GMAT Strategy

There is an awesome list of resources on the resources page on this site:

https://www.beatthegmat.com/resources.html

Be sure to check that out.

took the princeton review practice exam, 600 (q41, v32). This was extremely discouraging.. ran out of time for both sections. I was using a strategy of not taking notes when reading for the RC. I thought I was doing well on time but I did end up rereading portions of the passages.


took a GMATPrep, scored 720 (Q49, V40). Saw about 4 questions on here that I've seen before. However, questions that you've seen before are not necesarrily 100% the same. They usually have the same narrative but ask for different things. Didn't finish the last 2 question in quant but finished the verbal on time. Took small amounts of notes while reading the RC here. Finished verbal with about a minute left over.

I think I've been reading too many strategies on verbal and its messing me up. I need to concentrate on one strategy that works for me. Not sure why I'm scoring so much lower on verbal than quant. In the beginning my verbal scores were actually higher than my quants. Well at least I know what to focus more on now: verbal, specifically RC. I'm going to keep studying/practicing until I can consistently score around 750.

bullshark wrote:I'm going to keep studying/practicing until I can consistently score around 750.

Good luck. I'm rooting for you.

It's been a while since I've posted but I've been studying consistently for about the last 2 months.
I've been taking the GMATPrep exams the last couple of weeks and here is my latest score:

780 (49Q,49V)- got 3 incorrect on quant and 1 incorrect on verbal


Although this seems like a great score, I came across many questions that I saw before. (This was about 2nd time I took the Test#2 in GMATPrep. I took Test#1 4 times before).

I tallied up the number of questions I saw before and it was an alarmingly high number:

Quant: 12
Verbal: 22! (one was an RC group of 3 questions that I came across before).


Although it feels good to get a 780 on the practice GMATprep, I know it is mainly due to running into so many previously seen questions. (I'm actually disappointed I got any incorrect!). I also concentrated on timing for this exam.. making sure to complete all questions. The fact that I ran into so many previously allowed me to breeze through them and hence it also is not an accurate assessment of my timing.

Do you guys suggest I do more practice exams from other sources or keep doing GMATPrep?

I've done some Manhattan, Princeton and Kaplan a while back and my scores ranged from 680-720.

Thanks in advance for your input.