How does some having been detached from academics for over a decade with a work day that averages around 14 hours on usual hit the bulls-eye with a perfect score of Q51 and a 750 on the GMAT?
We asked Viki Badani, an investment banker who has 14+ years of work experience with one of the longest average working days across various industries.
How did he go about it? He shares with us.
From the get go, Viki had been comfortable with quant but was troubled more in verbal for which he had to start from the very basics.
He had a ton of issues in SC initially when he was making a ton of errors. After realising his shortcomings, he reverted back to the extreme basics and took Sandeep Sir’s advice regarding the material.
> He first completed all the basic concept building videos.
> Post that he did the 250 most important SC questions from the material in extreme depth and studies the reasoning for all 250 of the questions. > He also prepared from the 700-800, the OG advance and the marathon practice videos.
For RC, he studied OCTAVE in extreme depth post which he completed the entire 700-800 level collection of questions.
For CR, he found that post the concept building phase, doing mix bag questions helped him a lot. He used to do questions from the study material, the OGs, Manhattan Prep, 700-800 series and the OG Advance that later he described turned out to be really challenging.
Even though his stronger suit was quant, he did face trouble in the DS trap questions for which he says the material for DS helped him get the clarity on how to eliminate and get through in the DS.
He later gave 2 official mocks from and scored a 770 and 780 on each.
In the last leg, he took time off of work for a week before the exam. He studied the entire day to get comfortable with the fatigue from 5 in the morning till 10 in the evening for a week that helped him develop stamina. In this duration, he only resorted to revising concepts, watched the videos over and over again, studied from Manhttan Prep series and focused a lot on his weaker section of SC.
He actually had studied way more than what was asked so much so that an RC passage that he had previously practiced appeared in the exam. In total, he encountered nothing unusual at all in his exam.
In the end he says that during the course of the exam preparation his expectations and perspective totally changed. Initially he says he would’ve been content & happy with a 750 but by the end he questioning it. He even says that if his quant score was even a Q50 instead of a Q51 with the same aggregate, he would’ve given the exam again.
That is the level he had reached by the end of the preparation. He says if one follows what’s prescribed, scoring a 770 or a 780 even is absolutely achievable with a V41 or V42.
The one key advice he left for everyone preparing is to study as much as possible without a break every-day. Be it 2 hours or 3 hours a day, never miss on consistency.
Be consistent and see yourself scoring a sky-high score with Top One Percent.
Best of luck!