Studying Strategy Improvement

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Studying Strategy Improvement

by AleksandrM » Tue Jan 15, 2008 10:29 am
I have been studying for the GMAT for the last three weeks. I have read a lot about STUDYING STRATEGY (as opposed to exam strategy) and walked away with a lot of interesting things about what to do and avoid doing. The following is my strategy thus far. I do not want to change it or follow a new strategy (unless it is seriously flawed). I am simply looking for suggestions on how to improve what I already set out to do.

Import piece of information: I plan to take the test in either June or July.

During the week I do about 90 minutes of questions from all sections of Quant and Verbal; I am studying with PR at the moment, but will follow the same approach with other books. This approach will, from the outset, get me into a frame of mind where I have to solve different types of problems. I have started with easier problems from each section and will work my way into the most difficult ones in all sections, concurrently. I will randomly time some problems at each level of difficulty and in each section of Q and V. On weekends I study about 5 hours (w/ timed CAT perhaps every three weeks).

In addition to the question and exam practice, I have been writing flashcards. I have also been looking over Eric's flashcards, and rewrote those I found useful. Rewriting in my own words allows me to retain information better. I review these daily, and especially on Sundays, when I have off from studying the actual texts.

As I near my test date, I will begin working through the OG Verbal and Quant books in addition to the Kaplan 800, because these contain some of the more difficult material. I will additionally continue reviewing previously reviewed and studied material from other texts and flashcards.

The texts I own at the moment are:

Ultimate Math Refresher (absolute waste of time)
Princeton Review Cracking the GMAT (working on presently)
Kaplan Premier 2008 (will work on next)
OG 11th Ed.

I plan to purchase:

OG Verbal and OG Quant
Kaplan 800

I might also purchase:

Project GMAT (for the stat, prob, perm and comb)
Delta Course

Any suggestions, corrections, revisions, etc. will be appreciated.
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by mayonnai5e » Tue Jan 15, 2008 3:00 pm
I have a couple of comments:

1) I've never heard of project GMAT and, in general, we avoid recommending any courses/materials that are not provided by well known sources (kp, pr, mgmat, og). I believe Eric used Delta course so he might be able to provide more information on it.

2) Book ordering - I posted an in-depth review of how I would order books to maximize efficiency and organization. You can read my post at this thread:

https://www.beatthegmat.com/what-is-the- ... t7418.html

The main issue I see is that if you plan on starting the OG V and R book near the end of your studies, a large portion of it will be relatively easy for you by then (the first 100 problems of each section will be easy/medium questions). Not that going over basic problems is ever a bad thing, but you may want to go through those books at the same time as OG 11 to maintain a continuous progression in difficulty.

3) I don't quite understand the point of randomly timing certain problems. Timing one or two problems at a time is not a very effective way to improve timing and work under pressure in my opinion. I suggest working the PR and Kaplan books untimed because at that point you are still ramping up (learning the strategies, question types, etc). But once you get to the OG books, I strongly suggest doing all practice timed.

4) Back to the ProjectGMAT material, I would ditch that and instead spring for the MGMAT SC book. This book is widely considered to be the bible of SC and frankly SC is far more important than stats, prob and combs on the GMAT. You will see about 15 SC questions guaranteed on the GMAT while you may see 1 or 2 stat/prob/comb questions (if you are doing really well on quant). Also, remember that verbal weights more heavily on your score than quant. And one great benefit is that if you buy this book, you get access to 6 MGMAT CATs, which I consider to be the second best CATs available (after GMATPrep).

Good luck!
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by Stacey Koprince » Wed Jan 16, 2008 1:18 pm
echoing mayonnai5e

Start doing some of the earlier OG questions now but save the harder ones for later. Time EVERY SINGLE OG question you do, no matter how far along you are in the process. Stick to your time limit the first time you try any OG question. Then, spend all the time you want analyzing and redoing the problem.

prob / comb / perm are NOT common on the test. Recently, we have also been getting lots of reports of ZERO questions in these categories even for high-level test takers. Don't buy an entire book that focuses only on this stuff, no matter who publishes it.
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