I just Beat The GMAT!

Hi Everyone,

How it all started in 3rd quarter of 2011: I read a book called "Stay Hungry Stay Foolish" on Indian entrepreneurs and found that I'm well suited to the path of entrepreneurship. Let's learn what it takes to get there.

Background: 7 Years of IT Consulting Experience (SAP Technical) and BE (IT) with below average GPA.

Irrespective of countless practice scores (majority of which were close to 700), here is how my real score's panned out:

GMAT-1: 18-01-2012: Q39, V19, Total: 480
GMAT-2: 13-07-2012: Q44, V21, Total: 550
GMAT-3: 28-10-2012: Q47, V29, Total: 620
GMAT-4: 29-12-2012: Q49, V31, Total: 650
GMAT-5: 13-03-2013: Q49, V35, Total: 700

I take full responsibility of my scores and no exam was planned in a hurry or was given under work pressure. Though, I've been under the payroll of a leading IT firm but I have got full opportunity to study and my work load was almost negligible.

In first 2 attempts I thought inexperience of online exams is what's taking toll on my score and nothing's horribly wrong. But, I was wrong. This test is as much mental as it's a test of your reading skills. Only in my 3rd attempt, I realized that I first need to learn how to read before sitting for such exams. But, how much reading do I need as I have not read any book apart from technical instructional manuals in years and I have not been avid reader in my under graduation days as well.
I was poor in Quant all my life so I'm at backfoot for both the skills tested in this exam. Nevertheless, if business needs those skills, I will have to learn them, to be successful, no way out.
My mind is different than most of the guys out there. It does not run for a short cut. It believes that if I'm told to learn these skills (CR,SC,RC,Quant), they are there for a larger picture. In first 3 attempts at GMAT, my mind gave up knowingly that I'm not good enough yet and I do not deserve to be cleared by this exam. But, it was not a good approach since GMAT will make you feel this way even if you are a 780 guy. So, I came back to the drawing board and started again, hoping that someone will come and hold my hand to get me past the line that I have virtually drawn for myself.

Indeed, many brilliant salespeople came when I sought help and done too little except boosting my confidence artificially that I'm capable of 700 now. Like a small optimistic kid, I believed them and sat down for GMAT, only to find out that I've marginally improved. If I start exposing them on how they harmed my preparation (not only in monetary sense but in terms of time and effort), it will take an another page and I'm not sure about the prospects of getting this review published as well. Anyway, that's not the topic here.

Test Day:
For the second time in my test history, I got down at the wrong station. Make no mistake, all my tests were at this very location. This single fact might tell you a lot about my psyche. Anyway, I reached test center taking an auto from this close station and reached test center almost running. At this moment, my brain told me look how stupid you are once again, do you really deserve to be in the 90th percentile ?
I replied back to myself, I have been in this spot before (running and coming late/confused) and I do not blame my 550 on my getting down at wrong station so how will that effect now ? So, I won the first mental battle that was crucial to my outcome.

I have got used to burn very less energy in AWA and IR and it took me 2 attempts to learn this. My strategy at IR was to do selective questions and I was lucky to have ample questions from my zone.

Journey of those 2.5 hours that has shown me 7 as the hundred's digit of my score:

Quant: I was half of my strength in Quant from my last attempt. If I'm doing a simple percentage question in 1min in my previous attempt, I was taking 2 mins this time, but deep down I knew there are many questions I'm familiar with that I know are sufficient or insufficient by just looking at them and using my previous knowledge. GMAT is not a bluff test and it gives you questions on the same pattern, no matter what. So, I even took 4-5 mins on some of the word problems that otherwise would not have taken me more than 1:30 at home. But, the important thing was "I did not give up". 7 questions, 7 mins to go at the end but no panic. I told myself, 2-3 of those will be conceptual D.S questions and my fundamentals allow me to get them down in no time. I guessed on the last one but I managed to get the same score as earlier and I almost knew that going into the break. Mentally I have won this section.

