GMAT Strategy

Hey everyone,

I'm glad i landed up on this forum. i gave my gmat first in october after studying independently and i scored a mere 470. after taking a prep course from an instructor i got 530 in january. i need to score atleast 600 and the deadline for that is march 3.

i want to know if my target score is achievable?
i want to know how i should go about it?

at 530 - my Q% was 33 and V% was 58
at 470 - my Q% was 33 and V% was 28

please help!

You're going to need to drill. What I have found most helpful is drilling material I learn. What you may be doing is simply going over material and then not making an intentional effort to practice that material again. This will result in you forgetting the material, and its like you never learned it, or worse, you will remember going over it but not how to do it. You need to really focus on drilling material you know and focus on the concepts that are seen most frequently.

osirus0830 wrote:..you will remember going over it but not how to do it.

that's exactly what happens! i see similar questions and i remember getting 'em wrong and reviewing 'em but i'm obviously not doing enough to get 'em right. i was thinking from now on i'm going to strictly analyse my results after i do a maths section so i know what topics to work on exactly. can you give me an example please?

i usualy get 25-27/37 on the maths if that helps.

It really depends on how much time you have. I would go through each MGMAT math guide and do two problems each from each chapter. It served kind of like an active flash card. It insured that I always remembered how to approach each type of problem. The only real math problems I had trouble with were: geometry (because I didn't buy that guide), and some of the word translations that weren't in the Word translations guide. If you have the time to do what I did, you will get over a 600.

well i have almost 14-20 days to just devote to maths so. but i don't have access to MGMAT. i've been relying on kaplan, cambridge, and the OG. so can you suggest something from that?

btw, for a 600.. is my verbal percentile decent enough if i raise my maths percentile? or that needs to be worked upon as well?

plus right now what i'm doing is that i'm taking up just the maths section in the practice CAT tets of powerprep. i do it and then i analyse my mistakes and then i hit the chapters which need work. is that what you're saying?

qamar999 wrote:well i have almost 14-20 days to just devote to maths so. but i don't have access to MGMAT. i've been relying on kaplan, cambridge, and the OG. so can you suggest something from that?

btw, for a 600.. is my verbal percentile decent enough if i raise my maths percentile? or that needs to be worked upon as well?

Assuming you have Kaplan Premier, you can do something similar. At the end of each topic, they have a set of usually 7 problems broken down from easy, intermediate, and difficult. Simply do two problems a day from each section. With the official guide, all the problems that you got wrong the first time doing, drill those daily. That should suffice.

sorry for sounding so "annoying" but as you can tell i'm kinda desperate

so.. for a 600.. is my verbal percentile decent enough if i raise my maths percentile? or that needs to be worked upon as well?

also, i'm assuming 'coz time is not an issue for me during the test, i should work on getting the concepts right for the next 2 weeks rather than get myself used to the whole testing environment?

YOu should definitely attempt to improve verbal. I would say focus on Sentence Correction. You may not have enough time to adequately improve in CR and RC. One trick to use with these two sections though is to simply look for extreme language. What I mean is if an answer choice has the words "all", "any", "every", etc. eliminate it and guess something else. Even if you don't understand the question, this should at least help increase your guessing odds.

ok thanks! i'm doing sections of maths problems from powerprep right now. is that any good? i'll try to get hold of kaplan over the weekend.

qamar999 wrote:ok thanks! i'm doing sections of maths problems from powerprep right now. is that any good? i'll try to get hold of kaplan over the weekend.

I'm not familiar with power prep so I really can't say. Over all though, I would say if you consistently review the material you are likely to forget, then regardless of the source, you will be good.

HI,
I did the same mistake that u r going to do.I got 550 for the first time then i got 450 when i was aiming for 600+ in 4 weeks or so.I set a target too low to achieve.my advice to you is to Set a target score at least 700.
Important thing is to achieve the target score in mock test then only take any date to sit in the exam.don't otherwise.Any ways Good luck with ur prep.

hmmm but if i'm aiming for 600 or 700 i'd need the same approach to get an improvement right? i have a deadline to apply by the 3rd 'coz 6th is the deadline to apply for the business school i'm aiming to get in.

I just shared my exp with you and is not that what happen'd with me will happen with you,and sure u have deadline to meet .Well in that case as u r already good in verbal u just need to sit and work out a plan for maths.Be sure u have gone thru all OG quant questions. TRY to give some mock test and analyze where is u r doing wrong DS or problem solving,or is some particular topic say numbers which u r getting wrong. Prepare well

thanks! appreciate your input! yeah that's exactly what i'm gonna do. i'm gonna make a list of topics i'm weak in and then work on them systematically from easy to tougher questions.