Study hours

I saw a few posts awhile ago about the number of hours you need to prep to improve your score.. For every 1 pt improvement to your total score, people suggest you study ~1.5 hours.. That seems like a crazy amount of hours but I think it is probably accurate. I studied a ton of time to go from a 670--> 740

The key is to make sure that when you study, the time spent is quality time. For Verbal, I used the MGMAT guides and I found the Reading Comp and Sentence Correction to be very valuable.

I can't agree more with what was said above. My first diagnostic I scored low 500s. After about 80-100 hours of studying, I consistently scored into the low 600s. It took me maybe another month and 100+ hours to score into the high 600s, trying to break 700. My goal is to score as high as possible on the real exam 5 weeks from now.

In terms of my daily study habits, here it is. I hope that it offers some direction:

A little about my daily life... I work full-time about 45-50 hours a week from Sunday through Thursday. I am President of an organization which takes about 5 hours a week of my time, depending on which events are coming up. Finally, I also spend some time in the gym to "get away." Otherwise, I'm always studying.

On work days (Sunday-Thursday), I am studying from 2-5pm. I am going over OG questions, other problem sets, reviewing strategy guides if I feel that I need to. On Thursday, I prepare to take a 3 hour CAT exam.

On weekends (Friday-Saturday), I am spending roughly 8-10 hours on reviewing my CAT exams thoroughly and to set up my schedule for the following week.

I hope this helps a little bit. If you want to speak more about which schedule would be best for you, let me know. We can chat online or something.

The important thing in the preparation is to "NOT BURNOUT" and staying in focus, which definitely cannot be acheived if you spend in a lotta time after a busy day at work.

I would suggest get ample time to study on the weekends and make sure that you manage an hour or so on a weekday that should keep you in the hunt. Don't plan it in such a way that you end up loosing the focus.

I would argue that it's impossible to determine how many hours you will need to raise your score. Your best move is to study as much as possible with the time you have, but be smart about it. Don't try to run marathon study sessions. Study with a similar cadence to what you will find in the test -- use intense study sessions lasting around an hour with a meaningful break in between. Take advantage of all opportunities to study, a bit in the morning, your lunch break, nights, weekends. Use flashcards when you're waiting for meetings or the bus. You've got to go "all-in".

Try to be focused in your study. If you can, categorize your areas of weakness and attack those first. Look at the question types and give more time to your lowest performer. Focus on skill building first (do you understand CR process, do you have grammar rules down, etc.) and do fairly frequent evaluations by working OG problems on GMATPrep tests.

Study is very important. but for you spare time you can play game for fun.