Hey All,
I've just started studying for the GMAT about 10 days ago and having just completed my first practice test (scored 510!!! Horrible) I am wondering how to change my strategy in order to improve. In a way I am lucky that I am not working at the moment (company closed down) but I find that studying all day is burning me out and that may have contributed to my score.
So far I have studied some of the theory relating to the Math & SC in the Princeton Review and I have completed half of the questions in the Official Guide (11th Ed). As a ball park i got about 70% of all the questions correct, but I didn't time myself.
When I did the practice test, I found myself struggling or taking too long on some straight forward questions (Quant) and other ones I just couldn't do. I also had to guess some because I was running out of time. It was a similar story on the verbal. Because I have been reading/writing/speaking in english for a long time, I thought I could rely on my inherent grammar rules to deal with SC, but on the exam they didn't work too well. I found it difficult to get the main points from the RC section, and therefore spent a lot of time re-reading after reading the question. Also because of time I went through the CR much faster than I wanted to.
I have the Manhattan books (RC & CR, SC on order from amazon) and plus with the SC notes from Sahil and Spidey I am hoping to improve on these areas. Regarding the quant I am planning to practice and practice the problems I had trouble with (probabilities/rational numbers - integers, factors) to help in that area.
Do you think it would be a good idea for me to go back and redo the OFG using Ursula's excel file and after reviewing Sahil/Spidey's notes? I found the Math questions in the first half of the OFG to be a little easy, but maybe I should do them again and time myself.. I have a lot of practice questions I can do aside from the OFG, but it seems pointless to continue since I obviously need to review the fundamentals. The more questions I do after I have a sound base may be more useful?
Sorry, I've rambled, but what I am really looking for is a good strategy towards studying which I can apply religiously to each and every question I come across so that I can score well on the exam.
Can anyone help? Cheers.
I've just started studying for the GMAT about 10 days ago and having just completed my first practice test (scored 510!!! Horrible) I am wondering how to change my strategy in order to improve. In a way I am lucky that I am not working at the moment (company closed down) but I find that studying all day is burning me out and that may have contributed to my score.
So far I have studied some of the theory relating to the Math & SC in the Princeton Review and I have completed half of the questions in the Official Guide (11th Ed). As a ball park i got about 70% of all the questions correct, but I didn't time myself.
When I did the practice test, I found myself struggling or taking too long on some straight forward questions (Quant) and other ones I just couldn't do. I also had to guess some because I was running out of time. It was a similar story on the verbal. Because I have been reading/writing/speaking in english for a long time, I thought I could rely on my inherent grammar rules to deal with SC, but on the exam they didn't work too well. I found it difficult to get the main points from the RC section, and therefore spent a lot of time re-reading after reading the question. Also because of time I went through the CR much faster than I wanted to.
I have the Manhattan books (RC & CR, SC on order from amazon) and plus with the SC notes from Sahil and Spidey I am hoping to improve on these areas. Regarding the quant I am planning to practice and practice the problems I had trouble with (probabilities/rational numbers - integers, factors) to help in that area.
Do you think it would be a good idea for me to go back and redo the OFG using Ursula's excel file and after reviewing Sahil/Spidey's notes? I found the Math questions in the first half of the OFG to be a little easy, but maybe I should do them again and time myself.. I have a lot of practice questions I can do aside from the OFG, but it seems pointless to continue since I obviously need to review the fundamentals. The more questions I do after I have a sound base may be more useful?
Sorry, I've rambled, but what I am really looking for is a good strategy towards studying which I can apply religiously to each and every question I come across so that I can score well on the exam.
Can anyone help? Cheers.
