I just Beat The GMAT!

I just sat the GMAT and reached my target of 700+. At the start of my journey I had thought the most I could get was 670, in the end I got 710 (48Q 38V 6IR). I am very Thankful.

I am writing my debrief because I read these religiously and it kept pushing me and inspiring me just to do a little more. I also kept visualising myself writing this and that itself kept me going. I am indebted to those who have written before me and I am hopeful this helps someone along the way.

Study period - 4 months

Resources
OG12 & OG13
OG verbal and Quant review
OG practice questions and additional practice exams
OG Paper exams
MGMAT Books
MGMAT exams
Kaplan
SC and CR Bible
e-gmat
economist g-mat
Grockit
GMAT club questions

Conclusion
Rather than boring you with my story about how I tried each product, I will dive straight into how I assessed each of them.

OG resources - Essential. If I could redesign my prep, I would go through each of the resources twice and spend 80% of my time on these. The practice questions and exams are the best way for anyone to prepare for the real deal. For me, no other resources could in any way simulate the type and style of questions. The other companies all felt different, some were harder, some were easier, but most of them were just stranger!

MGMAT - Great to kick off quant. It gave me a great grounding and understanding of the topics. Its worth doing once through all the quant and keeping it as a resource to refresh any topics you need. I didn't use at all for Verbal so I can't comment there.

Kaplan - Didn't use it, wasted my money.

SC and CR Bibles - I found the SC Bible very helpful. Although I grew up in Australia, my grammar was poor and so I needed this to get started. I read it twice, once in the beginning, and once in the middle after I had done a significant amount of questions. The boost after my second read was massive and it went a long way to helping me reach my target. I read the CR bible, but I didn't feel it helped me that much, but in general I think CR and RC aren't topics which are conducive to be learnt from a text book.

E-gmat - I tried it, not for me. I found it very prescriptive and overly analytical. It might be worth mentioning it is designed for non natives, which would exclude me I guess.

Grockit - I used this early on, I think the video explanations are quite helpful. The questions don't quite simulate OG. Also I found myself concentrating on the hard questions and wasting time there. I think this is worth trying and I can see it being useful to some people.

Economist gmat - This was interesting, I found it inflexible as it is hard to quickly skip ahead to your aptitude, especially in quant. That means it takes time and for anyone working, time is at a premium. I barely used it for quant, but I used the app everyday for verbal on my bus ride to work. That was fantastic! Also the ask a tutor and essay submissions are quite helpful. It does overly focus on shortcut techniques which I didn't like. The test I found strange, the quant test got too hard way to early compared to GMAT and although it did reflect my mark accurately it's not how you would end up at that mark in the actual GMAT. The verbal test answers often had a more indirect nexus compared to the GMAT and I couldn't follow the logic in some of the explanations. Overall, I think it was worth it for me because I had the app at the tip of my fingers everyday and spent almost an extra hour of study which felt more like killing time on the bus ride to work.

GMAT Club questions - These are fantastic and the only questions I felt that could supplement the OG style questions. If you want extra questions, these are the only ones I would recommend.

Study Plan
I broke my study plan into stages:
Stage 1 "Knowledge Acquisition" - I used the first month to simply get through MGMAT quant books and the bibles to try and grasp each topic one by one. Generally I would spend 2 - 3 hours a day, that's 30 mins on the bus to work, 30 mins on the bus back and 1-2 hour after dinner.

Stage 2 "Question Accumulation" - I uses the second month to get through a high volume of questions, I focused mainly on the OG, each night I would do 25 quant and 25 verbal questions and get through OG13 and the OG reviews. At this stage I didn't worry about time, just technique. I also made a point to try and identify my weaknesses and revert to stage 1 where I had issues (ie perms and combs and SC)

Stage 3 "Pressure and Practice" - I began timing myself and doing blocks of questions, I found the the old written exams really helpful for these, although quant I found a fraction too easy, the verbal remains at a similar level. I began doing practice tests at this stage, just quant and verbal but by this stage you should know your strengths and weaknesses.

Stage 4 "The final countdown" - I took a week off before my exam, which sometimes felt too long and at other time felt too short. I think in the end I needed the time because I didn't get RC and CR until the last 2 days. I did full practice exams from start to finish including AWAs, IR's and breaks. After the first 2 days I worked on my weaknesses when doing practice questions. By the last 2 days I was only doing RC and CR practice otherwise practice tests.

