GMAT Strategy

Hi,

I was wondering if anybody could help me decide what the best prep alternative is for me. I have done A LOT of research on prep companies and programs and I am now on the fence between Veritas on-demand course ($550) VS Manhattan GMAT guided self-study ($800).
I have chosen to do a self-study program as I work part time and have time to study and move faster than a regular class would. Also because of the cost.

I took the GMAT 3 years ago (Jan 2011) and scored 580. Back then I only "self-prepped" for a month with a Kaplan book. Since then, my English has improved a lot in general and I feel I would be able to score higher because I would do better on the verbal section.

I am targeting a score of 700+. I have about 3.5 months to prep and would like to know which of the two options (Veritas on-demand course VS Manhattan GMAT guided self-study) will help me most to achieve a score of 700+ given my time-frame and my background.

I would love to hear from people who have had experience with both. I would also love to hear from people who achieved a score of 700+ using either of the two companies.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Why not try Veritas on Demand for free?


Here is information about Veritas On Demand https://www.veritasprep.com/gmat/gmat-on-demand/


Here is the link for the free trial https://www.veritasprep.com/gmat/gmat-on ... ree-trial/

Thank you both for your help!

After the free trial I decided to go with Veritas Prep On-demand course. Almost two weeks later this is where I stand.

Took a Veritas CAT on Apr-18 and scored 670 (45 Quant, 37 Verb). I was pleasantly surprised since when I took the actual GMAT on Jan-2011 I scored 580. As I mentioned on my original post since 2011 my English has improved a little (which I guess helped my score in the Verbal section). Also, I started "self-studying" with free materials about 2 months ago.

After completing about 20% (Arithmetic and CR sections) of the Veritas on-demand course, I decided to take one more CAT, this time directly from mba.com. I was naturally expecting to score about the same or better but scored 650 (40 Quant, 40 Verb)on Apr-27.

While I am not panicking over this decline it is somewhat frustrating. I would appreciate any general advise, and also any advice on how to improve my Quant score since this is clearly my weakest area. As additional info I tend to do better at data sufficiency than at problems.


Thanks in advance to anyone who may help me!

Rich is right a 670 and a 650 are essentially the same score and each is a big improvement over a 580.

The change in the Quantitative is something to look into.

As I have mentioned to others who have a good verbal score and are better at data sufficiency, data sufficiency is about reasoning your way through the problem. You may not be doing math at all or you may be doing some easier math. A careful person who is good at verbal can be good at Data Sufficiency.

In problem solving you are competing against the engineers of the world and you are going to need to be able to just straight know the math and on many problems do the math. So that may be what you will need to do to improve...get more comfortable with the actual math!

In my experience, seeing big swings in a section score tends to indicate a foundational weakness. On one test, you may luck out and avoid the questions that exploit the weakness (for example, setting up equations from awkwardly-phrased sentences), while on another test you may see problems that hit that weakness over and over.

I agree with Rich that you should definitely go through the questions you missed and see if any patterns emerged.

Thanks a lot guys! I really appreciate the support and value the feedback.

I am working through the Algebra section of the Veritas course to be able to better understand my mistakes in the last CAT, since the mba.com free practice CATs only tell you the right answer but not the process.

This brings me to my next question. It is regarding the homework sections that come after the lessons in the Veritas Prep course.

What is the best way to work through these?
What I have done so far (Arithmetic HW and the Critical Reasoning HW) is to only work all odd problems. I did this for two reasons:
1. To have some unsolved problems left to practice later.
2. Because doing every single HW problem for a particular section seems very time consuming to do it on one sitting.

Does this approach make sense? Is there a better way to work through the HW? Any other advice regarding HW problems and how to use them best? Any general advice?

Thanks!

What I have done so far (Arithmetic HW and the Critical Reasoning HW) is to only work all odd problems. I did this for two reasons:
1. To have some unsolved problems left to practice later.
2. Because doing every single HW problem for a particular section seems very time consuming to do it on one sitting.

Does this approach make sense? Is there a better way to work through the HW? Any other advice regarding HW problems and how to use them best? Any general advice?

Your approach is just right.

We often recommend to students that do at least 50% of the homework. The entire set of 12 Veritas books contain more questions than does the Official Guide 13th edition. So that is lots of questions. If you do at least half of the questions you will get exposure to the question types and lots of practice and you will save some questions or later as you suggest.

I also like the "doing every other problem" technique. I recommend this as well. Doing every other problem ensures that you are exposed to different problem types and different difficulty levels.

Keep at it and let me know if you have questions!

I'll second David's recommendation. It's what I recommend to my students as well.

See juan.manrique, Great minds think alike! And by that I mean YOU and Bill (and I).

Let us know if you have questions.

I think it's more that I learned from the best

Dear GMAT experts,

I am happy to report that I scored 720 (48 quant) (41 verbal) on my last CAT today. With this last score here is my history of CATs:

- Actual GMAT - Jan-2011 - 580 (37 quant, 31 verbal)
- Veritas CAT #1 - Apr-18 2014 - 670 (45 quant, 37 verbal)
- Mba.com CAR #1 - Apr-27 2014 - 650 (40 quant, 40 verbal)
- Veritas CAT #2 - May-27 2014 - 720 (48 quant, 41 verbal)

I have now completed 66% of the Veritas on-demand course and have a few questions regarding how to maximize my score:

1. I want to do all I can to ensure that even on a "bad day" I would score at least 700. When should I schedule the actual test? extra info: I study between 2 and 4 hours every day, taking one day off per week.

2. Approximately, how many more CATs should I take? and how often?

3. The quantitative section is still my weakest, especially problem solving (I am a little better in Data Sufficiency). Besides my Veritas course, where can I find useful content, tips, and practice to work on this?

4. Any additional tips/advice are very welcome.


As always, thanks a lot for all your valuable feedback!

You are not far from being ready to take the exam. You need to complete the rest of the content on your Veritas course and you need to take a few more practice tests. Ideally you would like to see a 700+ on two GMATPrep exams or at least on another GMATPrep and another Veritas test.

Some people put the GMAT off for too long and then they become nervous, although it looks like you have taken the actual exam before so that should be less of a problem.

You should probably be ready for the exam in a few weeks. As for scheduling your exam, have you looked at the availability in your local testing center(s)? In some places you might need to schedule the exam now in order to get a good time slot in July. You should check that availability now. You do not want to find that the next date is in August because you will certainly be ready to get in there before that!

You say that your weakness is problem solving, but more specifically which subjects? Word Problems, arithmetic, geometry?

As for ensuring that you can get a 700 even on a bad day, well I would say that the key is to really have confidence and ability. For example, students who usually take the verbal questions down to 2 answers and then struggle a little from there - going back and forth between the two - often have a let down on test day. The student that sees 4 wrong answers and 1 that is clearly right finds that she can perform well even on a bad day because the technique does not rely so much on that really tough judgement between two answers.

If you techniques are sound and you have a high level on confidence on your answers (and you get most of those right of course) then you should not have a let down on test day.

So a bit more of your Veritas course, some practice sets, a couple of good results on official practice tests and you will be ready to get that 700+!

David, thanks for the confidence and valuable feedback!

I just checked the test dates available in my area and the only two available in the near future are:

- June 19 (3 weeks out)
- July 9 (6 weeks out)

One feels a little too soon and the other too far away. Decisions, decisions... Any thoughts?

On a different subject, after reviewing the quant section of my last CAT, the subjects where I struggled the most were:

- Wordy fractions / sets and subsets problems
- Exponents
- Wordy probability problems

I guess both probability and word problems are coming up soon in the course, right?
What would be a good way to brush up on exponents?

Thanks again!