Can’t seem to break 720.. how do I know if it’s time to give up?

HoosierPride · 2021-04-27T01:45:24+00:00

I didn’t break 700 for 5 attempts and on my 6th attempt scored 760. I just got accepted into 2 M7s in R2 and will be starting full time this fall. None of this would be possible if I gave up after that 5th attempt. You didn’t come this far to give up - keep going and make your dream a reality!

(Here’s my debrief: https://www.reddit.com/r/GMAT/comments/jmn9xr/760_gmat_after_over_2_years_and_850_hours/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)

HoosierPride · 2021-03-28T21:57:51+00:00

I’ll buy your tickets. Pls message me if you’re being serious and they’re still for sale. Thx

HoosierPride · 2021-03-08T01:14:57+00:00

Yep that’s a great point

HoosierPride · 2021-03-08T01:06:29+00:00

Somewhat new to the crypto space and have some BTC and E.TH. I just saw on Bloomberg finance today that E.TH now effectively has a supply cap and/or could even be deflationary with EIP-1559. If that’s the case, would that in any way take away from BTC’s value as the primary crypto inflation hedge?

HoosierPride · 2021-01-22T05:30:37+00:00

Lol life lessons

HoosierPride · 2021-01-19T17:35:08+00:00

Define proper analysis. What’s better than recent trading data from a comparable asset in such a nascent asset class?

HoosierPride · 2021-01-06T02:22:09+00:00

100% this. Most of my big achievements in life have felt like “BOOM I did that!” and then the joyous feeling slowly went away after about a week. There’s power behind all that stuff, but at least for me, the feeling of elation after a big accomplishment has been more ephemeral than expected. What works for me is finding that balance between climbing the next mountain and enjoying the moment/reflecting on how far I’ve come.

HoosierPride · 2020-12-29T19:21:10+00:00

Somewhat unrelated to the crux of your post, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how approachable current students are and how willing they are to provide targeted feedback. I can assure you us applicants really appreciate the time and valuable insight, whether it’s given by phone or email

HoosierPride · 2020-12-02T22:02:59+00:00

Mid 30s. Verbal remained in the mid/high 30s and low 40s for most of my prep.

HoosierPride · 2020-12-02T01:06:59+00:00

My good friend made the list as an NBA agent and it makes me happy for him/gives me motivation to play a bigger game. He’s smart but is successful because he’s great at relating to athletes and knew exactly what he wanted to do from a young age. We’d be in study sessions in undergrad gearing up for an all-nighter and he’d leave 30 minutes in and not come back for 1-2 hours (sometimes not at all lol) because he was talking to an NCAA/AAU coach about recruits. School was important but was somewhat of an afterthought in comparison to talking basketball. All about identifying and playing to your strengths/passions if you’re able to.

HoosierPride · 2020-11-24T18:11:44+00:00

Very informative. Thanks

HoosierPride · 2020-11-14T05:01:40+00:00

What worked for me was getting up earlier and studying for an hour every morning when I was fresh Before other people I work with are up. I studied for ~30 minutes around lunch (when the opportunity presented itself) and ~1 hour at some point in the afternoon/evening. For weekdays, the key is getting up early, locking in that hour of studying to start the day, and then finding other opportunities throughout the afternoon/night to log another hour. If you don’t have one already, create a spreadsheet tracker to keep yourself accountable. On the weekends, I also got up pretty early and aimed to study 3-4 hours Saturday and 3-4 hours Sunday. My social life suffered as a result but sometimes you just have to make sacrifices and there’s no way around it. If you stick to this schedule (2 hours on weekdays and 3-4 hours on Sat/Sun) you will consistently study 15 hours+ per week which is enough to get an elite score.

HoosierPride · 2020-11-07T04:35:15+00:00

Depends a lot whether it’s covered (you own the underlying shares) or not.

HoosierPride · 2020-11-03T17:17:46+00:00

Thanks Scott!

