Peking University Alum’s GMAT Comeback: 480 to 720
September 2023 GMAT 720 V35 Q51 (Evening Class + Dustin’s Terminator Class)
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Exam Scores
- 12/03/2021 First Attempt: 480 Q49 V14 (cancelled)
- 03/22/2023 Second Attempt: 560 Q50 V15 IR:3 (cancelled)
- 05/10/2023 Third Attempt: 640 Q51 V24 IR:4 (cancelled)
- 07/19/2023 Fourth Attempt: 720 Q51 V35 AWA:5 IR:7
Academic Background
Peking University, Business Administration
Preparation Time
Preparation Materials
- Official Materials: OG, OV, PP
- Question Banks: GWD, Kaomianfen
- Courses: A2 Weekday Evening Class, Dustin’s Terminator Class, Greedy Snake
- Supplementary Resources: Manhattan (Ron), GMAT club (Ninja), Dustin’s YouTube Channel, Yang Peng’s Long Sentence Training
- Tools: ChatGPT, Notion, Quizlet
- Other: Fourth attempt exam experience sharing
Foreword
I hope my experience can serve as a strong encouragement for those with a weaker English foundation who believe scoring 700+ is impossible on their first try. I chose A2 because many friends were studying there, and the online reviews were excellent. I enrolled without much hesitation. I improved my score by 80 points in each attempt, and I hope to provide some direction for students who are not seeing significant progress.
About Preparation Materials
From the list of materials, you can see I used every tool available to improve my score. Since Sentence Correction (SC) is being phased out, I believe the explanations from Ron and Ninja will become less crucial. Yang Peng’s Long Sentence Training is also unnecessary; as A2’s classes suggest, the best way to practice long sentences is through extensive reading of GMAT passages.
As for Greedy Snake, exam experience sharing, and ChatGPT, I believe they were key to achieving a stable Q score of 50-51 and boosting my score in the later stages. I’ll discuss the effective use of ChatGPT further in my fourth attempt preparation, as it was one of the biggest takeaways from Dustin’s Terminator Class.
Experiences from Each Test Attempt
First Attempt: 480
What does a V14 mean? For me, it meant spending most of the exam time just trying to read and understand the questions, often failing to grasp them fully. I ended up with only 18 minutes left for 18 questions. Looking back, I had only gone through the OG once and hadn’t done any summarizing. I hadn’t even finished PP1 and wasn’t managing my time effectively. This score was inevitable. I strongly advise everyone to follow the preparation advice from A2 and Kory. Once you decide to take the GMAT, commit to it fully.
Second Attempt: 560
I had to pause my GMAT preparation due to an internship and military service. I then re-enrolled in a review class in January and scheduled my test for March. This time, I diligently re-did the OG twice and completed PP1 and PP2, summarizing my mistakes. However, the results were disheartening. Despite increased effort, my Verbal score barely changed. After careful consideration, I realized the main issues were my lack of improvement in reading comprehension and poor pacing. I then revised my study plan with these two points as priorities.
Third Attempt: 640
For my third attempt, I went through the OG and PP1-2 again. I also started reading an article from The New York Times or The Economist every morning. By this point, I began to understand what the tutors meant by gaining a new perspective each time I reviewed the material. My RC reading became smoother, and I started grasping the concept of vertical summarization in CR. My SC skills also improved, which I attribute to the reading ability gained from daily translation practice. In the two weeks leading up to the exam, I practiced one GWD set daily to find my optimal pace. In the early May exam, I scored 640. Around this time, I decided to enroll in the Terminator Class.
Fourth Attempt: 720 (Terminator + Exam Experience + ChatGPT)
My primary reason for enrolling in the Terminator Class was to finish the GMAT journey sooner and ensure my preparation strategy was on the right track. I signed up a few weeks before my third attempt.
Dustin helped us re-evaluate the GMAT from a different perspective in the Terminator Class, focusing on problem-solving approaches. For instance, developing the ability to anticipate the answer before even looking at the options in SC or CR can significantly speed up the selection process during the actual exam.
