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Going for it

by GCHall840 » Sat Jul 21, 2007 9:43 pm
I took the Manhattan GMAT course from March 11 to May 6. I was doing really well with the course until work got to be too much. Plus, I had some personal issues that came up that seemed to divert my attention away from my studies. But, I thought to myself, I have all of what Manhattan GMAT has to offer with their math and verbal strategy guides as well as all of their online resource material. So, why not go for it and do the very best that I can possibly do with Manhattan GMAT as my guide?

I am taking the test on September 24, so I have restarted the Manhattan GMAT course on my own. I decided to follow that course syllabus to a T from beginning to end. I felt great after I went through the recorded first class session and the first lab on Data Sufficiency-Quick Elimination Strategies. I feel fortunate because the class recordings are all new, so I am getting the best of both worlds there. I really liked the part of the first class session where Dan Gonzalez, the main instructor, went over some very useful strategies about how to prepare for the test.

Now, I can put in a plug for the wealth of information that is available on this website. I went through the whole list of GMAT resources to pick out the ones I am going to use. That is quite an extensive list of some very useful information, I might add, too.

Thanks for all of the encouragement that people on here give. Even though I am one of the moderators here, I have also learned a whole lot by helping other people, too. Honestly, I have picked up on many really useful tips and strategies that other people have talked about or posted on here, that I feel very fortunate to have found such a great place for help and whatever else I need, too.

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by beatthegmat » Sun Jul 22, 2007 11:35 am
Congrats Greg on setting a date! I'm very pleased to hear that you are going for it.

I'm glad that you've benefited from the discuss that takes place here on the forum. Moreover, I want to thank YOU for the fantastic posts you've contributed over the last few months--your thoughtful posts will truly help generations of GMAT test takers to come!

Best of luck!
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Rolling along, some questions about taking practice tests?

by GCHall840 » Tue Jul 24, 2007 6:46 am
I am studying number properties for my math prep. I have been reviewing the elements of number properties in the MGMAT strategy guide to get me ready to practice problems in the 3 Official Guides.
This week, I will take another practice test to monitor my progress.

I am also going to study sentence correction and critical reasoning for my verbal prep. I have the latest edition of the MGMAT Critical Reasoning Strategy guide, so I am looking forward to working from what I think looks like a great resource. Of course, the MGMAT Sentence Correction guide is also a very good resource for my prep work in that area. My goal is to study the strategies in those two strategy guides, to get me ready to practice in the 3 Official Guides.

I do have a question about practice tests: I am going through all of the Manhattan GMAT course material for my prep work. They suggest that the student take 3 of their online MGMAT CAT's during the 9 week course.
Should I take all of the 6 online tests before I take the GMAT on September 24? Several people who post on this forum, suggest that you should also take the 2 GMATPrep tests as well? I don't want to take a test just to take a test. But, I think that taking a practice test should be only to monitor my progress on the way to getting prepared to take the test when I do? I would appreciate what other people have to say about that?

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Re: Rolling along, some questions about taking practice test

by beatthegmat » Tue Jul 24, 2007 3:45 pm
GCHall840 wrote:I am studying number properties for my math prep. I have been reviewing the elements of number properties in the MGMAT strategy guide to get me ready to practice problems in the 3 Official Guides.
This week, I will take another practice test to monitor my progress.

I am also going to study sentence correction and critical reasoning for my verbal prep. I have the latest edition of the MGMAT Critical Reasoning Strategy guide, so I am looking forward to working from what I think looks like a great resource. Of course, the MGMAT Sentence Correction guide is also a very good resource for my prep work in that area. My goal is to study the strategies in those two strategy guides, to get me ready to practice in the 3 Official Guides.

I do have a question about practice tests: I am going through all of the Manhattan GMAT course material for my prep work. They suggest that the student take 3 of their online MGMAT CAT's during the 9 week course.
Should I take all of the 6 online tests before I take the GMAT on September 24? Several people who post on this forum, suggest that you should also take the 2 GMATPrep tests as well? I don't want to take a test just to take a test. But, I think that taking a practice test should be only to monitor my progress on the way to getting prepared to take the test when I do? I would appreciate what other people have to say about that?

Greg
For my own prep, I tried to take as many practice tests as possible because I wanted to get used to the pacing and test mindset prior to my test. I think however you are approaching your practice test in a smarter way--to monitor your progress.

Don't feel pressured to take a ton of tests if you feel like there isn't much value in the exercise. However, I highly recommend taking at least the 2 GMATPrep tests prior to your actual GMAT. GMATPrep is the most accurate indicator of your actual GMAT performance and I think it's wise to take these tests right before your exam...

