First a little background on myself for those of you who are about to embark on the perilous, exciting, painful and brutal journey that is the GMAT! I'm an ER doctor with several years experience and I want to complete an MBA to get involved in international healthcare and to do my bit to try and make the world a better place.
Getting through medical school is an arduous task, and postgraduate medical training is a very tough beast indeed. Anyone who gets through this must be intellectually gifted and therefore the GMAT would be a piece of cake for them, right? WRONG! The best advice I can give you is DO NOT, under any circumstances, underestimate the GMAT!
Sure there are a handful of geniuses out there who might be able to ace it with little or no effort, but for the vast majority of us this is not the case. Hard work and perseverance is the primary determinant of success. Personally, I think this is a good lesson for success in life in general, even if you happen to be a genius.
So here is my GMAT story and study plan in full : Apologies for the length but I feel that for anyone out there who is just starting out they might find the detail useful so here goes -
August 2009 - read the formulae in the OG and attempted my first GMAT prep practice test without doing any practice questions - scored 650. Not bad at all I thought, this will be a piece of cake (idiot). Spent a day doing some practice questions and enrolled to do the GMAT that week as a baseline measure.
1st Test 25 aug 2009 : score : 500 (Q21, V39) disaster! My pacing on the quant was terrible and I did not even have time to guess the last 7 questions. Warning - The GMAT penalises you severely for unanswered questions. It is much better to at least take an educated guess. I did however, note that luckily my verbal score was very high and so for the next attempt I would need to focus on quant. This makes sense because doctors primarily rely on verbal reasoning and critical thinking, with very little need for math computation. We do need to understand stats in detail, however.
Still in arrogant doctor mode, (stupid, stupid!) I decided a week of mathematics practice would be sufficient to bring my score up. I completed the OG and the quant review. Didn't really understand a lot of the answer explanations but didn't let that phase me. (again, very stupid). For example I noted they had a habit of breaking large numbers into powers of 2, 3 5 and 7, but did not understand why (prime factorisation I realised much, much later..)
2nd Test 18 Nov 2009: score : 610 (Q37, V37). Better, but nowhere near the approx 680 you need to be in the target zone for a top school. It finally dawned on me that I needed to put some seriously hard work into this GMAT thing... damn!
25 Feb 2010 : Started studying PROPERLY with a comprehensive study plan in place. Purchased all of the MGMAT guides (foundation math, and 8 guide books), along with turbocharge your GMAT verbal and quant, and 6 practice MGMAT CAT exams online. I kept a strict diary of exactly how many hours I studied this time. I focused on quant because this is where I needed to improve most. I Started with foundations, then the 5 MGMAT quant guide books. Booked a test date : 4 June 2010.
9th April 2010 : 115 hours of study completed in total. not finished MGMAT guide books. Felt a little more confident so tackled my first MGMAT CAT exam - score 520! (Q25, V36) I knew I was better at math so what happened? The answer is twofold - as you learn new techniques it actually slows you down to begin with because of the extra thinking time required. Again, my pacing was way off. I kept spending too long on difficult questions 3 mins+ because "I knew I could do them". I had to guess the last 10 questions without even looking at them. I thought long and hard and decided on a new timing plan : Strictly 2 mins and no more per question in quant practice questions and for my next CAT exam I set a time limit of 2 mins on each question. It is fundamentally important that you do not fall too far behind in your pacing (say no more than 90 secs cumulative), because there is nothing worse than added pressure when you come up against difficult questions and you have given yourself even less time than you need.
11th May 2010 : 180 hours of math completed - all 6 MGMAT math guide books completed. Note : if you follow the MGMAT guide books to the letter this means you will also have completed all the OG guide questions and quant review.
2nd MGMAT practice CAT with 2 mins max per quant question in the timing options : score : 630 (Q36, V40). ok I suppose, but what happened with the quant? Good news - the 2 min strict timing limit meant I actually finished the quant section with 30 mins to spare! a vast improvement if I can just get the pacing right for the next one...
12th May 2010 : MGMAT CAT exam 3 : normal timing options : score 650 (Q43, V36) Now we're talking. finished the quant on time and with good pacing and it was my best quant score to date. I noticed however, that my verbal scores were a little volatile. A low verbal score would drag down my final score since the overall score is weighted more heavily towards verbal. I looked at the MGMAT breakdown data on my CAT exam (absolutely invaluable information) and realised my sentence correction was a little poor. For the next 5 days I completed the MGMAT sentence correction guide and all the OG and verbal review questions completed for SC. Also moved on to MGMAT turbocharge math questions 90 mins at a time to build stamina. This was mentally exhausting but worth it. Took the rest of May off work to concentrate on the final push.
Back to the OG to practice the questions again, at speed. Discovered I could do the easier questions with lots of time to spare so decided to see how many I could complete in 90 mins to build more stamina. no more than 5 hours a day can be spent doing this because it really takes every spare bit of mental effort.. You need recharge time - this is absolutely essential. Lots of sleep, exercise and good food. Get out and see your friends and family. Movies, videogames, or simply sit in the park and do nothing - you would be surprised how effective a day off from studying is to recharge your brain.
20th May : 212 hours of study completed. MGMAT CAT exam 4 : score 650 (Q44, V38). solid and confident pacing now, but starting to worry if I can break the 700 barrier...
more math practice questions under the stopwatch
28th May : 245 hours study completed. MGMAT CAT exam 5 : score 650 (Q43, V37). verbal still a bit shaky due to SC. I found I had no mental stamina left for the verbal after the quant. Decided to try an energy drink in the breaks between the verbal and quant sections the next time - perhaps low blood sugar is affecting my verbal? (the brain uses only glucose as fuel so if you are hungry your mental performance can dip) getting seriously worried as test day approaches. more practice questions and lots of time spent on answer explanations to figure out the best approach to quant questions. mental exhaustion kicking in big time..
took a weekend off - was going crazy with stress and very very fatigued..
31st May : 256 hours study completed. MGMAT CAT exam 6 final push, last chance. score 740!!
Q47, V44. Astonishing! Smashed the 700 barrier. 3 months of studying before I finally did it - you must, must keep pushing - do not give up! Once the psychological barrier was lifted I knew I could do it and this was the best reassurance to date to keep my nerve on test day.1st June : official GMAT prep test score 700. ok I know I can do it now. decided to take 2 days rest to recharge before the big day, with very short 30 min warmups on quant questions and formulae review.
4 June : test day : took every ounce of concentration to keep my nerves steady. started the quant section and began freaking out internally - mind blanking and going into overdrive. managed to keep calm and keep it together but only just! took energy drinks in the break. I think they kicked in during the verbal section -I was on fire, and it was like I could see through the exam and was certain I was getting most of the answers correct, in fact I thought I was on track for the 99th percentile until the last few questions when time became tight and I was worn out. Felt like someone had hit me over the head with a stick when I finally completed it..
final score 700 ! relief beyond belief! the pressure was off and I could get my life back. I could probably get a higher score but the time and effort (and it would be a 4th resit so maybe would not look so good) and lost income from time off work probably is not worth it. At the end of the day don't forget your GMAT score is only one component of an MBA application. I plan to do some outdoor voluntary work in the Summer to boost my CV instead.
Thats it - I only used the OG and the MGMAT math and SC guides, along with MGMAT turbocharge math.
2 major lessons : keep going even if you think you have peaked, and practice, practice, practice. pacing is key.
The best way to summarise my whole GMAT experience is to paraphrase the legendary author Hunter S Thompson - 'it was like falling down an elevator shaft to certain doom and landing in a sea of mermaids!'
smash your barrier! the pain is worth it!