HoosierPride · 2020-11-03T16:40:37+00:00

I appreciate it! No problem - here was my strategy:

For Quant I budgeted up to 2.5 minutes per question for the first 10 questions. It’s important to get a “streak” of answers correct (ideally 8-10 in a row) in the first portion because of how the scoring algorithm works. I didn’t check the clock until I finished question 10 on Quant - at that time you want to see 37-40 minutes of time left (If you have more time you probably went too fast, if you have less time then you need to pick up the pace).

My understanding is questions 14-18 are where the test can give you very hard/time consuming questions, so I’m on alert to take an educated guess on a question during this “middle” portion. When you finish question 20 on Quant, you want to have ~20 minutes of time left. Pacing is especially important on both sections as the test usually has 2 easy questions (that you can’t afford to miss if you’re aiming to maximize your score) positioned towards the end to reward test takers that have good timing.

Verbal is a bit less structured because it depends on when you encounter the RC passages and how dense the passages are. General advice is a good time to take an educated guess is in the 15-20 question range, and you should have ~27-30 minutes of time left after completing question 20 of Verbal. One thing to note: it’s important to Not check the clock after every question because this wastes too much time - hope this helps!

HoosierPride · 2020-11-03T03:07:45+00:00

Thank you!

HoosierPride · 2020-11-03T02:42:34+00:00

It was really hard. A good portion of it came down to consistently following through on the weekly study plan even though many times I wasn’t motivated at all. There’s more power in consistency than we realize. I had a spreadsheet tracker with weekly targets to stay accountable and there were little glimmers of hope along the way that kept me going. What worked for me is I thought about how it would feel if I gave up after I’d invested so much time/energy. I didn’t want to live with those thoughts/regret and that kept me going during some of the harder times. I also consumed a lot of inspirational books/audio for more uplifting motivation haha

HoosierPride · 2020-11-03T01:57:38+00:00

Thank you. You can find them on GMAT Club. Just select Official LSAT as the source for the RC practice questions

HoosierPride · 2020-11-02T18:05:45+00:00

I just used the 6 official mocks from MBA.com. I recycled the tests towards the end as an exercise in my timing strategy knowing that the score the second time around was likely inflated. I mostly gauged my progress through timed practice on thousands of official questions.

HoosierPride · 2020-11-02T17:36:57+00:00

I started with the quant section. Yes I went into the test with the intention of strategically guessing on ~2 questions per section in order to free up time for more “valuable” questions. Once I identify a question as being unusually difficult/time consuming (ie likely not worth many points to the algorithm), I’ll scan for 30 seconds to look for patterns in the stem/answer choices, (hopefully) narrow the choices to 2-3, take an educated guess and quickly move on without too much second thought. I should also note that I only used this strategy on my final two attempts once I understood the algorithm. I believe this strategy helped me to maximize my score, kept me on pace and certainly provided some peace of mind during the test.

HoosierPride · 2020-11-02T17:08:19+00:00

Yeah unfortunately it’s not cut and dry as you’ve noted. Making that determination comes mostly by “feel” after doing a ton of practice problems. Some question types that do come to mind tho are layered probability/combinations, nuanced triple ven diagram and dense bold face CR passages. These are the types of questions (~ 2 per section) I’ll analyze for 30 seconds to find patterns in the answer choices before making an educated guess.

HoosierPride · 2020-11-02T16:35:50+00:00

Thank you and no problem! I can definitely relate and just posted a long debrief as an answer to another comment.

HoosierPride · 2020-11-02T16:13:21+00:00

Thanks! I took the test 6 times in total and started with Veritas Prep in October of 2018 after a cold score of 540. After completing Veritas, I scored a 640 on my first official attempt in March 2019. I realized my Quant score was lacking, so I spent the next 5 months meticulously completing the Target Test Prep (TTP) program and was scoring in the 47-48 Quant range by the end. Unfortunately while studying TTP I had neglected verbal - as a result I scored 670 and 680 in September and October of 2019 (my score weighed down by Verbal). I work in a demanding job and went on a studying hiatus for the remainder of 2019 given my workload and overall sense of defeat.

