Sheer hard work. 8 months prep. Mock 550 to GMAT 720

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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Beatthegmat forum has contributed enormously towards my development, and I wish to share some insights from my GMAT journey. I will try and keep the debrief objective

Background

Indian, studied Biotechnology in London and worked with a NGO in development sector for 1 year. Currently in Bahrain after an unsuccessful online venture, Craftila in Bangalore.

Pre-GMAT Level

I started my GMAT prep in the month of September 2012. Prior to that, I had not studied mathematics for 7 years and being a non native speaker, my English was not commendable.

GMAT scoreline

I performed all CATs with IR and AWA sections
  • Manhattan 6 CATs
    GMATPrep 2 CATs
    Veritas prep 1 Free CAT
Image

GMAT 1st Attempt: Bangalore, 5th May 2013 : 640 (Quant 49, Verbal 24, IR 6, AWA 5.5)

One month Break
  • GMATPrep 2 CATs (repeat)
    Economist 1 CAT free
    Platinum 1 CAT free
    Stratus Prep 1 CAT free
    Kaplan 1 CAT free
    Manhattan 2 CATs (repeat)
GMAT 2nd Attempt: Bahrain, 9th July 2013: 720 (Quant 49, Verbal 40)

Preparations material
  • Manhattan Strategy Guides 5th edition
    Official Guide 13th edition
    Official Guide 2nd edition Verbal and Quant
    OG IR question bank
    GMATPrep Question Bank 1
    GMATPrep CAT questions, more than 500+ official questions
    Magoosh Premium
    Powerscore CR Bible
    10 LSAT papers
    Kaplan 800 (CR & RC only)
    GMAT club tests on free days (Quant only)
Quantitative Reasoning section

Although I was able to score in the low 40s, in order to raise my score to high 40s or even 50, I concentrated on timing and accuracy rather than solving extremely hard questions. You have to understand that GMAT quant section is more about mental strength and consistency.

What worked for me
  • Solved 20 timed questions in each sitting.
    Reviewed even right answers and tried to find multiple ways to solve the same question.
    Identified common DS & PS traps.
    Developed the mentality to pull out from a question.
    Developed a few guessing techniques.
    Maintained a book for error log, common formulas, number properties, etc. and reviewed the same each weekend.
Verbal Section

This section almost felt like moving a mountain, however I now believe that it is possible. I struggled in literally each type of verbal question. As adviced by a number of instructors, practice as much as possible from the official questions. Although official questions are limited, if studied carefully they bring forth enormous learnings.

Sentence Correction (SC)

Manhattan SC guide along with RON's explanations of the GMATPrep questions is the real deal. I believe that I must have read the Manhattan SC guide thrice before I got a good hang of the rules and was able to naturally apply them in the official questions.

What worked for me
  • Practiced Practiced Practiced and maintained an error log.
    Scanning answer choices vertically.
    Initially focussed on finding and understanding errors in all answer choices.
    Later, did not get bogged down in small errors such as idioms, pronoun ambiguity or rare exceptions.
Critical Reasoning (CR)

Prior to reading the Powerscore CR bible, I did not have a strategy to attack CR questions. The Powerscore CR bible in my opinion is one of the best books as it completely alteredt my thinking when faced with a CR prompt and equipped me with a number of tools to attack such questions. Also, I believe there are insufficient 700+ official questions and hence practiced relevant CR questions from LSAT papers, particularly assumptions questions.

What worked for me
  • Faithfully followed the Powerscore CR bible and trusted that with practice, I will be able to solve tough CR questions in under 2 minutes.
    Went through wrong options to understand how they affect the argument.
    Identified common CR traps and wrong answers such as opposite, out of scope, percent, etc.
Reading Comprehension (RC)

This section again demanded a lot of patience and handwork. I don't even remember the number of passages I must have read to get comfortable with alien and boring matter. A number of GMAT prep companies advice students to read reputed journals and magazines, however I focussed on getting as many RC articles under my belt from different sources such as OG, LSAT, mocks, etc.

