MGMAT Retention - Some tips!!

ok I just had a major breakthrough regarding learning the MGMAT material...

So I've gone through the books and now can't remember too much, as mentioned before a few times on GMATClub, ... I was wracking my brain trying to work out how the hell I would learn the material, and I remembered from my school & uni days how to study maths (FINALLY! I wish I remembered this 3 months ago), specifically how to learn math concepts cold. I went to https://www.flashcardmachine.com/ and started doing some flash cards, then I remembered I should be testing myself on all the little nuances in the books, particularly stuff I didn't quite grasp the first time around.

By testing myself I mean doing flash cards like Q: An ODD number divided by an EVEN integer CANNOT produce an integer. TRUE or FALSE? A: TRUE --> An ODD number divided by an EVEN integer CANNOT produce an integer. This is because the odd number will NEVER be divisible by the factor of 2 concealed within the EVEN number.

and I did literally tonight around 200 flash cards like this for the Number Properties book for stuff I still haven't learnt cold 100%. So the flash cards weren't so much flash cards like 'the formula for this is ...' but more like little mini test questions to make sure I understand the concepts. IF a concept was a bit tricky I would do multiple flash card questions for it, covering all the different angles in the MGMAT book including some of the examples they give... I found the process of writing up the little test questions also tested my knowledge and forced me to make sure I knew the concept well before writing up a question based on it.

If you register at https://www.flashcardmachine.com/ and look up my username (n2739178) you should be able to see all the flash cards I've made so far.

I know it may seem tedious to go through all these cards day in day out, but I'm going to do 30-40 random flash cards a day from them (you can choose a random flash test mode on the site) until I know it all down pat. There's not a lot actually that I still have to learn for Number Properties but I've forgotten a lot of key concepts and these need to be re-cemented into my brain. The other key concepts that I do remember obviously I didn't make flash cards for.

So my aim now is to do 30-40 of these flash cards a day for each book, until I feel I've remembered almost all of it, then do all the OG questions again listed for each book. Then I'll have a cemented knowledge of the concepts and should be able to tackle the questions a lot more easily and not make as many conceptual errors.

So yeah, thought I'd share that. I used to do that at uni and in high school but I completely forgot about it. I hope this helps someone in the same boat as me (i.e. covered all the MGMAT books then forgotten half of them).

Also a tip - read and re-read each chapter in each book, no matter how tedious or boring it is to do so. I have really found this has also helped immensely to cement concepts that I either forgot or never learnt properly in the first place, some concepts even popped out of the page at me that I never noticed at all!!

And one more thing - by this stage I've done most of the end of chapter problem sets, however there were always a few questions that threw a curve-ball at me so I'm rereading the questions and I can remember which ones they were that I had a WTF moment with... so I'm redoing those questions only now (the other ones I could still remember how to do easily).

Finally my studying is on track again and I'm studying effectively. Thank god for that... Was really starting to stress out!

One more tip: I'm also going to start making these flash cards for errors I come across in the OG questions... key conceptual errors or tricks to answer those sorts of questions, so I learn the concepts involved in those problems, if that makes sense.