Hello, although this is my first post here, I have been a heavy lurker for the past 10 days or so while I got my study on for the GMAT, and I would like to just give a big thank you to Eric and the team who maintain this site - it truly was an invaluable resource for me in preparing for the test, and I think the community and GMAT takers everywhere (including myself) owe it to you all - big time.
As I said, I studied for about 10 days, a good amount of that on this past weekend before the test. I ended with a 710 (Q48 V39), which I was quite happy about as I was gunning for a 700. I even earned the honorable distinction of getting shushed by the test administrator lady when my score popped up as I was celebrating.
Anyways, here's how I prepared (I used mostly the OG, but did use Manhattan and Kaplan early on for math and sentence correction):
Day 1 - Spent this day (when I say day I usually mean 2-3 hours, if I took a test that day up the number to 4-5 hours) on just remembering old math formulas and basics and then running through problems on these. I have always been pretty decent at math, so I did not spent too much time on learning anything, rather practicing what I knew. I will concede I had read enough about the GMAT to understand the structure and question types, so that didn't factor into my 10 days.
Day 2-3 - somewhere around here I rediscovered the gem that is www.beatthegmat.com and printed off a lot of the materials under the resource sections. Studied very in-depth on sentence correction learning as many rules and memorizing as many idioms and things of that nature that I could.
Day 4-5 - Took another couple of days to learn the black arts of data sufficiency - this and sentence correction were my two main whammys. I spent a good amount of time on number properties and things of that nature rather than the straight math. I also took my first Kaplan practice test, the once that scores you about 70-100 pts too low, and eeked out a 600. I never took the essays with my practice tests.
Days 6-8 - Took a practice test each day (Two Kaplans [560, 590], one Powerprep [710]). Did a few reading passages, I don't think much can be done to prepare for these, answered about 100 CR questions in the OG. Spent about 20% of my time each day doing some math and sentence correction.
Final weekend:
Day 9 Saturday - studied roughly 8 hours, about 30% data sufficiency, 40% sentence correction, 20% normal math, 10% CR. Would have studied more, but my friend had a lacrosse tournament that I wanted to go to and I was sick of studying - yeah, I really have my priorities straight.....
(Day 10) Sun - Studied about 9-10 hours, since my test was at 8am Monday I planned to act as if Sunday was a test day, unfortunately I decided to sleep in until 10 and treat noon as if it were the new 8am (the time my test was the next day). I took both official practice tests, one starting at noon (660) and the other starting at 10 (690). In between this time I spread my studying out evenly between all sections and spent around an hour on the AWA (once again the formats from the resources section were awesome).
(D-Day) - Test was at 8am - I was up at 6 running through practice questions on the official GMAT Prep software until about 7:20 when I left for the test to get my GMAT on. I am a pretty calm cucumber during tests, so I think that helped me. Test center was pretty standard, I highly recommend the headphones they have there, I could not hear a thing although I did feel the heavy vibration of fists pounding on the desk in the cube next to me about halfway through my verbal section (I talked to the guy beforehand and to sum it up he indicated that he had to pass some financial advisor test or he was screwed - I'm guessing the screwed part came true). Anyways, I got my 710 and called it a day =).
Three pieces of advice I can give particularly if you don't want to kill yourself for two months and do it on less time like myself:
1. I planned to take the test around this time last year (as you can see from my join date), but the weather got nice, work got busy and the GMAT mysteriously faded away just like the beer cans I would leave on my porch every night in college . Once you decide to take it - pick a date and take the darn thing!! I feel like I lost a year twittling my thumbs and playing too much golf.
2. Use the resources section on this website. Plain and simple, this site put me on it's back and dragged me through the GMAT kicking and screaming like a little whimpering girl (as you diction scholars might have realized, I am in fact a male [I tried to throw you off with the =) above]). I was particularly fond of Suhil's grammar notes and the formats sections for the AWA (I studied the AWA for a grand total of about an hour this was so good).
3.Study when you are not studying. What I mean by this is that once you start studying things like sentence correction, start trying to speak with GMAT grammar, if you listen to people talking not using parallel structure, pronoun errors, and correct idioms don't be a jerk and point it out to them but make a mental note to yourself and recognize that you are the man. As you read news throughout the day - critically read the thing. Think about what the author's agenda is, where the article comes from, is it bias in any way, etc.
