New Strategies to attack the GMAT

Now that you have taken a much needed break, you should find it easier to see improvement. Of course, you will have to work harder and smarter since as your score goes up, the effort needed to push it further up increases exponentially. You might want to try out some new study material (it will help you look at things from a different perspective and the material wont appear stale either). Ensure that your basics of all the relevant topics are strong. Then you should review all your tests and pick out the areas you are weakest in. Focus on one area every week (or whatever works for you) while continuing to practice everything else. If you are willing to put in the effort, you should be able to get your desired score.

Hi Angelik,

It seems you can put in hard work but probably missing the direction. It is good to work hard but unless you know where to put your energies, you will not be able to get desired results. I suggest you to do the following;

Earlier post wasn't completed. Here is the complete post.

Hi Angelik,

It seems you can put in hard work but probably missing the direction. It is good to work hard but unless you know where to put your energies, you will not be able to get desired results. I suggest you to do the following;

1. First and foremost, analyse where do you stand viz a viz your fundamental knowledge of concepts tested on GMAT both for quant and verbal.
2. If you have gone through the basic concepts, you need to practice, practice and practice.
3. If you are lacking on the basics, you have to learn the basics first. I highly recommend all five guides of Manhattan Quant and SC guide from the same company. You can skip RC and CR from Manhattan if you have to spend heavy on them. Alternatively, you can get good offer on a complete package of 8 guides i.e. 5 from quant and 3 for verbal.
4. Download math book from gmat-math-book-87417.html. This is a collaborative efforts by all the legends here. A lot of math concepts will be cleared after you have gone through it.
5. Once you have gone through the basics, for practice I suggest you to take help of this website, which has documented all type of questions for practice supported with expert advice and very clear and clean explanations. Specifically look for the solutions given by Bunuel, Ian and Karishma. Follow these three members and you will get daily digest of questions answered by them.
6. For quant, you should start from 500-600 level questions. After having solved them, you should move to 600-700 category. If you are very comfortable with second level, then only move to 700+ category. Please have a look at ds-question-directory-by-topic-difficulty-128728.html for DS questions and at gmat-ps-question-directory-by-topic-difficulty-127957.html for problem solving questions.
7. These should help you easily go up to 70-75 percentile in quant. For verbal, you need to go through Manhattan SC guide cover to cover and then solve all OG 10, 11 and 12 verbal problems. No need to practice from any other source. Once you have exhausted questions from OG, you can search this site and will find collection of more than 300 questions from GMAT prep compiled with a lot of pains by your friends on this site.
8. For CR, you can refer Powerscore CR guide just to understand the pattern and type of questions covered in GMAT and then practice from official source. This will also help you in RC. For RC you can't do much specifically.
9. Still if you are left with time and feel you are lacking somewhere, GMAT club tests will help you understand concepts and practice them repeatedly.

I am sure you can do this much to reach closure to 700 mark.

All the best. Do let me know if you need help for any of the materials referred above.

Manjeet

THANK YOU all for the advice, I am trying to create a more efficient study plan in order to see the desire results.
Manjeet, I will follow your tips step by step..do you think 15hr per weeks is good? I just don’t want to study like crazy and get sick of it again.
I need extra motivation to get my discipline back!!
Again…thank you all for your time!!!! Let´s see how it goes.

Don't be very particular about specific number of hours/week. You should work backwards i.e. how many months of preparation you can devote to GMAT preparation? Normally 2-3 months is what is required for a good preparation however duration devoted each week will depend on your other preoccupations. 15 hours a week is good amount and you can do the preparation for around 3 months totaling to around 200 hours. Important is the quality rather then number of hours. If you spend time in right direction, even 15 hours will be good enough.

Just relax and enjoy GMAT. At the end of it, you will realize that you have changed altogether and your approach to life is also different. While studying verbal, you will read a lot of real life stories drawn from history, science and business, which will increase your knowledge in general. Similarly while preparing for quant, you will realize beauty of numbers, geometric figures and even common sense which probably you did not notice in school. Make GMAT your friend and you will win.

All the best.

So Is there any improvement in your scores right now!