Took the exam about 10 days ago and only got the chance to write it now. Not that my studying/preparation method was the best, but it worked out quite okay so hopefully it will be helpful to some people who are in similar situation.
A little background – I was born in Taiwan, an island somewhere in East Asia, and I came to Canada when I was 15 (now 25). Chinese in my first language. I did my undergrad in a math/business dual degree program, so the quants wasn’t exactly hard for me.
I would not say English is the hardest thing I have ever encountered in my life, but it is definitely not my forte, especially when compared to quants.
I started studying in January this year, and on average I spent around an hour after work on studying, three days a week. On the weekend I would spend two to three hours a day on either studying or doing practice exams as the time came closer. For the quants, all I did was the 300 questions in the official GMAT review book, and nothing else. For verbal, I used
Manhattan prep’s sentence correction book as my main study source, coupled with the official GMAT verbal book to practice. I did not read any materials for critical reasoning as it is one of my strongest ability. I read some practice GMAT reading comprehension on line for practice. I tried Kaplan’s “passage map” method and found it to be a giant waste of time for myself. I just didn’t have time to create that when doing the test (I am a slow reader). I spent about 2 hours prepping for integrated reasoning (bad idea) by using online resources, and practiced for AWA by writing 5 or 6 essays. I used Kaplan’s GMAT review 2015 to get the sense of what GMAT would be like, and I used it for integrated reasoning and AWA sections as well.
On my practice, the first one I did was a Kaplan’s online mock exam. I got a 720. Then I did the Economists GMAT challenge and got a 740 (they got interesting questions). The weekend before my real GMAT, I did the GMATPrep 1 on Saturday and the 2 on Sunday, got 750 and 740, respectively.
On the day of the real deal, I woke up early, went there, and did the test. It was not the best testing environment, especially when I could not drink too much water before the exam in fear that the call of nature would be too strong to resist. I took all the breaks (2), and used about 5 minutes for each. On the integrated reasoning section, I got caught off guard by one question, and spent lots of time on that question. I got a 6 out of 8 in that section, a bit disappointed, but it doesn’t really count anyway so I am not complaining. On the AWA, I got a 5 out of 6. I was hoping for a 6, but I probably had some degree of overlap in two paragraphs, which was likely the reason.
On quants, I got a 50, a little bit surprised. I thought I would easily get a 51 without a problem. There were 3 questions that I had no idea how to approach, and about 3 or 4 more which I wasn’t entirely sure, but getting a 50 probably means I got most of them wrong plus a few careless mistakes here and there. On the verbal, surprisingly, I got a 40, which was slightly better than what I had expected before I saw the score. Sentence correction showed up 17 times (yes, I had a tally count on the board just for fun), and it did not really lower my performance by too much.
Overall a 740, which is in line with what I wanted, so I think I will not write the GMAT again. Preparing for it wasn’t fun, but it was worth it. I think people can do it on their own quite effectively, but if you feel necessary, going to some prep courses for the weaker areas could also be a good idea. It took me two and a half months of solid studying, but it depends on how comfortable you are with it, and what kind of score you need, you might be able to spend less time on it than I did.
Hopefully this will give some of you some insight as to how others study for it. Good luck on the GMAT.
Cheers,
stevkang8