GMAT Strategy

Hey BTG Community,

I'm back on this forum now and working toward my GMAT retake #2. I took the GMAT in Sept 2010 and scored a disappointing 490. Although, I know I did not work too hard, I should have atleast scored a 550. I need 580-620 for my target schools. I just booked my test date today for 3 months from now - march end 2011.
I deliberately took the last 3 months off from GMAT and concentrated on my family,friends and socializing - a lot of which I had missed out.

I am looking for some support/opinions from you guys on how to tackle the test this time around. I did not use the best books last time. I used kaplan premier 2011 and OG. Kaplan is good but not good enough for GMAT style questions and I did not find many strategies there to tackle questions. I did go through MGMAT SC and powerscore CR but did not digest it enough.

Now, I'm thinking where to start. I'm completely blank. I plan on buying MGMAT Quant guides and MGMAT SC. For CR, I would re-read and digest Powerscore CR. RC - I am hearing some good reviews about RC 99(Aristotle). Any one has any reviews on this? Another quest that I have on my mind is should I prefer the veritas guides to MGMAT?I really need to nail down on verbal. I'm considering reading some fiction books too.

Hey Nehs,

Sounds like you got a great plan going bro so I would say, stick to it. In my personal experience, I thought the MGMAT verbal material was excellent, so I would certainly encourage that. I also did Benchmark for Quant and thought that they had the best quant material of all the major companies. Of course, OG is also a must, anyone can tell you that. Let me know how it works out for you and keep at it!

JL

gsbjake wrote:Sounds like you got a great plan going bro so I would say, stick to it. In my personal experience, I thought the MGMAT verbal material was excellent, so I would certainly encourage that. I also did Benchmark for Quant and thought that they had the best quant material of all the major companies. Of course, OG is also a must, anyone can tell you that. Let me know how it works out for you and keep at it!

JL

hey JL,
Thanks for ur inputs. I think MGMAT was good too but it too me a lot of time to make the concepts sink in (haha!!)..yeah, I'm pretty dumb at grammar..I do communicate decently good but I have issues with the GMAT way of things...

So did the benchmark course work for you? I've not really heard any reviews of it so far...infact,I'm hearing about the course from you...

I am looking for some suggestions:

I am planning to pick up a basic grammar book to brush up my fundamentals for Verbal. Should I incorporate this in my routine GMAT strategy or just finish off with the book in a few days?
Does reading fiction/non-fiction books help to improve our reading speed and develop our RC / SC skills?

Hey Nehs,

It's my pleasure to help out bro. I did Benchmark and MGMAT at the same time and thought they were both pretty good. I thought Benchmark's CATs in particular were really helpful cause they had the same layout as the actual GMAT. PM me if you want more info and I'd be more than happy to share. Good Luck!

JL

nehs wrote:I am looking for some suggestions:

I am planning to pick up a basic grammar book to brush up my fundamentals for Verbal. Should I incorporate this in my routine GMAT strategy or just finish off with the book in a few days?
Does reading fiction/non-fiction books help to improve our reading speed and develop our RC / SC skills?

Reading fiction/non-fiction is going to help you incredibly. The more you read ,the better your comprehension level and familiarity with different topics ! And though,on a conscious level, you may not see any great benefit but on a subconscious level, you'll see that your accuracy in and understanding of CR arguments and RC passages has become better.

Going through a basic grammar review will be helpful. However,books dedicated entirely to grammar tend to get a little too detailed for the GMAT. I recommend that you go through the SC Grail as it has the first section ,if I am not mistaken,which brushes up your grammar for the GMAT. So instead of having to go through complex details such as a reflex pronoun and obscure things like that, you just need to know grammar which will help you tackle the questions.

For RC, I'd also recommend RC99 as it has a good collection of GMAT type passages . However, you may want to do the passages in the book after you've read a few fiction/non-fiction books.

Thanks again for your reply.I am so relieved to hear this :

rishi raj wrote:Reading fiction/non-fiction is going to help you incredibly. The more you read ,the better your comprehension level and familiarity with different topics ! And though,on a conscious level, you may not see any great benefit but on a subconscious level, you'll see that your accuracy in and understanding of CR arguments and RC passages has become better.

I am considering purchasing the SC GRail and RC 99 PDFs too. I plan to purchase the RC 99 after I have gone through the MGMAT RC Strategy guide.

I would pick up a copy of Doing Grammar: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195387295.

It goes very well with MGMAT SC book and GMAT SC in general.

uwhusky wrote:I would pick up a copy of Doing Grammar: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195387295.

It goes very well with MGMAT SC book and GMAT SC in general.

Thanks uwhusky. If I need this one too then I"ll get it.
I just saw a copy of English Grammar by David Daniels and Barbara Daniels https://www.amazon.com/HarperCollins-Col ... 0064671097 in my local library and I picked it up. Working good,so far for me