The Tutoring Difference - From a 510 to a 650 to a 720 - The Beat The GMAT Forum

Studying for and ultimately taking the GMAT was quite a project for me-a six year one in fact. Okay, six years is a bit melodramatic, but in all seriousness, although I first took a course with Veritas Prep after graduating college in 2008, I did not achieve a competitive GMAT score until the beginning of 2014. Following the advice of my colleagues back in late 2007, I decided to study for the GMAT during my second semester of senior year in college to avoid the challenge studying for the test while working in my first full-time job as an investment banker in New York City. I took a Veritas Prep course and despite studying rigorously for six months I achieved a well below average score of a 510. The only highlight from the test was that I received perfect scores on both of my essays.

My conclusion during that summer of 2008 was that graduate school and an accompanying MBA degree were a lost cause. Despite my near perfect undergraduate GPA, I figured that my test scores would never be near competitive enough to land me into a top MBA program or into any MBA program. After all, I was still the same person who received a very average 1180 on his SATs in high school.

After several years passed, I finally got the point in my professional career where I needed to think about moving to the next level in my industry. While my dream of pursuing an MBA from a top program resurfaced, so did the unsettling thought of needing to retake the GMAT. I knew that I had to give an MBA serious thought as a means of enhancing my development in finance and my mentors agreed.

After several weeks of contemplation, I summed up the courage to take another course with Veritas Prep, though this time I took the pre-recorded online version. After running through the course material for the last three months of 2012, I then buckled down for intense studying during the first four months of 2013. I meticulously completed the book work in the Veritas program along with all the online quizzes and the more than ten GMAT practice exams provided. Although my practice test scores (620-690) showed dramatic improvement from my actual score back in the summer of 2008, I decided to spend an additional month studying the Official GMAC Guide along with the supplemental verbal and quantitative guides. Despite my final practice exam score of a 700, I performed in the lower middle of my practice test range on the day of the test scoring a 650 (44Q and 36V).

As one can expect, my frustration boiled over and I put the books down for three weeks. Two personal trips across the country and a significant increase deal flow later, I started studying to retake the exam again in mid-August, but knew that I would not have a chance to get a competitive GMAT score-a 700 or higher-unless I began to study smarter. After getting advice form a colleague who had been admitted to HBS a few months before, I decided to hire a tutor. I interviewed several tutoring candidates on Craigslist, but ultimately decided to use Jeff Miller due his experience and to the well-organized and rigorous course work he offered. Also, I could tell that Jeff was someone who also had to work at becoming a great quantitative test taker; this fact was a huge positive to me because I knew that he would understand how to put himself in my shoes and guide me through my many struggles.

I first started working with Jeff on standard topics like number properties and quadratics. As I found more time to study the online course work offered by Target Test Prep, however, I was able to direct Jeff to my particular areas of difficultly. As work in my job kicked up for its final end of the year push, though, I contemplated quitting my GMAT studies and my subsequent MBA hopes several times. There was a period when I would not even get back to Jeff for several weeks due to my intense work load. Nevertheless, as I found more pockets of time, I continued to press through the online course work. Upon completing all the online material, I reconnected with Jeff toward the end of 2013 and we worked vigorously on my many problem areas-most notably the advanced number property questions. My practice GMAT quantitative scores ultimately improved up to as high as a 48. The only area holding me back from the 700 range was my low verbal results.

While Jeff was very good at giving me the basics on how to strategically approach critical reasoning, I did not become fully comfortable and competent in the verbal section until Jeff introduced me to Neil Lukatch. Even though I was on a tight deadline-I was introduced to Neil at the end of December and was supposed to take the GMAT in about a month-Neil dissected my weaknesses and took me through the intricacies of sentence correction and critical reasoning questions. By the time I took my actual GMAT exam, I was able to spot key words that helped me avoid incorrect traps in inference and strengthen/weaken critical reasoning questions. Furthermore, my biggest issues on sentence correction-identifying pronoun and parallelism errors-were largely ameliorated.

Thanks to hours of assistance from both Jeff and Neil, I managed to achieve a 720 (49Q, 40v) on the actual exam and as a result feel that I am now a competitive candidate for admission to a top MBA program. I would advise anyone serious about achieving a top score on the GMAT to speak to both Jeff and Neil immediately. They will help you study efficiently, and most importantly, realize your full potential on the day of the GMAT exam.

The Tutoring Difference - From a 510 to a 650 to a 720

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