Location: London, UK
Starting GMAT Score: 430
Final GMAT Score: 690
School Attended: London Business School
Evan achieved one of the biggest score increases I have ever seen with any of my students, so this is part of the reason I chose to include him here. But his situation was instructive for several other reasons as well.
First of all, when I met Evan for our initial session we talked a lot about which test he should take (at the time business schools had just announced that they would accept the GRE as well as the GMAT). Evan’s math ability was very, very weak and he informed me that without a calculator he would be almost completely worthless, so we settled on the GRE. I tutored him for several months for the GRE and he did pretty well on the actual test, but he decided after that first experience (and based partly on the fact that he was feeling more confident with math at that point) that he wanted to switch to the GMAT (I tutor many students for both tests and its pretty common to switch from one to the other).
However, even with all of the work that he had put into the GRE, his initial GMAT score on the diagnostic test was 430. He wanted to go to London Business School so he had a long way to go. The biggest issue was his fundamental Math weakness. So I had him work through several foundational books and we worked together on his basic Math skills. With many of my students I help them create a binder to allow them to compile, in an organized fashion, all of the notes and rules and techniques that they will need to remember or at least be aware of come test day. This proved to be crucial in Evan’s case because he would tend to forget things as soon as we moved on to another topic. Having the binder allowed him to constantly go back and review concepts that we had covered previously.
Also, as with all of my students, I trained him to rely on his reasoning and critical thinking ability as much as possible. This was especially important in his case since no matter how much we focused on the basic math that serves as the foundation for the questions, he was never going to be completely comfortable with the harder math that appears on the test.
He also had trouble with the Verbal section. Ironically, although he was an avid reader, he had the most trouble on Reading Comprehension initially. As with many other students, it was a combination of the way he was reading the passages and the approach he had on the questions. He needed to learn to read the passages for purpose and function, which he was quickly able to do once I showed him how, in part because he had good fundamental reading ability to begin with. And for the questions, he learned how to identify the different question types and tweak his approach on each question based on what is usually required for that particular question type. And like almost all of my students, he needed to learn that Verbal questions are black and white and although there may seem to be ambiguity as to which answer is right and which ones are wrong, there is in fact no ambiguity: there is a reason why the right answer is right and why the wrong answers are wrong and what is needed is an understanding of how to prove both that the right answer is acceptable (basically not wrong) and that the wrong answers are demonstrably wrong.
When Evan went to take the GMAT for the first time, I actually thought he would probably score around 650, so I was a bit surprised but obviously ecstatic when he called to tell me that he had gotten a 690!!! Since that was actually above what he had been getting on practice tests and since he had been at it for a long time and didn’t want to do anymore, he was satisfied with that score and was admitted to London Business School later that year.