this was my first attempt at the gmat. i am 30 years old, based in mumbai, haven't tested in eons and hence was quite nervous about this. i studied for 5-6 weeks, about 3 hours a day.
i am sharing my 2 cents with others who are yet to begin or just beginning to study:
i have accessed gmatclub matter a couple of times but mostly i felt there is too much out there n its pretty overwhelming. one needs to identify ones natural strengths and weaknesses and what help one needs in each. you can do this with a sample DT online to give you a sense of what areas you are a little more comfortable with than others. for example, i was naturally a little weak in CR but a little strong in RC. hence i was keen to pick up any testing tips i could gather on CR to help me improve my accuracy and refine my approach to the questions. the best GMATCLUB stuff i found useful was the "comprehensive critical reasoning guide", the "gmat flashcards v7" and the "gmatclub grammar book". i did not use any material from the leading players but stuck to only the
OG material. i had read a lot about its superior quality and when i tried to give a mock test at a local coaching institute, i was horrified at the quality of the test. it was riddled with grammatical errors and the same RC passage appeared twice! hence i stuck to only official material and used only the gmatprep software to test.
i brushed up fundamentals quickly from the
OG and dived right into the questions (
OG 13). i reviewed my errors, esp in PS, DS and SC: error logs here are the most important. RC is one area where its difficult to significantly alter your score and i didn't employ any strategy here. after the
OG 13, i did the
OG verbal review and the
OG quant review. both are quite easy and unlike the matter on the actual test, but nonetheless it is good practice to refine your accuracy and speed. after these two, i re-did the PS, DS and SC sections on the
OG 13. i maintained notes of my errors and which methods i found difficult or needed a better grasp of. these i revised a few times in my prep and right uptil the testing day. SC is one section which is easy to score with careful practice. it is also the least time consuming and hence i believe one should try to master this section to boost both score and time management.
the biggest thing is to focus on the method. gmat questions are all meant to be solved within two minutes and if one isn't able to, it means there's a better approach out there. this is key to the quant section in particular. for testing i used the gmatprep software - one test within a couple of weeks of prepping. the second one just a week before i wrote the test. since the question bank is limited, re-installing the software or using it with a different username will still get you plenty of repeat questions, artificially inflating your score. hence after two tests, the re-testing i did was all to gain access to the official matter for extra practice. i recommend everyone does that as the kind of questions in the gmatprep software are super.
thats all from me, thank you gmatclub for the support. if anyone would like to ask me any questions, pl feel free to comment.
best,
av.