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New to the GMAT

by bellaray » Fri Mar 04, 2011 7:30 pm
Two weeks ago I began studying for the GMAT. I took the GMATprep test on week one and the second GMATprep test on week two, scoring 420 and 460 respectively. Today, I took the 2nd Kaplan online test scoring 550 (put in about 30 hours of study this week, and 24 hours the week before, trying to re-establish base knowledge).

Currently, I am 32 year old, and haven't had to any college Math or English courses in 10 years. Needless to say my skills are a bit rusty. The GMAT seems to be an animal completely unto itself. Realistically, I only need a score of 500 to get into the business school that I will be attending because it is located close to work. However I would like to score well in the event I could transfer to a different school. I have approximately 40 more days to study before taking the exam, and a couple of extra months of wiggle room if by chance, I royally mess up.

My study manuals include:

The Kaplan GMAT Premier 2011
The three OG 11th Edition
The Princeton Review 2011

My questions are:

What is a reasonable score goal for someone in my situation??
Are the Kaplan tests representative of an actual GMAT test??
What other training or resources should be pursued to boost score??
(it seems a 650 is a completely different level of play than a 550, and a 750 than a 650)

Any advice or direction would be greatly appreciated.
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by eternal_optimist » Fri Mar 04, 2011 8:04 pm
Welcome to beatthegmat!
Here are the answers to your questions.
1. Given the fact that you got a 420 and a 460 on GMATPREP, I think with 40 days of preparation, you can definitely take this score to 550, but you'll have to carefully chart out a study plan for yourself to ensure that you're on the right path and that you are really making a quantifiable pogress.
2. The GMATPREP CATs are the best indicators of your competency level for the actual test.
3. Since you're not aiming for a very high score, I think you should be fine with the resources/books you have. However, what you need to ensure is that you really understand the stuff there.If you find that you're unable to understand a concept or apply it in questions,then you can possibly get other material.
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by bellaray » Sun Mar 06, 2011 6:07 pm
eternal_optimist wrote:Welcome to beatthegmat!
Here are the answers to your questions.
1. Given the fact that you got a 420 and a 460 on GMATPREP, I think with 40 days of preparation, you can definitely take this score to 550, but you'll have to carefully chart out a study plan for yourself to ensure that you're on the right path and that you are really making a quantifiable pogress.
2. The GMATPREP CATs are the best indicators of your competency level for the actual test.
3. Since you're not aiming for a very high score, I think you should be fine with the resources/books you have. However, what you need to ensure is that you really understand the stuff there.If you find that you're unable to understand a concept or apply it in questions,then you can possibly get other material.
The initial tests I took were, you might say, "cold turkey," I just took the prep test with no diagnostic prep, and had yet to start studying. Following what you stated about the GMATPREP CATS being the better indicator, I took another one yesterday and scored 530, plus I retook the test that I initially scored a 420, I was about 14 minutes from finishing it, when we lost power, but I noticed the second time around a completely different batch of questions appeared. Is there any way to distinguish between 500, 600, and 700 level questions? It seems that a person can be answering some tough questions, then something deceptively easy appears? Is this the CAT just changing gears, or does each subsection....i.e. Algebra, data sufficiency, and geometry start at a certain difficulty level then work upwards?
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