My entry for BW editor position

By way of this discussion I wish to describe my GMAT journey and share the experience and learning I had on the way. Generally, the GMAT preparation period should last around three to four months, may be a little more in some cases but unfortunately for me it lasted almost eight months. So, I developed a living relationship with GMAT. The reason of this prolonged attachment with GMAT was because of my low score of 620 in the first attempt. I was disheartened that I could not impress the GMAT princess. Though I was exhausted but at the same time I was sure that this is not a true reflection of my abilities and for sure this is not what I deserve. The most important learning I had from this experience is that one should never loose confidence.

As I was distressed, my wife gave me a book titled “Great Failures of the Extremely Successful”, written by Steve Young. This book showed me that failure can be much worse and one has to struggle and fight back to win the race. Reading the book, I realized how famous personalities turned their failures into triumph and lifetime achievements. This book exposed me to the realities of life and taught me to fight them. I realized that stumbling and rising up again is an unmatched path to success and each one of us has to go through this process to cherish the success. I learnt that time spent on worrying over a mistake is a waste of time and instead one should figure out ways to correct the mistake and move on. As I wanted to apply to B schools with a good GMAT score, I decided that I will meet the GMAT princess again and this time will surely impress her. As I understand, if one has impressed the beautiful GMAT princess it becomes a little easier to impress the stunning B-school queen.

Now let us move on to what I did for the preparation, with a hope to be helpful to all prospective GMAT takers. First and the foremost thing is to sit back and think of a strategy. Before I plunged in the preparation for the second attempt, I took some time off to think and rework on my strategy. It is very important to understand one’s strengths and weaknesses, for example I was good at quantitative and critical reasoning (CR) section of GMAT but I was not as good as the GMAT princess wants one to be in sentence correction (SC) and reading comprehension (RC) sections. This implied that I had to practice more on SC and RC.

My reworked strategy was to spend more time on quality rather than on quantity. I realized that I was not comprehensively analyzing and tracking my mistakes. I learnt that I need to scrutinize more and also discuss more with friends. Analyzing the mistakes and making sure not to repeat them was the need of the hour. Earlier, I followed a rule to solve at least thirty SC questions every day (quantitative measure), now the rule changed to not only solving but also analyzing the approach (qualitative measure). I experienced that whether I answer correct or wrong, an analysis is always helpful because sometimes one might get the right answer but with a wrong approach. Now it was not important to solve thirty SC questions every day rather it was more important that how I solved these questions even if that number is fifteen or twenty.

Moreover, I started to study in groups and joined discussion forums where I learnt not only from my own mistakes but also from those of my fellow GMAT aspirants. Working in a group gave me the opportunity to discuss my thoughts and take steps towards converting these thoughts into action. I also realized that my earlier technique to handle the adaptive GMAT exam did not work well. I learnt that the GMAT princess simply loves people who can answer the first eight to ten questions correctly. I refined my approach and started to practice answering the first ten questions correctly in each and every test I appeared. Ensuring that I analyze every mistake and taking notes so as not to repeat the mistakes helped me and I started seeing an improvement in the test scores. Finally, I scheduled a meeting again with the princess and this time made sure she was left with no option than to adore me. I won over her and she gave me a gift worth 750 points.

Now moving to discuss about the resources and methodologies I used. First thing first, "Official Guide to GMAT”, popularly known as OG and available in two versions 10 and 11. Many people say and I second them that this is the bible for GMAT (for Christian friends reading this please pardon me for comparing Bible to any other book). Undoubtedly OG contains everything one needs to know to impress the princess. It talks of everything the princess will be looking for in you and will give you all the necessary pointers to impress her. And why not, after all it is written by the princess herself. Even though OG 11 has lot of questions repeated from OG 10 but the explanations given in OG 11 are more succinct and useful. You might feel that the questions in OG are on an easier side but do not make the impression that the GMAT will be same. These are just sample questions and you are exploring with this book, more for explanations than for questions. I read somewhere that “each and every explanation on OG must be on your finger tips on the G day (the day of your GMAT exam)” and I can vouch for the truthfulness of this statement.

Now the best part, INTERNET. Dive into the plethora of information and catch some gold fish. I mean there is lot of information available on the internet and it is very easy to drown. Try to figure out some discussion forums where like minded people do like minded talks in a like minded fashion. Some of the sites I comprehensively followed were http://www.scoretop.com/, http://www.sentencecorrection.com/ and http://www.testmagic.com/ . For me scoretop was the best friend, even leaving behind my wife in terms of the time I spent with scoretop. For readers who do not know about scoretop, it is a discussion forum where people come and discuss each other’s problems, share thoughts and also discuss how they managed to impress the princess.

As I have learnt in my application process, that when it comes to extra curricular or community service activities, the B school queen is not looking for mere participation but one’s contribution to make a difference. So while reading the posts on these forums, participate actively. May be people can learn a lot from you and you land up writing this contribution of yours in one of the essay topics. Reading various posts and solving different questions will be a good pointer to determine the direction you need to take your preparation. Another advantage of these forums is that the posts contain questions which either someone could not solve or some magnanimous person wanted to share with others. This simply helps because, on an average, you will work on difficult questions.

Coming back to study material. Apart from OG, there is loads of other material like Kaplan, Princeton, Manhattan guide to sentence correction, Barrons, Power prep, Novas, 800score.com, Crack GMAT, GMAT soft and the list continues. If time is something you have plenty of you can go through all of the above but otherwise pick one or two and move on. From my experience, I found “Manhattan guide to Sentence Correction” the best of all, as it explains the common errors our beloved GMAT princess will be looking for. Simply an amazing book for people like me who do not want to read Wren and Martin. Do not run corners finding these materials. If you are exploring www.scoretop.com properly, you will find all the relevant and good material as part of some of the discussion thread.

That brings me to an end describing about my sojourn from a score of 620 to 750. I believe that three most important qualities required to succeed in GMAT are strong determination, perseverance and relentless hard work.

I wish everybody good luck.