I beat the GMAT - 760 (Q49 V44) - The Beat The GMAT Forum - Expert GMAT Help & MBA Admissions Advice

I discovered this site about a month or so before I took the actual GMAT. The posts have been very helpful in focusing my studying and learning from other people's experiences, so I wanted to share my own in the hopes that I could help other people out as well. I'll try to give a timeline for my studying efforts and my strategy as I went along.

Overall, I studied from about February through May (4 months). I signed up for a Manhattan GMAT class, which went from late January through late March. I feel like the class was very helpful from the perspective of getting me used to the GMAT format and offering tips and strategies for addressing each of the problem types. That being said, I know it is expensive and not everyone can afford it, so at the very least I recommend purchasing all the MGMAT books. I basically spent the first 2 months of my study time going over those books in detail and trying to get all the concepts down pat. I can't emphasize enough how helpful these books were.

After I was confident that I had the concepts down pat, I went back through the MGMAT books and did all of the problems they offer at the end of each section. While these are not in GMAT format, they are very helpful for reinforcing the concepts and skills so that they become second nature. I decided to take an MGMAT practice exam at this point and scored a 650. It was in the range that I was okay with, but I really struggled with the quant.

After a couple weeks of that, I moved on to the OG books. I did started by doing 50 questions of each type, then recording the answers and reviewing my mistakes (I would review after roughly 10-20 questions at a time). Once I had done 50 problems for each questions type, I did the next 50. I used the MGMAT tracking spreadsheet, which was incredible for tracking areas of weakness. It really allowed me to easily identify where I was weakest and address it. At this point I realized my quant was definitely weaker than my verbal, so I focused more on quant to try to bring that up. I finished all the quant questions in the OG and most of the verbal ones.

About a month before the exam, I took my first GMAT Prep exam and scored a 730. I was excited because the last one I took was an MGMAT exam and scored a 650. The 730 at least proved to me that I was making progress and in the range that I was hoping for. Based on my score (don't remember the breakdown) I knew my quant was still weak so I decided to forsake verbal for a bit and really work on the quant. I did lots of problems in the OG Quant book and reviewed all my mistakes. In areas I was scoring lower in, I went back and reviewed the concepts in the MGMAT books. In addition to all this, I trolled through the quant page of Beat The GMAT and did most of the problems on there. It was very helpful to see other people explain problems and understand how they approached them.

Two weeks before the exam I did another GMAT Prep practice exam and scored a 770. This time my verbal stayed roughly the same and my quant came up significantly (I think the breakdown was Q50 V45). I continued to focus on the quant and finished the rest of the OG Quant book problems. At this point I was slightly worried I was getting rusty on verbal, so the week of the exam I did a few verbal questions each day to make sure I was still quick there. As for the AWA's, I did one practice one but really just looked over a template and made sure I knew how to structure my arguments. I haven't received my score yet but I think I did well. My advice here is to check out some of the templates floating around and follow them... not to a tee, but just the general format.

I took my exam at 8 AM on a Saturday morning. I packed a banana and gatorade for a snack in between sections. It is surprising how grueling working your mind can be, and I think eating a banana before my verbal section helped get me through. The AWA's were a good warmup, but when the quant started I had trouble with the first question, a coordinate plane problem. I spent way too much time on it and overall I did not feel strong about the quant. During the break I reminded myself that I needed to forget about it and I could still get a solid score with a good verbal performance. At the end when I pressed that report button and the 760 popped up... I was pretty stunned. I had thought I bombed the quant! Goes to show you, its tough to tell your performance on a CAT.

So to sum up what I think the most imporant things for me were:

- The MGMAT books. I know it sounds like I work for them or something, but these were invaluable to me. You can learn all the tricks you want but they are no substitute for learning the underlying concepts.

- Timing! I used a stopwatch for every question I did and recorded the times. This not only sets your internal clock but also allows you to look back and see which problems took longer and review them.

- The official guides. There is no substitute for the real thing, right?

- The GMAT Prep tests. Don't underestimate being comfortable with the format on the computer. Having stared at that white and blue screen for hours during practice exams made it much more tolerable and comfortable during the real thing. In addition they turned out to be pretty accurate predictors of my actual score.

- The final thing is more mental. I realized during my first practice exam that I was allowing past problems to affect my future performance. When I didnt do well on a problem I would spend too much time on it and then try to rush to catch up later on. Rushing did not help, in fact it probably took longer because by rushing I was not taking in all the important information and had to re-read each question. My point here is that, like a quarterback who throws an interception, you need to treat each question like its a totally new experience. Forget about the past. Try your best, and if you think you are running out of time, take an educated guess and move on.

Anyways, I could probably write even more, but I think this is a pretty solid debrief of my experience. I hope anyone reading finds this helpful and good luck to everyone taking the test!

I beat the GMAT - 760 (Q49 V44)

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