GMAT Strategy

Hi Team Gmat,

I decided to take the plunge this weekend and get in full GMAT prep mode, hoping to take the test in 2 months based on my work schedule. Briefly, my background is a 25 year old American who works professionally in communications.

To get a true baseline, I took the GMAT prep practice CAT this weekend before cracking open any study books (did study GMAT materiel for 2 weeks about a year ago). While I skipped the practice AWA, I did the rest of the sections consecutively in a test like environment.

Score: 640
Quant: 39, with 40 minutes left
Verbal: 38, with 30 minutes left
IR: 4

I'm not too worried about IR - I was completely unfamiliar with the format and a quick review of my errors makes think a familiarity with question structure will help alleviate the low score there.

My bigger questions:
- Does a 2 month time table sound reasonable?
- Are there strategies to make myself use more time? (rare question, I know)
- What materials should I be using to study? (Currently have a 2014 Kaplan GMAT PREMIER and a 13th EDITION GMAT REVIEW)

I'm planning to dedicate 2-3 hours on week days and 4-5 on Saturdays and Sundays
3 weeks Math
2 weeks Verbal
1 week review IR and AWA
2 weeks test practice and review of error log

Any other input would be helpful. I've tried to do as much reading on the GMAT test prep subject this weekend, but I realize everyone needs to approach the test a little bit differently.

While it's a little challenging to determine whether your time frame is realistic, given your particular challenges, many of which are related to your just going too fast to get the answers, it does seem that you could significantly increase your score in two months.

Maybe your next step should be to go back to the GMAT Prep CAT you took and see what you did, what you got right, what you got wrong, what you basically understand and what you are clueless about. That way you can get set up to make the best use of your time going forward.

Then yes, go through the Official Guide, the version you have is fine, and choose parts of the Kaplan book that you can use to strengthen your weaker areas.

As far as slowing down goes, maybe if you understand the degree to which paying attention to details and catching little tricks matters, you will slow down to do that. Also, become clear about the fact that you have about 2 minutes per quant question and 1.8 minutes per verbal question, and you might as well use it all to give yourself the best chance of getting the correct answers.

If you really have trouble slowing down and focusing, you might want to look into mindful meditation or some similar method for adjusting how you operate in general.

Beyond using strategy guides and learning about concepts and approaches for handling GMAT questions, you could probably increase your score significantly via practice. For quant, I bet if you sign up for a BellCurves practice account and start getting smoked right and left by the tricks in the quant questions in their question bank, you will slow down naturally. For verbal questions, and more quant questions, you could use the Veritas question bank. This is of course in addition to all the questions in the Official Guide, but those online question banks would probably be really good for you with their somewhat video game like setups and the graphics that clearly show performance, including time spent per question.

The way to get more points on the GMAT is to get more questions right and if slowing down is part of what it takes for you to do that, then via practice you will make this very clear to yourself and train yourself to use the time you have.

One other thing. In case you hadn't planned to do so, it would probably be best to space out the practice CATs so that you are taking one every week or two. That way you can use them to practice timing and other test related things and to continue to assess how you are progressing.

Hi There,

- Ideally GMAT preparation takes anywhere between 3-6 months. However, it depends upon individual as well. If you are thorough with your basics, 2 months will suffice.

- To manage time, you need to guage your accuracy with the question types. Check for which question types you answer incorrectly and just be careful and spend some more time while answering those particular questions.

- For study material you can refer to the link below.

https://blog.manyagroup.com/detail.html?authorid=59

Hope this helps. Let us know if you need any further assistance regarding your GMAT preparation.

Good Luck

Hey Centreright,

Welcome to the wonderful (and slightly intense ) world of GMAT! Congrats on taking your first CAT. Here's my initial impressions:

1) Congrats, you're a high-scorer! If you've got a 640 with no prep, you know a lot of the base content already and you're a solid test-taker. You have an excellent chance at a 700+ or even a 750+ score. A 2 month time-table is reasonable, but you need to set a Study Plan and set it NOW. I'd suggest weekly CATs using those from GMATPrep and MGMAT, an effective review method utilizing an Error Log, and studying a narrow list of concepts from the GMAT Concept List (attached) each week. Above all, do NOT waste your limited study time by (1) throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks (doing WAY too many concepts all at once with limited gains) and (2) confusing QUANTITY of study with QUALITY of study. Review! Review! Self-analyze!

