r/GMAT

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Overall recommendation:

1. Grind as many practice questions as you can, without neglecting any of the 3 areas - even if one of the areas is a strength for you (getting your score up to 100th percentile for one section can seriously boost your overall score and is worth the effort).

2. Use the official mocks above unofficial sources as a primary indicator for your performance. I scored 725-775 on my last few official mocks, but I never got above 665, for example, on Magoosh

3. Use structured resources to guide you for the quant section. This post links a few. There is a huge variety of questions for the quant section, and knowing the tips and tricks is genuinely very helpful. I was skeptical of this method of study, preferring to rely on my conceptual understanding of maths and my ability to problem solve unseen question types on the fly. While these are necessary skills - and you should practice them - they are not sufficient. Structured resources took me from a 70th percentile on my 1st attempt to a 100th percentile quant score on my 2nd.

My study approach:

2 months of study before my first attempt, 3 weeks between 1st and 2nd attempt. Only really studied on weekends (~6hrs each Saturday & Sunday) for the first 2 months. In the last 3 weeks (between 1st and 2nd attempt) I increased to also study about 1 hr a day during the week.

I didn't buy any of the expensive USD 250+ (some $350+) courses (TTP, Magoosh, etc.). Instead I followed the main advice I had received - which is to just grind as many practice questions as possible. For this, I bought the official question packs and all the official mocks (did these under test conditions). Plus, I found this free question bank from Manhattan Review. I also followed some free online structured courses for the quant section (recommendation 3 above).

My background:

I studied Maths and CompSci in my undergraduate, and I am a home language English speaker.

My preparation experience:

Verbal: Surprisingly for me, the verbal component of the exam was always the easiest (getting 100th percentile on all official mocks, including my first one). But this overconfidence caused me to neglect verbal. I got 98th percentile on my first attempt at the GMAT focus - lower than all my mocks, dragging my overall score down substantially. After that I bought the official verbal practice question pack and worked my way through them, and got 100th percentile on my second attempt. The lesson here is to be sure not to neglect your strengths.

Quant: Another surprise for me, despite my quantitative background in university, I really struggled initially at the GMAT (70-80th percentile in my early mock tests). An unlock for me here was to also use structured preparation on top of question banks. For this I followed some free online structured courses for (see recommendation 3 above).

Data: Honestly nothing fancy here. I just did the question banks, and consistently got ~84. Perhaps someone in the comments can give advice for this section. I got the sense data was more of a time crunch where practice was the key driver for performance. Unlike the quant section nothing here stood out to me as needing structured support.

I wanted to thank everyone who gave me feedback and advice here after my first gmat attempt a few weeks ago (https://www.reddit.com/r/GMAT/comments/1sunw69/drop_from_700s_practice_to_675_actual/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)

I had a discouraging first attempt, scoring 675 after practice tests in the mid 700s. I followed the advice in the post linked above and got a 715 (Q84, V88, D85).

In case it’s helpful for anyone else in a similar situation seeing a big dropoff from practice to actual, here’s what I did:

—focused on streaks and accuracy in first 10 of Q. Saw my biggest score increase here.
—Also for Q, I used gmat club and got faster and more accurate at medium difficulty questions rather than focusing just on 700+ questions. I also drilled weak topics using Gemini; it was pretty good at drilling down to the areas I was actually weak or deficient on and giving me unlimited practice questions in a more user friendly interface than gmat club.

—I definitely felt test day nerves, probably more so this time around. I was better at dealing with them this time—it’s fine to take 20 seconds to calm down and reengage the question.

—Last point: I don’t know if this is true, because the scoring algorithm isn’t linear or transparent. But I did find, for both Q and DI, that both actual tests penalized wrong answers more. That is, even with similar streaks of right answers to start, I could get 4-5 wrong on the official practice to get the same score as 2-3 wrong on the actual. So aim high!

Thanks to all for the advice; good luck for those retaking!

I got 76th percentile DI, 15th percentile Quant (Was so rough LMAO), and 56th Verbal

79 DI, 71 Quant, 80 V.

I have all summer to study and will be putting in around 3 hours before/after work during the week and 5-7 hours per day on weekend. I am gonna get TTP and the prep questions from GMAC. What are peoples thoughts, I need an 80th to 85th percentile (615ish) to get into my target programs.

Hello everyone, just scored 615 on my first mock, with Q being my biggest weakness. I plan to self study as I can not afford courses like TTP. I have the OG Guide and Questions. This is the order I plan to study for Quant, I would appreciate feedback on my structure. Is anything missing? Should I change something?

The plan is to watch videos on the topics, read through some fundamentals before going into untimed practice until i reach high confidence, then move to next topic.

Thank you!

