GMAT Prep Discussions 2019

MY Background

I previously worked as a consultant (almost 1 year) and later joined my family business (franchise Samsung Electronics) (since 2015) as a business development manager to Admin Head so I had WAY more time here.

Post-MBA goals: I will transform and expand my family business so it stops dealing with very controversial products.

GMAT background
I am a non-native but an international educated kid so my reading comprehension fairs a little bit better. My math sucks ball. I had to relearn basic arithmetic.

I took the test on (November 17, 2019) and walked out the room as if I was possessed by a ghost! I have been hoping for above 700, but didn't think that I could achieve that good of a score. Considering that I only had one and half month to prepare for second attempt with first attempt scoring 640.

Notes: IT IS POSSIBLE TO IMPROVE FROM A 640! And it is very possible to go from 640 -> 720 within 6 weeks!!!!! Do not give up!

640 (Q37,V34) -> 720 (Q47, V46)

Materials I used along the way in chronological order:

- MBAWizards entire study material

- OG18
- Powerscore Bible for CR/SC/RC
- GMAT Prep software (EVERY THING)
- 6 weeks of pain, sweat, blood, and tear

GMAT Strategies

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Overall Strategy:
What truly made the difference for me is the way I approach the questions during practice. For each question I did wrong, I will do it 3 - 4 times until I get it right. I will then perform what I call error analysis where the faulty at institute played a very vital role in helping me identifying what did I do wrong and how to prevent it and structure analysis (understand what the question is testing) of the questions. Once I completed the analysis, I redo the questions again in different ways but this time the methods must be under one minute. This allowed me to have a huge arsenal of ways to attack the problems. Versatility is key.

Quant Strategy (Q37 -> Q47)

- Know what they are asking for and what you should look for
- Know what concepts they are taking & what possible traps they're trying to throw in your face
- Know to use shortcuts & number testing
- Use different strategies to approach the questions
- Dump the question you have no CLUE
- Learn to TRIAGE and understand answer choice patterns!
- Ditch the AD/BCE grid

It was MBA Wizards that allowed me to hit the Q47 within 6 weeks. In order to get to this score, they first suggested me to familiarize myself with the basic concept of maths and be a 100% accurate for questions 1 - 200 for PS in the OG

I struggled most with basic arithmetic. MBA Wizards foundation maths was all I need to get myself back to speed. The little tips and tricks they gave during the classes helped me realize math shortcuts. institute helped me see that on certain types of questions, there is no need to go FULL ON CALCULATE you can basically erase choices or test the numbers. TESTING THE NUMBERS MADE THE DIFFERENCE HERE.

Most of the concept they teach during the course, if you understand and consumed it all, I bet you'd hit a Q51. What made the difference for this course was its in depth analysis on the type of MISTAKES you could make and THE TRAPS that the test writers created. I was able to hit Q47 only because of Manthan Mehodology.

On one small note, I want to suggest the elimination of AD/BCE grid. To me this is a waste of time, why? Because you should be focusing on the statements rather than eliminating questions that writing so many strokes down on paper. Strokes = time and time is of the essence in GMAT.

So what did I do for DS questions? Since MBA Wizards made me work on SO MANY QUESTIONS, my brain automatically tells me which choices to choose.

Verbal Strategy (V34 -> V46)

- Know the common traps and wrong questions!!
- Know how to identify what types of questions you are dealing with
- Read a lot of books/articles
- Practice practice practice
- Always ask yourself: is this answer debatable

Verbal was the toughest to improve for me but going from V34 - V46 in 6 weeks is possible and I encourage everyone to not lose hope. With that being said, I'm still pretty much in the dark between the V34 - V46, 12 point jump but I can definitely shed light on breaking the V3 barrier.

V34 is quite achievable if you understand the basic concepts of SC/CR and RC. By basic concepts, I mean knowing the possibilities of what could be tested on the test day. However, I want to stress that the BEST material for tackling GMAT verbal is official GMAT material on which was emphasized a lot during the learning days.

From V34 – V46, Teachers at institute suggested that I start focusing on questions that I GOT WRONG and perform analysis on why the hell I messed up. At first when you approach verbal questions, all you would feel is "oh my gosh they all look the same and it all looks right WHY" and that is something you should be happy about. This reaction means that you can STILL TRAIN your brain to detect the subtle differences that makes an answer right or wrong. Always go through what you did wrong and find ways to prevent those mistakes. ALWAYS.

V34 - V46 for me took a lot of practices. As someone who has taken IN A LOT OF STUDY MATERIALS, I would say hands down course structure was the best. Nothing beats these guys for teaching you the basic concepts. However, in order to take things to a different level, you need to be able to come up with understanding of your own and apply them rigorously. The reason I am saying this is because MBAWizards question bank helped me out the most in developing my understanding.

For SC
I took their 100 SC question bank and did it religiously... I think each question took me a good 15 minutes. The best part about institute was they helped me highlight ALL THE POSSIBLE entry points I can go in to tackle the questions. Doing such exercises allowed me to apply what I learned from them, my own terms. I'll probably buy the ESR for my 740 score just to see how well I did there. SC is the easiest section you can improve on!

