GMAT Strategy

Hi sameerashroff,

Raising a score from 500 to 650+ will take some serious time and effort. Unfortunately, 1 month is probably not going to be enough time to make that happen. I'll be happy to offer some advice on your situation, but I'd like to know a bit more about your studies so far and your overall timeline/goals:

1) How long have you been studying?
2) What materials have you used?

3) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
4) Do yo know which Schools you plan to apply to?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

sameerashroff wrote:Hi All,

I have exactly a month to prepare for GMAT. I need help in cracking the GMAT and getting a 650+ score. Currently getting around 500. Need help on getting better at both Quant and verbal. Please help me out. Currently getting Q40 and V16.

Thanks in advance.

Hi sameerashroff,

Your score breakdowns don't provide much information regarding what's needed to increase your score.

The GMAT is a test of your math and verbal skills AND it's a test of your test-taking skills. So, taking several practice tests is an important part of your prep. This will help you build your test-taking skills, and it will help you identify any remaining area(s) of weakness.

While CAREFULLY analyzing your practice tests, there are four main types of weakness to watch out for:
1. specific Quant skills/concepts (e.g., algebra, standard deviation, etc.)
2. specific Verbal skills/concepts (e.g., verb tenses, assumption CR questions, etc.)
3. test-taking skills (time management, endurance, anxiety etc.)
4. silly mistakes

For the first two weaknesses, the fix is pretty straightforward. Learn the concept/skill and find some practice questions to strengthen that weakness. To focus on one topic at a time, you can use BTG's tagging feature to isolate one concept. For example, here are all of the questions tagged as statistics questions: https://www.beatthegmat.com/forums/tags/ ... statistics
See the left side of that linked page for more tag options.

If your test-taking skills are holding you back, then you need to work on these. For example, we have a free GMAT time management video at https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gener ... video/1244

Finally, if silly mistakes are hurting your score, then it's important that you identify and categorize these mistakes so that, during tests, you can easily spot situations in which you're prone to making errors. I write about this and other strategies in the following article: https://www.gmatprepnow.com/articles/avo ... teaks-gmat

Cheers,
Brent