GMAT Strategy

Hello,
I recently took my GMAT and after 2 months of preparing (approx. 40-50 hours) I scored a dismal 480. I'm a native English speaker and writing tutor, but scored the lowest on the verbal section. My prep prior to taking the test consisted of heavy OG and Manhattan Sentence Correction.

I've registered to retake the GMAT the first week in June. I am graduating undergrad the first week in May and plan to spend the entire month of May preparing. I've scoured the website and have found some great plans, but given the fact I only have a month and have already worked through about 80% OG quan. and 40% OG verbal, and taken both GMATPrep CATs, I'm unsure of where to go from here. Any suggestions?

Best,
Jen

what materials have you used? books etc?


dont tell me its only been the Manhattan SC and OG book.


And 40-50hrs in 2 months? That would be about week and a half for me 5hrs/day.


Please list what you have been using etc and it might be time to get onto some prep company etc.

I go to school full time and work full time as well, and when taking the test, was under the gun to get the score in in order to meet the admissions deadlines. As for prep materials, I went through the entire Kaplan quantitative review book, then did og and manhattan. I also have the Kaplan 09 premier program with cd.

well id say you need more practice materials.

you could start with the premier book go through it filling in spots using other books if need be.

then onto maths, verbal cr and sc.

now once u have a solid foundation and you know your stuff go to the 3 OGs and get the Kaplan ADVANCED book and work ur way through that.

Everyweek or two keep doing some GMAT tests some on your premier cd and lots more online to see how your progressing.


Have you tried Knewton.com ? try them got a free trial sign up and check it out fully adaptive to your needs and has free gmat to try. check it and let me know what u think.

Well it depends on what your target score is.

Here is breakdown :

If your targeting a score in the range of 600, then OG10 is fine. I would go with 10 because that has the most questions. 11 has questions contained in 10, but 10 has even more questions than 11 (almost twice as much).

I don't know about 12 but I hear it's the same thing as 11. I wouldn't be surprised.

Also study GMAT 800 by Kaplan. Really the GMAT 800 will help you get a score in 600's on the real GMAT. It should be called GMAT 600.

Buy OG Verbal and Quantitative review and maybe Kaplan Quant and Verbal review if you want to go bongos with study overload.

Next, practice GMATPrep. Keep reloading the program and take practice tests. The GMATPrep has about an 80% similarity to the real GMAT in Q and above 90% for the V. Also the score you get on GMATPrep accurately reflects the real score you will receive.

Now if you're a heavy hitter and want to shoot for 700+, I suggest solving math brain teasers, enrolling in Manhattan GMAT or that 750GMAT prep course, or maybe even looking at some standardidized math test primers (books that are just focused on increasing your math ability

As I said before, most prep stuff you can buy will prepare you for the V.

However, I have yet to see any prep stuff that will prepare you adequately for the Q if you want to receive 700+.

To me all the books you can buy are behind the curve when it comes to simulating the level of difficulty on the Q in the real thing.

I realized the GMAT Q tests your ability to reason intuitively in a quantitative manner. In that sense, it's not so much a Math test as it is an IQ test. However, I do feel you can study for this. It's just a matter of finding the right source.