GMAT Strategy

Hey Everyone,

Looking for a Gmat Expert to critique my study plan for the last month of my studying and my general situation. I understand your time is very valuable; however, if you get a second I would really appreciate your time and effort to respond to this post. With that being said, here is what I have been doing and what my general plan is going forward.

Background: I scored a 660 Sunday with a 47 in Quant and a 34 in verbal on GMATPREP. My mistakes in quant were generally things I understood; however, that I had misread or made minor errors costing me a question. In regards to verbal, I missed an assortment of random questions from all three categories and my timing was rushed on the last 4 questions. I have approximately one month left of studying and have been studying for about 2- 2.5 months now.

Background of what I have been doing: I watched all the Thursday with Ron videos and have implemented them in my game plan. Kudos to Ron for doing those for free, they are extremely helpful and he obviously does not have to do that. I am Not even attempting to study combination/ Permutation questions as those will be my throw out questions during the exam and I feel that my attention to other questions would be more logical as I find Combination and permutation type of questions especially difficult to grasp and too time consuming. Currently I am taking a week off as my brain feels fried and Ron has recommended that after a good amount of studying you need to take awhile off. I have read/ outlined the Manhattan books except reading comp, Completed roughly 3/4 of each category in Gmat, timing my questions and doing roughly 30 a day and then trying to look for a general take away to add to my compilation of notes. Or if there is a tough question that I did not understand I will add it to a list of questions that were relatively tough so that I can review them.

My General Strategy going forward: I am going to study probably 2-3 hours Monday-Wednesday and 4-5 hours Saturday and Sunday, taking Thursday and Friday off. I think it would be logical to spend the first week back doing pure review, going over my rules and getting my mind back into the mindset of knowing all the rules and some of the more difficult questions. In addition, I just bought the advanced Gmat quant book and was wondering if this would be worth going through at this point in order to increase my quant to 50. For the second week, I figured I would focus all on verbal, and then the last two weeks I would do a combination, with the first hour or so math and then Verbal in the last part as that is how the test is structured and I want my brain to do the verbal after doing math.I am planning to take a few Manhattan tests the week of the test and the second gmat prep practice two days out. The day of the test I was considering warming up on maybe 10 questions of each section and review my notes a final time.

Does this sound like a logical plan?
Are there any suggestions in getting verbal from 34 to 40?
Do you think I should at least learn the basics of combination/ Permutations?


Thank you so much for taking the time to read my post and hopefully provide a thorough response! Also, please ignore any grammatical errors as it is quite late here and I am exhausted as I am writing this.

Sincerely,

Brian

Brian,

I like your suggestions, and your name as well. Most importantly, you spell your name correctly, so that is an extra plus hahaha. But anyway, for the Combination/ Permutation questions, do you have any recommendations to a prior post on here or a thorough one method approach to them? My issue with them is for some reason I think I have gotten a plethora of strategies to approach them rather than merely one I can get strait in my head that works consistently.In addition, I have a hard time distinguishing between the two queston types. I also think your general approach to sitting down and thinking about which areas to prioritize is very solid. From my general experience, whether it be work or anything in life, people act too much and think too little.

Also, I guess since I got an expert reply, I would be interested in hearing what people's thought on my profile, as it may be one of the most unique profiles that is going to apply. Although, I am not applying until the next round if not the round after that in order to get my work experience more thorough.

My profile is as follows: Double major in Economics and Finance from a state school. GPA 2.8; however, first in my class in my stock market game with a 34% return in 6 months. I purchased, with a million fake dollars, AIG at $2 a share so obviously with a longer holding period my return would have been much larger. In addition, I managed 500k for the University and analyzed multiple securities in my advanced security Analysis class. I advocated purchasing Wal-mart at $54 a share and made the University portfolio a good amount of money. My class grades are A on one test, the second test I would get a D or whatever then I would get an A. I didn't take school too seriously as I went from class to class and the professors would just scale the classes SIGNIFICANTLY if their students didn't do the work, so there was little incentive to really go for the A's. Not to mention all the "All American Atheletes" you see. Not saying that all of them didn't earn their grades; however, at my school it was pretty apparent that a man who cannot complete a proper sentence cannot possibly be getting A's in Monetary Policy, a graduate course that undergrads are allowed to take. Also, at my school they primarily teach modern portfolio theory, which in my opinion, is a huge waste of time. Any finance buffs out there who like to debate, I am more than happy to share why . HOWEVER, here comes the fun part. Right before I graduated I shattered my shoulder. So I had to quit applying for jobs and continued to work my teller job in college while my shoulder healed. After a few months, I finally found a full time position at an insurance company and was fired after 6 months for things I had no control over. I am willing to go into further detail about this if needed. I went unemployed for 6 months, while applying to over 500 jobs. I finally found a temp position at an insurance company and within 4 months I immediately was promoted. I guess I almost forgot to mention I am 25 years old and a white male.

The reason I am taking the GMAT is to solidify the fact that I am in fact articulate and to hopefully use to find a more appropriate job for what I want to do. I assume I will have to fill out a "if there is anything else you would like to explain." paper on my application. Also, if you have a family member who graduated from a prestigious institution first in his class from their law school, would that be a helpful thing to some how include in your application or is that irrelevant as far as schools are concerned? I do not want to be admitted merely because of a prestigious relative.

Thanks so much for your timely response Brian!

Brian,

I agree. Sorry, was trying to give a general overview of where I was, but perhaps I came off as too whiny. I completely Agree though. Thanks for the advice and I appreciate your time.

I think that is something that will obviously take considerable time and thought. However I hope there is a strong correlation at being good at the dating game and being admitted into the school of your choice . I guess I will find out.

Brian,

I know, I was being a funny guy. Thanks for your candid advice, it is much appreciated. Hopefully I will have a great score so that I can share my debrief with the Gmat Community and give a little bit back to people I have benefited a significant amount from. I will keep you updated on my status.

Thanks!