First time post from a long-time lurker on this forum!
Took the GMAT earlier this week and walked out with a 740 (Q49, V41). There were definitely things I did in my prep that were immensely helpful and others that were not at all, so thought my experience could be useful to others. Apologies in advance for the long-winded post, I have never been a succinct person (something I will need to work on for my essays)!!
First, a bit of background on my study prep. I started "studying" in late December, but really didn't do much at all until mid-Jan as I simply got too lazy over the holidays. Prior to mid-Jan, the only prep I did was sign up for a MGMAT class, attend my intro session, read through the MGMAT "Foundations" books and take a MGMAT practice test. Was pretty discouraged to get a Q29 V35 (530), especially as I was aiming to take the exam in late Feb and hit that magic 700. I started to buckle down, particularly in quant, studying about 15 hours a week (outside of the class itself, with most of the time focused on weekends as I have a pretty heavy schedule during the week).
STUDY PREP
From mid Jan to early Feb, I drilled through the MGMAT quant guides and SC book and took detailed notes. Note taking was a method that I found useful in college, but in retrospect I really think I could have better spent my time using other strategies (more on that later). I took another practice test in late Jan and was encouraged by the improvement Q37 V38 (630).
For two weeks in late Jan/early Feb, I attended my MGMAT classes, did my homework, went through the MGMAT guides again, did all the practice problems at the end of the chapters, and ordered the Powerscore CR book (read through and took detailed notes). The latter was actually tremendously helpful. My third MGMAT diagnostic in mid Feb yielded Q42 V 41 (680), with a 90%+ hit rate on CR. I was starting to feel pretty optimistic about hitting that 700 benchmark, and signed up for a March 18th test date.
And then that's when I got stuck. To kick my quant score up just a few notches more, I tried to get my hands on as many third party resources as I could. I did as many problems as I could from these third party sets, began working my way through OG 13, and also spent a ton of time on the gmatclub website - I downloaded their quant book and worked my way through that, tried out their "tough" quant problems (in reality these were just way over my head, at least at that time), and took gmatclub tests. Unfortunately for me, my quant score did not budge. Two weeks of drilling in quant and I could not get past Q43.
This is when I made the single best decision of my GMAT preparation. I emailed Ian Stewart. As some of you know, Ian is a mathematician/expert on this site/GMAT god/one of the nicest/coolest people you'll ever meet. Even though it was late February and I had theoretically gone through all of the "material" in quant about three times over (2x with MGMAT and once with GMATclub), I was really impressed by some of the other reviews Ian had received on this forum. Over the next two weeks, I met with Ian four times over skype to review the major topics (number properties, algebra, word problems, geometry/probability (with maybe just 10min spent on the latter to cover basics)) and also went through all the books he has publishes on the subjects (except for probability). Sadly, though, I did not have enough time to use his problem sets.
There is no other way to sum up the sessions than simply amazing. I have always dreaded math my entire life, but with Ian I actually looked forward to our sessions! I cannot even begin to count how many times I thought, "hunh, that is actually really cool", which later just progressed to, "wow! beautiful!" (and let me tell you, a month ago I did not think it was possible to call GMAT problems "beautiful"). Ian just simply has a gift for breaking down questions into their simplest elements, and explaining that process to the average Joe. After meeting with Ian, I no longer stressed about which problems were "really hard" or "easy" (Ian taught me that even some of the "hard" questions could be solved very simply if you just thought about it the right way), and as a result, the whole test just felt easier.
The last two weeks of my study prep were actually horrible. My work schedule turned to hell, I had to travel a lot more, and was working the entire weekend before my exam at a conference. I tried to maintain my 15 hours of study a week (getting no sleep as a result), splitting my time between practicing with Ian's materials and focusing on verbal. In verbal, it was at this time that I discovered the awesomeness of Ron Purewal's study halls in SC. I tried to watch as many of those videos as I could on "fast forward", skipping through parts and taking screen shots. If I had more time, I would have certainly watched his videos in full, but under this method I could get the gist of each one of his sessions in under 40 minutes.
Four days before my exam, I took a practice exam from GmatPrep and was pleasantly surprised with a 740 (Q47, V45). Two days before the exam, I reset my gmatprep exams, took another one and got a 750 (Q48, V45), albeit with quite a few repeat questions. Tried not to study the day before, got a not very good night of sleep (too much anxiety!), and was up at 6am the next morning for my 8am exam.
EXAM EXPERIENCE
AWA felt fine, but I actually completely messed up timing in IR (this score report I am actually very nervous to receive). I told myself it didn't matter, splashed water on my face during the break, and drank some gatorade. In the quant section, I finished just in the nick of time. There were 2 questions that I looked at for 20 seconds and skipped altogether. I saw one combinatronics question during the whole exam. Repeated my break routine, ate a piece of chocolate, and mentally rallied myself for verbal, knowing that this was the section that could really make it or break it for me.
