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Dear friends, let me give you some background of myself and my preparation.
I’m a non-native guy from a middle-east country. My first attempt of GMAT was nothing more than a disaster. I took GMAT in December 2014 and scored 560 (Q44 & V24). If I tell you about my preparation, you will see why I ended up in this score. I had about four months to get both TOEFL and GMAT. My GMAT preparation consisted of studying MGMAT books both in verbal&quant section. As I was particularly weak in Verbal, I started with MGMAT foundation of verbal. Till this point, you see nothing wrong with these; the problem arose when I started to solve some questions. I realized that as much as I review SC book, I was not able to master the concepts. I think that I read both SC section of MGMAT foundation of verbal and MGMAT SC book for over ten times. This situation was very weird for me as someone who had been able to master different books in his life by just only one or two reads. I’m not telling that MGMAT books are not written well, my point is that for a non-native guy, it seemed impossible for me to implement the concepts. In those days, as SC took a lot of time, I wasn’t able to spend a good chunk of time on CR, RC, or quant. Without literally practicing any OG quant,cr, rc, sc question, I went to the exam and ended up at getting 560.
In 2014, I already knew E-GMAT, and I knew they are great at what they are doing, but in those days, I assumed that I could master GMAT on my own the same way that I had mastered different exams in my life. But believe me that GMAT is a whole different beast, especially if you are lacking in general knowledge of English. I was able to master TOEFL from nothing to a score of 102 in less than three months. But GMAT is an entirely different story. After four years, when I wanted to retake GMAT, I knew that I must change my preparation dramatically. So, I enrolled in two of the free webinar of e-gmat, and I saw, what I was missing in my first preparation. So, I immediately enrolled in verbal online course.
The great thing about e-gmat course is that it addresses both learning and application of concepts along each other. So, as you learn new things, you learn how to implement them. The great thing is that after learning a concept on e-gmat, I was then able to understand what MGMAT SC book tried to teach. So for me, e-gmat was way more understandable and applicable than MGMAT SC book.
I found another benefit from e-gmat course which surprised me. In the e-gmat internal forum, students not only can get a response from experts but also have access to previous queries and expert answers. I spend a lot of time on reading those queries, and in many times I learned a lot of things from them. In many cases, those inquiries shed light on different aspects of OG questions that I missed through my read. I can not accentuate more that how e-gmat internal forum helped to cement my understanding.
After completing SC course on e-gmat module, I took three gmatprep and scored 35 on verbal in two of them. In e-gmat course The only thing that I wish it were different, is that e-gmat offer more study options. As a non-native person from a country with low GDP, who was very weak in SC, I wish that I were able to purchase just SC course and spend around 4-6 months on that.
I’ve scheduled my exam on November 15, and I will update you with my real GMAT exam experience and score.
