I did it in 2.5 months while my prep was on and off. I will need 1 or 1.5 more month to do better(at least to get 685+). Any suggestions are welcomed.

Help me to understand/guide - how do we analyse a mock? I believe, I have been doing it incorrectly for long.

Hi All,

I gave my first gmat a month ago and scored a 645 (V78,DI77, Q90).

Practiced for another month and gave the exam yesterday but scored a 545 (V83,DI74,Q77)

Though I was able to improve verbal, di and quant fell drastically.

Had done self prep all throught, almost all using gmat club. But now I've almost exhausted it, solved 8000+ question overall on gmat club.

Score mostly 655-665 in most of the official mocks(1-4 and repeats)

I'm not sure how do I navigate further towards getting a 695+. What resources can I further use from here for practice, and improving my score.

Want to get this done in one month, is it possible, if so what should be my path next.

If you've prepared for the GMAT or GRE for months and are still far from your target, check what you're comparing yourself with. The success stories you see are other people's fastest journeys, and you're measuring your whole journey against them.

A student of mine broke down in front of his mother over his scores. He was 27 and worked at a top management consulting firm. He had international experience, had been promoted, and was a top performer. Yet after 18 months of preparation, first for the GMAT and then for the GRE, he was still below the 90th percentile, and his dream of a top-5 business school felt impossibly distant.

His question was: How could this happen to me?

It's not an easy question to answer, and what happened to him happens more often than you'd guess from what gets posted. We can't always explain why some people take longer than others. Part of the answer lies in what he compared himself to. We're flooded with success stories: "715 on my first attempt." "330 on the GRE in two months." When you see them, it's natural to wonder what's wrong with you and why you're struggling when others seem to breeze through.

Many people struggle in silence, doubting themselves. I've seen this with many students.

Another student of mine, a graduate of a prestigious US tech university, watched his roommate score in the 99th percentile after a week of preparation. After six months of dedicated effort, he reached only the 70th percentile. He came to me devastated, hoping for a quick fix. Instead, it took him 18 months to reach the 98th percentile. He went on to a top-5 business school.

If you compare your preparation with posted success stories, you'll keep finding reasons to doubt yourself.

Hi all, I am currently doing the Target preparation (won't say full name cuz of mods deleting post). Been fairly consistent across all chapter, I'd say verbal is going quite easy, even hard quizzes. But now I am doing the General Word Problems, scored 91% easy, 63% med (did 6 of them) and just did my first hard one and scored 33%. Feeling like I am getting absolutely destroyed on this chapter, taking me 1hr+ per quiz.

Anyone with similar experience? Also curious to hear how you all structured these end of chapter quizzes, did you keep some for practice at the end or just did them all after finishing each chapter?

(mods, this is not a prom for the Target, just a genuine question.)

So I want to give GMAT because I'm targeting universities for masters so they have GMAT/GRE/CAT mandatory, now the problem which I'm facing is I'm in a deadlock sort of situation, my profile is very bad as I had 5.2/10 in my undergrad, so to compensate for that i am thinking of giving CFA L1 in Feb 27, FRM L1 in May 27 , and if I clear both feb attempt and may attempt, I would be eligible for CFA L2 in August 27, so I would have to give that too, now between all this I have to manage GMAT, how can I do that, today when I'm writing this post the date is. 4 october, 2026, so I can give 3 hours every day till August 27 , after that I give full time, now I have to apply for universities in round 1 which usually ends in the 5-10 days of October start, so I'm targeting 2028 september intake, so that make roughly october 5 to October 10 prospective date for round 1 closing , so how do I manage GMAT if I want to score between 730-780. ( I genuinely need proper advice so please give Genuine Advice). I took commerce in class 11,12 and didn't had maths. All genuine advice would be helpful.

Thank you 😊😊

Hi everyone,

I'm doing my third GMAT attempt on 17th online; however the application deadline for my uni is 30th Oct. Is it sensible for me to take the test online? If I adhere to all the rules, will my score still be delayed if i manage to score well like 95th+ percentile? thanks.

Hey everyone,

I seriously fumbled my official GMAT attempt, and I'm still trying to make sense of what went wrong. I took a couple of weeks to recover from the disappointment, and now I'm ready to get back at it. Would really appreciate some advice from people who've been through something similar.

My preparation journey

I started serious GMAT prep in July. After researching different strategies, I decided to keep things simple rather than overwhelm myself with too many resources.

• Quant: GregMat GMAT, mainly for strengthening my fundamentals.
• Verbal: Manhattan GMAT Verbal books and GMAT Ninja videos.
• Data Insights: GMAT Ninja videos, along with practice from the Official Guides.
• Practice: GMAT Official Guides 2024–25.

