Hello all,
Wanted to share my GMAT experience for everyone.
Started out my prep by taking a GMATPrep test and scored a 650. This made me overconfident, and in hindsight, I wasted a lot of time not building on my fundamentals and just solved problems out of "the bible" too early in my campaign.
Resources used:
1) GMATPrep (Bought the extra 40$ tests, but not the question pack)
2) Barron's GMAT (AVOID AVOID AVOID, typos, poorly written questions, etc)
3) 13th Edition
OG Prep (Completed all of the practice problems early in the 3.5 months and then worked through some again near the end)
4)
Manhattan GMAT 5th Edition Collection (Worked through the majority of the sections and free problem sets)
5) Kaplan GMAT 800 (worked through maybe 30% of this book, not very useful)
Soure------Date-------Quant------Verbal------Total
GMATPrep May 30th--43 (61st) 37 (81st) 650 (78th)
GMATPrep July 12th--48 (78th) 44 (97th) 740 (97th)
MGMAT----July 26th--47 (70th) 37 (82nd) 690 (87th)
MGMAT----Aug 1st----44 (61st) 35 (75th) 650 (77th)
MGMAT----Aug 7th----48 (76th) 37 (82nd) 700 (89th)
GMATPrep Aug 10th--49 (83rd) 40 (90th) 720 (94th)
MGMAT----Aug 15th--47 (70th) 44 (98th) 740 (97th)
MGMAT----Aug 23rd--49 (79th) 40 (91st) 730 (96th)
GMATPrep Aug 30th--50 (90th) 41 (93rd) 760 (99th)
MGMAT----Sept 6th---51 (97th) 45 (99th) 780 (99th)
GMAT------Sept 13th--51 (97th) 42 (96th) 760 (99th)
Fun fact: I took almost all
MGMAT quant sections untimed because of how unrepresentative the difficultly was. After taking 4 GMATPrep tests and the real thing, I still stand by that claim.
Summary: I spent about 3.5 months studying and around 400 hours total clocked.
Things I would've done differently:
1) Start with a book that teaches the fundamentals well. Barron's was a bad idea.
2) Research which prep materials are the best at the beginning.
Magoosh, Veritas,
MGMAT all have huge mind share, but
MGMAT was the most suggested.
3) Used an
error log (surprising, I know. Most successful people use error logs)
4) Memorized idioms for verbal
5) Not worried so much about IR and AWA
Things that I'm glad I did:
1) Took practice tests at 8am and constrained myself to the most test like of settings
2) Forced myself to have a good sleep schedule so that I would be at peak shape
3) Chugging coffee at 6:30am the morning of