Thanks first to everyone who has posted here - this is a great forum. Appreciate everyone's comments about prep materials and strategy. I took the GMAT yesterday and was very pleased with the result - 49Q, 48V, 770.
Briefly, here was my prep strategy:
- Manhattan GMAT online review course. I took this from early Feb - early April. It was a great course, very well organized and very well instructed.
- I was fortunate enough to start with practice-test verbal scores pretty close to my target range, so I focused 80% of my study time on quant. I studied for ~2 hrs either 2x or 3x/week during the course. This was enough for me to keep up with the quant content in the course, but not verbal - I would have had to put in more time to really keep pace with the verbal as well. I paid attention to verbal during the review course and learned some good techniques, but I did not reinforce them with much studying. Had I started out farther behind my target on verbal, I would have definitely wanted to allocate more time to studying.
- I spent about the same study time during the 3 weeks between the end of the course and GMAT day, reviewing the content areas where I was weakest (probability, exponentiation, word problems).
- I wound up doing all the challenge sets in the MGMAT quant strategy guides (these point you to the harder questions in the OG). It was pretty useful to have a guide to the tougher problems.
- Two techniques from the MGMAT course that were most helpful to me:
1) I spent about 1/2 as much time doing practice problems as I did reviewing the answers to those problems and the underlying concepts. I had been spending a much greater fraction of time doing practice problems when I started studying, and I was retaining content poorly and repeating mistakes. Once I started to allocate my time in this way, I got better at retaining the content.
2) The MGMAT online labs I found to be a mixed bag, but the lab on timing strategy was EXCELLENT. It really improved my approach, especially in the quant section where timing had been a significant problem in my practice exams.
- Lastly - this may sound wacky, but it worked for me. I was very intentional about nutrition in the 72 hours before the test. No refined sugar, no alcohol, no caffeine except my morning coffee. I had to drive 90 mi to the test site for a 12 noon start, and I was careful to bring my lunch - turkey sandwich, yogurt, apple, raisins. The last thing I needed was to do my usual burger-n-fries-n-Coke-on-the-road and have a sugar crash in the middle of the quant section. It turned out that indeed, I was just about out of gas by the end of the exam, and I was really glad that I had put good fuel in the tank so I could work at my best level as long as I did. I honestly think my food choices were probably worth 20-30 points on my final score.
Good luck to everyone!
SC
Briefly, here was my prep strategy:
- Manhattan GMAT online review course. I took this from early Feb - early April. It was a great course, very well organized and very well instructed.
- I was fortunate enough to start with practice-test verbal scores pretty close to my target range, so I focused 80% of my study time on quant. I studied for ~2 hrs either 2x or 3x/week during the course. This was enough for me to keep up with the quant content in the course, but not verbal - I would have had to put in more time to really keep pace with the verbal as well. I paid attention to verbal during the review course and learned some good techniques, but I did not reinforce them with much studying. Had I started out farther behind my target on verbal, I would have definitely wanted to allocate more time to studying.
- I spent about the same study time during the 3 weeks between the end of the course and GMAT day, reviewing the content areas where I was weakest (probability, exponentiation, word problems).
- I wound up doing all the challenge sets in the MGMAT quant strategy guides (these point you to the harder questions in the OG). It was pretty useful to have a guide to the tougher problems.
- Two techniques from the MGMAT course that were most helpful to me:
1) I spent about 1/2 as much time doing practice problems as I did reviewing the answers to those problems and the underlying concepts. I had been spending a much greater fraction of time doing practice problems when I started studying, and I was retaining content poorly and repeating mistakes. Once I started to allocate my time in this way, I got better at retaining the content.
2) The MGMAT online labs I found to be a mixed bag, but the lab on timing strategy was EXCELLENT. It really improved my approach, especially in the quant section where timing had been a significant problem in my practice exams.
- Lastly - this may sound wacky, but it worked for me. I was very intentional about nutrition in the 72 hours before the test. No refined sugar, no alcohol, no caffeine except my morning coffee. I had to drive 90 mi to the test site for a 12 noon start, and I was careful to bring my lunch - turkey sandwich, yogurt, apple, raisins. The last thing I needed was to do my usual burger-n-fries-n-Coke-on-the-road and have a sugar crash in the middle of the quant section. It turned out that indeed, I was just about out of gas by the end of the exam, and I was really glad that I had put good fuel in the tank so I could work at my best level as long as I did. I honestly think my food choices were probably worth 20-30 points on my final score.
Good luck to everyone!
SC
