GMAT Strategy

I hope this message finds you all well. I have been studying about 1 hour a day the past 6 weeks for the GMAT and finally took my first practice exam today, timed exactly like in the real exam.

I ended up with a 640 score, and am a little worried that if I don't get my study strategy down to the T going forward, I will not reach my goal. I am also very worried about the fact that I scored in the 47 percentile for the quantitative section, given that it appears admission committees pay extra credence to this section. I was wondering if someone could give me some advise on how I can set up my strategy for success? Apart from general feedback on strategy and tips, some specific questions I have are:

- which topics should I focus more on
- when should I take my next practice exam

I have attached the detailed report of my quantitative section to this post for your review. I am so grateful for all the help.

I intend to take the actial GMAT in the last week of October; leaving me with 12 weeks to study, as I will be away for 2 weeks during this period.

Thanks!

Hi Rich,

Thanks a lot for the response! I truly appreciate your time.

1) What is your goal score? 750
2) When are you planning to apply to Business School? I am aiming to apply for the 2nd round of admissions for Fall 2016, which generally close around the January- March time frame.
3) Do you know what Schools you'll be applying to? I will be applying to Columbia, MIT Sloan, NYU, Georgetown and American University.

So far, I have been studying with Sackmann's GMAT Math Bible. I read it cover to cover twice in the last 6 weeks and did all of the questions. I didn't do any practice on the verbal yet.

I just ordered the Complete Manhattan Prep GMAT Strategy Guide, which gets here tomorrow. I planned on studying all the topics using that book. https://www.abebooks.com/Manhattan-GMAT- ... -PLA-_-v01

Please what are your thoughts on the above? Thanks again for taking the time to respond. I truly appreciate it.

Please what are your thoughts on the above?

Your goals sound perfectly reasonable given your strong starting position. Just make sure to mix in official material as well. Most importantly: the two free tests on mba.com (https://www.mba.com/us/the-gmat-exam/pre ... tware.aspx), the Official Guide, and perhaps the question pack from mba.com, which you can find here: https://www.mba.com/us/store/store-catal ... ack-1.aspx

Hey Jaiyeolab,


You're in a great starting position, and you've obviously covered some solid foundational work, so well done! Curious as to why you were only studying 1 hour a day. It's hard to make serious progress with such light study -- even if you work full time, try to do at least 2 hours in the evening and then more on the weekends. A study plan of less than 10 hours a week is just unrealistic.

In addition, it's a little bit unusual to me that you waited 6 weeks to take your first CAT! But now that I've criticized you enough, here's the awesome news: a 640 on a MGMAT CAT to start is GREAT! Understand, however, that a score on a MGMAT exam does NOT IN ANY WAY equate to the actual GMAT. It is score COMPLETELY differently, and is really just a "ballpark" score. The questions themselves are excellent, so I definitely recommend you stick with MGMAT practice CATs moving forward.

It's hard to know specifically what topics you need to focus on without a more detailed self-analysis on your practice exam. I think you should go over it filling out this attached Error Log. To get to a 750+ (which is an EXTREMELY ambitious score), you need MASTERY of the exam. To do this, you'll need to do a LOT of in-depth self-analysis. It will NOT be enough to simply take a practice test, receive a score, then do a cursory read-through of the incorrect explanations. I also attached an Error Log for the Official Guide (this one is for the 15th edition, not the newer 16th). What questions have you been missing from the OG?

Since you have 10 weeks to study, not including your 2 weeks off, I would suggest you take 1 CAT a week. I would intersperse MGMAT CATs with the 4 official CATs (GMATPrep 1 and 2, which are free at mba.com, and GMATPrep 3 and 4, which can be purchased at mba.com for $49 called 'Exam Pack 1'). Those 4 practice CATs are vital. Use these CATs to build up your stamina. In the first month, don't worry about the AWA and IR. Just do the Quant and Verbal. Once you've done a number of those CATs, add on the AWA and IR. The GMAT is a LONG test, and you'll need to prep for that mentally. Just like a runner would a marathon! The GMATPrep's are the only official exams out there that are scored like the GMAT, so those will be the MOST accurate to what your actual score would be. If you spread them out, they'll provide more accurate "check-ins" for you. So you plan might be something like:

Week 1-MGMAT 2
Week 2-MGMAT 3
Week 3-GMATPrep 1
Week 4-MGMAT 4
Week 5-GMATPrep 2
Week 6-MGMAT 5
Week 7-GMAT Prep 3
Week 8-MGMAT 6
Week 9-GMAT Prep 4
Week 10-GMAT Prep 1 (re-take)

After you do each CAT, do you Error Log, and then based on your cumulative Error Log I would select a very small number of concepts to hone in on during the next 6 days. Be sure not to "water down" your study by trying to do everything at once. If you're working full time, 5-6 concepts MAX is really all you'll be able to do. Try to do a little Verbal and Quant each week, perhaps 3 Quant and 2 Verbal.

I HIGHLY recommend you develop a strong RC strategy EARLY and practice it CONSISTENTLY. You can't really wing that one without bleeding those 700+ level Inference questions. Do at least 1-2 passages EVERY DAY. You can see an example of how I do RC here: https://gmatrockstar.com/2015/03/13/conq ... -question/

As you practice each week, remember to include pacing drills so that you aren't only doing timed questions on the CATs. Some info: https://gmatrockstar.com/2015/01/31/sent ... ng-drills/

Hope you find this helpful and good luck to you! You're looking to gain over 100 points, but you have the time to do it!

