4 Steps to Your Complete GMAT Study Plan - Part 3
Welcome to part 3 of our series! Earlier, we talked about determining both your starting point and your goal score. We also talked about developing your timeline and gathering your resources. Now, its time to talk about what to do!
(Note: If you havent read the earlier installments of this series yet, please do so before you continue here.)
Step 3: Learn how to learn
How do you study? More important, how do you know that the way in which youre studying is effectivethat is, that youre learning what you need to learn to improve your GMAT score? Read on!
The GMAT is a completely different beast than other tests. Youll need to do certain things very differently than the way you did in school.
- Interleave your studies
Most people choose a topic and then learn all about that one topic before moving on to another topic. This is a time-honored way to study and most people feel that they learn a lot this way.
Theres just one problem: theres another way to study that ultimately results in much more actual learning.
Interleaving your studies involves mixing up topics and activities in a way that pushes your brain to work harder during your study sessions. People often say that they dont feel as though theyre learning as much when they interleave. When theyre tested, however, they have retained much moreand they keep this knowledge for far longer.
Go ahead and follow the link in that last paragraph right now. Youll also want to come back to this again later, as you start your actual studies.
- Learn to think your way through the GMAT
Remember that the GMAT is ultimately not a math test or a grammar test. Its a test of your executive reasoning skills. (Has it been a while since youve read that article? Read it again to refresh your memory.)
Yes, you do need to know the formula for the area of a circle and how modifiers work and so on. You also need to know how to handle the different question types given on the GMAT. So during your primary study phase, youre first going to concentrate more on what you need to learn (or re-learn from your school days).
But thats only the start. As you progress, youre gradually going to concentrate more on learning how to think your way through the GMAT. Here are some important premises to keep in mind:
- All of the questions that you study will not appear on the real test. The goal is not just to memorize how to do your study problems.
- The questions on the real test will be similar in certain ways to your study questions but they wont be essentially the same questions with different numbers or words.
- Rather, the questions that you see on the real test will be similar in terms of the line of thinking that you will need to use in order to answer the question. Thats what youre ultimately trying to learn.
- The Second Level of GMAT Study
This think your way through idea is what we call the Second Level of study: not the basic facts and formulas or even the basic processes for the different question types, but the method of thinking that will allow you to work your way through new problems on the test, efficiently and effectively.
The Second Level of study kicks in after youve learned a decent amount of the basic rules, formulas, and processes for the different question typesperhaps halfway through your primary study period. Your Second Level learning is going to come from your light-bulb moments.
- Take Advantage of Light bulb Moments
You know when youre studying something and, all of a sudden, you say, Ohhhhhh! Thats what theyre really asking! Or Ohhh! This is what Im supposed to do next.
Youve just realized something that helps you to really understand whats going on. Whats more, you now get it so well that you feel good about your ability to handle that thing again when you see it in future.
While youre studying, youre looking to create as many light-bulb moments as you can. Youll distill these moments into the following format:
When I see: ABC
Ill think / do: XYZ
For example:
When I see: [pmath]y^2<y[/pmath]
Ill think / do: ????
Do you know the true significance of that math statement? Figure out what it means.
Normally, we think of squaring as making something bigger. But in this case, the squared thing is smaller. Thats weird. What needs to be true in order for [pmath]y^2[/pmath] to be less than [pmath]y[/pmath]?
If you square 2, that gets bigger (4). If you square 1 no, you still get 1. Thats not smaller.
Maybe I need to try a negative? [pmath](-2)^2[/pmath] no, thats 4, which is still bigger!
Oh, wait...what about [pmath]1/2[/pmath]? Yes! [pmath](1/2)^2=1/4[/pmath]! Thats smaller! Oh, right, now I remember: When you square a fraction between 0 and 1, it gets smaller, not bigger.
Are there any other kinds of numbers that get smaller when you square them? (If youre not sure, try some different numbers.)
Turns out there arent. The only numbers that get smaller when you square them are the fractions between 0 and 1. (Note: The fractions between 0 and -1 still get bigger when you square them, because they turn positive.)
Okay! The expression[pmath]y^2<y[/pmath] is really a disguise for [pmath]0<y<1[/pmath]. On an easier question, theyll just give me that number range. But on a harder one, when they want to see whether I actually know my exponent rules, they might tell me that[pmath]y^2<y[/pmath] to see whether I know what that really means.
I dont have time during the test to figure out every one of these little codes. Rather, before I get into the test, I want to have learned as many of them as I can.
When I see:[pmath]y^2<y[/pmath]
Ill write down: [pmath]0<y<1[/pmath]and ask myself how fractions matter in the problem
Take advantage of your light-bulb moments to learn how to recognize what the test writers are really trying to tell you. Then, when you see this again on the real test (or something like it), youll already have an idea of what this question is testing and how best to work through it (or, at the least, how best to start).
- Your ultimate goal: Recognize what to do
Your goal is to learn to recognize as much as you can on test day, so that you can work efficiently and effectively to get the score you want. Just be aware that you wont recognize everything. Not recognizing anything is a good clue, too: its a clue that you might not want to keep working on this problem. :)
Roughly 80% of this kind of learning comes after you have finished doing the problem. Your goal here is not to do a million questionsyour goal is to do a much more modest number of questions and really analyze them to death afterwards in order to figure out what you need to recognize in future and how to handle similar problems. Heres a full run-down of how to analyze problems to maximize your Second Level of learning.
Go take a quick look at that article now; then bookmark it for a more thorough review in a few weeks. Remember, at first, youll concentrate more on learning the underlying facts, rules, and processes. About halfway through your primary study phase, bring that article back up and start using it.
- Document your takeaways
Remember your GMAT Journal? Write something in your Journal every day.* Dont write everything you did. Write:
- what you did that day*
- the two or three most important things you learned (such as I know to cut myself off on a verbal problem when )
- one or two things you want to review at a later date (such as review modifier rules in 2 weeks); ideally, go put that lesson on your calendar right now
* Note that, on some days, youll write Relaxed / took my Earned GMAT Break. Dont burn yourself out!
Also, keep a stack of flash cards handy at all times. Whenever you have a light-bulb moment, capture it! Create a When I see Ill think/do takeaway. Once or twice a day, take 5 minutes to review a random sampling of your flash cards.
Join us next time for our fourth and final installment. Well talk about how to set up study sessions and track your progress.