GMAT Strategy

Hi everyone,

I have been prepping on and off for the GMAT for over a year now. I scored a dismal 440 on my very first practice test and after taking a Princeton Review course I scored a 530 on my first official exam.

I realized that I needed to make a significant improvement on the exam to get into a competitive school so I took a MGMAT course hoping to reach 600. When I took my second official exam and saw my score (400!!!) I wanted to cry. MGMAT does not offer a score guarantee so I wasted $1000.

My third test is around the corner and I am at my wit's end. I'm still scoring well below what I know to be my true ability level. I have put in the work and money and I'm not seeing results.

Is there anyone out there that can suggest a few things I can do to raise my score?

Did you do your assignments?

I dunno.. I think you might be overstudying. I studied my butt off 3-4 hours a day a few weeks and up to my real test day and it didnt retain. Cancelled my score.

Now round 2, I changed my strategy to study about 2 hours a day and remained calm (instead of beating myself up over not getting the material). I found it a little easier to go back and reread the books (I couldnt for the life of me get how to do age problems and rate problems before but I did the exercise lists for each section using OG11 and got 30/31 correct under timed conditions including DS problems associated with the sections.. I used to get about 50% of DS problems wrong). Really attack DS and your math score will improve. I skipped the book on inequilities b/c i thought i knew all abouit them... turns out it was a really useful subject and I went back and really studied it.. they tend to ask alot of those types for DS.

Just remain calm and GET SLEEP. I was going to bed at 1 and waking up at 7ish for work and I was tired all day so all of that studying went to waste.. you can't retain if your brain is tired.

If you learned something, then you didn't waste anything. It's your study. I heard the MGMAT is very good.