Verbal:I got an SC first. I spent 2 mins or more on this but I couldn't get this down. Next was CR and I guess I missed it as well. I have heard how critical are the first few questions of this exam and unknowingly, I pressed the panic button. There on, I could not get the meaning of most of the sentence's and CR did not make much sense as well. It has happened to me in the past and despite working hard on my Verbal ability, I was just saying to myself "not again". But, instead of giving up entirely this time around, I decided to take the maximum possible output and rather than ON/OFF situation, I tried to do damage control. I'm good with RC but not sure if I was understanding them properly or not as I was kind of baffled. I used an another sense that I have acquired by doing thousands of official/unofficial questions. I know what's not the answer and I can eliminate 3 out of those with my experience. I did the same and even though I was trying hard to understand the argument and sentences, fear of failure has once again struck me hard and it was not allowing me to use my verbal senses. I knew what was right approach but without understanding the meaning, you are with 1/4th of your troops. I mentally lost this section but somehow managed to pull it off decent enough to get a 35.

On GMAT courses:
Please do not fall upon the fancy advertisement of Native vs Non-native speakers and refuse to buy the argument that non-native's can teach non-native's better. Trust me on this, the game is not between natives vs non-natives. Its a standard English game and your non-native instincts are not going to harm you as much as your reliance on those people who claim "Relax guys, we have dissected the Verbal side of exam for you". Its a reading skill that you need most and I do believe reading can hardly be taught. I can tell you how to read in not more than 3 hours flat and its up to you after that, how you practice that skill. There are not too many things out there.

I'm refraining myself from mentioning the name's of those companies whose material I have tested (3 online courses and 1 offline classroom course) but a general suggestion is that you can make out if a company is honest or not if its giving you a trial of its full content upfront and claiming that it will give you a full refund if you didn't like their product. "No strings attached." I tried Magoosh 7 days prior to my last attempt, thinking that I will return it with in 7 days of its purchase. I made set of 41 questions and gave verbal tests out of it. At the end of 7th day, I was done with their Verbal content, but I did not chose to return it and ask for a refund. Simply because, I have spent 10-12 times more on other courses, where in I did not get any refund whatsoever. Why shall I ask for refund from these honest people who are allowing people to test their product for 7 long days. Their quality was also better than many others I have tested in the past, without much of the advertising fluff and tall claims about the score improvement in so & so days.

Despite the Verbal mess-up, I managed to see 700 on the screen but somewhere I know that it nowhere translates what I have gone through in the past year or so. Pressure killed some of my score. I'm known to be patient and constantly improving like a spider but my family has lost patience with me on this. Kids are waiting to be born, sister's waiting to get married, buying a home is a priority too much delayed etc etc.

I have seen many crests and troughs of this exam in past 2 years and I wish to share them with others. There are 2 reasons for doing that:

1) I come from a teacher's family and I feel responsibility to share what I have learnt through this hardship. I can pass on the virtue to reach Q49 and V35 if some one is patient enough to listen. I have been looking for a personal tutor in my last 3 attempts but I could not find anyone. I want to be that one for others.
2) Teaching pushes me to study before I can teach. This will help me keep going on.

I'm looking for a case study based school with focus on consulting/entrepreneurship. I can take a break before applying in R1 and can improve on my GMAT for Richard Ivey, Darden, Tuck by that time. I know many of you will not agree that improvement on score is worth the effort but I think I'm already there. Without the added pressure of fear of failure, it will be lot easier to improve.

I can be reached at [email protected]

Amazing Dude..! I can see the real experience in your post. I just realize that GMAT is actually churning an Entrepreneur out from you. All the best.God bless you always.

I admire your tenacity. I have been having so many issues with this test...it often feels like the only obstacle I cannot overcome.

Thanks so much for posting! Good luck to you in the future.

congrats on hitting the 700 mark. Your story is indeed motivating.

Cheers !!

Congrats !! on hitting that 700 Mark. Me too struggling a lot with Verbal and I have spend lots of time on improving it, but still not able to cross 650 on GMATPrep test, most of my mistakes are in SC and RC ..RC most of the time I am consecutively getting 3 questions wrong in a sequence. I feel pity on myself ..what to do, can you please guide me on this..


regds
sachin

congrats bro! i can tell your score is still far better, your aptitude and attitude both can fetch you a good brand of a bschool on your profile. I wish this money refund gimicks of these courses go off soon from the market.

