Firstly I am in an unusual position in so far as I simply needed to take the GMAT, rather than to achieve a specific score. That being said, the GMAT was a big challenge and I wanted to do my best.
I devised my study plan from Eric's original Beat The GMAT blog. I felt that his approach was comprehensive and achievable for anyone choosing to self-study.
Books:
Kaplan Math Foundations: Without doubt this was the most important book for me. Without the important lessons in this book most of Kaplan Premier Quant would have made no sense to me. I am currently 25 but I had not studied math since the age of 15 (UK GCSEs), and even then my math grade was average. As a result I actually really enjoyed reading this book.
Kaplan Premier 2013: The OG is often referred to as The Bible, but for me Kaplan Premier deserved this title. I almost felt like it was written by the GMAT testmakers, revealing their secrets. In particular its analysis of what the GMAT actually tests is very detailed. That being said I can now see that the book could never cover all GMAT topics in great detail, but as an entry to mid-level book I don't think it could be much better.
Kaplan Math Workbook: Like Eric Bahn's original review, I was lukewarm about this book. It didn't seem to offer anything in addition to Kaplan Premier except for further sets of similar questions. I would only recommend this book to people who have rusty (not poor) math skills and want a refresher before starting the main focus of their GMAT quant study.
Official Guide 13: Great for practice, practice, practice. I did all quant questions and the first 40 questions in each verbal section, all under timed conditions. Verbal is my strongpoint which is a shame in some ways because the OG verbal explanations are very good; indeed they are far better than the quant explanations. As such I would say that someone needing to improve their verbal skills could learn from the OG itself, whereas the quant section can only be used for practice.
The time I took from first searching 'GMAT' to taking the exam was exactly 10 weeks, working almost every day.
Throughout my studies I had access to 5 Kaplan CATs but I did not complete any of them. At several planned stages in my study plan I would take one of the Kaplan CATs but each time I had very little idea about any of the quant questions. As such I felt it was more productive to cover all my quant textbooks before taking another test, but unfortunately by the time I had done this I was close to G-Day and instead focussed on GMATPrep and the OG. The week before my real exam I did both GMATPrep exams under full test conditions and scored 630 and 660 respectively.
G-Day
I approached G-Day feeling that I could definitely do better that my final practice test score of 660. The opening AWA had a longer stimulus than I was used to but was otherwise very straightforward. Following the Kaplan AWA Template makes it hard to go wrong in this section. The following Integrated Reasoning section was much easier than anything I'd seen in the Kaplan CATs and it was almost identical to GMATPrep.
The quant section started with a straightforward question but before long it moved onto problems I felt very unfamiliar with. I kept hoping for more straightforward questions but instead I was dealt problems that I had no idea how to approach. Unlike in practice I couldn't quickly identify ways to setup equations and occasionally I couldn't even understand what the question was asking. I had never experienced anything similar in practice so I can only assume that it was a symptom of exam anxiety. Out of 37 questions I probably received 2 that were very easy and I had to make educated guesses on 3/5 of the rest.
Verbal was almost identical to the questions that I'd seen in the OG. The only surprises were that I took longer than expected, having to rush the final 3 questions and that I scored lower than expected. Again this must be the effect of exam day anxiety.
Lessons:
1. Know why you are studying for the GMAT - and I don't mean simply 'to get a perfect score'. What do you really want to get out of it? Do you want to prove to yourself that you can do anything? Do you want join a global business network? Do you want to become a leader? The point is that if you pursue the GMAT for reasons you don't fully believe in, you will eventually lose interest and burnout. This is the equivalent to giving up and it can happen to the most noble of people if they don't believe in what they are doing. Know what your bigger picture is to drive you on.
2. Practice, practice, practice - you learn the most by getting a question wrong. And if you don't understand why you got a question wrong you will be driven to spend hours trawling through forums, searching the internet and referencing textbooks until it makes sense.
3. Get a tutor - towards the end of your study plan if there are concepts you still don't understand hire a tutor for a couple of hours. If I had my time again this is certainly what I would do. I think only a couple of hours would be necessary and it wouldn't break the bank, especially since you will have only spent approx $100 on books if pursuing a self-study approach.
