All-
This is going to be a long post as there are a lot of things I need to get across, but I'll bold the major points
I had my first attempt at the GMAT in November and scored a 590 (V35 Q36 AW6.0). Needless to say I was quite shocked considering how much time I had spent studying (~3 months, mostly following the 60 day plan from here). I felt like I was doing well with practice questions (Error tracking tool shows overall 76% correct with 82% of the questions answered). The odd thing is that this was the exact same score I got on the first practice test I took before I knew anything about the GMAT. Basically my 3 months of studying were useless.
One of my suspicions as to what went wrong is that I got put on a intense project (work in M&A consulting) about 5 weeks before the test and I had 0 time to study for ~3 of those 6 weeks). I tried to salvage studying for the short time before the test but it clearly didn't help.
I need to improve my score significantly, to at least 650, preferably closer to 700. My question is what is the best strategy for studying for a retake and how long to study before retaking? The 60 day plan is a bit too intense as I simply cannot keep up daily with the pace given the nature of my job -- and that's the reason I allotted myself over 3 months of studying, knowing that I'd have to skip days here and there or wouldn't be able to complete every question assigned that day. Should I assume I need more than 60 days or would I be ok with less given that much of the material will be review and not first-time learning?
I'm clearly weak on Quant, which really pisses me off because this is stupidly easy math that I don't understand. I work with numbers every day but the sh!t asked on this test is ridiculous. Verbal I'm OK with, but there's definitely room for improvement. AWA is clearly a non-issue.
Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
This is going to be a long post as there are a lot of things I need to get across, but I'll bold the major points
I had my first attempt at the GMAT in November and scored a 590 (V35 Q36 AW6.0). Needless to say I was quite shocked considering how much time I had spent studying (~3 months, mostly following the 60 day plan from here). I felt like I was doing well with practice questions (Error tracking tool shows overall 76% correct with 82% of the questions answered). The odd thing is that this was the exact same score I got on the first practice test I took before I knew anything about the GMAT. Basically my 3 months of studying were useless.
One of my suspicions as to what went wrong is that I got put on a intense project (work in M&A consulting) about 5 weeks before the test and I had 0 time to study for ~3 of those 6 weeks). I tried to salvage studying for the short time before the test but it clearly didn't help.
I need to improve my score significantly, to at least 650, preferably closer to 700. My question is what is the best strategy for studying for a retake and how long to study before retaking? The 60 day plan is a bit too intense as I simply cannot keep up daily with the pace given the nature of my job -- and that's the reason I allotted myself over 3 months of studying, knowing that I'd have to skip days here and there or wouldn't be able to complete every question assigned that day. Should I assume I need more than 60 days or would I be ok with less given that much of the material will be review and not first-time learning?
I'm clearly weak on Quant, which really pisses me off because this is stupidly easy math that I don't understand. I work with numbers every day but the sh!t asked on this test is ridiculous. Verbal I'm OK with, but there's definitely room for improvement. AWA is clearly a non-issue.
Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
