GMAT Strategy

I will be applying to a Masters program that accepts GMAT/GRE/SAT scores, and the deadline for scholarship money is June 15th. I figure if I want everything in on time (still cutting it close ) I will have 7 weeks to study. What is my best strategy? I have class all day today, but will be taking a practice test cold to see where I'm initially scoring. I already have the GMATOG 11th edition. Can anybody help me with a strategy for beating the GMAT? Some scholarship money won't hurt, but I also need to make the cut for the program!

jp8811,

If you will study out of the Official Guide, I suggest you consider getting the Official Guide Companion from gmatfix.com. The Companion is the only gmat prep book I've seen that shows how gmat strategies and solving techniques are applied to actual official gmat questions. Other gmat books show you how to apply the strategies to their own 3rd party questions. The OG Compnaion categorizes each OG question by topic and by difficulty (ie Geometry ->Triangles -> difficulty 500-600) so I used the GMATFix Companion to help me plan my gmat program.

For verbal, MGMAT SC guide was particularly helpful. It has just about all the grammatical concepts that you're likely to run into on test day and explains them very well.

If you want to develop a good strategy/plan of study, spend some time going through the "I just beat the GMAT" subforum to look at how others prepared. I reported the strategies that worked and those that didn't work for me at www.tinyurl.com/gmatpost

Best of luck!

Thank you very much for the response. Where can I find a diagnostic of the GMAT? I'll update the thread after I take the diagnostic tonight. Thanks again!

jp8811 wrote:I will be applying to a Masters program that accepts GMAT/GRE/SAT scores, and the deadline for scholarship money is June 15th. I figure if I want everything in on time (still cutting it close ) I will have 7 weeks to study. What is my best strategy? I have class all day today, but will be taking a practice test cold to see where I'm initially scoring. I already have the GMATOG 11th edition. Can anybody help me with a strategy for beating the GMAT? Some scholarship money won't hurt, but I also need to make the cut for the program!

If I may kindly ask a somewhat unrelated question: which Masters program accepts SAT scores? Sorry for the tangent, but I am just curious...

jp8811 wrote:Where can I find a diagnostic of the GMAT?

https://www.mba.com/mba/thegmat/download ... onsoftware

There is a link to download the software at the bottom of the page. You will be asked to register with the site in order to download. It's an inconvenience, but you will have to register anyway to take the GMAT.

pJackson79 wrote:

jp8811 wrote:I will be applying to a Masters program that accepts GMAT/GRE/SAT scores, and the deadline for scholarship money is June 15th. I figure if I want everything in on time (still cutting it close ) I will have 7 weeks to study. What is my best strategy? I have class all day today, but will be taking a practice test cold to see where I'm initially scoring. I already have the GMATOG 11th edition. Can anybody help me with a strategy for beating the GMAT? Some scholarship money won't hurt, but I also need to make the cut for the program!

If I may kindly ask a somewhat unrelated question: which Masters program accepts SAT scores? Sorry for the tangent, but I am just curious...

Its a new program at Duke, in their business school. MMS Foundations of Business. I honestly have no idea what to expect when applying to this since it is a brand new program.

Anyway, I took the GMAT cold this morning and scored a 530... A lot less than I expected, but I guess its ok. I need to crack down now big time and start studying. Sentence correction were the main ones I missed in Verbal. I need to slow down in the Quant section because I can list about 4 or 5 problems I missed just from not reading the problem carefully.

Thanks everyone for all the help so far! I've been reading through the forum, and there's tons of info here!

530 cold is not bad at all; means that you already score better than 1/2 of test takers before even starting your study. I wish you lots of success.

Below is what I did for Sentence Correction. I still miss a question from time to time, but my SC accuracy is now very high

For my verbal prep I used ManhattanGMAT Sentence Correction guide, The Official Guide, and gmatfix verbal flashcards.

1) If you don't already have it, consider getting the ManhattanGMAT SC guide and go through its lessons.

2) Get the gmatfix verbal flashcards (you can evaluate some for free); these cards are broken down into SC subtopics, with each topic giving you loads of examples and pinpointed lessons on how the topic is tested on the GMAT

3) Once you can go through the flashcards for a particular topic without error, use the Manhattan guide to find the specific questions in the OG that test the topic you're studying. Practice those questions and study the explanations carefully.

This is just a snippet; you can see my full debrief at www.tinyurl.com/gmatpost where I point out what worked from what didn't work for me.

Best of luck

jp8811 wrote:
Its a new program at Duke, in their business school. MMS Foundations of Business. I honestly have no idea what to expect when applying to this since it is a brand new program.

Very interesting!! Thanks for the info. I did not know about this.