Veritas Prep self-study pace/timeline guide?

[greenious]

Hello,

I will be taking the GMAT in first week of April. I purchased the complete set of Veritas Prep books and have been studying on my own since the second week of January. Between then and the test day, I have about 12 weeks of preparation. I'm now halfway through that period and so far my study pace is finishing one book per week (5.5 books so far, 6.5 remaining). I'm not sure if I'm studying too slow or okay and I really wanted to do a reality check.

Could anyone here that use Veritas books and self-study share their experiences?

Any tips are appreciated!

[Bill@VeritasPrep]

Given your timeline, that's not a bad pace; you'll have a couple of weeks left to polish specific areas. However, if you can speed up a little to 2 books a week (or even 3 books every 2 weeks), you'll have more time to target weaknesses, work on strategy, and review the essentials.

You don't necessarily need to get through each and every homework problem when you go through the book initially; you can leave some "in reserve" for those final weeks of prep when you need to go back and look at specific types.

[David@VeritasPrep]

Depending on which books you went through first, you may very well be on a good pace. For example, the first three Quant books: Arithmetic, Algebra, and Geometry can take a long time to work through - lots of material lots of homework -

(as Bill said you do not need to do every problem in the homework on the first pass through you can save some to study later. If you do this I recommend that you initially do EVERY OTHER problem. This way you will be exposed to all of the subjects - since the questions are often arranged by subject. So do questions 20, 22, 24, etc. rather than doing 20, 21, 22, 23. If you find that you need more work on a particular area then you can do all of the questions on that topic).

Some books go more quickly like advanced verbal reasoning and foundations of GMAT reasoning.

If you are doing the books in numerical order (so arithmetic followed by critical reasoning and then back around to algebra and then sentence correction) if that is how you are completing the books then I would advise that you take a practice test after lesson 8 data sufficiency. Then you can start to see where you are with more than a month to go.

Do you have any other questions for us?

[greenious]

Thank you Bill and David for the prompt responses.

Based on your responses and the sample syllabus I saw for a local in-class course, I might need to speed up my pace a little bit (from 1 book to 1.5-2 books/week). I initially did the books in numerical order, but then switched into the Verbal portions since I feel I'm weaker in those areas. So the books that I have finished are Fundamentals, Arithmetic, CR, SC, RC, and am now on Advanced Verbal. I will then plan to go back for the Math portions. I've been doing the HW in odd/even numbers as David suggested, glad I got the method right right there.

One new question I have is, how would you suggest dividing the time between learning individual topics and taking the full practice tests? Should I finish the individuals first then spend the last 2 weeks of studying for taking the practice tests, or should I take them in between learning the individual topics?

Thank you.

[Bill@VeritasPrep]

As David said, taking a practice exam after the DS lesson is a good idea. At that point, you'll have seen all of the foundational material, so it'll let you know where you stand.

Our syllabus for the live course also recommends one after finishing the course/books. Beyond that, taking one a week is a good idea; it'll help you work on pacing and strategy, and it will highlight areas to focus on for the next week of studying.