GMAT Strategy

Hello all,

I have been studying for Gmat for 4 months and also took a course from kaplan. I have taken a kaplan gmat prep and scored 350, 570, 440, and 520 respectively. I consistently score around 50 pencentile on the quant. For the verbal side, i score 1, 36, and 16 percentile respectively. I have a lot of trouble with the verbal side of the exam because i am non native speaker. I have been devoting my time on the verbal but i feel like it's not improving much or as much as i would like to see progress. I'm currently using kaplan premier and og 12 to study. My most weakness is SC, followed by comprehension Reading, then crital reasoning. I have not taken the gmat prep on the cd yet. I actually planned to take my test on oct 29 and i postponed my exam to Nov 17. I just rescheduled my exam to Dec 29 again because i feel like i'm never ready enough to take the exam. So i only have less than two months to study from now. I dont know if it's enough? I fear to not achieve the score i am looking for. I also constantly run out of time at the end and having to guess randomly around 10 questions on both verbal and quant (kaplan prep). My target score is between 650. I really would like some advice of how i can improve my score and perhaps some study plan that would be appropiate for weakness. I also would like to know how many question should i attempt to do per day. I have read up where people state their hours of study but i am a slow reader, i usually take longer time to study than most people. Thank you! Any comment or advice would be appreciated

For SC, follow Ron's advise. Take each SC question type " say subject-verb agreement,parallelism etc.," and practice as many questions as you can.

Regarding RC, there is no particular trick to handle it. Only practice will help you gain control over RC. Practice as many as you can and read newspaper,magazines etc.,.
For CR you can go through Powerscore CR Bible (best resource for CR) to understand how to tackle CR questions. After going through each chapter in CR Bible,pick all the questions from OG related to the question type (For eg: if you understood how to handle the Main Point/Strengthen questios,then pick all the Main Point/Strenghten questions from OG and try to answer them (use BTG errorlog)).Also, please make sure to read the answer explanation from OG for
all the questions.

Also, use Kaplan CD to test your knowledge on SC,CR and RC. Don't forget to view Ron's videos on SC,CR and RC.
All the Best

Thank you for your response. Another question, I've seen a lot of people taking different prep tests. are those prep on the Cd that come with the prep book i.e. Princeton review, MGMAT, etc. Thanks!

First thing you should do is to take GMAT prep I. No other test will give you your true level than this. Take the test. Analyze the test in DEPTH. How the questions are asked? How you are answering them? In what content areas you lack the required knowledge? Where do you need more practice? How your mind is fooled by GMAT questions? etc. Third party tests are good for practice. Their scores do not mean a thing and you should not look at them at ALL.

I suggest Total GMAT Math for quant section and Manhattan SC guide & powerscore CR bible for Verbal section. If you can UNDERSTAND and solve all the OG questions you are through with your quant practice. Use the Official Verbal review and Quant review. They are gold.

All the best.

HTH,
Prodizy

gmattaker2408 wrote:Thank you for your response. Another question, I've seen a lot of people taking different prep tests. are those prep on the Cd that come with the prep book i.e. Princeton review, MGMAT, etc. Thanks!

It depends. If you buy any MGMAT book you get an online account with Manhattan where you can take the CATs. I think Princeton tests come with a CD.

IMO, Manhattan CATs have unnecessarily tough quant questions. GMAT questions are not like that. I like Veritas CATS, but they are a bit easier compared to actual GMAT. But they are similar to the actual GMAT questions in the way the concepts are tested.

HTH,
Prodizy