What worked for me
  • I focussed heavily on the passage and less on note taking, mostly writing only initials of complex term or name, and years.
    Initially in my prep took time to understand the passage.
    Pre-thinking the purpose of the passage before answering the questions. Mostly I ask myself, why did the author bother to write this passage.
    Learnt to move on in case of tough RC inference question.
Test Day

Attempt 1 (640 Q49 V24): Although I was confident about my preparations, I did experience anxiety on the test day. My AWA, IR and Quant went fine, but I experienced restlessness in the verbal section. It is difficult to replicate the test day emotions.

I normally write a small timing table for each quant and verbal section that serves as benchmark, however on the test day, I twice misread the verbal timing table and was completely off time. My body went in panic mode and all questions seemed difficult and never ending.

Lesson learnt: Stay Calm!

Attempt 2 (720 Q49 V40): This time I learnt by heart the timings table. I did 3 weeks of prep, mainly taking all the available free CATs in-order to build my mental strength. I also purchased the GMATPrep question pack 1 and performed timed mixed question set. Highlights from attempt 2;
  • Having gone though the emotions before, I was very calm during the entire exam
    Got couple of very difficult word problem at the end of the quant section, which might have lowed by quant score.
    Number properties dominated my quant section, faced only 1 question each from Geometry and Combinations.
    Took all my breaks.
    Did not get any bold face questions in my verbal section. PS note, do not judge your performance while performing the test.
    CR was dominated with inference, assumptions and evaluate.
    Being a biotech graduate helped because I got two science passages, including one about some biology species.
    Parallelism helped me solve lot of SC questions, however I did face few one worded questions.
I will be writing my feedback on individual CATs and the prep sources mentioned above in a later post. I would like to thank all the instructors and students on the forums for selflessly contributing to the community.

I would love to answer any queries. Wish you all good luck for your prep.

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Piyush Jain

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by faraz_jeddah » Mon Jul 22, 2013 4:27 pm
Congrats on an awesome score! and thank you for the debrief. Motivates me to buckle down.

Interesting to see that you scored an amazing 49 on Quant in both attempts. :)

Btw how accurate was the GmatVeritas prep CAT?
Thanks again!

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by jainpiyushjain » Mon Jul 22, 2013 10:11 pm
faraz_jeddah wrote: Btw how accurate was the GmatVeritas prep CAT?
Thanks again!
Thank you faraz_jeddah

In Veritas CAT I scored 740 (Q50 V42)

The test consists of AWA and IR section too. Veritas CAT has a good collection of quant questions for advance test takers. Although they have done a brillant job with their verbal section, I was not able to understand a couple of hard CR questions even after explanations and ignored some SC explanations as it contradicted with my earlier learning from the OG & RON. RC passages were diverse and mostly long. In summary, its a worthwhile exam to build your mental fitness and guage your score.

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by pareshcs » Tue Jul 23, 2013 7:04 am
Congrats....Really motivating debrief

I want to know whether I should buy Powerscore Critical Reasoning Bible or Manhattan GMAT Critical Reasoning 5th edition.

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by gmaster328 » Tue Jul 23, 2013 8:21 am
So inspiring! congrats!

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by jainpiyushjain » Wed Jul 24, 2013 2:16 am
pareshcs wrote: I want to know whether I should buy Powerscore Critical Reasoning Bible or Manhattan GMAT Critical Reasoning 5th edition.


Personally having read both the books, I would recommend Powerscore over Manhattan for CR. Manhattan CR foccusses on writing summary for each line, which didn't work for and at the same time I was not able to solve questions under 2 minutes. Powerscore on the other hand, compelled me to stay with the argument and create a visual image of the argument, which really got me going.

Both books offer only few unique questions.

Good luck :)

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by pareshcs » Wed Jul 24, 2013 5:12 pm
Thanks Piyush for the reply.

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by lunarpower » Sat Jul 27, 2013 5:40 am
Congratulations, and thanks for the kind words.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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by ani781 » Sun Jul 28, 2013 4:29 am
Congratulations Piyush !! That is one CRACKER of a performance. In just two months you were able to nail the verbal with such elan. Amazing !! And may I know what did you do differently, which helped you make that HUGE leap ? Any suggestion will be highly appreciated, as I seem to have hit a plateau , and no matter what I do , not being able to get more than the 32/33 range in verbal.

