only on the questions. I also did OG 3rd time. This really helped me clear out some of the fuzzy things in my mind. To top it all, I did their live sessions that there were offering in August. These sessions really gave me that much needed push. I could see where I was faltering in the difficult questions related to modifiers, parallelism, and Verbs and also improve my approach in CR. I could appreciate even more the power of pre-thinking for CR questions.

Congratulations Aparna, I have the egmat course. I like it. I have a question for you. What is provided in the live sessions that is not a part of their course. The have a special on live sessions that ends today and I want to decide if I should purchase that.

great debrief ...u r surely a fighter ...and congrats for a baby too

Thanks Everyone !!!
@missionGMATverbal : As an reply to your question :
The live sessions help you build in the course. they help you hone key skill such as how to prethink for assumptions questions, how to do meaning analysis for difficult SC problems involving modifiers, parallelism errors. etc. They focused more on difficult concepts. So if you are facing problems with more challenging problems then these sessions may help you.