2) Your pacing is ALL over the place. Lots of smart people rush their GMAT. Know that the ideal test-taker clicks in their final answer with 10 seconds left on the clock. The time is there for you to USE, so as you move forward, try to stretch out your section to adhere to the attached benchmarks (yellow image). As you slow down to work on more detailed strategies your pacing will automatically even out. But still, the fact your accuracy was so high with such speed bodes well. To answer your question, YES, there ARE strategies. Every tutor and every test prep company has their own. You can get an idea of mine on my free blog: https://gmatrockstar.com/blog/ or from my many BTG posts. 90% of my tutoring sessions involve teaching strategy and working through challenging problems to demonstrate strategy and why it's necessary.

3) Get better materials (sooner rather than later). The OG is ESSENTIAL, but it's time to ditch the Kaplan book. It's sub-par, and you're already a high score-er. I'd go for the MGMAT books, especially Sentence Correction, Number Properties, Word Translations, and perhaps Advanced Quant. I would also recommend Powerscore CR. For RC, you can use the OG passages and free passages online, but you'll prob need to work with a tutor to perfect RC strategy. Scroll further down to see how I'd recommend you approach RC.

4) Focus on Quant and Verbal at the same time, concept by CONCEPT. You suggested the following plan:

3 weeks Math
2 weeks Verbal
1 week review IR and AWA
2 weeks test practice and review of error log

Here's why I don't like this plan: it pre-supposes at some point you will be "done" with Math and Verbal. You will NEVER be "done" with these sections. You should be doing a good chunk from both sections on a constant rotating basis from now until Test Day. Look at the attachment to see just how many concepts are on the GMAT. There's a LOT. There is NO WAY you can master all those Math concepts in 3 weeks. NO WAY. But you could definitely handle 2 Quant and 2 Verbal concepts a week. Aim to DEEP DIVE in the way that you study. Master a limited number of concepts, rather than doing the "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" approach. It's dangerous, and does not yield results.

5) Forget AWA and IR. Your scaled score (up to 800) is SOLELY based on Quant and Verbal, and that is where your focus should be. I have never heard of anyone with a 700+ GMAT score who did not get into their school BECAUSE of their AWA and/or IR score. Frankly, schools just don't care. AWA is easily mastered in 2-3 attempts if you have a solid template, and if you're doing the IR problems on your CATs to practice, then you'll be fine to attempt the 12 IR problems you'll see on Test Day, especially if you're a high Quant-scorer. To be honest, no one does that well on IR, and though I'm admittedly NOT an admissions consultant, it really seems like schools don't care as long as your actual GMAT score is high. 1 week focused ONLY on these 2 sections would be a total waste, and neglecting Quant and Verbal for 7 days three weeks out from your test is just foolhardly.

6. Do 1 CAT a week. The "final two weeks test practice" part of your Error Log is what troubles me the most. CATs are not something you shove into the final two weeks to "cram" for the actual exam. They are powerful diagnostic tools that you should regularly be doing in order to identify your weaknesses and pinpoint what concepts most need your time and attention. In fact, the POINT of doing an Error Log is so you can examine ALL the incorrect questions across multiple CATs to know where you should place your focus. Don't Error Log practice questions, with the possible exception of OG questions. Error Log incorrect CAT questions.

I hope this gives you some ideas on how to move forward. If you'd like additional advice, feel free to email me at gmatrockstar[at]gmail.com. You seem like a really promising student, so I think with a smart study plan you could get a really high GMAT score! Below you'll find my RC strategy and a sample.

Good RC Strategy

Step 1 - Read the Passage ---> Do a Passage Map!

Step 2 - Rephrase the Question

Step 3 - Write Down a Prediction (Go Back to the Passage!)

Step 4 - Eliminate 3 Choices (Use "+", "-"", and "?" Symbols)

Step 5 - Carefully Compare the "Final Two"

Questions to Ask:

- Does the Wrong Answer Use Unnecessary Extreme Language?

