GMAT Strategy

Hi All,

I intend to take my GMAT by november 30th,3 months from now.
My diagnostic score is 530 V26 Q36.Clearly I need improvement at both quant and verbal.
My target score is 680 V 36 Q47-i.e a 10 point increase in both quant and verbal.I am ready to do whatever it takes to achieve this end.i have already gone through power score CR bible and the first 4 MGMAT books once.I took a practise test after two months of prep fron june to august and was shattered.470 Q37 v19.So I have decided to start everything afresh(2 hrs a day on week days , 6 hrs a day on weekends)...

This is my prep plan:

Materials:

Quant-MGMAT
SC - MGMAT+e-gmat SC course
CR - Power score CR bible
RC - Veritas prep + e-gmat RC course

Daily activities-

1)Reading comprehension 2 passages every day before sleep fro Aug 20 to Oct 13(50 hrs) by integrating e-gmat RC strategies.
2)VERBAL DAYS:Mon,tue,Wed(mornings) - Verbal+3 or 4 OG problems(medium difficulty) from the covered topic
3)QUANT DAYS:Thu,Fri(mornings) - Quant+3 or 4 OG problems(medium difficulty) from the covered topic
4)Sat-Weekly review of topics covered in the past week+Practise test(only after Oct 13)
5)Sun- Verbal study+Quant study+Practise test review(only after oct 13)

Verbal:

Aug 12 - Sep 5 - SC (Theory=40 hours on VERBAL days)
Sep 5 - Oct 13 - CR(Theory=39 hours on VERBAL days)+SC practise(moderate-hard) from OG 12 on verbal days
By October 13 - would have completed atleast 50 RC passages

Quant:

Finish each MGMAT strategy guide in 10 hrs time.

Aug23-Aug 31 - finish Number Properties
Sep 9 - finish FDPs + practise of Covered topics in Quant on OG12 and their review
Sep 23 - finish EIV + practise of Covered topics in Quant on OG12 and their review
Oct 5 - finish Word Problems + practise of Covered topics in Quant on OG12 and their review
Oct 13- finish Geometry + practise of Covered topics in OG12 in Quant on OG 12 and their review

OG Practise.
Oct 13 - Nov 20 - Dedicated for OG Practise.
VERBAL DAYS-Roughly 10 questions each from SC,CR,RC on verbal days
QUANT DAYS-Roughly 30 questions and their review each day

Practise tests:

Start from October 13 - November 17- 1 each week for 6 weeks

Final Lap:

leave from office for two weeks.(Nov 17 - Nov 31)
GMAT day- Nov 30.

At the end of each topic ,I plan to take couple of day's leave- both as a reward for completing my studies and as a recharge for the next topic

Hopefully ,I will get to 680 V 36 Q 47 at the end of this mammoth effort.

Will keep you guys posted on my progress.

Btw,Pl do send in your comments.

* From today to your test date you have close to 15 weekends and taking so many mocks, one each week, are not useful.

* Your daily activities include only 3 to 4 four problems from covered topic - What is the covered topic ? From the course you are undertaking ? If so then why do you take a mock in the weekend ? When are you planning to improve using your mocks ? First either focus on improving the content using the coursework or don't stick to coursework and use the mocks to identify your weak areas and improve the content knowledge yourself. Doing both is difficult given your 2 hours on weekdays. So skip the mocks in the early stages. Start taking mocks once you finish the course.

* Remember that mock tests are useful only to a certain extent - to identify your weak areas, improve your stamina, testing experience. You cannot expect a score improvement unless you spend time analyzing your mocks, work on the identified weak areas.

* Your aug - oct plan includes both quant and verbal - Use OG problems instead of grockit problems. Try to solve the problems topic wise and review them effectively. Reviewing in the sense you should look for all possible solutions for a quant problem (search or post through forums) choose and learn the one which gives you best accuracy in short time, you should look for all possible errors in each option a single SC question, you should look for solid reasons for each CR and RC problems - this includes identifying different strategies/patterns. If one doesn't work, you should be quick to try out different strategies for CR and RC - once you get the right strategy and get used to the GMAT Problems you don't need regular practice for CR/RC problems. Take notes/flash cards while reviewing. All these review work take about 8 to 10 mins for a single problem, so OG problems are suffice. Wasting too much time for non official problems is not a good idea.

* Keeping to this plan - you would take roughly 80 to 90 hours for going through the strategy guides, 800 problems are there so roughly 25 hours for solving OG problems and if it takes 4x times to review then 100 hours for review, for a single mock with review its close to 10 hours. Lets say you take 6 mocks so that would be another 60 hours. Given your 20 hours a week, you will roughly have 13 to 14 weeks with 260 to 300 hours. Your 3 month would go off with this alone and if you have any time left use grockit problems as additional resource.

* The time you spend on review is the most crucial time for learning. You might even learn so many concepts during review and even if you solve 10 problems a day and it takes 2 hours to review do not bother unless you are learning something. Don't rush off solving problems. There is no use just solving problems. Review is what important.

Hi Sam,

thanks for your feedback.i had made a typo in the earlier post.I plan to take Practise teests only after oct 13 by when I would have completed theory and a basic level application of all concepts.

Other than the above point,I want to add that,I have changed my post incorporating your suggestions.
Pl feel free to go thro' them and mention your feedbacks if any.

Thanks

This seems fine. Take at least one or two mocks in between Aug and Oct. It also serves as a motivator once you start seeing improvements in learning stage. Apart from that everything is fine. As I said earlier - review effectively. Check these links for Ron's take on how to review. Hope it helps !!!

https://www.beatthegmat.com/stuck-at-quo ... tml#413529
https://www.beatthegmat.com/where-am-i-g ... 00875.html