GMAT Strategy

I am an Electrical Engineer from a good school looking to get my MBA. I need a score of 660 to get free tuition at the school I'm interested in. About two weeks ago I bought a used set of the 5th edition Manhattan study books (without online access). In a very short period, I read through all ten of the Manhattan study books and completed all the practice problems within. I did not take a practice exam. I really need the 660 to make getting an MBA worth it. I took the GMAT for the first time today. I got a 600 (40 quantitative, and 32 verbal). I finished the quantitative section of the test with seventeen minutes to spare. I really expected a higher score. I was really surprised at how low my math score was considering I deal with difficult high level math on a daily basis. I got a 32 on the ACT back in high school, so it's not like I don't perform on standardized tests. How should I plan to study in preparation for taking the test again?

My situation is probably atypical. Without going into a lot of detail, the university I'm interested in has a program for engineers that will cover the costs if I meet certain requirements. The last requirement is obtaining a 660. I'm not really interested in applying to other business schools for practical and economic reasons. I do have until late May to attain this score! When I took the ACT way back in high school, I took it cold without studying. I really don't know how to study for an exam like this. How should I go about using my time to prepare?

bob1123 wrote:My situation is probably atypical. Without going into a lot of detail, the university I'm interested in has a program for engineers that will cover the costs if I meet certain requirements. The last requirement is obtaining a 660. I'm not really interested in applying to other business schools for practical and economic reasons. I do have until late May to attain this score! When I took the ACT way back in high school, I took it cold without studying. I really don't know how to study for an exam like this. How should I go about using my time to prepare?

Hi.

I know how you feel. Before I prepared for the GMAT I had not prepared for a test like it, and I was not really sure how to get my score to increase.

I think that the first order of business for you is to realize that, as Rich indicated, GMAT quant is not a math test. It's a test that uses basic math to see how good you are at figuring things out. So it is full of trick and traps, and much of what really matters for scoring high are what you notice and how good you are at hacking your way to answers, rather than how good you are at math. By approaching it as a math test and by finishing 17 minutes early, you got tricked by the tricks and didn't see what you had to see in order to get more right answers.

I wonder whether just by realizing that GMAT quant is a tricky test, practicing data sufficiency questions for a week, and using the entire time available for quant next time you take a test you could hit your score goal in a week. Likely that is the case.

Still, I'll give you some more ideas.

Increasing your GMAT quant score can be done in the following ways. Since likely you could be better at data sufficiency questions, do a LOT of data sufficiency questions. As I said, just doing data sufficiency questions might be sufficient.

Beyond that, you could go over the practice test that you took and see what types of questions you didn't get right. The test tends to be pretty consistent in terms of the types of questions that appear on it. So by going over that test to see what to work on and then focusing on the types of questions that you are not as good at answering, you can drive your quant score up point by point.

For instance, if you weren't sure how to get the answer to a question involving triangles, you could address that situation by learning about how triangles are used in GMAT questions and doing thirty or more triangle questions.

The same could be done with exponent questions, absolute value questions and other types of questions.

I think if you were to get better at data sufficiency, get better at a few categories of questions, and slow down when you are taking a test, your hitting 660+ by scoring higher on quant would be a lock.

Even so, you could also work on verbal.

When you do verbal, and quant, practice questions, take all the time you need in order to get the right answers. Learning to see what's going on, not get tricked, and get right answers is the key. Once you are good at those things, you can speed up and keep doing them.

To go from 600 to 660, you need basically maybe 6 to 10 more right answers. Getting them is not such a big deal. By combining some slow, careful verbal practice geared toward learning to see more with some topic by topic quant work, you should hit you goal.

Sorry for my late response, I have been traveling heavily for my work. I've scheduled my next exam for the 24th of February, giving me about a month to study. I plan on spending 1-2 hours per day on weekdays and 3-4 hours per day on weekends preparing for the exam. I appreciate all the links to problem banks! They will come in very handy! I do have the 5th edition Manhattan prep books, but no access to their online materials. I intend to take some practice exams to gauge my current position and get a better feel for how to pace myself for the exam. Is it worth it to pay the fee to access Manhattan's online practice exams or are there other quality practice exams out there?

