Help With Initial Study Plan Please.

[Gouman]

I am getting ready to get serious about the GMAT. I scored 480 on the GMAC practice test. Therefore, I'm essentially bottom barrel, at this point.

My goal is 650 and I'm giving myself 12 weeks to reach it. My materials are as follows...

OG 11
OG 11 Quant Review
8 MGMAT Strategy Guides
Princeton Review Verbal Workout

I'm considering getting the OG 11 companion and the OG 11 Verbal Review too.

I have approx two hours per night and one complete weekend day.

Can somebody help me out with a study plan/tips. For example, should I go through each guide one by one or switch it up daily and do a topic from each guide per day?

Should I work and quant and verbal simultaneously or spend six weeks on one and another six weeks on the other?

Is it acceptable to do problems one night and then review them the next, even if it means ultimately I do less problems over the course of 12 weeks?

Does anyone have any sample schedules?

[Gabriel Ignacio]

Hey Gouman,

I haven’t taken the actual GMAT yet so I don’t know if my advices here will work but logically speaking, I believe they do. Here are my advices:

1.) Can somebody help me out with a study plan/tips. For example, should I go through each guide one by one or switch it up daily and do a topic from each guide per day?

ADVICE:
Reading from different guides for strategies about the same topic can be confusing as some people in this site have mentioned. Hence, what I suggest is that you focus on one of the six topics (problem solving, data sufficiency, sentence correction, critical reasoning, reading comprehension, and analytical writing assessment) per day using one book for that day.

2.) Should I work and quant and verbal simultaneously or spend six weeks on one and another six weeks on the other?

ADVICE:
My answer is that do one of the six topics per day. If you do six weeks per topic, you may end up forgetting what you have studied for the very first topic (from your first 6 weeks) on the last day of your preparation. For example, if you study DS in your first 6 weeks, you might forget all that you have studied from DS by the time you’re done with your preparation. I would suggest this daily format per week:

• Monday: SC and AWA
• Tuesday: CR
• Wednesday: PS
• Thursday: DS
• Friday: RC, read all notes and reorganize them
• Saturday: Full-length exam
• Sunday: Review of exam

If you notice, my Monday and Friday have two tasks. The reason is that I feel my SC, RC and AWA skills are the strongest from the 6 topics. You will also notice that I reserved Wednesday and Thursday for quant topics. I did this because math is my weakness and I have to make sure that what I studied for them remains fresh on my full-length practice test every Saturday. I also allotted the entire Sunday for reviews of the full-length exam. This is because I would have to “master” each questions from the practice exams which would amount to 78 questions (37 quant + 41 verbal). I analyze each question with quality (as Jim would say) which require time to do per question.

3.) Is it acceptable to do problems one night and then review them the next, even if it means ultimately I do less problems over the course of 12 weeks?

ADVICE:
I would suggest that you do BOTH solving problems and analyzing them on the same night so you your mistakes in your “answering problems session” can be tracked on the same night that you answer the questions. This can give you a quick sense of what you ought and not ought to do on the actual GMAT.

4.) Does anyone have any sample schedules?

ADVICE:
https://outbeat-the-gmat.blocked/20 ... ailed.html
https://outbeat-the-gmat.blocked/20 ... ailed.html
https://outbeat-the-gmat.blocked/20 ... up_20.html

Check out these sites. These sites are connected to each other. Mukul (the guy who owns the schedule) cannot fit everything iin just 1 post. I really like Mukul’s study plan because of the productivity entailed in his study plan. It’s overwhelming though for those who have many concerns apart from the GMAT like in my case, I have undergrad summer classes while preparing for my other application components and the GMAT.

Basically, the key to get a good GMAT score is “substantial and daily productivity.” I was trying to emulate Mukul’s schedule but I had a hard time achieving the same productivity given my other personal concerns but I hope you can emulate his daily productivity. If you can, you would only need two months to ace the GMAT instead of three months. In addition, I highly believe you can raise your initial 480 score to 700+ if you can do Mukul’s approach.

God bless in your GMAT and application endeavors

[VP_Jim]

You definitely have sufficient materials - so don't worry about buying more books.

My advice would be to work through a topic in one of the prep guides first, and then do practice problems related to that topic from the OG. You'll quickly realize that the explanations in the OG are terrible, so it's important that you study GMAT prep materials FIRST so that you know the "right" way to do problems rather than the "official" way. I would probably stick with one verbal topic per week and one quant topic per week, rather than jumping around every day. So for example, in week one your verbal topic might be "grammar fundamentals" and your quant topic might be "mental math".

Try to study for a couple hours per day, 6 days per week to avoid burnout. It's definitely okay to do fewer problems but put in more "quality" study over your 12 week plan, so don't worry if you aren't working out of 15 different books.

Also, remember to take a few practice tests over your studies. Don't practice pacing when working from the OG - slow down and analyze. Practice tests are for pacing. Try to do about one every couple weeks during your studies.

Hope this helps!

[mbadrew]

Stick to the MGMAT books and use the OGs for problems. The explanation is poor in the OGs and I'm sure it's done deliberately so people can keep failing and therefore, GMAC mints more cash.

You definitely want to review a topic and then do problems related to it. Don't do 6 week stretches of each topic. Devote 30-45min/day for each topic. Pace yourself.

Final advice. Time yourself when you're doing problems. If you're taking more than 1.30 minutes to solve a problem, then you need to review the topic and do some problems slowly. Initially do the problems slowly, but later on focus on timing. I got a 360 because I ran out of time.

[Gouman]

I know it's a little late but, thanks for the tips you guys. As of now I'm trying to get through each GMAT book in one to two weeks. Practice tests on Saturdays probably review on Sat and Sun.

So far two to three hours per night has been as much as I can eek out.

I'm concerned I will forget the stuff that I'm learning now if I cover each topic sequentially (in each MGMAT guide). However, I don't think I'll finish in 12 weeks if I'm jumping around or reviewing in some sort of cumulative fashion.

It's a conundrum. I guess I will try to work cumulative review in. It's much easier in the beginning when the amount of previous studied material is less. I'm concerned about having to review six weeks of material and do week seven (and so on).

Oh well, I'll just have to figure out a way to make it work.

Thanks again.