It’s difficult to do something when it has been a long time since you’ve actively done it. Neeraj had the same issue. Having been working for so long it had been a magnanimous task for Neeraj to study for his GMAT but in under two months he ended up scoring a 99th percentile score. How is that?
At 37, Neeraj knew he wanted a shift from his work and take the next step. After consulting with his friends he wrapped his head around the idea of giving GMAT and to get a MBA.
But right from the start, he had major concentration issues.
After having worked on board oil tanker vessel for over a decade and managing machinery workers, which was not at all a desk job, he found it extremely difficult to actually sit and study in the first place. In fact he shares that initially just a 3 hour video took him more than 5-6 hours to get through and even in terms of concept, in his words, he literally started at zero.
So he built up from his foundations and managed to ace the exam.
He took the first 10 days just to build his focus. He sat for hours and hours just to wrap his head around the curriculum and build his stamina. In the start he had no idea what GMAT even was or entailed. So, he started with the foundational topics.
His major problem areas were in verbal specifically RC and CR because the topics were very alien to him. Starting from the concept videos, he allotted most of his time in wrapping his head around the concepts only.
For RC, he gave major props to OCTAVE as it helped him gain accuracy even in the trickiest of questions.
For CR, he solved questions till the techniques he says became a part of his subconscious.
For SC, he relied on the explanations the most and did the conceptual questions in extreme depth with clarity.
He was rusty in quant but was able to get in flow soon as he started without many issues.
He said one of the most critical things to look out for is building depth in topics and not focusing on doing too many questions. He just took 42 days to do the concepts in depth and gave major attention to study material like the most important 100 questions in SC instead of randomly going about doing a 1000 questions.
One of the major aspects that helped that helped him in preparation he says was how carefully structured the curriculum of the course was. It helped know how to go about in preparing for his D day as well along with solving 5 mock tests which he says were more than enough.
He said that even though he was a bit nervous, doing IR and AWS calmed him before starting the quant section and finally ending with verbal.
In his exam he was well prepared and found nothing unusual and one he knew were which questions he would have to skip so as to not waste any time.
It just goes to show that it really does not matter where you start at as long as you have the drive to accomplish and nail the exam. Neeraj did after being detached from academics for over a decade and starting from zero.
Nothing is stopping you. Start now and see yourself in the 99th percentile as well!
Best of luck!