Best,
Vivian

I also wanted to mention, in addition to the MGMAT books, which are arguably the best on the market, you may also be interested in the Veritas Prep Data Sufficiency book (which does a great job explaining how to play "devil's advocate" with the statements), and the Powerscore CR book (still the best CR book out there, IMO). But for Quant, definitely those MGMAT books are your best friend!

Veritas Prep DS: https://amzn.to/1Mf43kD (there's a free older version of the book available on the web if you Google "Veritas Prep Data Sufficiency" -- it's a pdf)
Powerscore CR: https://amzn.to/1HDVPPS

These are all the books I recommend: https://astore.amazon.com/gmro04-20

But DEFINITELY invest in the Official Guide (15th edition is great to start, the lime green one), then get the 2016 version for the new questions (about 25% of them are new/different from the 15th edition). Can't get closer to the actual GMAT than questions written by the same people who write the exam!

Wow thank you so much Vivian, David and Rich. When I posted my question I did not think I would get this much useful feedback.

I plan to use all the feedback you have provided starting today, and I will continue to update this thread as I move along.

Again, thank you all so much for the detailed feedback. I am very grateful!

The one thing I will add to this is to use time as an indication for the the items you should review. Just getting something right or wrong is not good enough. You don't need to rush through problems, but in looking at your exam, one of the things that stands out is that you had some timing trouble. Use time as a guidance to material that you should be studying more thoroughly to discover a more efficient path to your solution.

Jim@StratusPrep wrote:The one thing I will add to this is to use time as an indication for the the items you should review. Just getting something right or wrong is not good enough. You don't need to rush through problems, but in looking at your exam, one of the things that stands out is that you had some timing trouble. Use time as a guidance to material that you should be studying more thoroughly to discover a more efficient path to your solution.

Hi Jim@stratusprep you make a really really good point. I am noticing that I got a lot of answers correct but spent over 2 minutes on a lot of them! I definitely will need to review those in addition to the ones I missed.

Thanks a lot all! Your feedback has been extremely helpful. I look forward to implementing these strategies and seeing steady progress.

Jim@StratusPrep wrote:The one thing I will add to this is to use time as an indication for the the items you should review. Just getting something right or wrong is not good enough. You don't need to rush through problems, but in looking at your exam, one of the things that stands out is that you had some timing trouble. Use time as a guidance to material that you should be studying more thoroughly to discover a more efficient path to your solution.

Hi Jim@stratusprep you make a really really good point. I am noticing that I got a lot of answers correct but spent over 2 minutes on a lot of them! I definitely will need to review those in addition to the ones I missed.

Thanks a lot all! Your feedback has been extremely helpful. I look forward to implementing these strategies and seeing steady progress.

To perform best on the GMAT, you will have to work on learning not only the concepts but also the test taking strategy. The math questions that you got wrong do not pertain to just one or two math topics. Therefore, it will be good to revise all the math concepts that you need for GMAT. The GMAT OG 2016 gives you an almost exhaustive list of math topics that you need for GMAT; you in the may refer to page 107 thereof -- the first page of the Math Review. I will also recommend that you go through the Math Review entirely. Coming to management of the test, you must note that accuracy is more important than speed in the early stage of a section; speed is more important than accuracy near the end of the section and you must complete the section within the stipulated time and answer all the questions. You may observe that getting four questions wrong (Q. No 34 to 37) has pulled down your score only by 11 percentile from 58 to 47. On the other hand, getting just two questions wrong (Q. No. 2 nad 3) has pulled down your score by 48 percentile from 68 to 20. Do not worry too much about the number of questions that you got wrong in the first diagnostic test. Learn the basics, practice regularly, and take full-length practice tests periodically. Accuracy will go up and so will your score. Manya-The Princeton Review courses come with 10 full-length practice tests and 125+ drills for practice. Here is the link to the brochure: https://www.manyagroup.com/brochure/gmat ... ochure.pdf

After about 11 days of focusing on my weakest quantitative topic, I retook the exam and my score dropped by 20 points. I am quite discouraged ATM and not very sure how to proceed. I am trying to figure out at this point whether to spend the majority of my time. I will be taking the exam on November 6th 2015.

I know the quantitiative section is my problem because I scored 83 percentile in verbal on my first exam and 81 percentile on verbal in the second, without doing any work at all related to verbal. I finished the entire Manhattan prep books on Number Properties and Algebra the last 11 days as a majority of the questions I missed in the first exam came from those categories.

My quantitative score however did not improve at all. Please any thoughts?

I attach the score summary of my quantitative section. Thanks a lot for all the feedback.

Hi,

the first time I took the CAT, i scored a 40 in the quant and 37 in the verbal. The second time around, I scored a 39 in the quant, and 36 in the verbal.

I took the essay the first time around but did not bother to the second time around since it was not going to be graded anyways.

I did not take IR in both, but am conscious of the fact that I will need to work on my IR.

I am just really bothered by the fact that my quant is so week and not improving. In order to balance my approach more evenly instead of being so book heavy, please do you have suggestions on what I can do?

Thanks so much