Hey guys,
I took the GMAT this past weekend, and I scored a 780. Firstly, I'd like to thank Beat the GMAT for helping me study. There's a lot of great advice and tips on these forums, and my first tip would be to earnestly browse through the forums for advice and strategies - anything I could say has already been said here. As I've found useful with others' posts, I'll summarize my study routine and give some quick tips.
Background:
I'm a 24 year old American, native English speaker, ethnically Indian but I was born in the Caribbean. I did my BS in Mechanical Engineering at Columbia. I then did the MS part of an MS/PhD program in robotics, but later left to volunteer in the US Peace Corps. Right now I'm in the Peace Corps in Mexico, working in a rural village helping start small businesses, and building prosthetic devices from scrap metal, among other things. I also run an NGO on the side with several other undergrad alumni, promoting STEM education in several developing countries.
My personal goal for doing an MBA is to go into Social Entrepreneurship in developing countries, so I've been focusing on schools such as Stanford, Columbia and Johns-Hopkins.
Summary:
Here's the material I used:
- Original Guide
- GMAT Prep question pack 1
- Manhattan GMAT Sentence correction
- Manhattan GMAT Advanced Quantative
- Manhattan GMAT challenge problem archive
- Knewton Self-study course (I don't think a course is necessary)
Routine:
November: GMAT Prep scored a 680 (Q37 V 40), didn't study for the rest of the year for work reasons.
January: Figuring Quant was my weak area, I started doing manhattan challenge math sets about 2-3 times a week. I never studied for quant, because I was already familiar, albeit rusty, with all the major concepts. Instead, I focused primarily on the reasoning behind the math questions. I didn't time myself, and forced my brain to work through each problem until I solved it. It was tough at first, but after a few weeks I got much better at it.
Late January: Knewton test and Manhattan GMAT test both scored me at 750 (~Q48 V41)
February: Just did the Knewton course, at a pace of 2.5 lessons/week in the evenings. I took 2 practice tests in February from Knewton, 760 and then 770 (~Q50, ~V44)
March: For quant, I started aggresively timing myself on Manhattan GMAT's challenge problems, lowering alloted time/question until I could get them correct about 80% of the time, in under 2 minutes and 30 seconds per question. For verbal, I did all the verbal problems in the original guide, and in the GMAT Prep software. I made an error log, and spent a lot of time reviewing/analyzing errors. Also, on the weekends I took practice tests when I had time.
Summary of practice tests:
November:
GMAT Prep 1: 680
January:
MGMAT 1: 750
Knewton: 750
Feb:
Knewton 2: 760
Knewton 3: 770
March:
Knewton 4: 780
GMAT Prep 2: 770
MGMAT 2: 740
MGMAT 3: 770
Knewton 5: 780
Advice/Tips/Recommendations:
- Obviously, learn the content, knowing the content is a pre-requisite for doing well on the exam
- Once the content is there, learn the GMAT's pattern of reasoning. Do this by practicing problems, and analyzing what exactly made you choose wrong answers instead of right answers, and analyzing how you might conform to the GMAT's idea of a 'correct' answer better, next time.
- Implementation is key to the GMAT. Do enough practice tests that, on test day, the strategies and techniques are second hand. Always practice 'good form' in your practice tests, which means spending 5 seconds to check and double check the prompt, and re-reading your chosen sentence on SC.
- Finally, get used to time pressure. On test day, I had about 3 questions to solve in 3 minutes, at the end of both quant and verbal sections. I solved these really tough problems quickly and correctly, only because my brain was able to remain cool under pressure, and jump right at the the obvious flaw/solution point for the problem, techniques I had learned from practicing many tests under tight conditions.
Once again, thanks BTG community for helping me do well on the GMAT. Hopefully my score will help me get into business school and achieve my goals. For the moment, I'm just glad I can put 100% focus back on my job and doing what I love.
I took the GMAT this past weekend, and I scored a 780. Firstly, I'd like to thank Beat the GMAT for helping me study. There's a lot of great advice and tips on these forums, and my first tip would be to earnestly browse through the forums for advice and strategies - anything I could say has already been said here. As I've found useful with others' posts, I'll summarize my study routine and give some quick tips.
Background:
I'm a 24 year old American, native English speaker, ethnically Indian but I was born in the Caribbean. I did my BS in Mechanical Engineering at Columbia. I then did the MS part of an MS/PhD program in robotics, but later left to volunteer in the US Peace Corps. Right now I'm in the Peace Corps in Mexico, working in a rural village helping start small businesses, and building prosthetic devices from scrap metal, among other things. I also run an NGO on the side with several other undergrad alumni, promoting STEM education in several developing countries.
My personal goal for doing an MBA is to go into Social Entrepreneurship in developing countries, so I've been focusing on schools such as Stanford, Columbia and Johns-Hopkins.
Summary:
Here's the material I used:
- Original Guide
- GMAT Prep question pack 1
- Manhattan GMAT Sentence correction
- Manhattan GMAT Advanced Quantative
- Manhattan GMAT challenge problem archive
- Knewton Self-study course (I don't think a course is necessary)
Routine:
November: GMAT Prep scored a 680 (Q37 V 40), didn't study for the rest of the year for work reasons.
January: Figuring Quant was my weak area, I started doing manhattan challenge math sets about 2-3 times a week. I never studied for quant, because I was already familiar, albeit rusty, with all the major concepts. Instead, I focused primarily on the reasoning behind the math questions. I didn't time myself, and forced my brain to work through each problem until I solved it. It was tough at first, but after a few weeks I got much better at it.
Late January: Knewton test and Manhattan GMAT test both scored me at 750 (~Q48 V41)
February: Just did the Knewton course, at a pace of 2.5 lessons/week in the evenings. I took 2 practice tests in February from Knewton, 760 and then 770 (~Q50, ~V44)
March: For quant, I started aggresively timing myself on Manhattan GMAT's challenge problems, lowering alloted time/question until I could get them correct about 80% of the time, in under 2 minutes and 30 seconds per question. For verbal, I did all the verbal problems in the original guide, and in the GMAT Prep software. I made an error log, and spent a lot of time reviewing/analyzing errors. Also, on the weekends I took practice tests when I had time.
Summary of practice tests:
November:
GMAT Prep 1: 680
January:
MGMAT 1: 750
Knewton: 750
Feb:
Knewton 2: 760
Knewton 3: 770
March:
Knewton 4: 780
GMAT Prep 2: 770
MGMAT 2: 740
MGMAT 3: 770
Knewton 5: 780
Advice/Tips/Recommendations:
- Obviously, learn the content, knowing the content is a pre-requisite for doing well on the exam
- Once the content is there, learn the GMAT's pattern of reasoning. Do this by practicing problems, and analyzing what exactly made you choose wrong answers instead of right answers, and analyzing how you might conform to the GMAT's idea of a 'correct' answer better, next time.
- Implementation is key to the GMAT. Do enough practice tests that, on test day, the strategies and techniques are second hand. Always practice 'good form' in your practice tests, which means spending 5 seconds to check and double check the prompt, and re-reading your chosen sentence on SC.
- Finally, get used to time pressure. On test day, I had about 3 questions to solve in 3 minutes, at the end of both quant and verbal sections. I solved these really tough problems quickly and correctly, only because my brain was able to remain cool under pressure, and jump right at the the obvious flaw/solution point for the problem, techniques I had learned from practicing many tests under tight conditions.
Once again, thanks BTG community for helping me do well on the GMAT. Hopefully my score will help me get into business school and achieve my goals. For the moment, I'm just glad I can put 100% focus back on my job and doing what I love.
