GMAT Study Plan - How to Start your GMAT Prep

GMAT Study Plan for GMAT Novices

Here is one of the most common GMAT study plans used by GMAT Club Members:

• Start with Math section first and focus just on math alone (you can do both math and verbal but I suggest you put all attention into one). Plan to spend 4 weeks on it.
• Start using an Error Log - keep track of your mistakes and guesses -this will become your study guide in Month 3.
• Optional Step: If you are feeling the load is too heavy and you are really weak in Math - get MGMAT Math Foundations book; it is great in providing a more general overview of math concepts.
• At the same time, start reading GMAT Fiction (see below for details on what it is for)
• Get involved with the Math Forum - you will learn a lot esp. when you try to teach someone or explain something
• After you are done with the math section - start taking the math portion of the tests you have.
• Evaluate results and decided if you need to spend more time in Math and patch up certain weak areas or move on to Verbal. This decision will be based on your target GMAT score. If you are looking for high 600's and 700's, I would not move past Quant unless I was able to score around Q44 (again Kaplan tests excluded as they are much harder)
• If you need additional help in Quant - refer to the Math Resources on GMATClub or the GMAT Math Books section. In particular Manhattan GMAT Number Properties book comes highly recommended by many members. Another book you may consider is the PR 1012 - it contains targeted GMAT practice questions, which could be helpful in honing one's skills.
• If you are comfortable with Quant but want to get to Q50+, use the GMAT Club Tests - they contain only hard questions and were designed as practice for high-level math scorers.

• Start working on the Verbal section. You can start with any section, but my suggestion would be to tackle Sentence Correction first
• Error Log!
• Sentence Correction Optional Step: If you are not a native speaker, you will need a good grammar book that steps beyond GMAT and gives you a strong background that you can use as a foundation for GMAT-specific books. Several grammar books are recommended on the Forum (best-gmat-grammar-book-for-international-students-79934.html) but the one that comes up most often is Doing Grammar by Max Morenberg. Another book to consider is Kaplan Verbal Foundations - it is more suited for the GMAT but not as detailed in some areas. This is for you to decide how much help you need or how much time you have. Kaplan Verbal Foundations is quicker and probably easier but incomplete. Also, take a look at GMAT Club's Verbal Resources for many copies of study notes.
• For your verbal practice, you can start with Kaplan Verbal Workbook - it has good strategies. However a very good alternative is the PowerScore Verbal Bible - i would say it is a good notch higher in terms of value and score improvement. It covers SC, CR, and RC.
• Optional Step: A large number of GMAT Club members actually skip the step above and instead use specialized books to tackle each of the questions types. The books they use are:
  
  • Sentence Correction - either MGMAT SC or PowerScore SC
  • Critical Reasoning - either MGMAT CR or PowerScore CR
  • Reading Comprehension - MGMAT RC
  • Note1: MGMAT CR and MGMAT SC come without any practice questions. Instead they refer to questions in the Official Guide 12 and OG Verbal, so you must have those two books to practice and preferably should not have covered it in the past. On the positive note - all Manhattan books come with access to 6 online CAT tests, so you should buy at least one Manhattan GMAT book (any one of them).
  • Note2: This approach of specialized prep takes closer to 2 months for verbal
• Critical Reasoning Optional Step: If you need additional help with Critical Reasoning - Do not get both PowerScore CR and Manhattan GMAT CR - the books are virtually identical (not really but kind of). Instead you can again use the PR 1012 book for targeted practice with Assumption or Conclusion questions or you can go very heavy weight and use LSAT books, but that's a tad too hardcore and usually unnecessary.
• Reading Comprehension is often the hardest areas to conquer - there are no clear rules and it is all about understanding of the passage. Unless you strongly feel that Reading is your forte, I would recommend you pick up a reading habit for the time being. I have written a large post on what I call GMAT Fiction and its benefits - take a look. I felt that reading books was a big contributor to my SC and RC abilities. There are no downsides to this really - worst thing possible is that you would have read some great books. And yes - make sure you read them during your low productivity time (at night, during transit, etc).
• Verbal forum should be your hobby by now
• Take the verbal-only portion of the tests to evaluate your progress (compare to how you did in the diagnostic test).

• This month should be spent on 2 things: taking full length tests (polishing your test taking techniques, timing, stamina) and Reviewing your error log (going through your weaknesses, making sure you understand why you keep making mistakes and how to solve every problem you encountered). You can start using Error log earlier than this by the way - the earlier the better.
• Schedule your test if you have not done so already.
• Start taking full length tests (including AWA) - this is important for your test stamina. Plan to spend a Saturday on this and then subsequent test review.
• Spend a few weeks taking tests and drilling down into your areas of weakness. Create a "black list of questions" that you continue to struggle with and find a way to solve them with minimal mental effort.