How do you suggest I focus on the Quant material in the coming week? In the road up to my first exam I read through the Manhattan books and did the problems at the end of each section. Should I go back over this material, or should I focus on doing practice problems and learn from my mistakes by logging errors?

bob1123 wrote:How do you suggest I focus on the Quant material in the coming week? In the road up to my first exam I read through the Manhattan books and did the problems at the end of each section. Should I go back over this material, or should I focus on doing practice problems and learn from my mistakes by logging errors?

Probably you should do a hybrid of those two things.

Now that you have learned all ABOUT quant, you have to learn TO GET RIGHT ANSWERS CONSISTENTLY.

So your prep going forward should be performance driven, meaning you do practice problems, seeking to get right answer, and when you run into something that you aren't clear about, THEN you go back to the materials to learn more about it. You can also review and broaden your understanding by using Beat the GMAT as you can use the Forums by finding ways in which people found answers to questions that you are not sure how to answer and by posting questions.

Also, while error logs can be useful, don't get into a habit of feeling good because you are doing questions and logging errors and learning things. You have to be learning to get right answers. Get it? Right answers are the key here. It's easy to feel that you are learning and miss the fact that you are not learning to get right answers.

The truth is that to score 660 you don't have to know all that much GMAT specific stuff. You are already scoring 40 on verbal. With another point or two in verbal and a low 40's score in quant, you will be at or beyond 660. You have read the books and learned about the GMAT. Now learn to get right answers.

The questions that you need to answer in order to get a score around 40 in quant do not involve much crazy math and are to a large degree logic based. For instance, a question may seem to be about averages, but actually in order to get it right you have to see that even though you have a lot of information, you don't have enough to calculate the average it is asking for.

By rushing through and finishing 17 minutes early when you took that practice test, you missed the logic tricks. That's why reading more is not the answer. You have to learn to see what you have to see, and you learn that by practicing.

So, slow down, practice learning to see what you have to see, and go back to the books, or go to Beat the GMAT or somewhere else, as necessary in order to fill in gaps in your conceptual understanding.

bob1123 wrote:Sorry for my late response, I have been traveling heavily for my work. I've scheduled my next exam for the 24th of February, giving me about a month to study. I plan on spending 1-2 hours per day on weekdays and 3-4 hours per day on weekends preparing for the exam. I appreciate all the links to problem banks! They will come in very handy! I do have the 5th edition Manhattan prep books, but no access to their online materials. I intend to take some practice exams to gauge my current position and get a better feel for how to pace myself for the exam. Is it worth it to pay the fee to access Manhattan's online practice exams or are there other quality practice exams out there?

Hi Bob.

Had you taken a practice exam before you took the real test, you may have hit your goal score the first time. Knowing how to get right answers is one aspect of hitting your score goal, and another is handling the test itself. It is likely that by taking some practice tests you would have learned that the GMAT is to a large degree a reasoning game and that finishing early is generally not a good idea. So taking some practice tests is a good idea.

Remember as you go through your preparation process that GMAT quant and verbal are to a large degree reasoning games. The tests with the questions that have the best reasoning tricks are the official ones.

I am curious to see how you do on an official test if you take your time and look for logic tricks. You can score rather high even by getting almost all of the first thirty quant questions right and rushing through the last seven. In any case, by practicing looking for the key things that you have to see and then focusing on catching the logic aspects and tricks of the questions when taking a practice test, you may hit your score goal this week.

As you get closer to test-day, you'll also want to spend a little time thinking about the psychological dimension of the GMAT. (Spoiler alert: it's enormous.) A simple mindset adjustment can easily improve your score by 50+ points. Check out this article about test-day hacks to boost performance:

https://creatingpositivefutures.com/3-re ... t-anxiety/