Unfortunately, the verbal section was a bit of a let down. All throughout my practice exams, I had ended with 5-10 minutes to spare in verbal, so I decided to really take my time (my mistakes in verbal were almost all due to careless reading, especially in CR/RC, so I decided to double check each answer). This worked to an extent - I felt very confident halfway through, and was getting some pretty tough questions. Unfortunately, though, I ended up taking way too much time - the last 10 questions I completely rushed through, and the last three were blind guesses altogether. In the end, I was happy to see the V41, but also pretty peeved at myself for just stupidly mismanaging my time.
THOUGHTS
Overall, I am very happy with my score, especially in quant as I previously just didn't think I could ever score in the upper 40s (when hiring Ian, I was simply aiming to get over the Q45 hump - Q47 was the dream goal for me). But, if I had to to it all over again, this is what I would do:
Quant:
1. If you need to brush up in quant,purchase the MGMAT guides and drill through them. IMO, this is definitely the best math "primer" on the market. Do some of the end of chapter questions (maybe just odds) to check you are retaining the information, but I wouldn't take notes unless it's a section you don't get. While I do think note taking is helpful, it is too time consuming. If you are naturally strong in quant, I think you can skip this step.
2. Take a GMATprep exam to gauge where you are and your strengths and weaknesses.
3. Reach out to Ian and pray he has the capacity to take you!! Not to beat a dead horse too much, but Ian is most definitely the single most helpful resource I came across in my quant preparation. Reach out to him early in your prep to maximize time with him.
4. Get your hands on all things Ian Stewart. He publishes his own guides for number properties, word problems, probability, and stats (remaining topics are in the works). The quality is stellar. I would also purchase his question sets - I didn't have time for them, but Ian's questions are really thoughtful and the only third party resource in quant I would trust. In addition, check out his posts on this forum. He has commented on a decent number of OG questions, and his explanations are amazingly simple and clear (waaaaaay better than OG explanations)!
5. Work your way through the OG topic wise. Make sure you review the questions, it is very important to understand how to apply concepts to future problems. LEARN from each question - the goal is to really build up your understanding of each of the subject matters, not memorize specialized shortcuts.
6. If I had had more time, I would have done GMATfocus and/or the GMATprep booster pack.
Verbal:
1. Powerscore CR book. Totally changed how I thought about CR. This is the one book I would recommend taking notes on. This boosted my CR accuracy from 50-60% to 90%+.
2. MGMAT SC. Definitely the best go to book in SC.
3. Ron Purewal study halls (free). I totally wish I could have utilized these more. Ron is the king of verbal - he totally introduces a new way of thinking about problems, and his explanations are also really simple and beautiful. By the same token, I would also read up on as many posts as possible from this guy on this forum and on MGMAT's forum. He is simply brilliant.
4. LSAT RC problems. I got the LSAT superprep book and did the problems there. For me, RC was the hardest topic to improve on, but LSAT RC problems are basically harder versions of GMAT RC problems, so that did help build stamina.
General helpful tips:
- This site is amazing! Besides Ian and Ron, the other experts are also awesome and really brilliant. All the experts here really know their stuff.
- If you feel down, just read about the success stories. It's addictive
- Don't forget to focus on timing
Things I would put in the "Helpful, But I Would Have Prioritized Less" bucket:
- Gmatclub quant book and tests. To be clear, I did find this resource helpful to some extent, and I think it could definitely be great for very math oriented people already. As someone who was stuck in the low 40s after already a decent amount of legwork, though, it was just a little too advanced for me. The questions are intense and definitely push you, but for me required too much memorization of formulas and tricks. May very well be helpful for those already scoring in the high 40s and want to clench that Q51, though.
- MGMAT class. This also needs to be qualified. I think MGMAT is at the top of the class in terms of GMAT prep companies. They are professional, filled with very smart teachers (I really liked mine), and have a great approach. I definitely did find my class helpful, especially in verbal (for me seeing something being taught helped me absorb the material way better than just reading it). And probably the most useful thing the MGMAT class did for me was get me into a rigorous study routine - being a few years out of college, I had tried studying on my own before, to (obviously) not very good results (I never ended up taking the exam). I also think that MGMAT provides a lot of support for getting to the mid-600ish level of the test. What I didn't fully appreciate going into the class, though, was that it really only covers the tip of the iceberg in terms of the work most students have to do to get a 700+ score. Finally, the fact that the MGMAT prep books are so good is actually a slight negative for the class itself. Every student is of course different, but it's definitely worthwhile considering using the (very good) MGMAT books as a base and then leveraging a MGMAT tutor to zone in on weaknesses rather than go all out on the class itself.
Alright, I think that it is it for me. Thank you for bearing through this very long and rambling post! I hope it was helpful.
