I just Beat The GMAT!

GMAT round 1. I took my first GMAT in early April, 2015. Leading up to it, I worked extensively in the Princeton Review book with the vast majority of my time being spent on practice problems. I weighted my verbal/quant practice at about a 40/60 split respectively, noting that my math skills needed much more help than my verbal/writing. I think I spent about an hour a day for a month in total preparing for my first GMAT - obviously not the most in-depth preparation...and the score reflected that.

Round 1 scores: 39 Verbal, 42 Quant, 5 Writing, 7 Reasoning with a 660 final score.

GMAT round 2. Not being satisfied with my 660, I vowed to redo the GMAT. Noting that my verbal score put me almost in the 90th percentile, I committed my time exclusively to the Quant section. I wanted a better study method and came across Target Test Prep. I was impressed right away with the ease of use of the website and the way that the material was structured. I also liked the instructional videos. Books are great but, at least for a person like me, it is often helpful to see the pen-strokes and have the logic conversationally broken down. I spent 10 weeks intensively using the website, working through the taught material for my worst subjects and conducting 30-50 practice questions per day. Overall, I probably spent 75 hours on the site between June and August.

The big breakthrough came for me when I started doing custom tests. Its easy to go through a chapter and then do the practice questions immediately afterwards because you are mentally primed to jump those mental hurdles. I think its actually a disservice to you to go about it that way. I recommend a 50/50 split in your time if you use TTP. Spend half your time working through your weakest chapters and learning/understanding the concepts. Spend the other half doing custom tests with a variety of questions so that you're having to shift the mental gears that you'll have to shift on test day - practice like you'll perform.

As I stated earlier, I exclusively committed my re-study time to the quant section using TTP. I retook the GMAT in mid August and came out with the following scores:

42 Verbal, 48 Quant, 4.5 Writing, 6 Reasoning with a 740 final score.

I would recommend Target Test Prep to any prospect GMAT taker - 5 out of 5 stars, I was blown away by the results.