Best of luck!
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by mayonnai5e » Thu Jul 26, 2007 1:13 am
For my Veritas course, they recommend I take 2 CATs per week. The course provides me with 15 different CATs. 5 from 800score.com, 5 from Veritas, 2 GMATPrep, and 3 Arco. However, based on the opinions of the members on this board, it seems the 800score.com and Arco CATs are completely inadequate. In addition, I have both the PR book and the Kaplan books so that's another 8 CATs I have access too. With 23 CATs at my disposal and a huge workload from the class, I have to be selective about the CATs I take. People also say the Kaplan exams are not indicative of your real score so I am putting those aside as well. Lastly, I have read about a way to clear your GMATPrep scores and retake the exam repeatedly (although some repeats may occur).

Personally, I think the best strategy for exams is to use those that are most indicative of what your real score will be so I plan on only using the PR CATs along with the GMATPrep CATs. For one thing, I would like to know what my real score will approximately be and I also don't want poor scores to bring my morale down (this is especially true if that CAT is not a great indicator anyways).

And lasly, I agree with you Greg in that it is useless to take CATs just to take them - I could take all 23 CATs and learn absolutely nothing. I think it's better to study 5-8 CATs and review and study them than it is to do 23 CATs and not have the time to study the results. Although, if you somehow find extra hours in your day to do 23 exams AND review all answers then more power to you.
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Number properties strategies and problem solving

by GCHall840 » Thu Jul 26, 2007 2:50 pm
Today, I started my daily study routine by going over strategies and practicing problem solving in the MGMAT Number Properties Strategy Guide. My weakest points are with divisiblity and primes, least common multiples, and exponents. I have been going back over the subject material once again to make sure that I hadn't missed something. Then, I went over every problem in the Official Guides that pertains to divisibility and primes as well as least common multiples. I didn't have any problems with odds/evens, positives/negatives. and consecutive integers. I could see by redoing those questions in the Official Guides, that I still felt weak with some of the more "abstract" problems. That is when I thought that I should look at some of the other resources that I know about to clarify any problems that I was having with factors/multiples and least common multiples. Many of the questions that I had problems with, had something to do with those two subject areas. Now that I have found some extra help with those two problem areas, I can finish my day by going over exponents and roots. Next stop will be to go over the Number Properties strategies for data sufficiency, so that I can redo the data sufficiency problems in the Official Guides, too.

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by beatthegmat » Thu Jul 26, 2007 9:23 pm
Great update, Greg! Keep up the good work!
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Learning something new everyday

by GCHall840 » Sat Jul 28, 2007 1:46 pm
I have completed the problem solving part of the MGMAT Number Properties Strategy Guide. I decided to wait until tomorrow to do the remaining Number Properties Data Sufficiency Strategies and the practice problems for them in the Official Guides.

Well, why would I want to wait another day or so to finish that whole strategy guide? Well, I needed to take more time on fine tuning my knowledge of the subject material and, because I felt weak in certain areas when I was practicing problems in the Official Guides.

That is when I thought about several of the people on here who made comments about doing some problems more than once. I don't neccessarily want to do that because I have done some of the number properties problems twice already. However, I also noticed that the "smarter" people who did well on the GMAT or knew the subject material very well, made up flashcards not only for the important things, but also for the problems that they missed, too. Bingo, there was a really good clue for me. I even told other people on here that you have to know the basic math stone cold to be able to do well on practicing for the test and, when you take the GMAT, too. I think that I need to take my own advice to make sure I know the basic math stone cold as well.

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The subject material tested on the GMAT

by GCHall840 » Sun Jul 29, 2007 6:17 am
I decided that I need to do what I call a continuous review of the subject material that I am learning in my GMAT preparation process. I thought that it would also be a good idea to do a review of the topics presented after I finish each one of the Manhattan GMAT strategy guides before moving on to the next one. It fits for me to do something like that because it seemed OK to just think that I knew a topic well enough to practice problems in that area, only to find out that I didn't really know something well enough when I was trying to do a problem that was difficult for me because of that.

My preparation process is a big part of my daily routine now, so I should give this my best shot in everything that I do when I am working on it. I also like to post comments here about the kinds of things that I think that other people studying for the GMAT, might be interested in, too.

For example, how do factors and multiples relate to each other when it comes to prime numbers and to determine if one number is a factor of another number, given another number? Or, what are the rules for odd and even numbers when they are added or multiplied? Is 2,762 divisible by 3? How about the rules for multliplying exponents when you have a string of them? Even though many of these items seem basic, the GMAT can present them in such a way, that even the easiest question can seem difficult, if you don't know the rules and or the procedures to solve that kind of question.

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The end of my study day

by GCHall840 » Sun Jul 29, 2007 4:11 pm
Today, I did go back to the Official Guide in the math review section, to go over the property of numbers, exponents and roots, and other subjects related to what I have been studying in the Manhattan GMAT Number Properties Strategy Guide. It was great to go over that material because the Official Guide had some things in there, that helped me a lot with my situation. Now I can go back to finish the Official Guide questions in both problem solving and data sufficiency.

