The Most Effective Way to Prepare for the GMAT

Regardless of whether your goal is an average GMAT score, an above-average score, or a 99th percentile score, the most effective way to prepare for the GMAT is to work topic by topic, mastering one topic at a time. To master a topic, you first learn the concepts involved in that topic and then do dozens of practice questions involving that topic until you get them correct consistently. Once you’ve mastered one topic, you move on to the next and do the same thing. By proceeding in this way, you eventually master the entire GMAT.

So, for instance, if you were working on rate questions, you’d first study the concepts involved, such as the rate, time, and distance formula. Then, you’d answer dozens of rate questions, starting with easy questions and working your way up to harder questions, until you virtually couldn’t get them incorrect. Similarly, if you were working on Sentence Correction questions involving modifiers, you’d learn all the concepts involved in answering those questions and then answer SC practice questions involving modifiers until you totally understood how to get them correct consistently.

This approach to GMAT prep works super well because it gives you an opportunity to focus on understanding a set of concepts, you go directly from learning concepts to applying them to answering questions, and you can apply what you learn in the process of answering one question to answering subsequent similar questions.

Takeaway: To master the GMAT, master one topic at a time until you’ve mastered the entire test.