I've taken the GMAT twice, April 2014 and Mat 2015. The first time around I scored a respectable 680 (48 36) but I kept saying to myself that I'm not a sub 700 candidate so I took a break and prepared to retake the GMAT. However, due to many episodes of procrastination, I did not take the GMAT until 13 months later and did not prepare seriously for it until March 2015. In the end, I ecstatic to say that I've scored 720 (49 40 IR 8) on the GMAT and I would like to share some tips that helped me get to that point
.Overview - Material used: OG 13, Quant Official, Verbal Official, MGMAT guide, KAPLAN guide, GMAT PREP + 2 extra exams
Firstly, during the time you spend studying for the GMAT, never lock yourself entirely out of your usual social life. Take weekends or days off and enjoy some good company or even go out and party lightly. I feel that being anti social will demoralize you and make your studying less effective. Also, take plenty of practice exams during your prep to prepare yourself to endure 4 hour of pressure on the test.
If you took the GMAT and want to retake. DO NOT wait over a year like me. At times it will get very frustrating as the GMAT takes over your life and you will feel that you are not making progress. I suggest you take a whole month of think about the GMAT and get back right away into attack mode.
IR/AWA - I did not study much for IR/AWA. For the AWA practicing 4-5 essay will give you enough samples to predict the pattern of argument analysis required for the GMAT. Also, have a good template to use, it will make writing much easy and very time efficient. As for IR, the real IR is much easier than those provided by MGMAT or Kaplan prep. So i think do not stress too much on it.
Quant - Quant has been my weak point from the first GMAT. I've tried several prep for quant including Kaplan and MGMAT and while both provides you with good basic knowledge for me it only allowed me to achieve 45-47 constantly. To push myself further, I've subscribe to the GMATCLUB tests and did a whole lot of questions on it. I felt an instant improvement on my quant scores, scoring 49-51 consistently on prep tests. i feel that the GMATCLUB tests allows you to be more detailed oriented in analysis questions. To conclude, for quant it is important to have a solid basic and if i can achieve at 49, anyone can.
Verbal -
SC - With SC, you must know all the basics and learn to spot the patterns. I think the most important part of SC is to not have tunnel vision, there are more than one way to pick out a wrong choice so if your plan A fails, always have a plan b, look for idiom errors, parallelism errors, etc.
CR - I think the MGMAT guild and the Kaplan guild prepares you sufficiently for this. When i was doing the GMAT i felt towards the later end of the test the CR questions I got were becoming more abstract which probably were more difficult, however, the logic to achieve the right answer remains the same.
RC - I spend a lot of time mapping out the passage on the erasable board, spending 3-5 minutes for each passage - probably more than many prep course would suggest. I felt that if i map the passage out properly I would need no more than 45 seconds to answer each questions, even the toughest ones. My handing writing is small so writing a lot is easier than many. On the RC I would suggest that you read the passage as if you have a genuine interest in what it is about. This will trick you mind to focus more on the passage and even pick up small details that may be missed.
Lastly, never give up! its a winnable fight! Goodluck every!
