GMAT Strategy

Hey all-

Newb here looking for some practical advice. I'm a law student - just recently decided to pursue JD/MBA degree. The applcation deadline is June 1, which means I would have to take the GMAT on May 29. The problem is I have never seen a GMAT problem. However, they will probably cut me a lot of slack since I've already completed my first year of law school there. Would it be possible to score around a 630 in one week practice? Thanks for ANY advice.

Well certainly it is "possible." Is it probable? I have no idea.

Step one, make sure they will accept your late GMAT score. You will get an unofficial score after taking the test, but your official score could take up to 20 days to be reported to your school. (although during the slower season, you should be able to see it in under a week)

Your MBA admissions department will be cery familiar with these timelines, and will be best suited to give you advice. Don't delay, ask them first thing tomorrow. Because if they say they won't accept late official scores or your unofficial score (which, btw doesn't change, you are only waiting for your AWA to get scored) you are S.O.L. and don't even bother with the rest of this reply.

If they say yes, that this is fine, then start your work. Keep in mind you are working with a very compressed timeline here.
1. spend time familiarizing yourself with the format and types of questions on the GMAT. Get to learn the principles and especially the types of questions asked. You don't have very much time for this, so focus on th data sufficiency questions and the Critical reasoning questions. Sentence correction probably wouldn't hurt either.

2. Download the GMAT Prep tests from MBA.com. Take the entire test in one sitting including the AWA section. You need to feel (or remind yourself) what it is like to sit for 4 hrs for a high pressure test. After taking the test -

3. Analyze your answers. Both correct and incorrect. These will give you an idea of your strengths and weaknesses.

4. At some time during all of this, you should schedule your test. It would really suck if you did all this and find out all the appointments are full.

5. Practice, practice, practice.

6. If you are able, take the second practice test two days prior to the test. Again, the whole thing.

7. Usually people take the day off prior to the test, but for you, you might want to do more error identification and a few brush up lessons.

Good luck!

Thanks for your input - very appreciated. When I spoke with the admissions director, they said it would be fine to email them an unofficial score. I guess its time to get after it. Take care.

There are some kids who score 740 on their 1st try so sure you can get a great score... but the reality is GMAT is a skills test rather than an apptitude test. As a law student, I think you will rock the CR and RC sections, and probably do ok in PS. SO you need to work on SC like crazy! I'm a lawyer and SC is what killed me but SC is the easiest thing to improve. As for DS... just do your best.


With such a short time frame i would say accentuate the positive... work on your strengths!

Good Luck!

Thanks for the encouragment Zuleron!

I agree with the above - it certainly could happen. Many people score 650+ without studying. It's just a question of whether you're one of them!

Definitely look at things that are unique to the GMAT - in particular, make sure you do some data sufficiency problems since those don't appear on other tests. Also, review your basic math rules (exponents, geometry, etc.) for factual stuff that you might have forgotten. I'd recommend picking up a prep book so that you have an idea of what's important.

Also, be sure you take at least one practice test before the real thing. Go to mba.com (where you sign up for the test) - they have two free and accurate practice exams.

Hopefully, you should be fine on verbal. If you did well on the LSAT, you should have no trouble with RC and CR since the GMAT verbal is much easier than the LSAT (other than the games section), in my opinion. You might want to take a quick look at sentence correction, though, since that's not on the LSAT and you may be rusty on your grammatical rules.

Good luck!

If you have one week of practice I suggest downloading GMATPrep and just doing 1 practice test a night.

Spend the day answering OG 12. There are 900 problems and you can solve them all in a week. And then go take a GMATPrep practice test at night.

I actually suggest downloading GMATPrep from MBA.com and then downloading PowerPrep from Gorilla Test Prep website. Powerprep is the old version of GMATPrep. I suggest 3 Pprep tests and 4 Gmatprep tests or vice versa.

Since you're a law school student I suppose you don't have a job. So the above is feasible.

