GMAT Strategy

Greetings,

I am new and first of all, I want thank you guys for great information you all share on this forum.

I've been studying for te GMAT for a month now. I enrolled in the Kaplan class in Jun 11 - Jul 11, however, I don't think it helped much. Studying on my own has been a little more helpful, I am having more success I believe with Kaplan's online materials and workshops. I kind of went blindly into the class, I have been out of school for 2 years now and haven't done anything academic since then. The materials I have access to are Kaplan online materials (with 8 CATs) and a course book. I just purchased the OG 13 and have only done the diagnostic test so far. I have been hearing good stuff about this!

OG 13 Diagnostic Score: Average
--Should I go back and go over all the ones that I missed?

Kaplan CAT trends this last month were:
7/01 CAT1: Q19 V27 - 400
7/14 CAT2: Q24 V12 - 390 (no AWA) (took this on a bad day)
7/27 CAT3: Q29 V40 - 480

5 more Kaplan CATs left


I really haven't studied much for the IR, AWA or Verbal portion of the test. I am pretty in confident in my reading and writing so I don't think I I will be needing much practice in these sections aside from SC and IR. My main goal right now is to get my quant score in the mid to upper 40s preferably.

I have have 2 months off and I really want to use my time efficiently. I do, however, have to take off one week (Aug 15-20) for a cousin's wedding. During this week I imagine I won't been getting much work done but I will definitely try to make an effort to get some studying squeezed in. The deadline for the school I am trying to get into is Nov 15th.

My study strategy: I use the Kaplan online quiz bank setup little mini 10 question quizzes all quant. I usually get about 40-60% of the questions correct the first time taking a quiz. I take about 3 quizzes and then I print out both incorrect and correct questions and re-do them and write notes next to them telling myself why I got these wrong. The problem is, re-doing, writing notes the questions, and figuring out why I got them wrong is taking me a long time. It can take me up to 5 hours which takes up all my study session's time. And sometimes Kaplan's explanation of the correct answers in the quiz banks aren't always the best. Overall, I want to learn what's going on in the problem being asked in a quicker fashion and have a higher chance of getting it right.

-I hear you guys grinding through a lot of problems and taking more CAT tests than I do. Should I aim for this also? I won't be able to re-do and re-write my incorrect answers in detail like I have been and I may end up wasting my CATs.

-Are my CATs too spread out?

-Should I purchase additional materials? Additional tests ? Better question banks?

-What would be the best way to incorporate the OG 13 into my studying strategy?

-My Data Sufficiency is pretty weak, should I mix them up with the problem solving questions or do them separately?

Again, I have a lot more free time than others and I wan to use it wisely. Any of your guys' insight would help