Congratulations. It's an awesome debrief. I got tons of confidence now. Thanks for the post.

I am improved from 400 level to 550 level now. What plan & courses you followed for improving verbal from V19 to V35 ?

congrats man!! the best debrief I went through so far I don't know whether you had it earlier or is it just a byproduct of your toiling with the GMAT, you definitely have the "writing skills" that should fetch you a good school.I am sure you will use it well with yourapplications..IMO put your applications as the first priority, even while focusing on application I am sure you will be able to improve your score up to your desired level....congrats once again you have already nailed it

I appeared in my Gmat one month ago and fell flat footed on the ground when saw 450 on my screen. Really appreciate the way you handled and analysed your failures to use them as your staircase.I belong to a Professor's family too and share the same ideology with you. All i want to say is You Inspire me and hope to write a post of your kind soon.

Wish you all luck and Happiness in future. Take care and congrats

grakesh wrote:Congratulations. It's an awesome debrief. I got tons of confidence now. Thanks for the post.

I am improved from 400 level to 550 level now. What plan & courses you followed for improving verbal from V19 to V35 ?

Hi Rakesh,

I never visited this page after writing my debrief. Sorry about the late reply.
I tried to do as many questions from every source I could get my hands on in Verbal but that helped me little. Recognizing pattern is so important that I cannot over-emphasize this. I will advice you to go through the practice content from the discussion boards such as BTG, GC and then once you have achieved decent accuracy and knowledge of concepts, you should start with official questions. Don't try to finish the official questions but pick an official question, do a complete anatomy on each question, figure out what all is being tested, how will you recognize the same question in different language etc and then move on to next official source. By official, I mean OG, OGV2, Gmatprep set. In total, there will be around 400 questions for each SC, CR and RC, and I need to make full use of those official one's. Write me for a detailed plan or if you are in India, give me a call and I will explain you how to exhaust your material in the best manner.

Regards,
Abhishek

sachinsonu wrote:Congrats !! on hitting that 700 Mark. Me too struggling a lot with Verbal and I have spend lots of time on improving it, but still not able to cross 650 on GMATPrep test, most of my mistakes are in SC and RC ..RC most of the time I am consecutively getting 3 questions wrong in a sequence. I feel pity on myself ..what to do, can you please guide me on this..


regds
sachin

Hi Sachin,

There are a few strategies, which I implemented to avoid RC mistakes, which could be useful to you as well:
Step 1: Read 1st paragraph with utmost concentration (imagine it as a CR argument and read a few lines twice if you couldn't understand it first time). Imagine the stuff author is mentioning. He wants to take you in a different world, go with him and explore the beauty of his writing.
Step 2: Read the 1st question on screen.
Step 3: You have read the 1st paragraph in such an involved manner that you immediately get to know whether you can answer 1st question from that little part or not. If you can, mark your answer but do not press "confirm" until you read the rest of passage.
Step 4: Read the rest of passage with decent speed and each passage is explaining something different (for instance in one paragraph, author start with pros and in next he is counting exceptions to his opinions etc.), then give one word for each passage in your mind or on paper (only initially till you start remembering that one word) and skip the paragraph. You don't need to remember that paragraph since those are just facts, to which you can come anytime and take away what specifically is being asked.
Step 5: Get in a habit of not missing direct questions (according to the passage type). Most probably you will atleast get 30% of such questions and these are easiest to get. If you are missing this particular question, tell yourself that you are offending the author. Because, he won't mind you missing an inference question (IMO he will be OK seeing we are not as intelligent as much as he is) but he will definitely curse you if you are not paying attention to his words (in direct question, this is the case). This is human instinct and if you follow my 5-step advice on RC, you will get 2/3 correct and your overall score will get a huge boost.

Let me know if you need more help. I'm just a click away.

Regards,
Abhishek

Hey Abhishek, Congratz! on achieving the 700 mark and All the best! for 7xx.. I'm struggling with reading skills and I believe it is one of the most important skill that is required; Can you please let me know, how did you improve your reading skills ?