GMAT Strategy

This is my first post hello to all. I am 36 years old and have not taken a math class on the material tested in over 20 years. Needless to say I am unable to answer any problems from the OG 13th edition pages 20-26 as suggested in my daily emails from beat the gmat 60 study plan. Geometry, Algebra, fractions, decimals all gone, lost somewhere in the back of my mind. Please advise what books, websites (magoosh or gmatprepnow)should I use that will teach me in literally baby steps the concepts I need to know.The OG Quant book is more for practice which I cannot do since I dont know the material. I have the KAPLAN premier 2013 edition, but it seems they are more concerned with teaching you tricks to beat the exam and not focused to much on learning the material. My exam is on March 1st, I am aiming for a 570 or better on the exam 55% verbal, 45% Quant. Please advise should I get the Manhattan quant books, or there is another website like Mathhelp.com that teaches GMAT math a 1 month subscription is $50.00. I almost want to take the GRE to avoid all this math, but I have invested over 45 days so far just on verbal alone. BTW i am doing self study and I work full -time so a class is not an option. Please keep in mind I don't have a general idea of the material and would be like an 8th grader starting from scratch.

Sorry I did not see this one before...do you have an update? Have you taken those baby steps on the math concepts? Are you moved on to looking at actual GMAT problems yet? I am worried that March 1 may not be enough time...

Thanks for all the help. My test date is March 17th and luckily for me I am trying to get into a local school here in NYC. A 540-600 GMAT score would suffice. Sorry I am not like the other people here looking for 700's and better. I became a member of Magoosh for assistance with Math which is helping since they also have online exams. Khan Academy is good, but they don't teach GMAT math techniques like Magoosh its more straightforward, but a great backup. I have been studying since November and focused on verbal for about 7 weeks and moved onto math. I work full time so studying daily 3-4 hours is not feasible, but I am making the time.I have both OG books 13th and Quant review. Kaplan Premier(not to helpful in Quant, except Data Sufficiency)and the critical reasoning bible by powerscore, along with Magoosh.

My plan for attack is laid out. The last 2 weeks of February I will spend all my time doing the OG Quant and verbal problems over and over until I am sick. Then the first two weeks of March leading up to the exam, It's all CAT tests. The weekend before I am off that Friday and will spend 72 hours polishing any weak areas. Any suggestions to this plan based on my time frame would be helpful. Unfortunately, I don't have any CAT scores to posts since i have not taken any in large part because of the Quant.



Anthony

Thanks for the reply and I will take your advice and do 1 CAT a week. Next Saturday I will post my score. I find that I am learning math better by doing the actual questions rather it be from Magoosh or the OG series and analyzing the answer explanation. I have 5 CAT exams courtesy of the Kaplan premier, 2 from the official GMAT website (GMAT PREP)so that's about seven. I heard doing thousands of Quant/Verbal questions really wont help as much as doing about 1000 each is this true? I will follow your advice regarding the weekend before and re-doing old questions. The materials I advised I had in my previous posts are those sufficient? I don't want to get the Manhattan books, especially Quant (way to big).Is there any other suggestions? I do find the DS a bit easier since many questions without doing any calculation can be answered or just by knowing you could solve for that equations tells you its sufficiency or not.


Regards,

Anthony

Your materials are fine to get you where you want to go. You know the score that you are looking for -- up to 600 and anything that really helps you to understand the material should get you there.

1000 is a lot of questions for each Quant and Verbal. If you do that many and really understand them that is better than doing more and not understanding as well. So you are on the right track there.

When you take your first CAT I recommend that you take the GMATPrep practice test. The Kaplan test may not give you quite as good of an indication of where you are. You can take each of the FREE GMATPrep tests twice and then you can purchase 2 more exams - called Exam Pack 1 from GMAC. That is potentially six official tests. There is no way that you should be doing more non-official tests than you do official tests. In other words you will want to take about 1 - 2 of the Kaplan exams. Don't get me wrong they are good tests, but when you have the option for official tests with the same interface you will see on test day and retired official questions then you want to go there, right?

If you do end up taking more than 6 practice tests you should mix your non-official tests. So take one of the Kaplan exams and then take the FREE Veritas practice test. So far results show that this exam may be more accurate than other non-official tests. If you take the exam I would love to know what you think.

Data Sufficiency is "easier." It does not require as much math and it can be done more quickly. It is also "harder" in that it is not about pure math but about reasoning. If you like Data Sufficiency then you might also be good at critical reasoning? It sounds to me like you have made progress. I look forward to a CAT score from you.

ajohnson77 wrote: I heard doing thousands of Quant/Verbal questions really wont help as much as doing about 1000 each is this true?

I don't think there's an upper limit of beneficial questions, but the mistake people tend to make when saying "I'm going to do a million problems!" is not spending time analyzing them. You have to go back and look at what you did wrong so you know what to work on going forward.

Thanks Guys for all the help. David I will follow your advice and stick with offical GMAT prep CAT Exams. I will do the 2 already provided and purchase the exam pack for the addition ones and only complete about 2 of the Kaplan exams. As I am doing the Quant problems I noticed that many of the questions actually are very simple to caculate and in many cases the answer could be found in the question stem. Im starting to realize this test(the quant section) is not about your ability to do high school math. It's about your ability to notice patterns, think critically and pay great attention to detail. Oh and David your right Critical reasoning is a strong point along with sentence correction. My approach for the Qaunt is a two sided approach. First, is to learn the material enough to anwer a question or at the very least be able to take a good 50/50 guess. The second part is to notice a pattern in the question and apply to to similiar ones whcih is working out ok at this point.

Bill you made a great point about doing alot of questions. Even if the question was answered correctly I still review the explanation since its possible to get a question right,using a method that just happened to work, but its not entirely correct.



Regards,

Anthony

Thanks Guys for all the help. David I will follow your advice and stick with offical GMAT prep CAT Exams. I will do the 2 already provided and purchase the exam pack for the addition ones and only complete about 2 of the Kaplan exams. As I am doing the Quant problems I noticed that many of the questions actually are very simple to caculate and in many cases the answer could be found in the question stem. Im starting to realize this test(the quant section) is not about your ability to do high school math. It's about your ability to notice patterns, think critically and pay great attention to detail. Oh and David your right Critical reasoning is a strong point along with sentence correction. My approach for the Qaunt is a two sided approach. First, is to learn the material enough to anwer a question or at the very least be able to take a good 50/50 guess. The second part is to notice a pattern in the question and apply to to similiar ones whcih is working out ok at this point.

Bill you made a great point about doing alot of questions. Even if the question was answered correctly I still review the explanation since its possible to get a question right,using a method that just happened to work, but its not entirely correct.



Regards,

Anthony

Rich I do agree some of the techniques used on DS can be applied to the general problem solving questions. If i were shooting for a 700 or better than i'd probably go for the Manhattan books. Half of my study is to learn the material enough to answer questions with 100% accuracy or at least be able to make good educated gueses through elimination. The other half is recognizing patterns in all parts of the GMAT amd beating the exam. I am sure many people got well over the 600 mark with just general/intermediate knowledge of the topics and pattern recognition.


Anthony.