The 60-Day GMAT Study Guide

Sorry for the vague title! I'm a rising senior in college, looking to take the GMAT for MAcc programs, to complete an extra 30 credits to sit for the CPA exam in my state (or go for research!). To gauge my current readiness, I took one of GMATPrep's free practice exams from MBA.com two days ago and scored a 560, cold; this puts me currently at the 50th percentile. The software doesn't score the AWA section, but I got a 5 in IR, a 41 (54th %tile) in quant, and a 26 (41st %tile) in verbal. I'm not thrilled with my first attempt, but it's been about four years since I've taken a comparable assessment, so I'm pretty rusty.

I plan to sit for the exam in early-mid September, which will give me about 2.5-3 months of pure preparation. My target score is 700+ because I do want my application to look attractive to admissions (I'm not from an extremely prestigious college). My father took the GMAT, but he took it in the mid-80s, and took it cold, so I don't have a lot of people to turn to IRL who have taken it recently.

I guess what I'm trying to ask is what study materials should I covet? I have the three OG books and a Powerscore CR Bible. I also have six CAT's from Manhattan Prep that I bought during a sale period. There are so many resources available and I don't want to spend money on online prep programs that I'm not going to use much. So far, I've taken a diagnostic exam and started an error log, and I'm in the process of reviewing mistakes that I made from my first attempt If anyone could give me some further guidance, I'd be ecstatic. Thanks!

kiranshankarsharma wrote:Sorry for the vague title! I'm a rising senior in college, looking to take the GMAT for MAcc programs, to complete an extra 30 credits to sit for the CPA exam in my state (or go for research!). To gauge my current readiness, I took one of GMATPrep's free practice exams from MBA.com two days ago and scored a 560, cold; this puts me currently at the 50th percentile. The software doesn't score the AWA section, but I got a 5 in IR, a 41 (54th %tile) in quant, and a 26 (41st %tile) in verbal. I'm not thrilled with my first attempt, but it's been about four years since I've taken a comparable assessment, so I'm pretty rusty.

I plan to sit for the exam in early-mid September, which will give me about 2.5-3 months of pure preparation. My target score is 700+ because I do want my application to look attractive to admissions (I'm not from an extremely prestigious college). My father took the GMAT, but he took it in the mid-80s, and took it cold, so I don't have a lot of people to turn to IRL who have taken it recently.

I guess what I'm trying to ask is what study materials should I covet? I have the three OG books and a Powerscore CR Bible. I also have six CAT's from Manhattan Prep that I bought during a sale period. There are so many resources available and I don't want to spend money on online prep programs that I'm not going to use much. So far, I've taken a diagnostic exam and started an error log, and I'm in the process of reviewing mistakes that I made from my first attempt If anyone could give me some further guidance, I'd be ecstatic. Thanks!

I'd definitely add the GMATPrep practice tests from mba.com to the mix. (You've got one more free test and four more you can buy.) You might also consider the Question Pack from the same site.

If you're looking for some good free supplemental material, check out our Question Bank: https://www.veritasprep.com/gmat/gmat-question-bank/

The research suggests that frequent, short/intense study sessions are more beneficial than more sporadic/longer sessions. So even if you only have a 20 minute stretch of free time on a given day, it's worthwhile to sneak in some drilling then to stay sharp.

Last, try to take a few minutes after every study session to distill what you've gone over into a handful of simple takeaways. This way, you can continually refer back to this takeaway summary sheet and not lose the forest for the trees.

Keep us posted...