GMAT Strategy

Posted in another thread:

I also need to score a minimum of 450. I've been studying CliffNotes Math Review for Standardized tests. It's helping me relearn the basics. I have the 12th Edition GMAC book which I find a little hard. But I go over it when I have the chance. I am also studying from Princeton Review 2011. I want to take the GMAT sometime in early August. So I want to prepare as much as I can. I study in the morning for 1 hour and then 1 hour at night. Is this engough to meet my minimum? Please suggest any other advice, Thanks!! What else can I do? I don't want to spend alot of money on courses or books.

Hey almalivia,

It certainly sounds like you're ready and willing to put in the work, so that's a great start!

Rather than try to predict a score based on which books you're using and how long you're studying, I'd recommend just taking one of the official practice tests at www.mba.com and seeing how you do. Then I'd take note of:

-How close are you to your target score?
-Which question types or concept areas troubled you the most?
-Which "silly" mistakes did you catch yourself making that you think you can fix really quickly?
-Which concepts seem like they'll come back to you the easiest, and which seem like they could take months and still never truly click?
-How much was your performance affected by pacing issues?

Then I'd assess those items and come up with a plan. If you're within 20-30 points of your goal, you may want to address the 2-3 things you most commonly missed and then really hunker down on your mistakes and see within 3-4 weeks how that impacts your score. If you're 100 or so points away, it's probably because your pacing was way off, so you'll want to address that with some timed drills and other emphases on pacing. It may turn out that just one question type - say, Data Sufficiency or Sentence Correction - is driving you crazy and killing your score, so you can buy a subject-specific book on that and get to work that way, or just devour that section of the Official Guide.

Everyone is different - some people can study for 7-10 days and well surpass their goal; others will require a lot of fundamental review of the basics before they can even consider it. But it's not a bad idea to get a sense for how close you are to your target range and to assess which items/concepts/question types will be your limiters as of now so that you can start making progress accordingly on the right items.

Thanks, I will take the test on mba.com and take it from there. Do you have another day and time for the webinar?