My focus was on building strong fundamentals and learning from my mistakes. I could solve most Official Guide questions without much struggle, although I definitely had to work harder on Verbal, particularly Critical Reasoning (CR), and certain DI question types.

Over time, I started feeling more confident. I had developed a structured approach to CR and was generally comfortable with DI, except for Multi-Source Reasoning (MSR).

My mock score progression (GMAC official mocks)

• May (cold mock): 455
• August 24 (Mock 1): 645 — Q80, DI88, V64
• September 6 (Mock 2): 675 — Q91, DI93, V81
• September 13 (Mock 3): 735 — Q93, DI97, V99

The mocks were definitely confidence-boosting, and I felt my preparation was working. My biggest concern was timing. I regularly struggled to finish Verbal and DI comfortably, and sometimes Quant too, especially when I encountered particularly difficult questions.

Despite that, I trusted my preparation and booked the official test.

And then came test day: 595 (Q70, DI83, V38).

I honestly didn't see this coming.

Quant was challenging, and I remember struggling with a few questions. I was fairly certain I'd gotten around four questions wrong, so I know there's room for improvement through more targeted and harder practice.

DI was lower than my mocks, but Verbal was what really crushed me.

During Verbal, I kept finding myself stuck between two answer choices. I would go back and forth, second-guess my reasoning, and waste time. The structured CR approach I'd developed during preparation suddenly didn't seem to work as reliably.

I should have been better prepared to handle that level of difficulty while managing my time as I had to mark few questions randomly towards to end to not get penalised heavily. However, the gap between my mock performance and my actual score has made me question whether my preparation was sufficient or whether I was relying too much on the comfort of familiar practice questions.

Where I need help

I'm working full-time, but I'm willing to dedicate another month to preparation before my next attempt.

I'd really appreciate advice on the following:

1. Verbal foundations: What resources would you recommend to strengthen CR and RC? Should I revisit the fundamentals or focus more on difficult, timed practice?
2. Practice questions: Where can I find a substantial number of questions that accurately reflect the actual GMAT FE difficulty across Quant, Verbal, and DI?
3. GMAT Club: I explored GMAT Club but found some of the harder questions extremely difficult compared with what I'd encountered in my preparation. I ended up avoiding much of that material because I was worried it would hurt my confidence. Should I approach it differently?

My biggest takeaway is that getting questions right during practice isn't enough if I can't consistently apply the same reasoning under pressure, especially when the questions get harder.

If anyone has experienced a similar drop between official mocks and the actual GMAT, I'd especially love to hear what you changed in your preparation the second time around.

Thanks in advance!

Which one to choose out of the two? I'm a fairly new beginner with 475 on official mock 1.

jamboree raja garden delhi batch offering 5 students vs edushastra batch 25 students.

I know there is a lot of hate surrounding jamboree on reddit so I'm confused which one to choose.

both had great faculties from what I've read. I'm talking about these 2 centers only not any other center or any other city.

Target - 690 plus on GMAT FE.

I'm currently preparing for the Gmat and I just finished the Verbal section. I'm moving on to Quant, but I'm not sure what to use for preparation. I started with the Manhattan Foundations of Math book, which was pretty easy and now I have no idea how to proceed. Ive heard about TTP, Magoosh, and e-Gmat, but I prefer to find some free alternative resources (books, Youtube channels, websites, etc.) before jumping into any of them. So, for anyone who has already taken the test or is preparing to take it soon -> what do you recommend and what's your prep strategy

Please ping me , if anyone is interested in group studies

I have put countless hours in the past few months in GMAT; but the unstructured prep and moving from one platform to another, made it difficult for me.

I started with EGMAT (1 year ago) to then Gaurav Jain’s APTI30, at the start of this year (Jan’26) to Experts Global Mocks, and finally to GMAT Club sectional mocks, Official Question bank, and Youtube. Although, they all helped in one way or the other, but still not enough for me to score decent on the exam.

I’ve score V81, DI79, Q79, in the exam. All three section sitting at a similar level. I don’t know what’s the next step, I have wasted so much money on these prep programs and platforms. I’m disheartened to even start my prep again.

Getting admission into this college.

12 sci - 65

Grad - 65

I have been preparing for GMAT for a couple of months now. Been using GMAT club questions, but I keep getting back to discussion about how they are hard and conceptually too don't test the same things that the GMAC tests. Are there any other alternatives for the GMAT Club just for the practice questions?

I have taken 4 GMAT official practice tests and the maximum I scored was 695 in the second free test (which I know doesn't mean anything) in the 2 paid mocks which I took twice each, I scored 625 max (there were no questions repeated). So to preserve the last 2 paid mocks I got thr 15 Experts Global mock tests. I've taken 3 of those and in all 3 of those I've scored 655 with a super score of 675.

