GMAT Strategy

I believe there are two aspects to exams; the knowledge and the process/system for answering questions.

the knowledge aspect is quite straightforward, i think, as this would mainly entail identifying and using the right study material to gain a pretty good understanding of the different areas covered in the exam. 'the process/system for answering questions' aspect would entail developing or adopting a step by step method for attacking each type of question on the GMAT exam.

The above is just how i view exams. I have set aside 2 months to prepare for the GMAT exam and would like your assistance in achieving my objective of 700+.

1. what books would you recommend, and for what areas of the exam?

2. what process did you use/ would you recommend for effectively and effeciencly answering the different GMAT question types e.g. process of elimination for SC etc etc?

So far I have OG 11, Manhattan SC, Princeton Verbal Workout & have been downloading free documents and guides from this site & scribd

Please help...

Welcome.


I too will be in a similar situation so I can understand your pains and anguish and getting a really high score. But I guess some background might be useful.


What is ur baseline score already? Try the gmat test and see what you score right now overall and in ur quantatitive and verbal sections.

What is ur background and profession? Engineer-might be already good with maths, English Lecturer-possibly already good with verbal



From my research it appears that many favour having an overall book that touches on all points and has some strategies etc ie All in 1 book.
The most popular are either Kaplan Premier or Princeton Cracking the gmat.

Then there are the official guides which are must haves. The OG gmat review covers everything though doesnt really teach u anything but excellent for practice as its authentic. The OG QUANTITIVE is for quantitive practice and the Verbal OG is for verbal practice. So you would need the 3 OGs.

Then there are the extremely well recieved and popular books/guides that focus on certain issues as Manhattans Sentence Correction, Powerscore Critical Reasoning Bible though Manhattans Critical Reasoning is also excellent, the advanced Kaplan book for those tough questions KAPLAN ADVANCED(Kaplan 800), then you have the maths guides or books such as the Kaplan Math Workbook or the EZ SOLUTIONS series that total 9 books but is possibly that absolute best you could buy on the topic.



I bought the following:

The Official Review Guide 2009

The Official Quantative guide 2005 <---cant be helped the new one is not out yet until August

The Official Verbal Guide 2005 <---cant be helped the new one is not out yet until August

Manhattan Sentence Correction 2008

Manhattan Critical Reasoning guide 2008

Kaplan GMAT MATH WORKBOOK and finally

Princeton cracking the gmat 2009 w/dvd



So I guess you could see that you might want to consider purchasing the OG Quantitive and OG Verbal + Something for maths eg Kaplan Math workbook, EZ solutions etc + something for critical reasoning like Powerscore bible or Manhattan CR + possibly an overview all in one book eg Kaplan premier or Princeton cracking the gmat. Ofcourse this all depends on the information you might supply eg background profession baesline score weaknesses etc.


There also is something that I am considering quite a bit even though I have the books and that is using the online prep course by KNEWTON. It seems very intelligent and looks excellent and then you would not need possibly as many books anyways and you would have your course and training targeted to you as its all adaptive. TRY IT its free trial and see what u think then post back here and let me know.
https://www.knewton.com/

JAVA ZAX wrote:
1. what books would you recommend, and for what areas of the exam?

I would also recommend (as have others) the PowerScore Critical Reasoning Bible, which many have found very helpful for deconstructing the sometimes seemingly subjective CR questions.

If you have very little time, nail the highest value fundamentals. That's it - then focus on getting timing down.

I recommend gmathacks.com's math bible, and verbal bible. Only the highest value questions which appear the most often, a mix of hard and simple, and clear instructions which enable you to learn how to solve questions, not cheap tricks or random "magic bullets" which you don't have time for.

Best of luck. i hope you get the 700

thanks guys -- im taking in your good advice. I have been putting together study material and a study plan for the next 8 or so weeks. I will start going through the material over the weekend starting with math, RC, SC, CR and then AWA.

My background is computer science, i have 4 years work ex in IT security, audit, risk and compliance. I am a certified information systems auditor (CISA) and a certified information systems security professional (CISSP). I work for one of the big 4 accounting firms.

Please keep the advice coming, I appreciate it.