That's all I have, thanks again to the Beat The GMAT team and honorable shoutout to all the experts here too!
Kiel
As I said, I studied for about 10 days, a good amount of that on this past weekend before the test. I ended with a 710 (Q48 V39), which I was quite happy about as I was gunning for a 700. I even earned the honorable distinction of getting shushed by the test administrator lady when my score popped up as I was celebrating.
Anyways, here's how I prepared (I used mostly the OG, but did use Manhattan and Kaplan early on for math and sentence correction):
Day 1 - Spent this day (when I say day I usually mean 2-3 hours, if I took a test that day up the number to 4-5 hours) on just remembering old math formulas and basics and then running through problems on these. I have always been pretty decent at math, so I did not spent too much time on learning anything, rather practicing what I knew. I will concede I had read enough about the GMAT to understand the structure and question types, so that didn't factor into my 10 days.
Day 2-3 - somewhere around here I rediscovered the gem that is www.beatthegmat.com and printed off a lot of the materials under the resource sections. Studied very in-depth on sentence correction learning as many rules and memorizing as many idioms and things of that nature that I could.
Day 4-5 - Took another couple of days to learn the black arts of data sufficiency - this and sentence correction were my two main whammys. I spent a good amount of time on number properties and things of that nature rather than the straight math. I also took my first Kaplan practice test, the once that scores you about 70-100 pts too low, and eeked out a 600. I never took the essays with my practice tests.
Days 6-8 - Took a practice test each day (Two Kaplans [560, 590], one Powerprep [710]). Did a few reading passages, I don't think much can be done to prepare for these, answered about 100 CR questions in the OG. Spent about 20% of my time each day doing some math and sentence correction.
Final weekend:
Day 9 Saturday - studied roughly 8 hours, about 30% data sufficiency, 40% sentence correction, 20% normal math, 10% CR. Would have studied more, but my friend had a lacrosse tournament that I wanted to go to and I was sick of studying - yeah, I really have my priorities straight.....
(Day 10) Sun - Studied about 9-10 hours, since my test was at 8am Monday I planned to act as if Sunday was a test day, unfortunately I decided to sleep in until 10 and treat noon as if it were the new 8am (the time my test was the next day). I took both official practice tests, one starting at noon (660) and the other starting at 10 (690). In between this time I spread my studying out evenly between all sections and spent around an hour on the AWA (once again the formats from the resources section were awesome).
(D-Day) - Test was at 8am - I was up at 6 running through practice questions on the official GMAT Prep software until about 7:20 when I left for the test to get my GMAT on. I am a pretty calm cucumber during tests, so I think that helped me. Test center was pretty standard, I highly recommend the headphones they have there, I could not hear a thing although I did feel the heavy vibration of fists pounding on the desk in the cube next to me about halfway through my verbal section (I talked to the guy beforehand and to sum it up he indicated that he had to pass some financial advisor test or he was screwed - I'm guessing the screwed part came true). Anyways, I got my 710 and called it a day =).
Three pieces of advice I can give particularly if you don't want to kill yourself for two months and do it on less time like myself:
1. I planned to take the test around this time last year (as you can see from my join date), but the weather got nice, work got busy and the GMAT mysteriously faded away just like the beer cans I would leave on my porch every night in college . Once you decide to take it - pick a date and take the darn thing!! I feel like I lost a year twittling my thumbs and playing too much golf.
2. Use the resources section on this website. Plain and simple, this site put me on it's back and dragged me through the GMAT kicking and screaming like a little whimpering girl (as you diction scholars might have realized, I am in fact a male [I tried to throw you off with the =) above]). I was particularly fond of Suhil's grammar notes and the formats sections for the AWA (I studied the AWA for a grand total of about an hour this was so good).
3.Study when you are not studying. What I mean by this is that once you start studying things like sentence correction, start trying to speak with GMAT grammar, if you listen to people talking not using parallel structure, pronoun errors, and correct idioms don't be a jerk and point it out to them but make a mental note to yourself and recognize that you are the man. As you read news throughout the day - critically read the thing. Think about what the author's agenda is, where the article comes from, is it bias in any way, etc.
That's all I have, thanks again to the Beat The GMAT team and honorable shoutout to all the experts here too!
Kiel
