Hey Folks,
I know everyone has his or her own approach to designing a study schedule. I have personally been Struggling. I started with the philosophy that I would read several books and master the strategies, and then begin attacking questions. I made it through cracking the GMAT, and was moving to Kaplin 2009; however, a fellow beat the gmat"er" gave me some advice on what to focus on in terms of literature. The two major items were the Manhattan review SC, and an online math review that is quite comprehensive. I have taken the advice, but now have a dilemma.
In addition to the reading it has been recommended that I start doing problems. For the past 10 days I have done 10SC, 10CR, 5RC, 10PS, and 10DS questions from the official guide. I have been recording my results on an excel sheet listed below. I feel my analysis is comprehensive, but it is time consuming. To do the 45 questions it has been taking me about an 60-70 min. The analysis, however, has been taking approximately 2-4 hrs. The reason why it has been taking so long is because I was told it is more important to know why each answer is wrong than to know which is right (obviously important as well). So I have been reviewing each problem very thoroughly, but the time investment is burning me out.
Of course time is limited for everyone. I have several questions I will list below. Please provide any feedback.
In doing the 45 quest. per day the time invested on avg is 3-4 hours. I am burning out, and I also do not have time to read the literature to improve on strategy and time saving techniques.
1) Should I focus more on problems or reading at this point in my study?
2) If the advice is to focus on literature, I personally need to always review notes that I make, how should I work the note review into my schedule?
3) Should I cut down the number of problems and keep my schedule of 1/2 literature and 1/2 problems per day-with this in mind If I take 1 hr to read about math, and 1 hour to read about verbal I would only have 1-1.5 hours to do problems, which could mean, with a thorough review, I am only doing 10-15 per day?
4) Should I make my problem analysis less comprehensive (ie do not review the questions I did not miss?)
5) Please review my analysis sheet and see if my time investment is providing me with enough benefit. (there are two sheets in the excel doc, one titled overall, and one titled scores)
6) Please keep in mind that I feel like my quant skills need more work than verbal based on my current scores
7) Are the questions in the OG hard enough. I started at #1 for each section and plan to work all the way through, they seem easier than the example problems in the literature (especially the quant), do they get harder as I get to the higher numbers, should I try a diff guide?
8) I have not taken a comprehensive test, should that be my next step and focus reading material about where I was weak?
I have a million questions, but this should do for now. Any help from you top scorers would be great. My goal is 720.
Thanks,
Kyle
I know everyone has his or her own approach to designing a study schedule. I have personally been Struggling. I started with the philosophy that I would read several books and master the strategies, and then begin attacking questions. I made it through cracking the GMAT, and was moving to Kaplin 2009; however, a fellow beat the gmat"er" gave me some advice on what to focus on in terms of literature. The two major items were the Manhattan review SC, and an online math review that is quite comprehensive. I have taken the advice, but now have a dilemma.
In addition to the reading it has been recommended that I start doing problems. For the past 10 days I have done 10SC, 10CR, 5RC, 10PS, and 10DS questions from the official guide. I have been recording my results on an excel sheet listed below. I feel my analysis is comprehensive, but it is time consuming. To do the 45 questions it has been taking me about an 60-70 min. The analysis, however, has been taking approximately 2-4 hrs. The reason why it has been taking so long is because I was told it is more important to know why each answer is wrong than to know which is right (obviously important as well). So I have been reviewing each problem very thoroughly, but the time investment is burning me out.
Of course time is limited for everyone. I have several questions I will list below. Please provide any feedback.
In doing the 45 quest. per day the time invested on avg is 3-4 hours. I am burning out, and I also do not have time to read the literature to improve on strategy and time saving techniques.
1) Should I focus more on problems or reading at this point in my study?
2) If the advice is to focus on literature, I personally need to always review notes that I make, how should I work the note review into my schedule?
3) Should I cut down the number of problems and keep my schedule of 1/2 literature and 1/2 problems per day-with this in mind If I take 1 hr to read about math, and 1 hour to read about verbal I would only have 1-1.5 hours to do problems, which could mean, with a thorough review, I am only doing 10-15 per day?
4) Should I make my problem analysis less comprehensive (ie do not review the questions I did not miss?)
5) Please review my analysis sheet and see if my time investment is providing me with enough benefit. (there are two sheets in the excel doc, one titled overall, and one titled scores)
6) Please keep in mind that I feel like my quant skills need more work than verbal based on my current scores
7) Are the questions in the OG hard enough. I started at #1 for each section and plan to work all the way through, they seem easier than the example problems in the literature (especially the quant), do they get harder as I get to the higher numbers, should I try a diff guide?
8) I have not taken a comprehensive test, should that be my next step and focus reading material about where I was weak?
I have a million questions, but this should do for now. Any help from you top scorers would be great. My goal is 720.
Thanks,
Kyle
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