I longed for the day when I would be making this post on BTG... and the day has finally arrived! I just beat the GMAT with a 750. Thanks to all the experts on BTG, especially GMATGuruNY, who consistently replied to my posts with ridiculous questions day after day (for the quant topics that were hard to grasp, I did some private tutoring sessions with GMATGuruNY (Mitch). Those Made all the difference! I highly recommend GMATGuruNY for any difficult GMAT topics you need assistance with). I'll probably do a more detailed write-up later and post it on here but just wanted to get a quick note out: If I had to redo my prep for the GMAT here's how it would go:
Pick up all MGMAT books and know all the content cold! Treat this as pre-req to your GMAT prep (i.e., your actual prep will start after you have mastered the content). After you've done that, it's all about application of that content and learning the ropes of GMAT riddles and traps. That's where real prep starts.
I would then move on to Magoosh and practice their quant questions for each category. Set a goal for yourself for each question type. E.g.: For number properties, give yourself a week to review the mgmat content, practice problems on Magoosh and then take a Gmatclub practice test. Build this out for each type and practice with Gmatclub tests. Some people might suggest that it's way too early to dig into GC tests but if you've mastered the content I think it's all fair game. Plus I think GC tests build better base from the bottoms-up. You learn GMAT tricks quickly from those tests.
As far as verbal goes, all I can suggest is to know everything from MGMAT SC book. I didn't have any strategy for RC and CR. I am not a native English speaker and, quite frankly, was pretty bad at RC when I took the SATs (my weakest area). I tried a bunch of RC and CR strategies but nothing worked for me. At the end here's what did the job: Read the passage / argument VERY carefully. Sometimes i would spend 5-6 minutes on just reading and understanding the passage. But once I understood, answering all questions would take 2-3 minutes total. Just by practicing how to be patient and COMPLETELY focusing on reading the passage, I improved my accuracy on RC from 50% to 90%+. Same goes for CR. I had no strategy at all for these sections except let the content drive you to the answer.
Now back to quant - Once you're done with reviewing each section, it's go time! Now is where you start taking real practice exams. Start with MGMAT. Take 2-3 timed tests just so you get the idea. The rest of the MGMAT tests, take them untimed. These tests are RIDICULOUSLY harder than the real thing. And not even in the best way. These tests are harder in terms of number crunching or problem complexity. Where GMAT problems get hard is hidden traps. Nonetheless, MGMAT tests are one of the best ways to practice. After you're done with these, move on to VeritasPrep tests. Take a GMATPrep in between after 3rd VP test or so. By this time you should have a good idea of what you will score on the real thing. Needless to say but keep an active log of your errors AND the problems that found hard to solve. I had a log built for each one of the tests I took. I recorded not only the problem type, but also what I did wrong and what's the best practice.
Last but not least, relax and take your time. I started with a score of 630 initially. I took the real GMAT first time and scored a 710. But I wasn't satisfied so I went back to work. There's always light at the end of the tunnel! (ps: guess this ended up being a not-so-quick note
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