For CR

QUESTION TYPES. QUESTION TYPES. QUESTION TYPES. Learn religiously to apply how to approach different question types. You need to be able to straight up read the questions stem and go in your head OH THIS IS WEAKEN, OH THIS IS INFERENCE! This radar allowed me to pre-prep in my brain what type of wrong answers I will face. This allowed me to eliminate a lot of unnecessary answers.

However, to select the right answer is a little bit different. When I manage to POE to 2 answer choices, instead of asking myself which one is correct, I asked 'which one can I debate into oblivion'. BOOM. Right answer up top.

Another thing I did for the last 2 weeks before the 2nd try was go through MBAWizards questions and for each question type, I try to categorize what the test takers were trying to test you. For example, I found that an assumption type question comes in forms of sampling errors (population must be representative), causation-effect errors (cause must lead to effect). Of course, I made those terms up so I can better remember what GMAT was trying to do.

For RC
First and foremost, find the reading strategy that is right for you. What I learnt @ MBA Wizards was reading through everything, jotting down summaries of what I read, and pausing after every paragraph to tell myself what the hell the author is trying to get me to think.

Second, understand the question types that are tested. One of the good things about RC is that there's an overlap with CR's inference type questions. So what I did was pour myself into understanding how to best tackle inference questions. If answers are not written in the passage in anyway or form IT IS WRONG!!! Also a tip for main purpose/passage idea type questions, learn the verbs that the questions use (analyze, summarize, argue, contended) and map those words to passages. I became very familiar with how passages are structure to convey a certain message because of this analysis. I think I knock main purpose/passage idea out into the ocean.

IR Strategy (3 - 6)
I just got lucky with the questions. The last one I got on my second exam were majorly quant and all I had to do was plug in numbers! I think if you are quite comfortable with CR and Quant then you should be fine. No sweat. If you want to study, I suggest MBAWizards material and GMATprep question bank

AWA (Between 5.0 - 6.0)
The template that institute teach is key to god. Seriously, memorize that template and use your CR skills to figure out how stupid the argument sounds.

Time Management

Another best part of MBAWizards was that they emphasis a lot on time management techniques too. There were many, few them i have listed below

1. Redo the QUESTIONS YOU HAVE in less than one minute. Redoing means writing everything down on paper to reach the answer not just randomly pointing to the right one because you remember it.
2. Basic concepts first, then time yourself later!
3. Practice. Practice. Practice.
4. I suggest you throw away the AD/BCE grid and go with using lines ( - - - - - ) vertically to eliminate your questions

Stamina
I built stamina through doing questions for 3 - 6 hours a day almost continuously for the first 3 months. After that I studied 2 hours a day because it was a bit too much. You've just gotta train yourself the same way someone trains to build abs.

Things I started doing that contributed to a higher score:

- Every time I take CAT I will analyze EVERY SINGLE QUESTION and ANSWER CHOICES
- be distract free in the exam room, use an ear plug. Seriously, in every exam I went to someone would SIGH VERY LOUDLY!
- Faculty helped me perform structure and error analysis EVERY DAMN TIME, www.mbawizards.co.in

- redoing the old questions
- be 100% correct on ALL easy questions and 75 - 80% on hard questions
- binge watching TV shows so I become stress free
- be okay with making stupid mistakes but learn to correct them rigorously
- review previous errors and how to avoid them every day
- move on to harder questions ONLY WHEN YOU GET EASY ONES CORRECT!!

Overall I would like to say that other than exam strategies, your own psychological well being is also important. Always give yourself a break and don't fear failure. Embrace the opportunity to learn and grow from the mistakes you get and you WILL CRUSH THE GMAT.

hi 

 Many of us have not been great at taking standardized exams. Therefore when they see their score, they are pleasantly surprised. Reasons can be any, some students are slow test taker and require a lot of time on exams and they usually complain of not finishing the exam on time and some students wrongly focus on topics or stuff which pull them down from their target score. So for those of you who are not hitting your desired scores, here are few tips which could be handy 

Don't focus on extremely tough or out of the ordinary questions Yes, it is good to gain an understanding of every question type if you have the time and capability to do so. However, it unnecessary if your goal is to simply achieve a score of 700+ (as opposed to 770). It is best to focus on the major Concepts and questions where you are required to apply these concepts. The most important questions to know are the ones where we see the concepts repeatedly in many other OFFICIAL questions. Any question that you come across that is testing some obscure concept that you never seen tested in any other question is probably not worth your time getting more than a basic understanding of. Unique question types or one-off tricks are a waste of your time and it will be a rare chance if you actually get tested on it during the real test. You cannot possibly prepare for every question type that the exam makers will throw at you. Better to spend most your time studying the most tested concepts or question types rather than spend 80% studying questions that have a 2% chance of occurring. 

