GMAT Strategy

Question to all that scored what they wanted (most likely 720+).

At what point in your studying did you know you were done studying and ready to take the exam?

Did you set a criteria for yourself? Such as I want to score consistently in the 750+ range for GMATprep exams. That will tell me I'm confident to get at least a 720 on the real exam?

There's alot of strategies on here on what and how to study but not alot on how and when to know you are done studying.

What were your "steps of doneness"?

Thanks in advance.

:arrow: : :!:

I personally knew when I was done when I had exhausted most of my prep material. I used the OG, the OG verbal, Kaplan 800, Kaplan Premier and PowerScore CR Bible.

But that wasn't my only criterion, of course. I was aiming for a 90% hit rate on all sections (quant was my strong point, so I didn't even practice for that one except for answering questions on this forum) of the verbal. I had a pretty good start with RC, since my accuracy was about 95% when I'd started prep. Weaknesses were SC and especially CR. When I got to over 90% for each section, then I was sure I was ready for the test.

In the end, it's all up to what your initial goal was. Mine was pretty damn high, so 90% was my target. But if you're not necessarily aiming for that 99th percentile score (i.e. you'd settle for something less than that), you might want to set a lower standard.

All the best with your prep!

I had a fairly simple way of knowing when I was ready. When I was able to look at just about any question (>90%), analyze it in my head within 1 minute, parse/handle the data all in my head without taking any notes, and come up with a quick "strategy" to attack the problem, I knew I was good.

Why? Because if I could do that that fast inside my head then I would certainly be able to do it with pen and paper with written notes and more thorough thinking.