I just Beat The GMAT!

Hello BTG community; just wanted to share my story with the community. After taking the 9-week online MGMAT course, I took the GMAT this morning. As I greatly benefited from reading posts regarding test preparation, I thought that I would share my experience with the crew.

I began studying the day the course began, about 11 weeks ago. I took a MGMAT practice test under unrealistically-timed conditions (hit the pause button a couple times) and scored a 640.

Throughout the duration of the course, I would say that I completed about 65% of the assigned work (while I adhered to the recommended 10-12 hours/week to do homework, I felt that this time frame was a little low) . At the onset of studying, my math competencies definitely stood to improve the most, with particular improvement needed in the areas of basic equations and fractions, decimals and percents.

Throughout the course, I took three more MGMAT practice tests, scoring (in order): 590, 650, 650. By the time I took my last test, I was feeling a little frustrated, as I was nearing the end of the course and had yet to break the 700 barrier. After reading some posts on BTG, I decided to take the more realistic GMAT Prep tests (for those who don't know, GMAC, who produce the GMAT Prep tests, is the only company who is allowed to reprint GMAT questions). On my first test, taken two weeks ago, I got a 720. Although math was clearly not my strongsuit, I felt as if the Quant section on the GMAT prep was significantly easier.

After the first GMAT prep test (they provide you two), during the past two weeks, things really started to come together. Using the practice test to assess my weaknesses, and the MGMAT strategy guides to delve deeply into the associated content, I spent one week doing a deep dive into my problematic areas. Yesterday, I took the other GMAT Prep test and scored a 750.

Today, I took the real test, felt just OKAY about my performance during the exam. I got to the end, held my breath, and ended up logging a [b]730 [/b]My breakdown was: Quant (45, 75th percentile) and Verbal (45, 98th percentile). Overall: 96th percentile.

Overall, while I was initially nervous that my failure to complete 100% of my coursework would result in a suboptimal score, I feel that my method of pinpointing and then intensely drilling my weaknesses was very effective. I would recommend the MGMAT method to anyone serious about doing well on the GMAT. Make as much an effort as possible to stay on schedule, but keep a clear picture of what your strengths and weaknesses are to help prioritize work when you are overwhelmed.

Good luck to all!

Congratulations! It sounds like focused discipline (even when getting 650 on MGMAT) kept you on track for a solid performance. Did you use anything besides MGMAT (and official prep).

Good question. I pretty much exclusively used the MGMAT and official prep materials. I took notes on all the strategy guides and made notecards for the concepts that were really rusty for me.

I found this to be an effective technique; as they mention in the MGMAT course, writing stuff down is a great way to internalize material, even if you never revisit the actual notes you wrote.

Happy to weigh in on any other questions!

Congrats on the great score.

What was the workflow like for Manhattan?

Did you do say all Math one day and verbal the next or was it mixed up?

Did you go through the books in the order they are numbered in?

Did you go through the entire book before doing any OG problems or after every chapter?

Thanks

The MGMAT course structure provides a couple sections of math and a couple sections of verbal alternating. On any given week, you may have a few math chapters to read, in addition to a few verbal chapters, the In-Action problems associated with those chapters in the Strategy Guides, and the O.G. problems corresponding to the topics covered. The class goes more or less in the order of the books, with some variation.

As I was stronger in verbal from the start, I probably ended up doing about 85% of the math homework, and 30% of the verbal homework--delving deeply into my problem areas and lightly drilling my strengths to maintain my competencies.

I would really recommend the class, especially if you are contemplating buying all 10 strategy guides and the O.G