Most people with a math or technical background have no problem with the Quant. They score easily in the mid to high 40's with no practice. But they suffer in the Verbal especially Sentence Correction.

Sentence correction is something most if not all people cannot get around except through practice.

You're a law student so the CR and perhaps RC sections should come easy to you.

Do the above and you have a good shot. Important thing is to not get bogged down with too much data and study materials which would cause too much confusion and wasted time.

If you wanted to, you can actually spend an entire week just gathering material on what to use to study for the GMAT. LOL

There are people who study 40 minutes and get 710 (friend of mine did that but he also scored 1560 on the SAT and is a Harvard grad so is a little out of the ordinary but it happens). So a week of study and 630 is very possible.

You just have to study the right thing. I"m pretty sure from my research and experience that the above is a clutter free bare bones approach for people with little time.

Just curious, which school are you attending?

zuleron wrote:There are some kids who score 740 on their 1st try so sure you can get a great score... but the reality is GMAT is a skills test rather than an apptitude test. As a law student, I think you will rock the CR and RC sections, and probably do ok in PS. SO you need to work on SC like crazy! I'm a lawyer and SC is what k!IIed me but SC is the easiest thing to improve. As for DS... just do your best.


With such a short time frame i would say accentuate the positive... work on your strengths!

Good Luck!

I think it's a skills test with a ceiling.

I come to think there are going to be some people that no matter how long and how hard they study they are never going to score, for example, 750.

(I know that sounds sort of stupid considering 99% don't get that score but I'm describing a hypothetical world where everybody makes GMAT a sort of long term effort to get the highest score possible... I take it most people just spend a few months on the average and get it over with)

Unless they answered every problem imaginable and just happen to encounter a similar problem they already covered.

But if one is able to do this, he/she would be able to get a 750 just by going over basics and then using raw intuition and problem solving ability to get the 750 IMO.

So what I think is that it's a skill test to a certain extent and then natural born ability distinguishes the higher echelon of scores.

This is why I believe a certain amount of people get 750+ with the same amount of studying compared to people who get 650 to low 700's.

I know that for certain people, whether it's due to their backgrounds or because they just have "knack" that they can just go over the general feel of the test and the types of problems and then rely on their ability to adapt and work out problems they never solved before to get a really high score ... all in 75 minutes.

I agree that there are insanely smart people who will rock the GMAT with minimal work. I know a few myself and it is depressing to be around them. BUT what I mean by skills test is that you can improve dramatically with hard work. If you score 630 with minimal effort, then there is no reason why you can't score 730 with hard work.

With everything, singing, language etc. there is a threshold level of natural ability you need but beyond that, hard work is the biggest determinant of success. There is a fantastic book by malcolm gladwell called "outliers"... Definitely worth a read.

Bara wrote: With regard to DS, think through them like a lawyer would.

These are the most manipulative of the math questions, and the most similar to the CR, actually. Assumption and Inference reasoning comes into play here, even though they're numbers.

With SC, keep in mind the differences between 'written' and 'spoken' English. Your reading of briefs should be a HUGE help here...so again, stay in your game.

Be a laywer (in training) taking the test, and that will help alot.

Good Luck!

This is fantastic advice.

DS really is like CR with numbers... never thought of it that way...

SC is the least intuitive even for lawyers. I'm a native english-speaking lawyer and took the GMAT with about 3 weeks prep. 2 days before the test I took GMAT Prep II and got 1 RC wrong, 0 CR wrong, and 8 SC wrong. Native english speakers actually have a disadvantage in that we don't know English grammer as well as, say, French kids know French grammar, so we tend to trust our ears too much and that's when the spoken english bleeds in and leads you astray. Bara is exactly right! Look to briefs and court opinions for examples of formal written english. But really be disciplined about how you eliminate wrong answers... don't rely on your ear.

Correction: you can rely on your ear to eliminate the two, maybe three, most obvious wrong choices but not when choosing between the final 2 options.