Debrief: 760 (Q49, V45) - debrief for non-quant geniuses!

No, I haven't started applying yet. I will apply this fall for matriculation in fall of 2013. How about you?

Congratz for your great score. I'm new here and I hope I can have the same thing in 50 days of preparation ...

No, I haven't started applying yet. I will apply this fall for matriculation in fall of 2013. How about you?[/quote]

I am also hoping to apply for matriculation for the fall of 2013 as well. It will be a challenge, but I am getting ready for it.

I have one question.. Should I reserve my MGMAT CAT until two weeks before G-Day or use them during my preparation to assess my skill? Thank you.

I would recommend using them during your preparation. They are great for teaching time management, as well as identifying specific topics you need to improve upon.

If you bought the MGMAT CATs, you'll have access to eight total CATs (including the two free GMAT Prep tests from GMAC). This should be plenty! I definitely do not think it is worth taking more than eight CATs during your preparation. Also, you shouldn't take more then two per week. Doing more than that doesn't give you enough time to improve your skills between CATs, so you're wasting them in a sense.

I recommend doing one GMAT Prep CAT several weeks before your exam, then doing several MGMAT CATs over the course of the final few weeks (but only 1-2 per week), then taking the final GMAT Prep CAT a few days before your actual exam.

Terrific score, I hope to cross the 750 wall too in 2 months...

great debrief! congrats on the superb score!

I'm starting to study and I'm planning on taking the gmat in before october. Ill be finishing the foundation of gmat math by next Sunday. That last chapter looks heavy on material. What strategy would you recommend for me as far as when I should take my first practice exam? And what is the next book that I should tackle post foundations of gmat math? Also, how many problems would you recommend to do on a per day basis? Once again my goal is to take the exam october? Any suggestions would work.

Laythesmack23

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Would you finish all the 8 mgmat books before starting to work on the actual OG guide problems?

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1. Practice exams: Most people take a practice exam before they even start studying to get a baseline for how much studying they'll need to do. I chose to study quite a bit before taking my first practice exam because I already knew I would score poorly and needed to study a lot. I chose not to "waste" a practice exam in that sense. I would propose taking your first practice exam after you feel you've done enough studying to at least brush up on the basic skills. That way, you can get a good sense of where you should spend your remaining study time.

2. Next book to tackle: I would propose the other MGMAT guides. I did all 8 of them and found them to be quite helpful. After that, do ALL the problems in the Official Guide (or at least most of them).

3. How many problems to do per day: Hard for me to answer this without knowing your work schedule. I have a job that requires long hours, so I could only study for 1-2 hours per day 3-4 days per week. Some people can study a lot more than that based on their work schedule. My recommendation would be to expect to do at least 1,000 Quant and 1,000 Verbal practice problems (unless you're already really good at either Quant or Verbal; then you can do fewer). How long it takes you to accomplish that will be based on your schedule.

Good luck!

I did this, but I don't think it is absolutely necessary. However, I would not recommend doing the OG problems the wat the MGMAT guides recommend, because it unrealistically has you do lots of similar problems in a row. Part of the challenge on the actual GMAT is switching back and forth between many problem types.

I see, since my last post, I've found it somewhat difficult to restrain myself to the chair, and study in a consistent manner.
I finished the numbers property book, and also half way done through the FDP MGMAT S.Guide. So let me get this straight, you did not practice, until you were done with all the books.

Was there a particular method how you chose to do the problems after you completed the guides? Or did you just do like the first 10-15, review, then re do them, and move to the next few questions?
Before you moved from one MGMAT Guide, to the next, how sure were you of the concepts? I understand the concepts, but it seems like i'm honestly forgetting them, I feel that I need to explain the concepts to someone before I move forward, so I can memorize the
necessary steps to solve? Do I need to worry about nailing the concepts 100% before moving forward, or is this something that I might pick up during practicing of the problems, assuming I read the guides, then practice on OG guides?

Correct, I did not do any practice tests until I had completed the books. I realize this won't work for everyone, but it was best for me because I wanted to build a strong base before "wasting" a valuable practice test (as there are so few sources for good/realistic practice tests).

Just to be clear, I did complete the problems at the end of each chapter of the MGMAT guides. But I did NOT do the recommended problems from the Official Guide that MGMAT includes at the end of each chapter until later.

After I completed the guides, I worked through the Official Guide by doing 37 Quant questions in 75 minutes in order to replicate actual test conditions. Same with Verbal (obv doing 41 questions for Verbal). I also started doing lots of GMAT Club Tests and one practice test per week (either MGMAT or GMAT Prep).

You do not need to nail concepts 100% before moving forward. This is impossible, I'd say. Try to build a very strong base, then move through practice problems until you're doing very difficult problems (whatever "very difficult" means for you in the context of whatever score you're trying to achieve). Only doing those problems will truly elevate your skill level to where it needs to be to achieve your target score. The key, in the beginning, is to build very strong fundamentals. Then it is all about refining those fundamentals and learning how to apply those fundamentals faster (after all, at least half the battle is doing things quickly, just as much as learning how to do difficult problems).

I thought the best resources for learning very difficult concepts were MGMAT tests and GMAT Club tests, both of which I felt were much harder than the actual exam (at least the Quant portion). I thought the Verbal portion of the MGMAT tests did not accurately mimic the actual exam (was much too ambiguous), and I did not do the Verbal GMAT Club tests.

Hope that helps! Good luck!