I was trying to find my original post, but I think it is gone now as it was too old
. Great.
I studied for about 3-4 months on and off - hanging out at the beach with the GMAT book, reading it while traveling, etc. I think I covered the entire book or maybe got close. It was ARCO GMAT Book - I don't think they publish it (thankfully - it was a waste of time). Anyway, I took a PowerPrep test in September or October and scored 550. My roommate who has not studied at all and was spending his nights drinking and partying (vs. me studying the GMAT) scored 540 on the same test. Made me feel real bad.
I then started studying using Kaplan books (this was back in early 2000's) and spent about 3 intense months on the GMAT.
I went through the
Kaplan's General book(this link is to the recent version as I doubt you want the 2001 edition) in about a month.
Then I got
Kaplan's Math Workbook and spent a month on that.
Finally, the last month I spent on the
Verbal Workbook and taking full length tests - nothing kills your Saturday as a Full Length GMAT Test.
Probably a shocking point to many will be that I did not use the
Official Guide. That's right, I did not. The Kaplan's questions are a bit different, esp. the Verbal part, so the last few days I spent taking the second PowerPrep (now GMATPrep) test and reviewing my mistakes as well as getting used to the GMAT question intricacies compared to the Kaplan.
On the day before the test, I got 740 on the PowerPrep - a bit of a shock to me since I've been scoring 640's on Kaplan. I dismissed the score, hoping that 640+740 = close to 700 that I needed.
The day of I got 750 (49, 42), which I was shocked about just as much (thanks to Kaplan that provides lower scores).
So, to answer your question, I seriously studied only about 3-4 months. However, I changed my work schedule and freed up my mornings to study (I worked from Noon till 9 PM). I started reading a lot of fiction books (I am not a native speaker and
my Fiction book recommendations are here), and was completely cut off from any social activities on the weekends. My weekends were spent taking full-length tests (AWA, Math, and Verbal) and after that I was mostly done for the day and did not want to do anything or talk to anyone, just being depressed about my low Kaplan score
Hope this helps.
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