Hardest Challenges, Brutal Questions, etc To drill the above point into your heads, We also suggest not to waste time on those brutal questions, hardest impossible challenges, or whatever else they manifest themselves as if you want to study efficiently (unless you are a nerd genius who won't settle for any less than a 770+). One perfect example is the some Brutal SC questions, which many of us have would have seen during our preparation. This is the biggest waste of time imaginable. At best it will waste a few hours of your valuable study time. At worse, it could be detrimental to your score, as you will be carefully studying questions that are not even from official GMAC sources and may be questionably written. 

You do not need to get every question correct to get a good score, not even close This point kind of follows my point above that one should not focus on studying really tough or out of the ordinary questions. If you see a question on the test that you simply don't know how to do or never seen before, don't bother wasting time spinning your head on it. Chances are likely that you will waste a considerable amount of time thinking about it or freaking out about it, and then end up guessing or working it through just to get it wrong anyway. Better to just skip the question and save the time for something you CAN do. You can afford to skip questions and still get a 700+ on the exam. NEVER EVER waste time on questions you don't know how to tackle. Try to eliminate some of  the choices is possible, and then take an educated guess, and move on. Also, to add During practice, We have always found students scrambling toward the end. Below We have listed some tips, broken down by section that would help you reach your target verbal score.

 Sentence Corrections The biggest topics covered on this test are parallelism, subject/verb agreement, singular/plural usage, and idioms. In any sentence there can be any combination of these appearing at once. Learn these well, especially if you're not a native speaker. When you read the sentence, spend 10-15 seconds pre-thinking the possible flaw or flaws in the sentence. If the answer isn't "A", then there will likely be more than one flaw. Read each of the 5 answer choices. Look for what we like to call "3- 2 splits" (though I'm sure other people call it that too). For example, if the first word of 3 of the answer choices is "was" and the other two say "were", then you know that you can eliminate a good number of choices right away. There were several questions in each practice exam (and on the real thing) where I was able to 3-2 split my way to the correct answer without even thinking too hard about the sentence. 

Critical Reasoning On the GMAT, CR is really just made up of conclusion, strengthen, weaken, and assumption. So the GMAT actually goes over an easier subset of questions and you'd be better off just studying GMAT practice tests. Pre-think the flaws to the question before you even look at the answer choices. This will help you determine the right answer choice much more quickly. Read the other answer choices to make sure there isn't an answer that better matches the answer you pre-thought. 

Reading Comprehension READ THE ENTIRE PASSAGE. Way too many test prep companies think that you can read the question and then simply scan the passage for the line that has the answer in it. This is such a bad way to approach the reading comp section, for a number of reasons. First, there's no way you can get the global questions confidently right unless you really read the whole thing to understand the point. The main point may not be in the first paragraph or the last, but might be buried in the supporting paragraphs. Additionally, when reading an "EXCEPT" question, students tend to eliminate answer choices simply because the words from the answer choice are in the passage. This is dangerous, as these types of answer choices need to be highly contextualized. And the best way to contextualize is just to bite the bullet and read the whole god damn passage. 

You don't have to solve the data sufficiency questions, but if you have time, it helps. This one is a trickier one, since a lot of tip pages will say that you should try not to solve the actual problem if you can avoid it. Solving the problem wastes time, it may throw you off, etc. What we teach is slightly different. This is extremely important; as it helps you confirm your answer and be confident in it. But if you're pressed for time, then we don't suggest this.  Also, The problem can usually be reduced to something simpler. i.e. If the question is asking "if X and Y are both integers, is x-y-5 > x+y+3?" You might look at the problem and say "ok, I have two variables so I either need to equations or two variables." The problem is you can reduce the inequality as follows: Subtract X from both sides -------> (-x)+x-y-5>(-x)+x+y+3 = y-5>y+3 Add Y to both sides -------> (+y)-y-5 > (+y)+y+3 = -5>2y+3 Add 5 to both sides -------> (+5)-5 > (+5)+2y+3 = 0 > 2y+8 You know have "if X and Y are both integers, is 0 > 2y+8?" X is irrelevant now. All you need to know is y and you can solve for the inequality. Reducing the equation lets you know "what do I really need to solve this" This will improve your chances of solving the most difficult questions easily 

TAKE YOUR TIME You should go slowly, in order to (a) make sure you read the question properly, and (b) make sure you didn't miss a negative sign or something like that when solving the problem. 

Exam anxiety For those who have it, this can affect your performance on test day if you let it. Just take some deep slow breathes prior to the exam. Sometimes doing few jumping jacks or pushups to let out some stress can be effective. Either way, you need to make sure you're in the right state of mind PRIOR to the exam. Be confident and tell yourself that it's just a test; it's really not the end of the world. Retakes are always available if needed. If stuck on a question, don't panic. As I've mentioned above, you do not even need to get close to getting every question right to get a decent score. Just skip the question and move on unless you think you will able to figure it out. 

Am really grateful to www.mbawizards.co.in for the support and guidance they provided sans that I would not be able to understand important points which I just explained to you.

I was able to combat exam anxiety as in a testing phase they throw full mocks randomly and of different difficulty levels till a student reaches potential. They teach in unique study circle styles which in turn help in combating my shyness in group discussion and gaining confidence, from 660 to 770.