I just Beat The GMAT!

Materials:
Quant, Verbal, and IR: TTP
IR / AWA: GMAT 2020 prep
Verbal: GMAT official advanced questions, GMAT ninja youtube videos



Scores:
[COLD] 15 November: 610 (32Q 36V)
[MOCK 1] 24 April: 740 (49Q 42V)
[MOCK 2] 26 April: 710 (49Q 39V)
[MOCK 3] 28 April: 670 (44Q 37V)
[MOCK 4] 30 April: 720 (47Q 42V)
[MOCK 5] 3 May: 770 (50Q 47V)
[MOCK 6] 7 May: 770 (50Q 46V)
[ACTUAL GMAT] 10 May: 770 (49Q 49V 7 IR 6 AWA)



Journey:
I started preparing for my GMAT in mid-November. Given that I was working at the same time, I wanted to take things slowly. I knew I had a ways to go on my quant, but wasn’t sure where my gaps were. As a result, my first step was taking a cold mock. I scored a 610.

My then-partner at the time had recently taken the GMAT (750), and highly recommended TTP to me, but noted that , depending on how thorough I wanted to be, it could take a while. I registered for their 6-month version to give myself enough time to relearn the quant from the ground up. I was especially impressed with how thorough the lessons and associated quizzes were.

I built in the significant time frame due to balancing my job, and decided that my only goal was to get the GMAT done before essay prompts came out (June). To tackle this, I made good use of TTP’s module-driven lessons, deciding to do 45 minutes a day across 1-3 modules. By having the lessons available in bite-sized segments, I was able to see active progression of my GMAT skills, and was able to adjust my effort levels accordingly as I got closer to June. I focused my first 4-5 months only on the quant, due to my relatively strong start on the verbal.

Then, I started actually following my plan, and completing TTP’s missions. I felt myself constantly improving, thanks to untimed practice questions and clearly defined sections and skills (e.g., Geometry has multiple components in it, including triangles!). It was fantastic getting to align different concepts and skills to different types of problems, while also getting to practice actual GMAT-type questions (e.g., quant reasoning) within each subject topic. It’s a very simple to execute process that gives clear milestones as you progress. I also took notes as I went, to solidify my own learning and be able to quickly go back to areas I was unsure about. This two-layers of learning built a base and structure to my quant learning. And even when I would miss a concept I had done before, I would drill a few questions on that section in TTP as review.

On weekdays I was doing ~1 hour a day, on weekends I was doing ~2-3 hours. I was able to complete TTP’s quant course in ~4-5 months, after which I started learning verbal and starting my practice tests.
For the verbal and practice test portions I took off 2 weeks from work so that I would have time to do both practice tests AND verbal studying / test recaps. This time period also lead up to my first GMAT attempt (and only, luckily). During those 2 weeks, I took a test every other day from official GMAT (I found all non-official gmat tests to be far off the mark in terms of structure / question types). The other days I would spend the first half of the day reviewing verbal (started with GMAT ninja videos, ended with GMAT advanced questions), and the second half reviewing all questions I had missed in the prior day. I ran through the advanced questions book 2 times and would also look at forum posts to see in-depth solution explanations.


In the days leading up to my actual GMAT, I took 2 practice tests and scored 770 on both (50 Q, 47/46 V). At that point, I was very confident in my quant, so spent the last 2 days leading up to the test relaxing and doing some light verbal review.

On test day, I put my quant and verbal sections first, in that order, intending to use my initial momentum to power through. There were no quant questions I did not recognize and the verbal I felt well prepared for. And I was able to breath a heavy sigh of relief once my final score came up on my page.


Q, V, IR, AWA Breakdown:
For Quant, I solely relied on TTP. Their Quant curriculum is super comprehensive. It’s safe to say that you won’t need any supplementing materials. Each topic is broken down thoroughly and has a wide range of practice questions with explanations. That given, I felt super confident with my Quant knowledge and consistently scored very well.

For verbal, I started with a 36 on my first cold practice test. I decided that I needed less in-depth prep, given English was my native language and I studied liberal arts (Government / Public Policy) in college, so I felt I more had to learn about the tricks behind the GMAT rather than relearn reading comprehension skills from the ground up. To teach myself the GMAT approach to verbal, I started using GMAT Ninja’s youtube videos, which gives in-depth tutorials without going into the modular-based approach. I then practiced these concepts using TTP’s quizzes. Once I felt I had a decent understanding of the GMAT verbal question types, I started drilling GMAT advanced questions (~150 questions all of the hardest possible ones you could get). I ran through that twice. After this rigorous Verbal practice, my score on the mocks went up to 46/47, although I ended up getting a 49 on the actual test.

For IR and AWA, I didn’t do much—just a few hours in the days leading up to the test. I went over TTP’s material for both and practiced the sections on a few practice tests (on most of my tests I stopped after completing Quant/Verbal).



Overall:
TTP is a lengthy process, but is definitely worth it. I was able to maintain a steady upwards progression through learning and practicing the quant section and testing my verbal knowledge. Best part is, if you have certain areas you need less work on, you can just skip the sections in TTP, allowing you to fully customize your studying process (also, it is much cheaper than getting a live tutor / taking classes).

I believe the GMAT is not the hardest test out there because it is learnable. There are clear patterns and concepts that you are being tested on. It just takes a lot of time to get it right. And the hardest part may actually just be getting a good study plan developed and executed.

If you find yourself confused on where to start, or even how long it will take, I would highly recommend giving TTP a shot through the free trial and go from there.

Good luck with your GMAT and application journey – I am sure it will all be worth it!