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Pachyderm,

You say "I was mostly suprised by my poor quant. score, since I've done relatively well when I practiced problems at home. On the test day, I totally lost pace during the quant."... did you ever try a full practice exam, or did you just practice problems? I think you just need to practice keeping the pace.

Tips (learned from MGMAT):
1) Get a stop watch and keep a time log for each question. You should time yourself one question at a time, and then maybe 15 questions at a time. This way you get an idea of how well you are pacing yourself.

2) TAKE PRACTICE EXAMS! And during these exams try to follow this time schedule:

Time Remaining Question Number
75 min
60 min 7-8
45 min 14-15
30 min 21-22
15 min 28-29
0 min 37

If you lose your pace, get back on track.

Hope this helps.

_________________
-Rachel

Hi Pachyderm,

Facing the same problem myself - got 640 and need a higher score. I also found that self-studying has left me with certain gaps regarding time strategies (thanks for the tips, RachelAL).

Got a few questions on how to continue:
1. Should I sign up for a course?
2. Are there courses that focus on improving results (rather than starting from scratch)?
3. Are there courses that focus on time strategies?
4. Are there any other means to practice time-related skills?

Thanks for all the tips so far!

I feel your pain. When I started preparing for the GMAT, I followed the same steps - purchased the recommended books from Kaplan and Princeton, signed up for the Kaplan classroom course, etc. It didn't take me too long to realize that the quality of math/quant in any of these books or courses was pretty dismal.

Striving for excellence in GMAT Math requires a different bent of mind and you can't acquire it by perusing through some of these horrid Kaplan Math guides (even the Kaplan 800 isn't worth it). I believe that one should only attempt to solve the OG after building a solid foundation in math. This becomes all the more imperative if you have been out of school for a long time and don't use quant for your daily work. So I set about searching for other sources. I scanned all the bookstores in my area for math prep books, went through various SAT guides, Regents and Barrons' guides, etc. to no avail. Nada...nothing.

And then someone told me about a few Math/Quant books available in India:

Mathematics For M.B.A. - RS Agarwal
Quantitative Aptitude For Competitive Examinations - RS Agarwal
http://books4u.in/book_detail.php?book_id=1494

Quantitative Aptitude for MBA - Abhijit Guha
http://www.tatamcgrawhill.com/html/titleDetail.jsp?isbn=9780070635791.html

How to prepare for Quantitative Aptitude for CAT - Arun Sharma
http://www.tatamcgrawhill.com/html/titleDetail.jsp?isbn=9780070619937.html

I had one of my connections in India ship them to me. As I started working through some of the material in these books, I had this feeling of deja vu - finally got my hands on some real Math books. Each topic has work problems in varying degree of difficulty. These books were primarily written to assist folks taking the CAT exam for MBA admissions in India. The level of math on the CAT is probably 10 times higher than the GMAT Math and therefore, as you peruse these books, learn to conveniently skip some of those wacko problems and topics because your chances of encountering them in the GMAT are pretty slim. Almost all the topics have various short-cuts for rapid problem solving. Bear in mind that the folks in CAT get only about 30 secs per problem (the 2min on the GMAT sounds like luxury).

These books are intended to prepare your foundation in math. Even if you don't encounter some of the tougher problems in your GMAT, the solid foundation gained from mastering these guides should come in handy if you intend to pursue quant finance during your MBA. The topics in Permutations/Combinations and Probability in itself makes these books worth purchasing. You'd spend much more buying the thrash from Delta course for advanced GMAT math.

Now I'm sure that some of these books are floating around the internet as pdfs. I'd rather purchase these books because the cost of printing 800 pages/book far exceeds their selling price in India (anywhere from $7 to $21). It's sad that some of these books are published by McGraw Hill in India and not available Stateside.

To put it simply, people who succeed in Math understand the "why" behind the answers. Simply understanding a formula does not mean you will be able to apply to it different situations, which is what the GMAT does.

In my opinion the prep materials are good for learning what the fundamentals tested on the GMAT are. After that, I would suggest using this site to see the way smart people work through the problems. Once you have this down, it is only a matter of timing.