Regards.

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by ani781 » Sun Jul 28, 2013 4:33 am
Hi Piyush ... one more thing, you have mentioned
"Manhattan SC guide along with RON's explanations of the GMATPrep questions is the real deal."
.. may I know what do you mean by RON's explanation of GMATPrep questions .. is there any specific course/book by Manhattan GMAT , where there are solutions to the GMAT Prep solved by Ron ?

Thanks Again !

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by buoyant » Tue Jul 30, 2013 6:13 am
Congratulations! Well done!

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by jainpiyushjain » Tue Jul 30, 2013 6:49 am
ani781 wrote:what did you do differently, which helped you make that HUGE leap ? Any suggestion will be highly appreciated, as I seem to have hit a plateau , and no matter what I do , not being able to get more than the 32/33 range in verbal
Although I would have just touched 700 in my first attempt if I had not faltered due to nervousness, I believe whatever happens, happens for good. In my second attempt, I was able to touch 40 in verbal, which really lifted and balanced my score.

Firstly, I took the first month off from GMAT and carried on with my general work. This period allowed me to chill and erase the official answers from my memory specially incase of Verbal.

During the second month, I appeared for a number of CATS, which allowed me to build stamina and to stay completely focussed even till the last question of the verbal section. I practiced Verbal only from official questions and reviewed my mistakes on every weekend. During this time, I purchased GMATprep question set 1, which was a great source to do timed set and has a good bunch of verbal questions with explanations. Both the prep and calmness, did the trick for me.
ani781 wrote: may I know what do you mean by RON's explanation of GMATPrep questions .. is there any specific course/book by Manhattan GMAT , where there are solutions to the GMAT Prep solved by Ron?
Apologies for not making it clear and thanks for asking. Basically, after appearing for the GMATprep test twice, I wanted to extract all the questions from the GMATprep question database. To my surprise, some Brilliant individual has already done this for us by creating a document, which has around 150+ SC official questions of the GMATprep. However this document is without explanations. Thats where Manhattan forum and RON come in the picture. Almost each GMATprep question is dissected on Manhattan GMAT forums, with RON personally explaining how to arrive at the answer and whats wrong with the wrong answers for a number of questions.

For any question, simple copy first few words and search in google. The manhattan forum link should mostly come in the top searches.

Cheers and good luck

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by lunarpower » Tue Jul 30, 2013 7:00 am
jainpiyushjain wrote:may I know what do you mean by RON's explanation of GMATPrep questions ..
so, i've been wondering this for a while, but never asked until now... why does everyone here always write my name in all capital letters?
just curious.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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Pueden hacerle preguntas a Ron en castellano
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On peut poser des questions à Ron en français
Voit esittää kysymyksiä Ron:lle myös suomeksi

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Quand on se sent bien dans un vêtement, tout peut arriver. Un bon vêtement, c'est un passeport pour le bonheur.

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by jainpiyushjain » Tue Jul 30, 2013 7:06 am
lunarpower wrote:
jainpiyushjain wrote:may I know what do you mean by RON's explanation of GMATPrep questions ..
so, i've been wondering this for a while, but never asked until now... why does everyone here always write my name in all capital letters?
just curious.
Good question. I used the capital letters for your name to demand the extra attention and weightage. There are number of instructors out there, but your work is really outstanding and hence the extra importance to the name.

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by lunarpower » Tue Jul 30, 2013 7:13 am
jainpiyushjain wrote:I used the capital letters for your name to demand the extra attention and weightage. There are number of instructors out there, but your work is really outstanding and hence the extra importance to the name.
well, thanks!
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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Pueden hacerle preguntas a Ron en castellano
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On peut poser des questions à Ron en français
Voit esittää kysymyksiä Ron:lle myös suomeksi

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Quand on se sent bien dans un vêtement, tout peut arriver. Un bon vêtement, c'est un passeport pour le bonheur.

Yves Saint-Laurent

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