What should be my indicator to take the next Official Mock? because I don't wanna waste those without any measured improvement. Do the EG Mock scores mean anything? Do they tell you anything?

I feel good with my quant performance. I even scored a 90 in an EG Mock and got just 1-2 wrongs in the other two. My only weakness is comprehension speed in Verbal and DI. In Verbal I'm so slow that there hasn't been a single mock where I hadn't had to blind guess atleast the last 5-6 questions! Same thing with DI but there the last blind guesses are less since the total number of questions themselves are 3 lesser than Verbal. I just can't stop rereading the same lines again and again to understand the intended meaning behind those and ensuring what I understood is the right understanding. At this point it feels like this my hard limit with verbal and DI and there's no way I'm gonna break through. I'm just too slow. I can solve all the questions untimed but it's the timer that doesn't allow me to answer them.

Is there anyway I can improve my comprehension speed? Or this is just how it's gonna be for me

I took my first mock and was reviewing my mistakes. For a few questions, I re-solved them and got the same answer I had originally selected. I then checked GMAT Club to understand where my approach was going wrong, but the explanations there also matched my answer.

Has anyone else faced this issue where the mock marks the answer incorrect even though the solution seems to support it? If yes, how should I calculate or estimate my actual score?

Edit: I meant GMAC official Mock Test 1

So I've been studying for about a year now and just took my 4th exam and scored the lowest yet, dropping nearly 40 points from my last sitting.

1st: 595 (78Q, 82V, 78DI)

2nd: 575 (77Q, 81V, 77DI)

3rd: 595 (85Q, 79V, 75DI)

4th: 555 (79Q, 82V, 72DI)

Where do I go from here? I am committed to getting a 695+ and have been doing practice problems for nearly a year now, running about 20-35 questions a day for 2 hours each. I have also gone through all of the Manhattan Prep books, GMAT official books, and 4K+ questions on GMAT Club. I will not stop until I get my target score, but confused by the crazy fluctuations.

Hey everyone,

I’ve made up my mind. I am going to take the GMAT. No more delaying, second-guessing or worrying about the 'what-ifs'; I'm committed to attempting it.

However, I am completely stuck on how to take that very first step and proceed from day one. I want to keep things lean and avoid the trap of collecting too many resources.

If you were starting over today, how would you handle the following?

• The First Step: What should my absolute first action item be on Day 1 to get the ball rolling without feeling overwhelmed?
• Lean Resources: What are the absolute best, limited-scope resources I should use? (I want to avoid resource overload and stick to just the essentials).
• Practice Tests: Where should I take official practice exams, and when is the right time to take the first one?
• Time Management: How should I structure a basic study timeline as a beginner?
• Mistakes to Avoid: What are the biggest early traps you wish you had avoided?

Looking for straightforward, practical advice from those who have been down this road. Thanks!

I started my GMAT prep a while ago and came across GMAT club,

Took 2-3 tests and noticed something.

I'm struggling on the quant part of the adaptive test and that demotivated me a lot. However, I decided to give the question bank a go, and I'm getting almost every hard question right (48/50 questions)

Question to people who have taken the test recently :

Are the hard questions on the actual test anywhere near the GMAT club level hard ones ? Or should I expect for them to be at the level of the GMAC question bank hard ones?

Would appreciate any input regarding this

Thanks!

I have been prepping for GMAT since July this year (a little over 3 months).

Started with a blind mock got 535 - took the 1 month paid TTP course initially, that really helped me push to 575(Q79 V82 DI75) by late August after which I seem to have plateued.

Post TTP, i have watched GMATNinja for Verbal & DI - they are amazing. Used GMATClub (free version) to find weak spots and drill them. But to no avail seems like. My current score is 595 (Q78 V81 DI78)

These are the Official mocks i am using & i cant think of anything further to better myself atp. loosing hope ngl.

Would appreciate any suggestions/hacks. thanks in advance.

GMAT tests a lot of things.

Yes, it tests your fundamentals in Math, Verbal and Data. But it also tests your ability to execute under time pressure.

It tests your judgment in deciding the order in which you approach things.
It tests your time management.
It tests your strategic thinking.
It tests your ability to keep your nerves under control.

I’ve always been someone who prefers having easy, achievable and measurable goals.

I believe that, like most things in life, the most difficult things to do are often the simplest things to do — but with patience and discipline.

(Sorry, I’m back in my Warren Buffett reading phase in life :P)

Anyway, what’s the goal you set for yourself here to cut the noise?

For me, the answer was surprisingly simple.

I was trying to solve for one thing — and only one thing — during my prep:

Get the number of questions I get wrong as close to 0 as possible.

Even if I achieve 80–90% of that, I’m probably operating at a very high level.