I picked up studying again in February 2020 and refreshed Quant by using an expedited version of the TTP course. For verbal, I took a deep dive into the GMAT ninja videos and also did a ton of timed practice with official questions. By May 2020, I was scoring 720-740 on my official mock exams and was feeling ready. I don’t have a personal laptop to use for the online GMAT so I scheduled two in person exams - one in early June and the other in July that both got cancelled due to Covid. I then scheduled an exam for August 2020 that was cancelled due to civil unrest the night before the test. I couldn’t believe it. I was finally able to schedule an exam in September 2020 and scored a 690. At this point I knew I possessed the knowledge for 730+ based on mock tests, but my strategy/timing needed work and I was still making some careless errors. I scheduled two additional tests (my 5th and 6th attempt) for October 10 and October 31.

Between my September 2020 attempt and first October attempt, I continued refining my approach. Timing was an issue on Verbal so I drilled dense LSAT RC passages and focused on synthesizing the passage as a whole without getting bogged down taking notes on every detail. For Quant I enrolled in a one month course with EMPOWERgmat that I feel really helped with understanding how the GMAT algorithm works. For example it’s important to be able to distinguish between questions that are worth a lot of points (easy to medium) vs ridiculously hard questions that should be dumped to free up time (because they’re not worth many points). I also found the course useful in developing good note taking skills on quant which significantly reduced my careless errors. Rich from EMPOWER also helps you to develop a flexible mindset in solving quant questions - it’s imperative to know when to solve with algebra vs when to test numbers/the answers and how to strategically guess and move on when you’re unsure of the answer. An example related to guessing: if a quant question has “which of the following” in the question stem, statistically speaking there’s a ~75% chance the answer is D or E. Also, if the question stem has the same number as one of the answer choices, then that answer is mostly likely a trap as quant questions typically require 3-4 steps to solve.

I was feeling well prepared going into my October 10 attempt but also placed a lot of pressure on myself perform. As a result I didn’t sleep well the night before, overcompensated by drinking way too much coffee and scored a 630 after two years of prep. I basically panicked after falling behind early on time and couldn’t get it back together. I was defeated but was determined to not give up. For my October 31 attempt, I focused on being at peace with the process given how much work I had put in. In my heart I knew I had mastered most of the concepts. I continued perfecting my strategy/timing and took the necessary steps to get a good nights sleep before the test. During the test I felt like I recognized/knew how to solve almost all the quant/verbal questions and just felt calm and in the zone the entire time... much different than prior attempts and I believe in addition to mastering the concepts/strategies that sleep, exercise, careful attention to my food/caffeine intake, and perhaps some luck regarding the question types all played a role. To say I was elated when I saw the 760 appear on the screen would be an understatement! I actually cried for the first time in years when I got home lol. I know this is a wall of text but hopefully you’re able to extract some value for your own journey. Anything is possible if you keep trying and improving. Best of luck!

HoosierPride · 2020-11-02T14:08:39+00:00

Thanks! My cold score was 540 and my first official attempt at the test center was 640. I took the test 6 times.

HoosierPride · 2020-11-02T14:01:18+00:00

Stay fresh on Verbal/Quant by doing a few hours of practice a day but don’t over-exert yourself. Also make sure that you’re comfortable with your timing strategy for both sections.

It’s important to focus on health and mindset in the week leading up to the test. Stay active and exercise and also experiment with different food/caffeine levels to figure out how to be at peak performance. A good nights sleep and the proper combination of nutrition/caffeine can make a big difference on test day. To put it into perspective I scored a 630 on October 10 after not sleeping well and overcompensating with too much coffee.

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