GMAT Strategy

Hi there,
Yesterday I took the test and I ended up with a very poor 440. I needed to take the test at this time to have a result available in order to meet an admission deadline and the Ad Com already offered me to retake the test. Unfortunately, I need around 650 which means a >200 points increase!!

The quant result kind of met my expectations for this attempt (32 vs. 33 in practice exams).
I had to guess 6-8 questions because sometimes I am not able to apply the concepts and I ran out of time...but I feel that the quant part is more predictable for me than the verbal part...

After the quant part I realized that my power of concentration was abnormally weak and thus, I was overwhelmed by all the text given in the verbal section. I only scored 19 compared to around 29 in my practice exams!! (MGMAT exams - good indicator??)

I am not a native speaker and in general Sentence Correction (grammar) is the biggest "pain" for me! Maybe it is because I never really understood grammar rules - I rather learned English by simply speaking, writing and reading a lot - and now I have to follow strict rules!
Critical Reasoning is my second biggest challenge....but I felt comfortable with RC.

I want to retake the test in about 6 weeks. Could someone recommend me a plan or is my goal too ambitious anyway?
I have read study plans for retakers who want to jump from 5xx to ~700 points but I feel that these plans might not make sense for me because of my much lower score - correct me if I am wrong!

Will a tutor make sense in my case? (especially for the verbal section where I am not able to detect the "signals" and nuances in SC; and the explanations in e.g. in OG13 do not help at all...)

Here is how a prepared for my test:

1)Materials I used:
-OG13 (only did about 90% of the questions, plus some from the additional quant book)
-GMAT Prep video tool (great stuff but turned out to be too time-consuming!)
-MGMAT Practice exams

2) I studied every day for approx. 3hours since beginning of February, including weekend sessions (at least one day)

3)My study approach:
-set-based: 10 problems within each area (PS, DS; RC, CR, SC)
-skipping problem when I did not find an approach within 1.5minutes, then stopping the time, marking them and trying to solve them without timing (max. 10minutes)
-viewing explanations after sets; considering unsolved problems for next session

3)For the next weeks: I can only study after work, later in the evening; I will be able to take 4 days off

I would appreciate your help! I am highly motivated to get this thing done!!!

Hi Sebastian. Thanks for the detailed information on your prep needs. Given the amount that you have already prepped, it is very unlikely that you can improve your score 210 points in six weeks. I think you will need at least two months of focused prep to accomplish that goal.

Fortunately, you can improve your prep greatly this time around. Did you use ANY strategy guides last time you prepped? If so, you didn't mention them. Those are a crucial addition to prep. Sentence Correction, a weakness you mentioned, is extremely learn-able.

Also, it is important to focus on certain Subjects and Topics for many of your prep sessions - you definitely didn't do that with your sets of 10 problems within each question type.

And you clearly didn't take enough full sections and CATs in the final weeks of your prep to build your mental endurance.

I've just written a guide on how to build a self-study course: GMAT Clarity. Using it, you can greatly improve your prep efficiency and raise your score a ton. It is flexible based on ability level, so the fact that you are starting at a 440 is fine. It might help to supplement your prep with a tutor later on, but I'm not sure that is necessary.

@thomas:

Yes, I only took 2 practice exams within the 7 weeks. I felt it was more important to focus on the content and speed, obviously I was wrong...

Well I think what I had was more like an "action plan" - where a strategy should probably be the basis. I did the following:
1)Studying the concepts and trying to apply them right away
2)Addressing weak spots by looking for similar questions in the forum and solving these
3) two practice exams 2 weeks before the test

For the verbal section, I learned that SC is probably the one where improvements are easier to realize than they are in RC and CR. However during the entire study time I did not really find a way to recognize certain patterns in SC when being timed - except for easy-to-detect signals, e.g. "like" and "being". The guide sounds interesting...I will try it!

@rich: Also Thank you very much!

Yes I have to hit a deadline for another application - June 1st. The next gmat result is important for me. We have a restructuring project ongoing in my company which finally also affected my department. It is likely that I will belong to the people who will be laid off by end of May - I was the last person that joint 2 years ago. Moreover it is personally for me the good time to start with the MBA this year. That is basically why I am motivated to achieve that goal.

Fortunately, the school I am going to apply until June 1st may accept me with a score between 600-620. However, I understood that this score is still far far away.
Regarding my studies I have to admit that I sometimes rushed through the problems - so I am not sure yet if mainly the approach was wrong.

I will try to work out a new plan anyway; meanwhile I will keep on solving problems from each section in order to keep my rudimentary skills "fresh"...

I have not scheduled an appointment yet. I would like to use the remaining CATs as an indicator to determine whether it makes sense to take the test. What would you do?

@Rich:
I received a response from the AdCom and they recommend me to have a better score available not later than early May (I think they mean the immediate result). Not good for me but its like that; they seem to calculate a sound portion of slack time(Visa processings, administrative stuff, getting settled)...
I will see how I can improve the next weeks. In case I feel not prepared at all, I think I will not be able to meet the deadline. However I feel, that I can do better on the next exam and not having such an immense score drop..

@Thomas:
I bought your guide last Saturday and started to work out my schedule. It looks like a good guideline that I really need - easy to read and made me aware of what is realistic. Here, I have 2 questions:
1) Will it make sense to make a "new" diagnostic test? I would have skipped that because all I want to achieve is max score increase, no matter what my current score is...
2)Would you mind having a look at my schedule after I have detailed my schedule?

(Could also send you a PM if that is better)