GMAT Strategy

Hey folks - so after a 6 month hiatus I'm back at it, and have made up my mind to write the test. I studied for almost 3 months straight between May-July 2013, but never wrote the actual test because I didn't feel my score was good enough. I made every rookie mistake - no error log, no revision of problems I got right, didn't stick to a regimented schedule, and consistently flipped back and forth between Verbal and Quant. I also decided to write 1 mock exam per week and was scoring between 580 - 640.

I'm trying to right all of my wrongs from the past and plan to write the test end of April or early May 2014. My 3 month plan is to complete 1 MGMAT book a week, along with the relevant OG problems. I will start with Quant for the first month and then move to Verbal.... as for CATs, I plan on starting those midway through my second month...(possibly once a week?), and then move into more frequent testing in the final month.

Note - these are the same books that I used in the past, so chances are I've done all the problems once before...but seeing as how its been about 6 months since I've looked at them, I doubt I'll remember any of the answers for the most part.

I plan on starting off with the OG Practice Test this weekend to see how I score and take it from there.

Any thoughts? Would really appreciate the feedback of the community, thanks.

thanks Rich - really appreciate it.

Personally, I think that my Quant happens to be the weaker of the two. Even during my previous run at studying for the GMAT, I found myself making lots of silly mistakes on Quant and getting caught in their traps, so hopefully I can fix it this time around.

Brent - thanks! That article was great. Most of my 'silly mistakes' are associated with not fully reading the question and try to zip through to the answer.

Having said that, one of the biggest take aways from that article you shared was the need for improving my penmanship. I have horrible handwriting, which makes my notes unreadable. When I'm solving a problem, this becomes an issue as exponents suddenly all start looking to be the same.

Thanks again