I just Beat The GMAT!

I started studying for late April GMAT exam date in mid-March with little to no resources at my disposal. I ordered the official GMAT prep guide books and started doing practice questions in both Quant and Verbal in no specific order. To be honest, I had no idea how to study for this exam and was just hoping that since I am a math major in college, I would have no trouble with the quant portion of the exam and do well enough on verbal to get a 700 level score. I started to do the quant questions in the book and of course a few were quite easy and very doable with no outside studying, however, most were surprisingly hard and included formulas and equations I was unaware of even from college level math classes. It started to hit me that although I could probably get a mid-600 score with no outside studying method, it would be nearly impossible to get in the 700 range, which I desired. Before even hearing about target test prep, I took my first official practice test and scored in the low 600's. I was very upset and not sure how to move forward. My test date was around a month away and I was certain I had a lot of work to do if I was going to improve my score to the 700 range.

What I was not aware of was the steps I needed to take to improve my score, specifically in quant. In verbal: speed, grammar rules and reading comprehension do not have formulas that can be learned, rather "practice practice practice" felt like the best method for me. And overtime, I found that through a lot of timed practice I was able to greatly improve my verbal score into a range that would allow for a "balanced" 700 score. With quant, the same practice method was not showing the results I had hoped for. Rather I continued to get stuck on the same type of questions and had a hopeless feeling of not knowing how to learn this abstract material.

One day, a friend of mine suggested I look into target test prep. I signed up for the 5 day trial and spoke to Jeff in order to set up a diagnostic exam. After the diagnostic I was shown my weaknesses, but more importantly had access to the TTP site that had invaluable content for a GMAT test taker. TTP has divided the GMAT quant material into organized sections that can be read through and practiced. In my opinion, the best thing about TTP is the way they have arranged and organized all of their content. It made clear to me what I was missing and what I already knew so that in the short time I had I was able to shift through a ton of information and learn the most important and most challenging things to me.

So, for the next two weeks or so I started to go through all of the units that TTP had built. Spending extra time on the material like "Number Properties" that was challenging to me and skipping over things like "Statistics" that I was already comfortable with. In addition, I had several video conferences with Jeff to track my progress and learn some more test takings tips and gain his valuable insights about what I should be fixing or doing differently. Eventually, TTP became the only source I used to study for the GMAT. I would continue to go through and learn all of their units and eventually decided to take my second official practice exam (around 1 week prior to my test date). I came out of it with a 700 score balanced in both quant and verbal. I was very pleased and very excited about my progress. For the next week I continued to knock out any low hanging fruit on the TTP site and learn some last minute verbal pointers. On test date, I felt very confident and prepared due to the time I spent on the TTP site and the discussions I had with Jeff. That confidence paid off in a big with as I went on to get a 700 level score.

I am certain, that if it was not for the TTP site I would not have got a score in the 700 range. The site's content was essential to my understanding of my weaknesses and my best path to improving those weaknesses. If I had to do the whole process all over again, the only thing I would change would be to start studying with TTP much earlier in the process, as I feel that my potential would have been unlimited if I had stuck to their tutoring strategy and learned all of their material.