All the required material for the exam is available online in the form of e-books, so it is meaningless to invest money in buying hard copies. The link to the e-books is available at the end of this blog.

You will be able to register for the GMAT only if you possess a valid passport. Once you register for the test and pay the fees, you can get access to 2 official tests which are quite similar to what you will see on the GMAT. The marks you score on this tests are almost similar to what you will get in the exam (+/-20)
Your score is valid for a period of five years. A fees of $33 is required to send your official scores to a school. Before the start of the test, you have an option to send your scores to 5 schools for zero fees. Each school has different code for the different programs it offers. For instance, you have to send your score twice if you want to apply for both Masters at LBS and MBA at LBS.

1. Start with a diagnostics test, a diagnostic test can be found in any OG (official guide), I would suggest taking the diagnostics test from Manhattan Online or Official Guide (OG) 2017/2018. Once you have completed the test, it is extremely important to analyse your mistakes. Find out your strong and weak sections on the test.
2. Downloading the mobile app “Ready4GMAT” and trying the ‘Question of the day’ might be helpful. No other app is helpful and free at the same time, so no point in wasting your time downloading them.
3. I am assuming that my friends from IIT are reading this, so quantitative ability section is extremely easy (over the Quant section seen on CAT), have a 95%+ accuracy. Get acquainted to Data Sufficiency questions and you should score 50/51 out of 60 (highest). Finish the Manhattan Maths guides to get a hint of the theory and follow up with practice questions on GMATClub.
4. Manhattan subject guide
   Manhattan subject guides are extremely useful to know all about the grammar rules and other important takeaways for the verbal section. Manhattan’s Reading Comprehension, Sentence Correction and Critical Reasoning guide are a must read! Powerscore CR Bible is another masterpiece that will help you ace the CR section.
5. GMAT official guides with a special focus on GMAT verbal guide
   Since you can do well in quantitative ability section, a major focus can be the official GMAT verbal guide and solving its questions. Through the entire length of preparation for GMAT, solving questions is as important as keeping a log of your mistakes. Keep a note of where you went wrong in SC and CR questions specifically.
6. GMAT club
   Join this forum, practice questions with a timer, add the questions you do wrong in your workbook. Keep revising your workbook to avoid those mistakes that you already committed.
7. Facebook groups
   Join this Facebook group, might turn out to be useful to get a link to people sharing their Manhattan/Veritas/Princeton/Kaplan test account.
   https://www.facebook.com/groups/113448619058615/
8. AWA
   Don’t freak out! You don’t have to share your thoughts on ‘My favourite animal’ like you did in your high school days. But don’t this section for granted. The essay you write on your GMAT is sent to the B-School so that the school can cross verify your style of writing in the GMAT with the essays on your application for the school’s programs. Whatever you study in the verbal section should be used while writing the essays. Sentences that follow the grammar rules on the GMAT are preferred. Keep it 4 paras, that includes an introduction followed by analysis, assumptions, whatever the question asks, closing note.

For all the engineering students better to go for the QVIA (Quant *8-minutes break* Verbal *8-minutes break* Reasoning and AWA) series in exam.

Before you leave, here are some of the mistakes I committed while preparing for the test. Please make sure you don’t commit any!

1. Do not overdo your prep
   I prepared for the GMAT at a length in July and August 2016, wrote a mock, got 760, gave up on everything. Started preparing again around 22nd July 2017 (my exam was schedule on 26th August 2017), got 680 on a mock and all hell broke loose! Started reading every single book again and re reading almost all my notes. And suddenly due to technical issues my appointment was cancelled, the center was declared unauthorized. Finally got an appointment on 21st for 26th August again but I ended up with a 700. So, prepare just some months before the exams and book an appointment as soon as you know you are halfway through and ready to go.
2. Do not go through a lot of textbooks
   Absolutely no point in collecting material and going through all the books written on GMAT. If you know your weakness maybe you can refer to more books on those particular topics. That’s it!

All the best :’)

Link to resources: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1h_6xD5a9M1KriMGtN46GLnaNx6SEhDsq

“It is more beautiful that Switzerland”, exclaimed a voice over the lunch hour. “It has everything mountains, wildlife, lakes, temples, mosques, cold desert, and meadows”, said an overjoyed person who had visited the place recently. It holds a lot of unforgettable memories said a terrified low voice from a corner and left the room. During his childhood, like thousands of unfortunate people, he was forced to leave this land. He never wants to return back to this place because the land possessed his ancestral roots and violent clashes had uprooted them. It is paradise on earth, it is the valley of Kashmir.

The brutal incidents in the valley had made me think who was right the militants or the Indian army. I started searching for literature, online articles, political debates, etc. but somewhere I realized it’s not about right or wrong. It boils down to what we have learned from our past. Whatever I read in the past few days depicted the loss of an entire generation. It was brutal, inhuman and disturbing.

Human is an intelligent animal, this is what I learned in my primary classes. But when it comes to this incident I don’t think we have shown any form of intelligence. On 8th July 2016, when Burhan Wani was killed, the valley went into a flashback and the same story unfolds today. Pellet bullets fired ruthlessly, thousands rushed to hospitals, and those innocent souls spending days in some corner of the house.

I visited this place for the second time in summer 2016 and my father promised me that we will come to the valley again in September to spend some evenings in the apple orchards and enjoy some fresh fruits. But the incident of Burhan Wani ensured that my father won’t complete his promise. I am a mere traveler in this land but what about those who left this land due to violent clashes?

