I just Beat The GMAT!

I wanted to do this one for people who AREN'T looking for 700 or 750, but more along the lines of 550-570, maybe a bit higher.

I just took the GMAT for the 2nd time, and I scored a 560 (35Q, 32V), which was a 100 point increase from when I took the test the first time, about a month ago.

So I studied for about a month, maybe 3 weeks, put in about 1 to 2 hours a day, strictly using one book:

OG Guide 12th Edition (the official GMAT one)

You probably need this book if you want to do well...on my first try I did NOT have this book, so it definitely helped.

I also did about 7 or 8 practice tests using GMAT PREP ONLY, just delete your answers and retake them, you won't see many repeats, but by the 8th time they start repeating a little more.

If you are a native english speaker, a 35 should be no problem at all, I would urge you to really practice the sentence correction as those are the trickiest ones. Definitely DO NOT only go by what SOUNDS RIGHT. If you just trust your ear, you won't get many right, that can only get you so far. I'm a native english speaker who sucks at taking standardized tests, I get really nervous, so i'm attributing that to my low score. I'm a little disappointed I didn't get a little higher but all in all i'm fine with the 100 point increase.

Also, for RC it's imperative that your mind is clear. If you start going fuzzy by the end, you won't be able to comprehend anything you've just read, so practice stamina.

If anyone has any questions i'd be glad to help, again, not for the people who are looking for a 700 obviously, but as I read the forums for a while I found that almost everyone was looking for a near perfect score, but this is for those of you who may only need a mid 500 score.

Do you feel that you could score higher if you have picked up few books that are focused on learning GMAT-specific materials?

Not quite sure what you mean by that, do you mean specific Strategies for taking the GMAT? I had the "Cracking the GMAT" by Princeton Review for the first go around, and frankly that book sucked, it only gave you tips on how to use POE and frankly gave wrong advice by generally saying "The right answer is never the answer you think it is" or something like if you get your answer in one step, it's probably wrong...with that book i got a 460, with the OG guide I got a 560...

I do not think I could have scored higher on the Verbal without another 2-3 weeks of just doing practice problems...Quant is more about concepts, Verbal is more about just doing millions of problems and finding the patterns and what the GMAT is looking for...once you find out what they are looking for you are golden

I meant more reputable resources like MGMAT SC guide, Powerscore CR bible, and the full series of MGMAT quant guides.

Have you looked into those at all?

I see what you mean now. To be honest I did not look into any other books, and there are a ton of reviews for every book out there, some say they are amazing, some say they suck. It all depends on how much time and money you want to put in. Looking back, I realize now that I didn't want to put in a lot of money towards books and I didn't want to put in more than a month, so I guess I got a score that reflects that. But it depends how you study the best...some people probably can't use more than 1 or 2 books efficiently and it is probably not necessary to have 5 books, but I suppose the OG guide fails to give adequate explanations for questions and its not great for concepts, its just a bunch of practice problems. Its definitely a necessity, but maybe one of those mgmat books might have been a good supplementary source

Moved to an appropriate forum!