GMAT Strategy

Hi - you've shown good improvement already in just a month, so congratulations with that. You mention that you've taken the three most recent tests in the past week. You shouldn't expect to show improvement in a week's time. It typically takes 2-3 weeks of concerted study to show a moderate score improvement.

You may need more time to improve another 100 points - 3 more weeks is not a lot of time and it is usually harder to jump from 600 to 700 than from 500 to 600. Most people study longer before taking the test; our course is 9 weeks long and I tell my students to take the test 2-3 weeks after the course ends. They are also studying every day or almost every day throughout that time period.

Run all of the score reports available on your tests so that you can diagnose your strengths and weaknesses, in terms of content, question type, and pacing. Since you've been taking our tests, you've got all of that data at your fingertips, but you've got to analyze it and figure out from there what to do. If you need help with that, come back and post specific details from your score reports - but you can do the best job of analyzing it b/c you can look at the entire test and the full set of results across all of the tests.

If you haven't taken the official exam before, I'd say go for it - it will give you good experience and give you an idea what to work on if you need to take it again. I tell all my students to assume they'll take it twice, and then it's just a bonus if they don't have to. The schools don't care if you take it twice.

If you have already taken it before, you'll need to think a little more carefully about it - have you taken it before?