I don’t want these kids to see a life their previous generations have seen. I don’t know what my colleagues’ family who left the lunch have seen. He started everything from scratch, his family migrated to a new city, he told us he saw his parents struggling, he lived in poverty, he had never been in such a horrible situation in the valley, his family owned large orchards which he has never seen ever after 1990.

Let them breathe in a free space, give them wings and they will soar into the sky and make us immensely proud!

Some life incidents hit you so hard. Life snatches the ground below your feet and grabs the sky above your head!

I am writing this, for I have realised the “working less than your potential” phase.

This happened when I have consistently outshone my peers in academics until one day one moron comes to me and says you get one thing clear in your head; you’re good at nothing. I didn’t get angry at him, I didn’t utter a word, I didn’t argue, I just walked out! Because I believe these morons are like a sky full of stars and I’m gonna give them my heart :D

Strange!

It’s good to have people who laugh wholeheartedly when you fall. It’s equally good to have people who wouldn’t applaud at your successes. For these are the people who make you work way beyond your capacities, your abilities! Eventually they end up shaping your lives.

So, whenever you hear those mocking comments. Welcome them!

And the appreciation you receive. Learn to let it go!

Appreciation is like chewing gums, just like a gum enjoy them, make some bubbles out of it, see them burst, once they burst, throw them as far as possible, you don’t need them anymore and get back to work. You keep them with yourself, it will get entangled with something and create disorder.

And all those mocking comments, they are like unending toffees. Take them too, enjoy them with shut mouths, shut your mouth (literally), and keep working endlessly. The next time you open your mouth in front of that moron make sure you utter just two words “Thank you!” Learn to make your results so strong that they leave scars on their minds.

And the journey from the mocking comments to the “Thank you” is hard maybe harder maybe sometimes hardest.

But

“When you’re hardest hit, it’s when things seem worst that you must not quit”

Don’t Quit!

“The goal is to die with memories, not dreams”. These memories of virtually punching people’s face with that “Thank you” are worth cherishing life-long.

Perhaps, the world is moving at lightning pace, there is something extra-ordinary happening there, contribute your bit. Even you make yourself better than what you are today. Even you keep growing. Don’t run away. Don’t run away till you show the world what you’re here for. A soul hovering in space, born on this planet randomly, that’s what you are, prove your existence!

Show the world what you are here for, why do you occupy that little space? And then it doesn’t matter which grave you occupy, ultimately your work becomes immortal.

I am personally mocked by someone, some days back, I have things to be proved, so I better get moving.

“Dreams don’t work, until you do”

So get going!

No argument! No emotional appeal!

I really don’t know what perfectly answers this question but here is my part.
Reading gives me knowledge, skills, teaches other’s experience and finally it has become a desire. A desire that has to be fulfilled by hook or by crook.
Reading has indeed turned into a habit. It has become as essential as breathing (maybe equally involuntary action). It has started giving me an inner pleasure, happiness that can act as a solid reason to sacrifice other momentary pleasures.

1.Start reading what you really like. Think as if today is the last day you would see this world. If that’s the case what would you like to place before yourself. If that’s the book you start with, things will start falling into place.
2. Try to replace every habit that wastes your precious time and energy with reading. Be it watching TV, gossiping, or trying to take a nap every time you travel short distances. This is the time you should learn investing in reading, once this happens you will become an avid reader.
3. Reward yourself. Want to try a delicious dessert in the newly opened restaurant across the street tonight? Wait! Don’t go for it until and unless you complete one chapter from the book you are currently reading.
4. Be obsessed with collecting books, buy books, gift yourself books! “When I have a little money, I buy books and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes” Mark Zuckerberg named the year 2015 as the year of reading in his life. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet name reading as one of their prominent habit! If you want to read more, buy more. Once you see books on your shelves, maybe one fine day you will open them.
5. Whenever I find a movie to be a book adaption, I promise myself to read the book before I watch the movie. And believe me, it works, be it Martian or Hunger Games!
6. Make reading a habit! “Habits are like a cable. We weave a strand of it everyday and soon it cannot be broken” It becomes a part of your everyday life (maybe unknowingly). It takes tremendous commitment, great efforts for making an action into a habit, for it is a process. And the initial step needs enormous force, it is the first thrust, the thrust similar to the one required to send an object outside earth’s gravitational pull.
7. You need to remember that this is a long-term investment. So just scanning through the pages isn’t significant. What is even more important is what you eventually gain out of it. Making notes or taking these experiences alone with you through lifetime is what I would prefer calling an ultimate goal. For instance, think 10 years down the lane you start building a startup. Maybe the book you are reading today has experiences that are essential for your business to flourish and reach greater heights. Now think of how important these notes will eventually turn out to be. Perhaps they will be diamonds in the coal mine, when you are working as hard as the miner is!
Ultimately it depends on you!
Whether you want to read or not,
Whether you want to replace your bad habits with reading or not,
Whether you are ready to sacrifice what gives you momentary pleasure over what you want eventually.
I’m nobody to persuade you to change. For if you don’t read, you stand on the other side of the gate. And the process to open this self-guarded gate and come to my side of the gate will be equally painful for you as it was for me!
NO ARGUMENT! NO EMOTIONAL APPEAL!