Took Diagnostic test w/ no prep, got 500 - best strat(s)?

[teamaaron2]

Hi all,

My first post here. This looks like a great community of people who all share the same goals, so I'm glad I found you guys and glad that I'm making this my home base for GMAT social prep.

Anyways, 3 years removed from undergraduate business school. Took the diagnostic GMAT from Kaplan (that comes free with the book you buy) and I got 500 on the nose. I saved my summary, but essentially my Quant, specifically data sufficiency is weak, hell all of it is weak. My verbal is slightly better, but not too much better.

What I think is:
- that my basic skills (high school math, algebra, arithmetic, geometry) are crap and need to be rebuilt
- I need to practice better grammer and understanding
- Integrated reasoning, which is essentially a case study, needs better practice, specifically graphical interpretation
- I need to be VERY fast with mental math.

Did anyone else identify similar problems with their base skills or low score? What strategy did you find worked the best? I was thinking of getting a bunch of high school math books for SAT prep and go over those. Then do university/college difficulty problems of those same topics, then start the specific GMAT prep so that it feels very redundant and also elementary.

Overkill? Not enough? If anyone has thoughts at all, please do post.

[Brent@GMATPrepNow]

I was thinking of getting a bunch of high school math books for SAT prep and go over those. Then do university/college difficulty problems of those same topics, then start the specific GMAT prep so that it feels very redundant and also elementary.

You need to find a GMAT-specific resource to help you prepare.

First, Data Sufficiency (DS) questions comprise about 40% of the math section, so you must become proficient with them. Since DS questions are unique to the GMAT, you won't find them in any non-GMAT resources.

Second, the math concepts tested on the GMAT are typically concepts you learned in grades 1 to 10. So, it's quite possible that books with "university/college difficulty problems" will feature concepts that are out of score for the GMAT.

The test prep companies on this site have a variety of resources to suit your learning style.

To get you started on DS questions, you can check out our comprehensive set of free DS videos: https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gmat-data-sufficiency

To help keep you on track and to ensure that you cover all concepts that the GMAT tests, you might want to sign up for Beat The GMAT's free 60-Day Study Guide: https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/gmat-guide

I hope that helps.

Cheers,
Brent

[Jim@StratusPrep]

Very much encourage you to get GMAT specific resources. Head to mba.com to get some free stuff so that you can see the difference in these question types an others. Then you can go buy some stuff...