Conclusion
I think preparation is essential, do not have any regrets and leave no stone unturned. My theory is that anything successful needs a solid base. Get your fundamentals right, don't look for shortcuts especially early on, there are some but they only really help if you know the basics. Personally, I was amazed to read some textbooks that say you should skim read or identify a question as a "plug in". Personally, I think that misses the point of the test. One thing that helped be was being self aware and accountable. I prepared an excel spreadsheet where I recorded all my answers and highlighted my wrong answers into 2 categories, ones I should get right and ones I could get right. As I progressed I could see them reduce and it also narrowed my focus on my weaknesses.

Sections
AWA - I have left this out of the debrief as I haven't received my score, I do feel this was my weakest section. In the exam I missed a key point until the 28th which was screaming out at me and meant I had no time to review my answer.

IR - I found this quite tough to be honest. Some practice tests I scored 9 others I scored 3. In the end I scored 6. I did not dedicate too much time do this because I do feel you on the day of the exam either you get it straight away or you don't. I could have probably done more but in the end its about balancing everything to get the optimum result.

Quant
After Stage 1, I got to my floor pretty quick. I was hitting 46 and 47. After stage 2 and 3 I was hitting 47 and 48 consistently. In the final week I hit a 49 in one practice test but I found that my scores were consistent and I was confident of replicating this result in the exam. I made conscious decision in stage 4 to spend less time on quant because the benefit of improving verbal would have a much larger impact on my overall score.

Verbal
This was my major hurdle, At the start I was really really poor at SC, however the SC bible really helped to learn it and the economist app helped me practice it. CR and RC were a different matter, no matter what I did I had no consistency. I just couldn't work out a technique until the final few days and was stuck on scores of 32-34 until the last 2 days.

What I realised was that all verbal is comprehension. Sentence level, paragraph level and passage level. So to comprehend things, I visualised everything in a cartoon form, usually the Simpsons form. So if it the paragraph was about a Beaver, or a sub atomic particle, that is what I would try and envisage. The next sentence would usually lead then to something else, like the Beaver building a damn or a sub atomic particle colliding with something and that is what I would visualise. This helped my comprehension a lot. Also I realised that for CR, all the information was there for a reason, and the answer will be impacted by it in some way. So if it comes down to 2 or 3 answers, go back to the paragraph and see if there is a innocuous piece of information that is only addressed by one of your answers. These 2 changes right at the end of Stage 4 helped me secure a 38.

Practice Exam Results
I didn't really find much value in the non GMATPREP exams apart from getting a feel for the time pressure and dealing with nerves. The MGMAT Quant was way too hard for me and The economist exams required all these little shortcuts. I did save OG until the last week but in retrospect i think one or two should be done early to get a feel for your weaknesses. Also there is no point doing the additional two exams more then once as the question pool is too shallow. I only hit 710 once before the final exam, but I feel that I was improving all the way until my last study session. Also I know they say the first 5 questions don't matter, but in the tests where I scored less than 700, they all had mistakes in the first 5 questions, so I kept that in the back of my head going into the actual exam.

MGMAT #1 590 (42Q 31V)
MGMAT #2 670 (45Q 36V)
MGMAT #3 700 (45Q 40V)
ECONOMIST #1 560 (41Q 27V)
ECONOMIST #2 640 (48Q 31V)
ECONOMIST #3 650 (46Q 34V)
GMAT PREP #1 700 (48Q 38V)
GMAT PREP #2 660 (47Q 34V)
GMAT PREP EXTRA #1 700 (49Q 35V)
GMAT PREP EXTRA #2 670 (48Q 34V)
GMAT PREP #1A 710 (49Q 39V)

Exam Day
My exam was at 1, I made sure that I went to bed late so I woke up late. I was ridiculously nervous when I woke up at 930. I eventually had a light breakfast, a piece of toast, a banana and water. I got to centre 1 hour early and decided to eat my protein bar and water in the park across the road. I even closed my eyes for 15 minutes. Eventually I got in the centre. Before I started I was relaxed because I genuinely felt that I had done all that I could but then again I was super nervous because I am an awful test taker and felt that I was going to bomb it and get 540!!!!

I felt I got a reasonable AWA passage to discuss, but I missed a key point which I am beating myself over and it meant the time allocated to checking was spent rushing to fit that point in. So I wasn't happy but it was out of the way.

IR had always been hit and miss for me, in my preparations, it felt way too easy or way to hard. In the end, the ones I understood, I got them straight away and the ones I didn't I had no clue and just guessed. On another day I could have got 9 or a 3, so I'll take 6.

BREAK - Protein bar and water

QUANT - I really focused on the first few and I they felt pretty straight forward and then I flew through the rest of the section. On every other occasion I have taken the full 75 minutes, but then next thing I know I had 5 questions to go and still half an hour to spend. I must have spent 10 minutes on 2 of them and about 3 minutes on 3 of them. I finished with 17 minutes to spare. I thought I had must of bombed it because it felt a bit too easy. Anything less than 47 would have been disappointing. It seemed odd at the time and I wasn't too sure what make of it.