Good luck!
I devised my study plan from Eric's original Beat The GMAT blog. I felt that his approach was comprehensive and achievable for anyone choosing to self-study.
Books:
Kaplan Math Foundations: Without doubt this was the most important book for me. Without the important lessons in this book most of Kaplan Premier Quant would have made no sense to me. I am currently 25 but I had not studied math since the age of 15 (UK GCSEs), and even then my math grade was average. As a result I actually really enjoyed reading this book.
Kaplan Premier 2013: The OG is often referred to as The Bible, but for me Kaplan Premier deserved this title. I almost felt like it was written by the GMAT testmakers, revealing their secrets. In particular its analysis of what the GMAT actually tests is very detailed. That being said I can now see that the book could never cover all GMAT topics in great detail, but as an entry to mid-level book I don't think it could be much better.
Kaplan Math Workbook: Like Eric Bahn's original review, I was lukewarm about this book. It didn't seem to offer anything in addition to Kaplan Premier except for further sets of similar questions. I would only recommend this book to people who have rusty (not poor) math skills and want a refresher before starting the main focus of their GMAT quant study.
Official Guide 13: Great for practice, practice, practice. I did all quant questions and the first 40 questions in each verbal section, all under timed conditions. Verbal is my strongpoint which is a shame in some ways because the OG verbal explanations are very good; indeed they are far better than the quant explanations. As such I would say that someone needing to improve their verbal skills could learn from the OG itself, whereas the quant section can only be used for practice.
The time I took from first searching 'GMAT' to taking the exam was exactly 10 weeks, working almost every day.
Throughout my studies I had access to 5 Kaplan CATs but I did not complete any of them. At several planned stages in my study plan I would take one of the Kaplan CATs but each time I had very little idea about any of the quant questions. As such I felt it was more productive to cover all my quant textbooks before taking another test, but unfortunately by the time I had done this I was close to G-Day and instead focussed on GMATPrep and the OG. The week before my real exam I did both GMATPrep exams under full test conditions and scored 630 and 660 respectively.
G-Day
I approached G-Day feeling that I could definitely do better that my final practice test score of 660. The opening AWA had a longer stimulus than I was used to but was otherwise very straightforward. Following the Kaplan AWA Template makes it hard to go wrong in this section. The following Integrated Reasoning section was much easier than anything I'd seen in the Kaplan CATs and it was almost identical to GMATPrep.
The quant section started with a straightforward question but before long it moved onto problems I felt very unfamiliar with. I kept hoping for more straightforward questions but instead I was dealt problems that I had no idea how to approach. Unlike in practice I couldn't quickly identify ways to setup equations and occasionally I couldn't even understand what the question was asking. I had never experienced anything similar in practice so I can only assume that it was a symptom of exam anxiety. Out of 37 questions I probably received 2 that were very easy and I had to make educated guesses on 3/5 of the rest.
Verbal was almost identical to the questions that I'd seen in the OG. The only surprises were that I took longer than expected, having to rush the final 3 questions and that I scored lower than expected. Again this must be the effect of exam day anxiety.
Lessons:
1. Know why you are studying for the GMAT - and I don't mean simply 'to get a perfect score'. What do you really want to get out of it? Do you want to prove to yourself that you can do anything? Do you want join a global business network? Do you want to become a leader? The point is that if you pursue the GMAT for reasons you don't fully believe in, you will eventually lose interest and burnout. This is the equivalent to giving up and it can happen to the most noble of people if they don't believe in what they are doing. Know what your bigger picture is to drive you on.
2. Practice, practice, practice - you learn the most by getting a question wrong. And if you don't understand why you got a question wrong you will be driven to spend hours trawling through forums, searching the internet and referencing textbooks until it makes sense.
3. Get a tutor - towards the end of your study plan if there are concepts you still don't understand hire a tutor for a couple of hours. If I had my time again this is certainly what I would do. I think only a couple of hours would be necessary and it wouldn't break the bank, especially since you will have only spent approx $100 on books if pursuing a self-study approach.
Good luck!
