GMAT Strategy

I got 520 (Q32, V28) on my first try and 480 (Q28, V28) on my second try. I want to ask anybody who started that low and ended up in the mid to upper 600s, did you feel like a complete idiot at times starting out learning quantitative? I feel like a mountain is before me right now and I am only hoping to score around 650. I am taking my third attempt October 19th, is 650 wishful thinking?

I am taking the Economist course right now and have purchased the Manhattan GMAT guides (fourth edition) as well as the GMAT OG review (13th edition). I can tell my verbal is getting better as I go through sentence correction right now and I am definitely improving from where I was. However, I feel like my quantitative is hardly making any progress. Right now it is just the Economist and the OG but will work on using the Manhattan as well. Hard to divide it all up while working an 8:30-5:30 job and also taking two night classes trying to fulfill prerequisites for grad school.

Dayln wrote:I got 520 (Q32, V28) on my first try and 480 (Q28, V28) on my second try. I want to ask anybody who started that low and ended up in the mid to upper 600s, did you feel like a complete idiot at times starting out learning quantitative? I feel like a mountain is before me right now and I am only hoping to score around 650. I am taking my third attempt October 19th, is 650 wishful thinking?

Hi Dayln,

Just to inform you, you score is much on the lower side in Quant in comparison to your score in Verbal and you can check that when you look at the percentile that you get in QUant and in Verbal.

Therefore with a little bit of focus and preparation, you can easily push your Quant score up to about 42-43 which anyone with about a month's practice in a guided environment can do. None of my students (Without any exception) for past almost 10 years has got a score lower than 43 and a great majority of them (about 95+%) have got above 46.

This improvement in Quant from 32 to 42 will give you an improvement of about 90 marks in total which will certainly fetch you a score like 600.

I hope it helps

Dayln wrote: I am taking the Economist course right now and have purchased the Manhattan GMAT guides (fourth edition) as well as the GMAT OG review (13th edition). I can tell my verbal is getting better as I go through sentence correction right now and I am definitely improving from where I was. However, I feel like my quantitative is hardly making any progress. Right now it is just the Economist and the OG but will work on using the Manhattan as well. Hard to divide it all up while working an 8:30-5:30 job and also taking two night classes trying to fulfill prerequisites for grad school.

Where I understand that It's quite difficult for you to take time out of your schedule for GMAT preparation, You should also know that GMAT is not the test of only Intelligence but it is a test of persistence as well. One can never improve in Quant unless the concepts learnt can be put in application. Therefore You will have to invest some time and energy to get the desired outcome.

In Quant you should be referring to the Solutions in OG and take away the key learning for improvement and and make sure that you can apply the concepts the next time you see the questions and for that you could use manhattan material.

Where self study can keep you paced up I would definitely suggest that you should not be overburdening yourself by guiding yourself in the way you feel is appropriate for you instead may be an expert help can make a lot of improvement in your learning.

Online One-on-One Interactive classes at you convenient timing can be of great advantage for you which you can take while you are free from work and ready to focus on GMAT preparation. Watching the Concept Videos and knowing the solutions is not all that can help you in isolation in my opinion.

Thanks for the advice guys. I started a couple weeks ago and it has been slow. I try to get an hour before work then an hour after work. I try to do GMAT problems out of the official guide as well.