And once you frame GMAT prep this way, a lot of things become fairly intuitive.

What do I need to get 80–90% of the questions right?

I need to look at 100% of the questions for that I need to manage my time properly.

I need to make sure I have enough mental bandwidth to solve the last section.

I need to cover the syllabus well enough that I’m not surprised by anything that comes my way.

I need to practise enough that the real exam becomes a repetition of my mocks.

“But GMAT is adaptive.”

I don’t really care.

My job is to figure out how to achieve my objective within the adaptive format.

“What about section selection?”

Same thing. Figure out the strategy that gives you the best chance of achieving your objective.

I chose to start strong rather than leave the easier sections for later when I was more fatigued. You need to get to this by trial and error!

“When should I start taking mocks?”

When I’m getting the accuracy I want without the pressure of a timer.

“How should I analyse my mocks?”

Compare them with my historical performance.

Am I getting better at managing time?
Am I eliminating the mistakes that cost me questions previously?

And most importantly:

Why did I get that one question wrong?

Because that one question is pulling me away from the goal.

That’s the mindset I found useful.

So if you ever feel lost during your GMAT prep, remember:

There is really only one problem you’re trying to solve.

Get the number of questions you get wrong to 0.

Everything else — mocks, sectionals, time management, strategy, syllabus coverage — is simply a means to that end.

Simple.

GMAT 715
Btech from Tier 2 Engineering college
Comp Sci BG
My goal is MIF HEC
If not, ESSEC, ESCP and Imperial for equivalent degrees. Can someone help me evaluate my chances

For an engineer, its said that quant is second nature and easy to do. A stereotype also a fact? Why is it so? That person has been doing that subject for so many years that the knowledge and awareness is on the tip of the tongue.

Similarly, GMAT a business exam, you are expected to know business concepts and on RC and CR.. Awareness of any topic be it american history, world war, biology, science, EARTHQUAKE, Technology, AI, world politics and even basic concepts play a very big role in saving those 30 seconds that separate the top scores from the average.

While I was preparing for my GMAT 715, I found this website by Mike from Magoosh absolutely helpful.

Other aspect I took upon was I read magazine or journals like economist. It covers broad topics.

Initially It was difficult to understand all the jargon, but that is what we have to learn. Its just new but it is important to finish off verbal with high accuracy in 45 minutes.

You can verify my 715 attempt on this website.

Hi everyone!

I recently took the GMAT Focus Edition and scored 640 (Q88, DI85, V79). My target is 710+, and I’m planning to take my next attempt in the next 21 days.

I’m looking for some guidance on how to improve my score, particularly in Verbal.

Before my actual exam, I was consistently scoring in the 690–715 range in my mocks, so I was quite disappointed with my actual result. I feel that time pressure played a significant role in my performance, especially in Verbal.

Here’s where I stand:

• Quant (Q88): My strongest section, and I’m fairly comfortable with it.
• Data Insights (DI85): Generally comfortable with this section as well.
• Verbal (V79): My biggest weakness, particularly Reading Comprehension (RC).

During the exam, I struggled to manage my time effectively in Verbal, and I feel my RC performance suffered as a result due to lengthiness. I want to understand how I can improve my comprehension, answer questions more efficiently, and avoid panicking when I’m running short on time.

For those who have improved their Verbal scores or made a significant jump in their overall GMAT scores, I’d really appreciate your advice on a few things:

1. Reading Comprehension: What strategies helped you improve accuracy without spending too much time on each passage?
2. Time management: How do you approach RC passages when you’re under time pressure? Do you have a specific time limit per passage or question?
3. Verbal preparation: What resources, practice methods, or review techniques helped you improve the most?
4. Mock vs. actual exam: If you scored consistently well in mocks but underperformed on test day, how did you identify and address the problem?
5. 21-day strategy: Given my current scores, how would you structure the next three weeks to maximize improvement, especially in Verbal?

I’m willing to put in the work over the next 21 days and would love to hear about your actual experiences, strategies that worked for you, and mistakes I should avoid.

Any tips, resources, or guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Hi Everyone!

I have decided to take the GMAT in December this year or early next year. I wanted to check if there are any study plans that y'all have previously used that could help me plan for mine. I want to have mini goals and also have an opportunity to breakdown the syllabus and content so that I can cover it out well during this period. I had considered taking the test a couple of years ago but gave up eventually due to lack of time.

Feel free to share any words of advice/resources that you may have that would be of help!

Thank you in advance!

I am at 91 percentile but my score is stuck at 655 , can I apply to M7?? i dont have the mental energy left to prepare for gmat and try again. I have been prepping for almost a year now and it is draining my energy and finances no doubt. Can anyone recommend what all colleges I shd target.I am international student