I just took the GMAT and am pleased with my results
I thought I'd post my strategies and prep plan. It's not necessarily right for everyone, but it worked well for me as someone looking to improve a good base score without investing a ton of time.As a note, I was pretty skilled at standardized testing even before I started, so YMMV.
Preparation:
February -- Took two practice Kaplan GMAT CATs, got a 710 each time.
March-September -- spent about an hour a week working through the entire 10th Edition Official GMAT book. I kept a timer. If I took longer than 2 minutes on a question, was unsure of the right technique on the question, had to guess, or got the wrong answer, I flagged the question for later review.
I also added the Beat the GMAT blog to my RSS reader and read it about twice a week.
October -- reviewed all the questions I flagged in the GMAT book. I noticed some patterns in both math (taking time to do long division to get the decimal equivalent of common fractions, not remembering triangle properties) and verbal (missing a particular type of parallel construction rule in sentence correction). I spent some time studying those areas in some second-hand Kaplan course materials.
Took each GMAT official CAT, including AWA, and scored 760 and 780. Then I went through each official CAT one more time in order to see new questions; I skipped the verbal on one of these additional run-throughs because my verbal score was already at or about 51.
Day of:
My big concerns were nervousness and controlling timing.
I showed up to the test center early and was bright and cheery with the proctors. There's something about joking around with the guy who's taking your fingerprints that really put me at ease and made the whole thing seem less dehumanizing and scary. I also used the over-the-ear headphones they gave me, since the room itself was surprisingly noisy with keyboards.
AWA: I just used myohmy's amazing template from these forums. I did find that it took me longer to write the essays than it had in practice; in both cases I was literally typing until the last 10 seconds.
Quant: The frustrating part here was controlling timing. I made myself spend a little longer in the first dozen questions to check arithmetic, but this left things a little tight at the end. There was only one question around ~28 that I ended up having to guess on. While this was way better than my guess rate even the week before, it still freaked me out a little. I told myself that it was likely a 'trial' question and moved on.
Verbal: I ended up finishing with 15 minutes to spare, consistent with my practice tests. I did start to zone out in the middle, which I tried to remedy by stretching my neck and wrists at the desk.
Random tips:
- Use the time during the instruction screens to start writing notes to yourself in your scratch pad. I wrote down the generic structure for the AWA, drew diagrams of key right triangles, and drew the A/B/C/D/E elimination grid without using any actual test time.
Start practicing mental math now. When you're in the elevator, find the prime factors of the time on the Capitvate screen.
Check numbers on calculations at work by hand before checking with the computer. etc.
Tutor elementary schoolers on multiplication and long division -- I was doing volunteer tutoring anyway, and switched to tutoring this topic in order to get better at it
Doing a little bit of prep each week for months can work as well as doing a lot of prep each week for 6-10 weeks; just make sure you leave yourself time to master the timing considerations when taking an adaptive full-length test.
The web is often as or more helpful than the professional prep books. I found this site very useful, as well as GMAT hacks.
