How to benefit from GMAT coaching

[viking9m]

Hi Experts,

I am planning to give my GMAT in 6 months. I got to know about general structure of GMAT. I gave my first GMAT CAT(Princeton) to see where I stand. I scored 520 (Q 28, Q 24) . Frankly speaking, I still need to refresh my Quants and grammar. Being an engineer, I am little optimistic about Quants. I am little worried about Verbal.

I am definitely planning to join GMAT in-person training. I wanted to check with experts, here about when to join trainings?. Should I prepare first, get all my basics right, brush up all necessary skills for 1-2 months and then join class? or should join class first then worry about preparations ? I want to make most out of my GMAT coaching classes. Because, after my class get finished and if I face major issues in solving problems, then I would be little helpless to go back to class and ask for inputs.

Any experts has any opinions/experts on this? Please share your experience about how to make most out of coaching classes.

Thanks

[GMATinsight]

Hi Experts,

I am planning to give my GMAT in 6 months. I got to know about general structure of GMAT. I gave my first GMAT CAT(Princeton) to see where I stand. I scored 520 (Q 28, Q 24) . Frankly speaking, I still need to refresh my Quants and grammar. Being an engineer, I am little optimistic about Quants. I am little worried about Verbal.

I am definitely planning to join GMAT in-person training. I wanted to check with experts, here about when to join trainings?. Should I prepare first, get all my basics right, brush up all necessary skills for 1-2 months and then join class? or should join class first then worry about preparations ? I want to make most out of my GMAT coaching classes. Because, after my class get finished and if I face major issues in solving problems, then I would be little helpless to go back to class and ask for inputs.

Any experts has any opinions/experts on this? Please share your experience about how to make most out of coaching classes.

Thanks

If you have decided to take the Expert help (Which is a good idea to stay on track and Focused and save time and effort) then I suggest that you shouldn't worry about brushing up the concepts as this becomes the primary job of the faculty to brush up your concepts. Also you might not be using a good source of questions (OGs) in just brushing up the concepts which you might need to check your competency and practice in well organized manner.

Ideally GMAT requires a training of about 3 months and postponing it further causes a decline in scores that you are capable of getting therefore it's important for you to be motivated for preparation and take GMAT when peak of your preparation is attained.

You should also be joining classes where there is no rush of the classes and the focus is more on enriching your learning rather than just finishing the course and leave in once the course is over.

Ideally it's best for the students if the classes can be adjusted according to the pace of the classes and the class size is minimum so that you may get the desired attention of the expert and address your own area of weaknesses.

Another part, Take the demo session wherever you choose to join your classes. It's utmost important for your satisfaction and to understand the methodology of teaching and the willingness of expert to improve your level of performance.

I hope it helps to start...

Feel free to drop any other query...

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Hi viking9m,

A 520 is a decent starting score (the average GMAT score is right around 550). Most Test Takers need 3 months (or more) of solid study time to hit their peak scores, so you've given yourself plenty of time to succeed.

You bring up an interesting point about knowing the basics/necessary skills; with your first set of scores, it looks like you have a decent understanding of the basics. Since you'll likely need to do some content review, you might consider a Self-Study Course - this will allow you to choose your own pace (and pause your studies, as needed, to focus on any content areas that need immediate attention), as opposed to a Classroom Course that will continue to move forward (even if you are not ready to move forward). There are plenty to choose from.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

[Matt@VeritasPrep]

As a rule of thumb, you want to do at least five hours of self-study for every hour you spend with an expert. You don't your tutor to teach you a bunch of basics (or even somewhat challenging methods and concepts) that you could discover for yourself: you only want the tutor to help you with material that has defeated you after a number of attempts. The five hours will help you generate lots of questions for your tutor and also get you further along the long slog of familiarizing yourself with the GMAT.

There are a few reasons for this:

(1) On test day, you'll run into a number of questions you don't know how to solve. If you've practiced grinding out answers to tough problems on your own, and have learned self-reliance and the art of inspired guessing, you'll be fine. If you've spent your time asking a tutor to solve things for you, you'll panic and get crushed.

(2) Tutoring time goes by much more quickly than you'd think. You want to have a focused set of questions to do with the tutor, and after every challenging question that you've tried, you want to ask the tutor for ANOTHER, SIMILAR question that you can then try to make sure you understand. (Any decent tutor will have 100s of these either on his/her laptop or in his/her head.)

(3) Tutoring is expensive, so why waste time and money doing things you could've done yourself for free!

One last thing: 3 months is fine if you're looking to make an improvement such as 520 to 590, 600 to 650, 660 to 690, or 680 to 720. Is is generally not enough if you're looking to go from 520 to 700, especially if your weakness is verbal, as verbal takes much more time to improve, in my experience.

[viking9m]

Thanks for your replies . I appreciate it.