Took the GMAT earlier this week and walked out with a 740 (Q49, V41). There were definitely things I did in my prep that were immensely helpful and others that were not at all, so thought my experience could be useful to others. Apologies in advance for the long-winded post, I have never been a succinct person (something I will need to work on for my essays)!!
First, a bit of background on my study prep. I started "studying" in late December, but really didn't do much at all until mid-Jan as I simply got too lazy over the holidays. Prior to mid-Jan, the only prep I did was sign up for a MGMAT class, attend my intro session, read through the MGMAT "Foundations" books and take a MGMAT practice test. Was pretty discouraged to get a Q29 V35 (530), especially as I was aiming to take the exam in late Feb and hit that magic 700. I started to buckle down, particularly in quant, studying about 15 hours a week (outside of the class itself, with most of the time focused on weekends as I have a pretty heavy schedule during the week).
STUDY PREP
From mid Jan to early Feb, I drilled through the MGMAT quant guides and SC book and took detailed notes. Note taking was a method that I found useful in college, but in retrospect I really think I could have better spent my time using other strategies (more on that later). I took another practice test in late Jan and was encouraged by the improvement Q37 V38 (630).
For two weeks in late Jan/early Feb, I attended my MGMAT classes, did my homework, went through the MGMAT guides again, did all the practice problems at the end of the chapters, and ordered the Powerscore CR book (read through and took detailed notes). The latter was actually tremendously helpful. My third MGMAT diagnostic in mid Feb yielded Q42 V 41 (680), with a 90%+ hit rate on CR. I was starting to feel pretty optimistic about hitting that 700 benchmark, and signed up for a March 18th test date.
And then that's when I got stuck. To kick my quant score up just a few notches more, I tried to get my hands on as many third party resources as I could. I did as many problems as I could from these third party sets, began working my way through OG 13, and also spent a ton of time on the gmatclub website - I downloaded their quant book and worked my way through that, tried out their "tough" quant problems (in reality these were just way over my head, at least at that time), and took gmatclub tests. Unfortunately for me, my quant score did not budge. Two weeks of drilling in quant and I could not get past Q43.
This is when I made the single best decision of my GMAT preparation. I emailed Ian Stewart. As some of you know, Ian is a mathematician/expert on this site/GMAT god/one of the nicest/coolest people you'll ever meet. Even though it was late February and I had theoretically gone through all of the "material" in quant about three times over (2x with MGMAT and once with GMATclub), I was really impressed by some of the other reviews Ian had received on this forum. Over the next two weeks, I met with Ian four times over skype to review the major topics (number properties, algebra, word problems, geometry/probability (with maybe just 10min spent on the latter to cover basics)) and also went through all the books he has publishes on the subjects (except for probability). Sadly, though, I did not have enough time to use his problem sets.
There is no other way to sum up the sessions than simply amazing. I have always dreaded math my entire life, but with Ian I actually looked forward to our sessions! I cannot even begin to count how many times I thought, "hunh, that is actually really cool", which later just progressed to, "wow! beautiful!" (and let me tell you, a month ago I did not think it was possible to call GMAT problems "beautiful"). Ian just simply has a gift for breaking down questions into their simplest elements, and explaining that process to the average Joe. After meeting with Ian, I no longer stressed about which problems were "really hard" or "easy" (Ian taught me that even some of the "hard" questions could be solved very simply if you just thought about it the right way), and as a result, the whole test just felt easier.
The last two weeks of my study prep were actually horrible. My work schedule turned to hell, I had to travel a lot more, and was working the entire weekend before my exam at a conference. I tried to maintain my 15 hours of study a week (getting no sleep as a result), splitting my time between practicing with Ian's materials and focusing on verbal. In verbal, it was at this time that I discovered the awesomeness of Ron Purewal's study halls in SC. I tried to watch as many of those videos as I could on "fast forward", skipping through parts and taking screen shots. If I had more time, I would have certainly watched his videos in full, but under this method I could get the gist of each one of his sessions in under 40 minutes.
Four days before my exam, I took a practice exam from GmatPrep and was pleasantly surprised with a 740 (Q47, V45). Two days before the exam, I reset my gmatprep exams, took another one and got a 750 (Q48, V45), albeit with quite a few repeat questions. Tried not to study the day before, got a not very good night of sleep (too much anxiety!), and was up at 6am the next morning for my 8am exam.
EXAM EXPERIENCE
AWA felt fine, but I actually completely messed up timing in IR (this score report I am actually very nervous to receive). I told myself it didn't matter, splashed water on my face during the break, and drank some gatorade. In the quant section, I finished just in the nick of time. There were 2 questions that I looked at for 20 seconds and skipped altogether. I saw one combinatronics question during the whole exam. Repeated my break routine, ate a piece of chocolate, and mentally rallied myself for verbal, knowing that this was the section that could really make it or break it for me.
