GMAT Strategy

Hello All,

I recently made the decision to get a MBA now and have planned to apply in R2 for 2016 fall. So I have to give my GMAT atleast in Nov 2015. I gave my first GMAT prep practice test today and scored 590(Q48 & V21) without much preparation. I am usually got at math but became rusty working for 3 years. I am a non-native English speaker.I can study for 3hrs in weekdays and 6hrs in weekends.

Please recommend me a study plan to score 700+ within 30 days.

Thank you for your help and time.

Aswin

[email protected] wrote:Hi AswinG,

A 590 is a strong 'baseline' CAT score (the average score on the Official GMAT hovers around 540-550 most years). However, 30 days is NOT a lot of study time - many Test Takers spend 3 months (or more) on their studies to hit their 'peak' scores, so you might have to consider pushing back your Test Date.

1) Do you know which Business Schools you plan to apply to?
2) Do those Schools have a Round 3?
3) Have you purchased any GMAT study resources yet?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Hi Rich,

Thanks for the reply.

1. Ross, Anderson, Kelley, Emory

2. Yes, they do have round 3 since I am international student I want to apply in round 2.

3. I have OG 2016, OG verbal & OG quant. I have also ordered Manhattan SC

Thanks,

Aswin

From you score on the GMAT Prep test it looks as if you can bump that quant score to 50 or 51 without too much trouble. Possibly the best way to do that would be to assess which question types you found most challenging, learn how to handle those types, and drill on those types until you are proficient at handling them.

I am guessing that even by getting better at handling six quant question types you can get to 50 or 51. If that doesn't happen after you get better at six types, work on a few more.

That leaves verbal.

To get to your score goal you need to get to at least around 36 and maybe even 38 in verbal. That's a pretty big move from 21. Making that move is obviously achievable, but it's tough to say how long it will take.

It would help if you told us what your hit rates or percentiles were in SC, CR, and RC. Then we would be in a better position to figure out what you need to do to achieve that 36 or above verbal score.

I can say this. GMAT verbal is pretty hackable. So you may be able to hit V36 just by becoming more familiar with the question types and getting good at hacking your way to answers.

As a matter of fact, good hacking skills can be more important than any rule or concept you might get from that MGMAT SC guide or any other guide, just so you are aware. I have seen people who can recite "rules" right and left who are having trouble getting above V30. When they, and others, learn to hack their ways to answers, their scores go right up.

Anyway, let us know what you have going on in SC, CR, and RC.

Marty Murray wrote:From you score on the GMAT Prep test it looks as if you can bump that quant score to 50 or 51 without too much trouble. Possibly the best way to do that would be to assess which question types you found most challenging, learn how to handle those types, and drill on those types until you are proficient at handling them.

I am guessing that even by getting better at handling six quant question types you can get to 50 or 51. If that doesn't happen after you get better at six types, work on a few more.

That leaves verbal.

To get to your score goal you need to get to at least around 36 and maybe even 38 in verbal. That's a pretty big move from 21. Making that move is obviously achievable, but it's tough to say how long it will take.

It would help if you told us what your hit rates or percentiles were in SC, CR, and RC. Then we would be in a better position to figure out what you need to do to achieve that 36 or above verbal score.

I can say this. GMAT verbal is pretty hackable. So you may be able to hit V36 just by becoming more familiar with the question types and getting good at hacking your way to answers.

As a matter of fact, good hacking skills can be more important than any rule or concept you might get from that MGMAT SC guide or any other guide, just so you are aware. I have seen people who can recite "rules" right and left who are having trouble getting above V30. When then and others learn to hack their ways to answers, their scores go right up.

Anyway, let us know what you have going on in SC, CR, and RC.

Hi Marty,

I don't know the individual hit rates in SC, RC & CR.

In verbal, my weakest area is SC and strongest is CR.

Thanks,

Aswin

[email protected] wrote:HI AswinG,

You won't necessarily "need" a 700+ score to get into the Schools that you've named, but you still might run into a problem with your overall timeline. Applications take time to properly 'craft' and the GMAT often takes longer to study for than most Test Takers realize. If you're insistent on applying for Round 2, then you'll probably have to give yourself more than 30 days to study for the GMAT.

1) Have you scheduled an Official Test Date yet?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Hi Rich,

No, but I am planning to give the GMAT on Nov 18 which gives me 30 days.

Thanks,

Aswin

Ok. Here are some ideas.

For quant there are overall improvements you can make, such as increasing accuracy and getting better at finding quick ways to get to answers, and topic specific skills you can develop. So I guess the way you could go about increasing your quant score is by learning more about your weaker areas and doing practice problems in those areas all the while working to make sure you are conscious of your accuracy and seeking to develop skill in finding quick ways to get to answers.

You can find many ideas on quick or efficient ways to get to quant answers by reading through explanations on this forum.

In verbal you need to get maybe 10 - 12 more questions right to get to your target score. Does that seem like a big deal? Not really. Right?

There are two aspects to getting more right SC answers. One of them is learning about more SC rules, concepts and conventions. You will get that stuff from the Manhattan Guide. The other is getting better at hacking your way to right answers. You may get some ideas on that from the Manhattan guide but don't be constrained by anything it says. I have seen people who learn all kinds of rules and strategies for SC and then still achieve pretty low hit rates. Then they start focusing on learning how to hack their ways to right answers and their hit rates finally go up.

So to get a few more right SC answers, which is what you need, you could learn about handful of key things, such as how modifiers should be placed and parallelism, and pair that learning with developing better SC hacking skills. If you had to choose just one aspect, I would recommend working on hacking skills. I am sure that without learning one more rule you could increase your SC hit rate by getting better at noticing key things and working you way to right answers.

CR and RC are both about noticing key things, seeing the logic of things and not getting smoked by trick answers.

In CR the only rule you need to know really is that inferences must be true given what is said in the prompt. Other than that, really the task is to get good at seeing the logic of the arguments and answer choices and using what you see to get to right answers. Doing practice CR questions with that in mind is the way to go. People have all kinds of strategies for doing CR questions, but I have seen people achieve their CR hit rate goals by dispensing with all but the most simple strategies, using no gimmicks, and employing tight logic to get to right answers. Learn to do that and you are set for CR. Otherwise you will flail no matter how many gimmicky strategies you learn.

For RC you need to get good at:

1) Fairly quickly going through the passages, seeing what's going on and noting where key facts are.

2) Reading questions an REFERRING BACK to the passages to efficiently and solidly confirm which answers are best.

3) Not getting smoked by trick answers that sound like something you read but really are not. You will not achieve a high hit rate in RC by picking answers that "sound kind of right." You need to really figure out what the passage is saying and which answer choices match that.

By getting maybe five more SC questions, three more CR questions, and four more RC questions right, or something along those lines, you will achieve your verbal score goal. You may even do better than that.

As you do all this, probably you should take one practice test per week, both to get practice in taking the test and to get data on what you need to work on. I have seen people get results by taking multiple practice tests in a week, basically one after the other, but if you decide to do that, don't do it too close to the actual test, because if you really go at tests intensely, you can get a little exhausted.

The four GMAT Prep tests are the best ones, with the ones from Veritas and Manhattan Prep probably being next best.

I didn't give you a plan exactly, but I am sure that having a sense of what you need to achieve you can plan how you will do that.

For more ideas, you could check out what I said in this interview.

https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2015/05/ ... rty-murray

Be intense, confident, and determined, and have fun playing the GMAT game.