Hi everyone,
I’m halfway through my GMAT preparation, about to face my final 5 weeks of study –tentative test date is 26 /11-. In order to optimize my study during the next weeks and make the most out of them, I’d like to share with you what I’ve done so far and hear what you have to say. I’ll try to make my post as structured as possible to help you understand where I currently am.
My aspirationsI’m a 2014 graduate with a BSc in Engineering. I will be applying to business school for 2017 intake at the earliest, so I still have plenty of time ahead. However, given that I had the time and the enthusiasm now, I decided to go ahead and prepared the GMAT. My initial goal is a 730+.
Since it’s far ahead, I haven’t put yet a lot of thought into it, but my idea is to apply to top tier schools such as Stanford GSB, HBS or Booth, and maybe to some European schools as well, such as IESE, INSEAD, HEC Paris and/or IE. As of today, I’m more inclined to do the MBA in the US.
Study time (to give you an idea of the time I have available and how I use it)
I’m working full time, competing in sports and involved in other community activities that I decided not to quit during my GMAT Preparation. Normally, I study for a couple of hours after work –some evenings it can be up to 4 hours, and other just 1-. On the weekends, I use one morning to do one CAT and the other morning or an afternoon to take the necessary time to review any mistakes I make in the CAT. When I do the CAT I do the whole thing, AWA and IR included. I try to emulate test conditions as much as possible, doing the 2 8-minutes breaks, snacks, etc.
Materials acquired:•
OG 2016
• Manhattan SC Strategy Guide
• Kaplan Premier 2016 (just using the tests, I haven’t actually opened the book)
Materials I have available from friends but haven’t used so much: • Manhattan RC Strategy Guide
• Manhattan CR Strategy Guide
• Power Score CR Bible
• Other Manhattan Strategy Guides (not used at all)
My first 7 weeks of study (up to today)I started to prepare the GMAT on the very first week of September, my aim was to dedicate 12 weeks to it, and then take the test. So far, it seems that I’m on track.
Week 1: I started to study on a Thursday, right after coming back from summer vacation, so week 1 was actually half a week. I took those two days just to get an overview of the exam: familiarize myself with the times, the structure of the test and the types of question, understand what CAT meant, how the score works… Did a few questions on the
OG paper diagnostic test and took the first GMAT Prep test as a baseline test.
GMAT Prep #1: 620 (Q45, V30)As an engineer and a non-native English speaker, this result was not a huge surprise. As I suspected, I needed to improve both Q and V significantly, and I decided to start working on verbal exclusively for the first 4 weeks before moving on to quant. As an engineer and a non-native English speaker, this result was not a huge surprise.
Week 2 (19 h): my intention was to start working with SC, as I understood it was an “easy” one to boost your score. However, the
MGMAT SC Strategy Guide I ordered on amazon did not arrive on time, so I decided to start with RC. I did a very quick reading of the Manhattan RC SG, and I did all of the RC passages on the
OG. I realized life sciences text where the ones I struggled the most with, whereas technology, social sciences, literature, business-related were mostly ok. Of course, it’d also depend on the difficulty. Taking a few notes per paragraph while reading helps me stay focused on what I’m reading.
MGMAT #1: 630 (Q45, V32)Week 3 (21 h): the SC guide finally arrived, and so that’s what I worked on the whole week. Even as a non-native speaker, I’ve always enjoyed grammar, so concepts like parallelism or subject/verb agreement were not a struggle. Idioms, on the other hand, are what I still struggle with. I continued on doing some RC passages –mostly redoing
OG passages from previous week.
MGMAT #2: 690 (Q45, V39)Good! I was satisfied with my V result after 2 works of exclusive V-work, however I was just a little bit worried about quant. It is true that I had done zero work on it, but I thought that just by doing the CATs on the weekend and reviewing the questions carefully afterwards I could have improved at a least 1 or 2 points…
Note: I wanted to take the first Kaplan CAT, but it was such a pain to register the book that I couldn’t do any until last weekend, when I finally got someone nice on the phone and registered it for me. I was so frustrated with Kaplan though. I sent them e-mails, contacted them on Facebook, called them… it took me over a month to register the book.
Week 4 (14 h): this week was supposed to be used exclusively for CR prep. I started to read the Powerscore bible and did some questions on the
OG… but halfway through the week, I just felt like I couldn’t do verbal anymore. I found the Powerscore book to be too boring, making it too theoretic, and giving too many obvious details sometimes… I think I will still give it a try, but on week 4 I just quit and moved on to quant. I did a couple of days of general quant questions, mostly on GMAT Club and I went for the third
MGMAT CAT (still no news from Kaplan…)
MGMAT #3: 650 (Q44, V35)I was upset… but not too much. It had been a weird week, and thanks to GMAT Club I was aware than this might happen, and that it is critical not to give up when your score goes down like that. It did worry me to see that I got almost every 700-level quant question wrong. I’d get a few 600-700
Weeks 5 and 6 (15 h and 18 h): I did mostly quant work on 700 level questions through GMAT Club and Bunuel. I did
OG CR questions every other day, and some SC questions, also from
OG. By this time my work had lost all the structured approach from the first weeks…
GMAT Prep #1 (redo): 700 (Q47, V39) I did recognize a few questions, but the Kaplan people still had not fixed my registration and I didn’t want to use any more Manhattan CATs.
Kaplan #1 (FINALLY!!!): 710 (Q48, V40)Week 7: it’s the present week. I’ve been working on tough quant problems in general, and refining the topics I’ve struggled a little bit with, namely, remainders, factors & multiples, triangles, and prime numbers. I will take the second Kaplan CAT this weekend.
What I know I must improve1)
Quant: I think I should be able to reach Q50. The question is how. I have mastered 600-700 level questions, and I need to continue working and improving on 700 level questions.
2)
Sentence Correction: even though I improved a lot quickly, I still miss a few SC in every CAT.
Open questions1) Given that I have 4 Kaplan CATs and 3 Manhattan CATs left, how would you distribute them? (Of course, I count on saving the second GMAT Prep for the last weekend before the exam)
2) I know that the only test we should really trust as a predictor is the GMAT Prep, but between Manhattan and Kaplan, which ones are more accurate predictors? I find the Manhattan a bit tougher than the Kaplan, is this appreciation correct? Would it be fair to say that a Q48 or Q49 in
MGMAT is closer to a Q50 or Q51 in the real thing?
3) I’m missing considerable amounts of questions (about a dozen or more) in the past couple of CATs, and yet in the upper 40s. Is this normal?
4) Earlier I said my initial goal was at 730. However as I progressed I reconsidered this, and given the time I have left, I’m more aiming at a 750. How feasible do you think this is?
5) This is a hard one, I know, but given my mockup results so far, could you provide an estimate of the range I’d be nowadays in the GMAT? (both quant and verbal).
6) Should I be following a more structured approach with the math?
7) Any other general advice? Ideas on resources to use from now on? Anything you’d be doing differently?
Thank you so much in advance for your comments and help. They're greatly appreciate it. I hope that this post also helps other in a similar situation, or those starting the GMAT race!
Cheers,
paula