Unfortunately, the verbal section was a bit of a let down. All throughout my practice exams, I had ended with 5-10 minutes to spare in verbal, so I decided to really take my time (my mistakes in verbal were almost all due to careless reading, especially in CR/RC, so I decided to double check each answer). This worked to an extent - I felt very confident halfway through, and was getting some pretty tough questions. Unfortunately, though, I ended up taking way too much time - the last 10 questions I completely rushed through, and the last three were blind guesses altogether. In the end, I was happy to see the V41, but also pretty peeved at myself for just stupidly mismanaging my time.
THOUGHTS
Overall, I am very happy with my score, especially in quant as I previously just didn't think I could ever score in the upper 40s (when hiring Ian, I was simply aiming to get over the Q45 hump - Q47 was the dream goal for me). But, if I had to to it all over again, this is what I would do:
Quant:
1. If you need to brush up in quant,purchase the MGMAT guides and drill through them. IMO, this is definitely the best math "primer" on the market. Do some of the end of chapter questions (maybe just odds) to check you are retaining the information, but I wouldn't take notes unless it's a section you don't get. While I do think note taking is helpful, it is too time consuming. If you are naturally strong in quant, I think you can skip this step.
2. Take a GMATprep exam to gauge where you are and your strengths and weaknesses.
3. Reach out to Ian and pray he has the capacity to take you!! Not to beat a dead horse too much, but Ian is most definitely the single most helpful resource I came across in my quant preparation. Reach out to him early in your prep to maximize time with him.
4. Get your hands on all things Ian Stewart. He publishes his own guides for number properties, word problems, probability, and stats (remaining topics are in the works). The quality is stellar. I would also purchase his question sets - I didn't have time for them, but Ian's questions are really thoughtful and the only third party resource in quant I would trust. In addition, check out his posts on this forum. He has commented on a decent number of OG questions, and his explanations are amazingly simple and clear (waaaaaay better than OG explanations)!
5. Work your way through the OG topic wise. Make sure you review the questions, it is very important to understand how to apply concepts to future problems. LEARN from each question - the goal is to really build up your understanding of each of the subject matters, not memorize specialized shortcuts.
6. If I had had more time, I would have done GMATfocus and/or the GMATprep booster pack.
Verbal:
1. Powerscore CR book. Totally changed how I thought about CR. This is the one book I would recommend taking notes on. This boosted my CR accuracy from 50-60% to 90%+.
2. MGMAT SC. Definitely the best go to book in SC.
3. Ron Purewal study halls (free). I totally wish I could have utilized these more. Ron is the king of verbal - he totally introduces a new way of thinking about problems, and his explanations are also really simple and beautiful. By the same token, I would also read up on as many posts as possible from this guy on this forum and on MGMAT's forum. He is simply brilliant.
4. LSAT RC problems. I got the LSAT superprep book and did the problems there. For me, RC was the hardest topic to improve on, but LSAT RC problems are basically harder versions of GMAT RC problems, so that did help build stamina.
General helpful tips:
- This site is amazing! Besides Ian and Ron, the other experts are also awesome and really brilliant. All the experts here really know their stuff.
- If you feel down, just read about the success stories. It's addictive
- Don't forget to focus on timing
Things I would put in the "Helpful, But I Would Have Prioritized Less" bucket:
- Gmatclub quant book and tests. To be clear, I did find this resource helpful to some extent, and I think it could definitely be great for very math oriented people already. As someone who was stuck in the low 40s after already a decent amount of legwork, though, it was just a little too advanced for me. The questions are intense and definitely push you, but for me required too much memorization of formulas and tricks. May very well be helpful for those already scoring in the high 40s and want to clench that Q51, though.
- MGMAT class. This also needs to be qualified. I think MGMAT is at the top of the class in terms of GMAT prep companies. They are professional, filled with very smart teachers (I really liked mine), and have a great approach. I definitely did find my class helpful, especially in verbal (for me seeing something being taught helped me absorb the material way better than just reading it). And probably the most useful thing the MGMAT class did for me was get me into a rigorous study routine - being a few years out of college, I had tried studying on my own before, to (obviously) not very good results (I never ended up taking the exam). I also think that MGMAT provides a lot of support for getting to the mid-600ish level of the test. What I didn't fully appreciate going into the class, though, was that it really only covers the tip of the iceberg in terms of the work most students have to do to get a 700+ score. Finally, the fact that the MGMAT prep books are so good is actually a slight negative for the class itself. Every student is of course different, but it's definitely worthwhile considering using the (very good) MGMAT books as a base and then leveraging a MGMAT tutor to zone in on weaknesses rather than go all out on the class itself.
Alright, I think that it is it for me. Thank you for bearing through this very long and rambling post! I hope it was helpful.