Phase 1: Arithmetic
Fractions, Decimals, & Percents:
Ratios & Proportions:
Averages:

Phase 2: Algebra
Linear Equations & Inequalities:
Exponents & Roots:
Quadratic Equations & Polynomials:

Phase 3: Number Properties
Divisibility & Primes:
Positives, Negatives, Evens, & Odds:
Remainders:

Phase 4: Applied Word Problems
Rates & Work:
Overlapping Sets:
Mixtures & Interest:

Phase 5: Advanced Math
Statistics:
Combinatorics & Probability:

So 3 months back, I scheduled my test for 14th May. Work picked up disproportionately, some travel came up, and I wasn't able to work at all. I haven't been able to take any mocks as well. Verbal seems easy based on the prep I have pulled so far, but I am struggling with the other 2 big time. I am a bit worried I wont be able to score well with such poor prep. So what should I do given this situation? Reschedule my test or take the test on the scheduled date, and then prep for another later date? I know this doesnt look good but panicing a bit here.

In india , dob format is dd/mm/yyyy. In gmat form format is mm/dd/yyyy. Because of this my dob is coming out wrong. In india there is no id proof which shows dob in form of mm/dd/yyyy. I have reached out to helpline but they were of no help. Please advise what to do next

Did anyone while studying made notes and got them scanned that they can share for the collective good in here ? DI notes in like recurrent formulas or table notes ANYTHING CAN BE HELPFUL 🩷😃 thank you !

Sorry in advance, Ik this topic has been discussed ad nauseam here.

I took the GMAT and got a 685 with a 71st percentile QR (99th VR, 97th DI).

Will improving to a ~715 materially improve my chances at H/S/W? I imagine it would take at least 50-100 more hours of studying quant topics.

For context, I graduated from an Ivy with a 3.95 so the rest of my academics are strong. I'm in investment banking, and will be joining a PE firm next year (so, good but not differentiated work experience). Ton of volunteering experience in college with small leadership roles for my ECs.

I worry that the cohort that I will be compared against (ORM bankers) will have stronger than median test scores, which hurts my chances.

Does it make sense to sink the time to retake? Or are essays really the difference-maker for my profile and GMAT is more of a check-the-box.

I feel like I'm picking up new concepts on Quant and I'm sufficient in keeping an error log and drilling timed problem sets at the medium level, usually landing at ~70% accuracy. For some reason in mocks my last 3 scores have been worse since doing this. I feel like the information I'm retaining and the ways that I set up problems are tricking me into being more confident in my setups, but then the execution totally falls on its face. Any advice here? How do I reapproach? Let me know if anyone needs additional details.

Hi

I just started studying for the GMAT and I'm feeling very discouraged because I literally keep getting every single Quant answer wrong... And it's easy (sub-550)... I'm not bad at math at all, it's just I haven't seen this math in years and haven't learned to apply it in the GMAT way. Can someone plz encourage me that this is normal and that I'll get a hang of it

595 → 605 → 615 → 695

That’s been my GMAT journey over ~1.5 years.

I work in a government PSU, so prep was always alongside a full-time job. Took long leaves before my 2nd and 3rd attempts, pushed hard, went through almost every resource I could find… and still landed at 615 in the 3rd attempt. That one stung.

What changed for the 4th attempt might sound counterintuitive. I didn’t do any prep. No studying / mocks. I just showed up with a 1 hour quant revision. I also switched my sectional order right there in the exam. Not saying you should do the same. And somehow, it clicked!

The one thing I did do differently between my 3rd and 4th attempt (20days apart): I focused on myself a bit more. Daily workouts. Daily meditation on the Medito app. Better headspace. I walked into the exam calmer than I had in any of my previous attempts.

If you’re stuck in that loop of “I’m doing everything right but the score isn’t moving,” I get it. It’s frustrating in a way that’s hard to explain.

Anyway, this is me signing off from GMAT prep. Grateful, tired, and honestly relieved.

Happy to answer anything if it helps someone still in the grind.

Update: My detailed score came in. I got Q90, V84, DI79

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Gave my first official test on May 7th and scored 635 (Q79, V84, D81).

Prep was staggered and on-and-off for about 3 months because I work full-time and long hours. Spent the first 1.5 months learning concepts on a course and then did topic-wise practice questions on GMAT club, mostly stuck to easy and medium questions to grab some low hanging fruit and to get the highest ROI on the time spent practicing. Quant is a bottleneck, I would say it’s mostly careless errors/pacing problem/translating word problems issues and rarely a conceptual gap. Verbal was my strongest, didn’t do much prep for this other than practice questions here and there. Data was okay, struggled with pacing and DS and was relatively better on non-DS questions, mostly practiced DS questions.