Dustin provides personalized study plans, emphasizes and trains fundamental reading skills, and integrates the latest ChatGPT into GMAT preparation. ChatGPT can help overcome issues like recognizing answers immediately due to repeated practice with OG questions, or the potential backlash from using Chinese exam experience sharing materials. It can address these challenges effectively.
During this phase, I also started working on OV and PP4. In the final two weeks, I completed the remaining GWD sets before taking the exam and successfully achieved a score of 720, finally conquering the GMAT!
Section-Specific Preparation Tips
CR (Critical Reasoning)
My biggest challenges in CR were usually not understanding the questions or taking too long to read them. My reading comprehension improvement significantly helped with this. During practice, drawing logical chains or using the substitution method for fill-in-the-blank questions were very helpful in the actual exam. Additionally, practicing more questions and summarizing them was crucial. What impressed me most in the fourth attempt was how many questions felt familiar, as if I had seen them before, just with different topics or wording. This allowed me to quickly identify the correct answers.
RC (Reading Comprehension)
The importance of Active Reading taught in A2’s classes is undeniable. During practice, you should cultivate the habit of understanding the relationship between sentences while reading and predicting the potential direction of the passage. Slow down at transition points, causal relationships, and short parenthetical phrases, as these are often areas where questions might arise.
Q (Quantitative)
For those aiming for a consistently high Quantitative score, I highly recommend the Greedy Snake and exam experience sharing classes. You don’t need to practice a huge volume of questions daily. Just completing GWD sets in the two weeks before the exam is sufficient to ensure you can finish on time.
About Reading Comprehension Training
Reading comprehension is undeniably a crucial skill for achieving a high GMAT score. Those who score well on their first attempt likely have a strong reading foundation. My initial reading speed was very slow. After realizing this issue post-exam, I searched online for ways to improve my reading ability. After joining the Terminator Class, I adopted two new methods, which I’ve divided into three phases, each lasting about a month.
Phase One
I followed Dustin’s blog’s translation training method. Initially, I translated sentence by sentence, then gradually moved to summarizing paragraphs. Unimportant details could be skipped. I spent an hour daily translating an article from The New York Times or The Economist, and the progress was rapid.
Phase Two
After joining the Terminator Class, I mentioned the translation training method from the first month during my initial consultation with Dustin. To my surprise, Dustin told me the method was outdated and he planned to remove it from his blog (though I still found it very useful!). He then introduced the latest reading comprehension training method used in the Terminator Class. This approach begins with a reading comprehension assessment to assign suitable articles based on individual levels. Unlike previous methods, this requires reading the entire article and then summarizing the main points in a bulleted list on a sticky note. This not only trains the ability to identify key information but also enhances the brain’s capacity to retain more data, preventing the common issue of forgetting the beginning by the time you reach the end.
Phase Three
The progress made over two months of practice, combined with regular GMAT reading practice, was substantial. In the third month, Dustin suggested another new method. This involved inputting 10 unfamiliar vocabulary words into ChatGPT and asking it to generate an article similar in length to a GMAT reading passage. I also specified the relevant field and instructed it to include more complex sentences. This method effectively expanded my vocabulary and improved my comprehension of articles in unfamiliar domains. While there’s still a quality gap between ChatGPT-generated articles and actual GMAT reading passages, it’s highly effective for training purposes.
Conclusion
Reading comprehension skills cannot be developed overnight. I recommend consistently reading English articles to build them gradually. Once your reading ability improves, scoring high in Verbal will become much easier. Additionally, memorizing vocabulary is essential. I recommend using Quizlet. I usually input the words I need to learn into ChatGPT to get their Chinese translations, parts of speech, and example sentences. Then, I use Quizlet’s import function to create flashcards, which is very convenient.
Although the preparation process was arduous, I learned a great deal. I developed the logical thinking skills expected of business school students and acquired the reading proficiency necessary for the extensive text consumption required in business school.
