Setting realistic tasks for GMAT study plan (advice please)

[Gabriel Ignacio]

Dear friends,

I really need advice how to set realistic tasks per day to make a good study plan. I hope someone out there would have the patience to read my circumstances and my problem.

To know my current situation with regard to the backdrop of my previous GMAT preparations and my target score, please click this link https://www.beatthegmat.com/not-giving-u ... tml#143636

Basically, my test date is on May 29, 2009. I am targeting something "unrealistic" for some people, (but not for me since I do not want to give up) which is to jump from 480 to 700+ in 39 days. I have been trying to do this for the past few weeks. Some people advised me to do 40 quant and 40 verbal each day with analysis. According to most people and based on my experience, you learn not by answering alone but by analyzing each questions (i.e. why I get this right or wrong) to the minutest of detail. Analyzing just one question (just one!) takes me about 5 minutes (for easy problems) to 15 minutes (for hard problems) which at first, I deem as a disadvantage. I am thinking that if I will do 40 quant and 40 verbal questions a day WITH ANALYSIS with the time I currently take to finish analyzing a single problem, it would take me about 25 hours a day (if that's even possible). I realize that doing 40 quant and 40 verbal questions a day WITH ANALYSIS is humanly impossible for me. In this regard, I would like to ask. How many quant and verbal questions a day should I do WITH ANALYSIS to generally raise my GMAT score by May 18 (which is 14 days from now including today)?

Disclaimer: I put May 18 instead of May 29 (my test date) because I plan to take GMATPrep # 2 by May 18 to check where I stand by that time after all the prepping I did from April 19 when I got the devastating 480 score. I am thinking of postponing my GMAT to October if I do not reach "at least" 650 by May 18. I plan to do NGUFO's strategy of long months of study to raise my 480 score to 700+ if everything fails by May 18.

Thank you very much and God Bless,
Gabriel

[VP_Jim]

I wouldn't think of it in terms of "how many questions should I do?". Instead, study for a certain amount of time, and just do however many questions you can do in that time. It will do you no good whatsoever to set a goal of, say, 50 questions if you are dead tired, burnt out, and frustrated when doing 30 of them! To perform well on the test you need to be creative and positive, things that you definitely will not be feeling after 3 hours of intense study!

Personally, I think anything over 2-3 hours per day is too much. When I worked through the OG, sometimes I would only do 10 problems in 2 hours - taking them apart, thinking of alternate approaches, analyzing wrong answer choices, etc. - but you can bet that I knew those problems really well!