- Is the Wrong Answer Outside the Scope of the Passage?

- Is the Wrong Answer Not Specifically Answering THIS Question?

- Can I Rephrase the Wrong Answer to Make It More Understandably Incorrect?

Let's look at a passage:

The fields of antebellum (pre-Civil War) political history and women's history use separate sources and focus on separate issues. Political historians, examining sources such as voting records, newspapers, and politicians' writings, focus on the emergence in the 1840's of a new "American political nation," and since women were neither voters nor politicians, they receive little discussion. Women's historians, meanwhile, have shown little interest in the subject of party politics, instead drawing on personal papers, legal records such as wills, and records of female associations to illuminate women's domestic lives, their moral reform activities, and the emergence of the woman's rights movement.

However, most historians have underestimated the extent and significance of women's political allegiance in the antebellum period. For example, in the presidential election campaigns of the 1840's, the Virginia Whig party strove to win the allegiance of Virginia's women by inviting them to rallies and speeches. According to Whig propaganda, women who turned out at the party's rallies gathered information that enabled them to mold party-loyal families, reminded men of moral values that transcended party loyalty, and conferred moral standing on the party. Virginia Democrats, in response, began to make similar appeals to women as well. By the mid-1850's the inclusion of women in the rituals of party politics had become commonplace and the ideology that justified such inclusion had been assimilated by the Democrats.

We've got two paragraphs, so I'd break them down on our scratch pad as below:

STEP 1 - Passage Map

Topic: history fields
Scope: how they differ
1: to describe how sources/foci of fields differ
2: to exemplify how 1 field underestimates the other
Author's POV: political historians (-); women's history (+)
Purpose: to explain how 2 fields differ, and why that's not (+)

Now we're in a great position to try a question:

The primary purpose of the passage as a whole is to

STEP 2 - Rephrase: What's the purpose?
STEP 3 - Prediction: to explain how 2 fields differ, and why that's not (+)

A. examine the tactics of antebellum political parties with regard to women
B. trace the effect of politics on the emergence of the woman's rights movement
C. point out a deficiency in the study of a particular historical period
D. discuss the ideologies of opposing antebellum political parties
E. contrast the methodologies in two differing fields of historical inquiry

STEP 4 - First pass:

A. (-) too specific to paragraph 2
B. (?) a little too specific to paragraph 2, but poss. long-shot
C. (+) potentially too negative in tone, but maybe
D. (-) the passage's topic is not political parties
E. (+) a great fit for the first paragraph, but potentially leaves out paragraph 2

STEP 5 - Second pass:

The "final two" are C and E, since those are the only two options with a (+) mark. So let's carefully examine the subtle differences between them.

C. point out a deficiency in the study of a particular historical period
E. contrast the methodologies in two differing fields of historical inquiry

Let's rephrase each one:

C. show (-) in antebellum study
E. contrast HOW 2 fields studied

What it comes down to is whether we believe the ultimate purpose of this passage is INFORMATIONAL or PERSUASIVE. It's tough, because the first paragraph is largely informational, and then the second paragraph is largely persuasive (it's rare to see a passage so "split" like this, and this is not an actual GMAC passage, so we can have some healthy suspicion regarding its quality).

Which one should we choose, C or E? This is a MAIN IDEA question, and the correct answer must be the most broad choice that does not step outside the scope of the passage. Since the last half of the passage is persuasive, we could argue that the first paragraph only serves to drive us towards the author's strong opinion. If we choose (E) here, we are not addressing the final paragraph at all. (E) is really more like the function of the first paragraph only. (C) best matches the overall passage and does an excellent job of matching the author's point of view.

The answer must be [spoiler](C)[/spoiler].

Takeaway: If a passage seems "split" between informational/persuasive, look closely at the language of the concluding paragraph. Is the author trying to end with a decisive opinion? If so, it's really a persuasive passage with some informational exposition. What really sold me on C is the strong opinion given in the first sentence of the second paragraph. The author really lays down a thesis, and then provides a detailed example to back himself up. He's obviously passionate.

Best,
Vivian