I just Beat The GMAT!

So I have been reading the various posts on this forum and all of them seem inspiring. So I'm not too worried about my initial score. I took the GMAT on July 27, 2012 and I received a score of 320. You could imagine I was pretty upset but at the same time I didn't really prepare as much as I wanted to and I didn't take many practice tests and also I was really nervous during the exam. I'm giving it another shot in October, hopefully things go much better the second time around.

The study materials that I used were as follows;

Manhattan Books
Official Guide 13th Edition
Quantitative Review 2nd Edition
Verbal Review 2nd Edition

I was just wondering if anyone could tell if I need more books to study with or will these be fine. Any feedback will be great.

It is never about the quantity of books (you have plenty on this list), but the amount of time spent reviewing material and designing the right study plan. Good Luck!

I second Jim's comment. You have enough materials, just make sure you are using them effectively.

Thanks Jim and NextGreatLeader for your feedback. I appreciate it and I will follow the feedback that you have provided.

Hey man,

I think the book set you have is fine. Initially I was doing problems out of the MGMAT books but realized they're not really representative of the GMAT and just stopped. I focused ALL of my attention on the OG problems and finished that book (except for the first 25-50 problems in each section as they are typically easier)

I would highly recommend doing drills of a certain problem type (which can be identified via the OG Error Logs) or at the end of each MGMAT book (they give you a list of OG problems which fall into a certain categorization of problem type).

I would also highly recommend drilling a couple MGMAT CATS (since you get 6) just to get a feel for your current score range. MGMAT quant, just as everyone seems to say, is much more difficult mathematically than the GMAT's quant. If you can start acing their problems you should be ok for the Quant section on the GMAT. The GMAT just incorporates more tricks and traps into their quant which can be reasoned through. Verbal is a tricky one to improve but I would recommend re-reading MGMATs SC book 3-4 times, Powerscore CR Bible for CR if that's a weak point. I bought the CR Bible but didn't find it to be as amazing of a resource as many people claim. I had more success working through the OG 12th Ed CR problems and just deeply analyzing each one I got right or wrong.

hope this helps!

Hey man!

Thanks for the great advice and the books. I'm pretty confident they will help me out. My exam is in about two weeks and the trouble I'm having is finding the motivation to study. Its been hard but hopefully I can get back into. Thanks for your help. I really appreciate it.