I guess I'm the kind of person who works well under stress. Even though I had thought about studying for the GMAT since March, I really didn't starting doing anything until late May for the June 19th test. When I started, I had 3 weeks to go, and I realized that I might have made a huge mistake. I work at a full-time job that requires a lot of over time, meaning that I only had 2-3 hours on week night to work on the GMAT.
Here's a list of books that I used:
1. Nova - wasn't very helpful. The questions were fairly easy, and didn't really categorize anything of the topics well.
2. Power Score Critical Reasoning Bible - I read it in 2 days, and since then, I got every single critical reasoning question right during practice. It is by far the best book for this section. I didn't like Manhattan GMAT's after merely glancing over it, other people might disagree though.
3. Power Score Sentence Correction Bible - very well organized; gave great tips on different types of grammar problems. However, the practice questions weren't as good as the ones from the Manhattan GMAT's Sentence Correction guide. I would recommend using both. Personally I spent a total of 4 days on both books, and that wasn't quite enough.
4. Manhattan GMAT Guides in Number Properties and Word Translation - Very useful to get good scores on the math section. I chose those 2 guides because they targeted at my weak areas. 2 days on each book is enough as most of the materials were still fresh to me. I only needed to learn a few tricks.
5. The Official Guide 12th edition & Verbal & Quantitative - I did about 2/3 of the questions on each of the books. Some people say that only do the last 100 questions, but I disagree. You could familiarize yourself by working on more official practice questions. I wish I had more time to do all of them a couple of times.
6. GMATPrep - I took it 4 times, a week in between each set of 2 tests, 640-690-770-780
What worked for me:
1. Like I said before, I work better under stress. Even though I wish I had started earlier, I doubt I'd put any actual effort into studying that would change the outcome.
2. I read fast. It's the only reason I could finish a study guide in 2 days and study for the test in 3 weeks. I also didn't need to study for reading comprehension at all because I usually get all of the questions right in this section.
What I would do differently next time:
1. Work on sentence correction more. It was by far my biggest weakness that dragged my verbal score down by a lot. I felt like a lot of the sc questions weren't just grammar problems, a lot of them contained logic reasoning that was for some reason hard for me to pick up even though I did really well in critical reasoning.
2. I don't normally drink caffeine, but on the test day I had a mocha. My test was at noon and I was afraid that I might get drowsy after a couple of hours, so I took a few gulps during breaks. It was the worst mistake I could ever make. I was so jittery that starting from the middle of the verbal section I could barely sit still. My mind just stopped working and I could only think about how I wanted to walk around or doing something else. In retro respect it was kind of funny, but I'm pretty sure my GMAT score went down from 780 on the GMATPrep to 730 on the actual test because of it. On the GMATPrep I was consistently getting 48-49 in verbal, but I only got 40 on the actual test.
I'm not sure if I should take it again because I do believe that I can do a lot better, but I'm not really sure if it's worth the effort and the money to do so.
Here's a list of books that I used:
1. Nova - wasn't very helpful. The questions were fairly easy, and didn't really categorize anything of the topics well.
2. Power Score Critical Reasoning Bible - I read it in 2 days, and since then, I got every single critical reasoning question right during practice. It is by far the best book for this section. I didn't like Manhattan GMAT's after merely glancing over it, other people might disagree though.
3. Power Score Sentence Correction Bible - very well organized; gave great tips on different types of grammar problems. However, the practice questions weren't as good as the ones from the Manhattan GMAT's Sentence Correction guide. I would recommend using both. Personally I spent a total of 4 days on both books, and that wasn't quite enough.
4. Manhattan GMAT Guides in Number Properties and Word Translation - Very useful to get good scores on the math section. I chose those 2 guides because they targeted at my weak areas. 2 days on each book is enough as most of the materials were still fresh to me. I only needed to learn a few tricks.
5. The Official Guide 12th edition & Verbal & Quantitative - I did about 2/3 of the questions on each of the books. Some people say that only do the last 100 questions, but I disagree. You could familiarize yourself by working on more official practice questions. I wish I had more time to do all of them a couple of times.
6. GMATPrep - I took it 4 times, a week in between each set of 2 tests, 640-690-770-780
What worked for me:
1. Like I said before, I work better under stress. Even though I wish I had started earlier, I doubt I'd put any actual effort into studying that would change the outcome.
2. I read fast. It's the only reason I could finish a study guide in 2 days and study for the test in 3 weeks. I also didn't need to study for reading comprehension at all because I usually get all of the questions right in this section.
What I would do differently next time:
1. Work on sentence correction more. It was by far my biggest weakness that dragged my verbal score down by a lot. I felt like a lot of the sc questions weren't just grammar problems, a lot of them contained logic reasoning that was for some reason hard for me to pick up even though I did really well in critical reasoning.
2. I don't normally drink caffeine, but on the test day I had a mocha. My test was at noon and I was afraid that I might get drowsy after a couple of hours, so I took a few gulps during breaks. It was the worst mistake I could ever make. I was so jittery that starting from the middle of the verbal section I could barely sit still. My mind just stopped working and I could only think about how I wanted to walk around or doing something else. In retro respect it was kind of funny, but I'm pretty sure my GMAT score went down from 780 on the GMATPrep to 730 on the actual test because of it. On the GMATPrep I was consistently getting 48-49 in verbal, but I only got 40 on the actual test.
I'm not sure if I should take it again because I do believe that I can do a lot better, but I'm not really sure if it's worth the effort and the money to do so.