Perhaps, all I do is make comments about strategies and the ways that I think things will work for me, but I am sure learning things in the process. I would say that I know a lot more about number properties than I did a week ago. I did take my own advice, too.

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Rolling along again

by GCHall840 » Tue Jul 31, 2007 7:18 pm
Well, I am finally just about finished with the MGMAT Number Properties Strategy guide and most all of the Official Guide problems in that area. I think that what has really helped me the most, is that I went back into each one of subject areas to work on the MGMAT in action practice sets. I also highlighted every tip and technique that was in each one of the subject area chapters, too. That, in itself, really has helped me out when it came to practicing problems in the Official Guides. Next math topic is going to be equations and inequalities.

I am working on Sentence Correction-The 3 C's or concise, clearly written, and correct sentences. Then, I am also working on Critical Reasoning and basic argument structure.

I am thankful that I have access to the MGMAT class lessons that were recorded for student use. Those class lessons seem to cover the kinds of things that are very helpful whenever I am not getting something. Even though I can't ask questions, they have become extremely useful study aides, too.

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Time spent studying

by GCHall840 » Tue Jul 31, 2007 7:42 pm
I thought about what other people have been saying about how many hours a day and per week that you should spend studying for the test. I also thought about when I first started my MGMAT online course where I was actually spending anywhere from 20 to 25 hours a week on that material. However, after about two weeks of doing things that way, I knew that studying that many hours a week was not working for me. In fact, I got behind not only because I couldn't finish all of the assigned material, but also because my work schedule had changed a lot, too. It became very difficult to keep up with the class material and work as well.

I think that I also became burned out on doing my prep work because I had not come up with a workable time schedule that took everything that I was doing into account. Instead, I only did what was assigned every week in that class so as not to get myself any more tired than I already was. It is true that I finally have found a happy medium where I study only 90 minutes at a time with no more than about 4 hours a day when I am not working. I limit myself to 2 hours a day when I am working. I do take one whole day off every week now. At the same time, there have been the days where I just didn't have the energy to do very much studying at all. On those kinds of days, I spend about 2 hours maximum. Perfect study schedules look very nice on paper, but in real life, things don't always work out perfectly like they did on paper, either.

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Re: Time spent studying

by beatthegmat » Tue Jul 31, 2007 9:00 pm
GCHall840 wrote:I thought about what other people have been saying about how many hours a day and per week that you should spend studying for the test. I also thought about when I first started my MGMAT online course where I was actually spending anywhere from 20 to 25 hours a week on that material. However, after about two weeks of doing things that way, I knew that studying that many hours a week was not working for me. In fact, I got behind not only because I couldn't finish all of the assigned material, but also because my work schedule had changed a lot, too. It became very difficult to keep up with the class material and work as well.

I think that I also became burned out on doing my prep work because I had not come up with a workable time schedule that took everything that I was doing into account. Instead, I only did what was assigned every week in that class so as not to get myself any more tired than I already was. It is true that I finally have found a happy medium where I study only 90 minutes at a time with no more than about 4 hours a day when I am not working. I limit myself to 2 hours a day when I am working. I do take one whole day off every week now. At the same time, there have been the days where I just didn't have the energy to do very much studying at all. On those kinds of days, I spend about 2 hours maximum. Perfect study schedules look very nice on paper, but in real life, things don't always work out perfectly like they did on paper, either.

Greg
This is a really great insight, Greg. I think people need to realize that it's okay to be somewhat flexible during your studies--in fact it's absolutely necessary. Taking one day off each week is especially smart...
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Practice, practice, practice

by GCHall840 » Wed Aug 01, 2007 9:23 pm
The last two days have been kind of frustrating for me because I have never really had to do anything academic more than once. That means that when I went to college where I had to take math classes, I didn't have to keep doing problems over and over again to get what those questions were asking me. But, it is definitely a different ball game when it comes to studying and practicing for the GMAT because I haven't always gotten a certain mathematical way of doing something correct the first time I tried to do that problem. In essence, what I am finding out about this whole process, is that I do have to keep doing questions maybe two or three times before the "subject" being covered finally sets in. In a way, that has made me feel as if I really was actually starting to get what this whole process is all about. It really isn't actually just about repeating one specific question over and over again to get it, it is about doing problems being "tested" about that same subject material, repeatedly until that concept has finally settled in and I can be ready to move on to the next subject...and so on, and so on.

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by beatthegmat » Wed Aug 01, 2007 10:21 pm
Hang in there, Greg, and be patient. You're right--it just takes lots of practice and repetition to get the concepts to sink in. You'll get there...
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