BREAK - Lollies, Sprite for one last blood sugar boost

VERBAL - I couldn't really get a feel for how I was doing because there didn't appear to be any discernible change in difficulty. I backed myself and followed the methods I had practiced with and put my faith in my study. I really felt like an athlete for this one, someone who was putting his training into practice on game day.

FINISHED!!!! - I was exhausted and nervous. I thought I had bombed it, especially quant and that I would take it with a grain of salt and be ready next time because I was relieved I had actually completed it once and would be better prepared next time. When my score came up I looked around the page frantically and saw my mark - 710. I was relieved and surprised and I still can't believe. It was over, WOW!

On reflection, I think i could have done even better especially with Quant in which I know there were a few of the tougher topics I skimmed to focus on Verbal, also that I only "got" CR and RC in the last two days. However, I am happy and now its time to focus on my applications.

Finally, Thank you to my wife, without her support (especially taking care of our bub) and faith I would not be able to reach my goal, I love you loads!

Great score!!
Congratzz !! You had a very strong performance on the test day

Regard,

Hi sydguy,

Yes, congrats! That is a great score...now you don't ever have to worry about this test again! And thanks for sharing your thoughts on Economist GMAT Tutor. I'm glad that you were able to use it for verbal and also found the ask a tutor feature useful. I hope that you were also able to schedule some 1:1 tutor sessions with our team of tutors.

The feedback about skipping ahead to more challenging quant questions is helpful too as we're always looking for ways to improve the program.

I also wanted to add that if you haven't reviewed the program under the "Verified GMAT Course Reviews" section of Beat the GMAT, please do! We'll give you a $25 Amazon gift card, and BTG will also give you a $25 gift card. Just in time for the holiday craziness!

Regards,

Elizabeth

Thanks Elizabeth

I tried to write a review through the verified GMAT course Review page however it requires a facebook profile which I don't want to use. If your interested I have written a review here.

In general, for my personal needs, the verbal was great, especially sentence correction, which helped re-enforce rules constantly because I kept doing questions over and over. The CR was good as well, my only complaint on verbal was that the passages were limited so I found myself doing the same ones over and over.

I didn't end up using quant much at all, because I wanted to get to my aptitude quickly and didn't have the time to start from scratch. I did also get put off by the focus on what I call "gmat tricks" which I didn't such as plug in, reverse plug in and ball parking. I think if these are going to be taught, they should be right at the end when the concepts are firmly established. Although these techniques can be used to speed up time, its my view that these should be support functions, not a primary method to solve equations.

The best part for me was the app, I was using it every time I had a spare half an hour on the bus, it seriously helped me a lot. I got through so much of the verbal tutoring just on that and got into some really good habits which were ingrained into me by the time the exam arrived. Fantastic.

The exams were interesting, the quant questions were quite different to gmat and would suit people who applied those gmat tricks I think. In the end it was a pretty fair reflection of my ability. The verbal section I found was strange, I couldn't follow some of the logic in the explanations and for SC there was a lot of answers which were wrong not because of grammar but because of meaning change, which was not my experience with gmat or gmat software.

Overall, I think it was good for me and a worthwhile investment if for nothing except improving my verbal score.

Thanks Elizabeth

I tried to write a review through the verified GMAT course Review page however it requires a facebook profile which I don't want to use. If your interested I have written a review here.

In general, for my personal needs, the verbal was great, especially sentence correction, which helped re-enforce rules constantly because I kept doing questions over and over. The CR was good as well, my only complaint on verbal was that the passages were limited so I found myself doing the same ones over and over.

I didn't end up using quant much at all, because I wanted to get to my aptitude quickly and didn't have the time to start from scratch. I did also get put off by the focus on what I call "gmat tricks" which I didn't such as plug in, reverse plug in and ball parking. I think if these are going to be taught, they should be right at the end when the concepts are firmly established. Although these techniques can be used to speed up time, its my view that these should be support functions, not a primary method to solve equations.

The best part for me was the app, I was using it every time I had a spare half an hour on the bus, it seriously helped me a lot. I got through so much of the verbal tutoring just on that and got into some really good habits which were ingrained into me by the time the exam arrived. Fantastic.

The exams were interesting, the quant questions were quite different to gmat and would suit people who applied those gmat tricks I think. In the end it was a pretty fair reflection of my ability. The verbal section I found was strange, I couldn't follow some of the logic in the explanations and for SC there was a lot of answers which were wrong not because of grammar but because of meaning change, which was not my experience with gmat or gmat software.

Overall, I think it was good for me and a worthwhile investment if for nothing except improving my verbal score.