Have my second official test coming up on July 7th so that gives me about 8 weeks of prep time and trying to make around 2 hours for this everyday and 3-4 hours on the weekends. Aiming for a 700+ this time, want to approach prep wisely this time. Any specific pieces of advice/suggestions are much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

I have not used the official mocks (2-6) yet but will be purchasing them this time. 

Mock Scores:

Diagnostic - GMAT Official Practice Test 1 - 555 (Q76, V79, D78) - 1/14/2026

1 - Magoosh Test 1 - 525 (Q75, V81, D72) - 2/9/2026 (Horrible pacing, couldn’t finish Q and D sections on time)

2 - GMAT Official Practice Test 2 - 545 (Q73, V81, D77) - 4/26/2026 (Same pacing problem as previous mock)

3 - GMAT Club Free Test - 565 (Q76, V81, D77) - 5/3/2026 (did get through all questions, made careless errors)

4 - Magoosh Test 2 - 605 (Q82, V82, D77) - 5/6/2026 (Made some careless errors)

Q81/V80/D77

Working professional with 7 YoE.

My GMAT journey had nothing but rocky. Had started back in 2024, completed TTP entire course by late 2024; but then life happened, and everything spiralled out of control.

Things stabilised a bit, and now got determined to resume my GMAT prep since November 2025
Been studying(2hrs weekdays, 4 hrs weekends) since then. Completed Magoosh in a month. Got comfortable with questions and grew confident. Took a free mock, and scored 535. Shattered. Realized that maybe I needed challenging material for preparation.

Subscribed to eGMAT. Completed the material. Since I knew most of the concepts, I was focusing purely on the quizzes. My mistake, I solved all the easy questions across all topics first, then medium questions, and then hard. Things were fine until Medium questions. But hard questions felts extremely hard. Outright incomprehensible. Felt that maybe i was overdoing it, so stopped eGMAT right away.

Moved on to GMAT Club quizzes. Here’s where it gets interesting. Every time I took those sectional quizzes it pretty much hovered in the same range Q(78-82),V(80-81),D(76-82), Overall(565-625). Would go through my mistakes, and questions where i took a lot of time, and would learn those concepts; but I’d do this just for Quants.

I honestly never understood how to analyse Verbal and DI. I thought, practise would make me perfect, but in hindsight i think over practice just made good better, and bad worse. Obviously, I would try different scapegoats in verbal- such as lack of comprehension, or disinterested topic, etc to attribute to my stagnant score, but that’s it. This was a rather cosmetic attempt to address something structural.

Started with Experts Global, and my scores did improve a bit- moved from 535 to 635. But that higher score was in a test where questions felt breezy. Thought things finally were falling in place and purchased the OG mocks. Got slapped hard. Twice. Score 535, and 575 in Mock 3 & 4. Each of these times, the first few questions would hit me hard and derail my strategy and confidence.

Hoping for a miracle, I took my test as scheduled and got a 595. Mind you, this was second best score in all my mocks.

I am now exhausted. But I am even more frustrated, because something tells me that my preparation wasnt structured. I was hitting hard, but aimlessly. I repeatedly did not address the flaws I did. The worse part, I donno how do i do it differently.

How do i move ahead now?

Been a long-time lurker of this sub and have seen so many amazing people post their scores. Gave my GMAT today and got 715! (Will update scores and percentiles later, forgot to check :) )

I plan to go for INSEAD or similar schools, is this score enough or should i try again ?

Profile:
94% in 10th, 84% in 12th, and an undergrad (B.Sc) CGPA of 7 from a Tier 1 (IIT)
26 years old with about 4 years of work experience — 3 years in core finance and the last 1 year in IB as an analyst. No gap.

What am I supposed to do after this? How do I apply to colleges, and can someone guide me? If there is already a post on this or any YouTube video, that would be very helpful!

Should i reach out to consultants, is it worth it or necessary ?

Hey everyone,

I’m preparing for the GMAT and looking for an accountability partner, preferably someone based out of India because of time zone alignment.

I work full-time, so evenings are usually quite packed for me. Morning study sessions/check-ins would work much better.

Main goal is honestly consistency. I’ve realized preparation becomes much easier when you have someone to push you, track progress with, and stay disciplined alongside.

What I’m looking for:

•	Regular check-ins/study updates

•	Sharing useful resources, mocks, strategies, etc.

•	Pushing each other to stay consistent

•	Planning weekly goals and keeping each other accountable

If you’re also struggling with consistency or finding it hard to stay on track alone, maybe we can figure out a plan together and make the process less overwhelming.

Feel free to comment or DM if interested.

Hi guys,

My situation is the following: I need to pass the GMAT with a 700+ until next year in April/May. What should the timeline from now on be?

I work full time and in the winter I‘m gonna study a semester of CS.

Thanks