albertoduro1xx wrote:Hello, I am new to this site and I am a junior in College right now. I plan on taking the GMAT in september, giving myself 9 months to prepare. I have purchased access to MAGOOSH premium and the 2015 OG. I was wondering if anyone had any advice on how to use my 9 months as efficiently as possible? Feedback is much appreciated as I kind of don't know where exactly to start.
I suggest first getting a sense of the basics, what will be on the test. Learn about the sections and question types. Also review math and grammar basics, making sure you know about triangles, circles, absolute value, exponents and other basics like that for quant, and maybe reviewing some basics like modifiers and pronouns for verbal.
Then, once you have a sense of what the test is all about and are not a total newbie, take the first official practice CAT in GMAT Prep, which you can download from mba.com, or possibly from the Resources page of Beat The GMAT. By doing this you can get a clearer sense of what the test is like, where you stand and what you need to learn to hit your target score. I would take this first test within a few weeks to a month of really getting going.
Then keep working on increasing your knowledge and on improving your problem solving skills and test taking skills as necessary to drive your score higher and higher until you reach your goal.
One other general thing I suggest is that as you prepare you do your own assessment of the test and what you need to learn to rock it. This is not exactly a math test or a language test. This is a test of things like skill in using available resources to find solutions and skill in using logic to analyze written material. So just going through someone's syllabus and learning a bunch of stuff is probably not going to prepare you fully or optimally. Yes, you can get much from following a course for GMAT preparation, but ultimately in order to prepare effectively, you have to develop your own sense of the test and where you are strong or weak and what you have to learn and what skills you have to develop to rock it.
I say if you are playing it like a game, you are probably on the right track.
