GMAT Strategy

preptobismol wrote:Hi all,

Again, thank you for the help so far! It's made the jump into studying a lot easier for me.

I recently took one official GMAT test as a diagnostic and am hoping for a little feedback on how I should proceed. I scored a 600 (30Q, 42V). Clearly quant is where I need to focus my energy. On the quant I was only able to answer 23 questions before running out of time (10 DS and 13 other) and missed 8 out of 10 data sufficiency questions. I also spent the most time on DS.

How can I improve on DS and will this be enough to bring me into the 700 range? I was surprised by my low quant score as I'm currently an engineering student and am pretty proficient in math.

I have seen multiple engineers struggle with GMAT math, at least in the beginning of their preparation.

This is not engineering math. The point is not to methodically work through equations to get to an answer that might not be a clean answer and might involve multiple decimal places. The point is to find shortcuts and as quickly as possible find some often trick way to get to what is often a clean, integer or simple fraction answer. This is a test of skill in using resources to achieve aims more than it is a math test.

In fact, when doing DS questions, generally the idea is not to find the answer at all, but rather to just see if one could find the answer. Actually finding the answer to DS questions tends to be unnecessary, and uses up time.

The 30 sounds a little low, but the fact that you got 8 DS wrong makes it sound as if you can fairly easily get your score much higher. Why? Because doing DS questions uses a skill set that one can go from not having to having in a month or two. I for one used to get queasy just looking at a DS question. So I did dozens of them and that changed everything. I also learned about certain things that people who are good at DS know about, such as avoiding C traps.

Don't neglect verbal too much, by the way. By getting to be more of an insider as far as understanding how the questions work and can be answered, you can likely boost that score 4, 5 or more points, and at the very least will lock in the respectable score you have already generated.

Here's a chart you can use to get a pretty good, if not perfectly accurate, idea of what you need to score on each section to achieve your overall score goal. For instance, if you can boost that verbal score to even just 44, and also get 44 on quant, which would be no big deal, according to the chart that would get you to the 710 - 720 range.

https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/how-to-cal ... at-scores/

HI All,

I have encountered a lot of forums wherein it is advised to divide quant and verbal preparation in blocks of 2 months and prepare separately. However some other plans advise to mix the topics as per days i.e. prepare for both sections in tandem. Which approach would be best to prepare. I will be using Manhattan guides and OG

HI All,

I have encountered a lot of forums wherein it is advised to divide quant and verbal preparation in blocks of 2 months and prepare separately. However some other plans advise to mix the topics as per days i.e. prepare for both sections in tandem. Which approach would be best to prepare. I will be using Manhattan guides and OG

There's no magic composition mix that will work best for everyone. (I'm assuming that you meant that the study plan you've seen is itself two months, and during these two months some days are exclusively quant and some days are exclusively verbal, not that you'd do only quant for 2 months and then only verbal for 2 months, which would, needless to say, not be advisable.) Partially, it will depend on how much time you have for each study session. If you have 45 minutes on a given day, that's probably not enough time to do both quant and verbal. If you have 2 hours, I think it would be entirely reasonable to split this time between subjects. Partially, your study mix will be determined by how you're doing on practice tests. Someone who is scoring 97th percentile on verbal and 32nd percentile on quant is not going to have the same study plan as someone who is scoring at 44th percentile verbal and 92nd percentile quant. However, if you're looking for a good template, the beatthegmat 60-day plan is a great place to start.