4 wks 4 days to GMAT....PLEASE advice?

Question

Hi everyone,

I would be very grateful for advice regarding my situation.

I have been through both the maths and verbal reviews in the Princeton Review and Kaplan books. That is the section they tell you how to approach the verbal and maths questions and the basic maths and verbal concepts. This took me 2 weeks in total.

I haven't done practice questions / tests yet.

I now have 4 weeks and 4 days off work and my GMAT is at the end of this.

Do I have enough time? I need to score around 700 as I will be applying to the top MBA programs.

I feel stressed and worried I will not get the needed score. I hear of people revising for 6 months and more.

What is the best way to use up my time in the next 4 weeks and 4 days.

Thanks everyone for you help. Its really appreciated.

meander · Answer

Relax, you'll be fine. Start doing practice questions on week days, and practice tests on weekends. Although I'd start with practice questions first. Kinda surprised you didn't do practice questions as you went through the PR and Kaplan books, because that's a good way to pick up on how the strategies work. Doing is always better than just reading.

But you still have plenty of time. Do you have the official guide? It has a bazillion practice questions and is a definite must. You can get it from Amazon for less than mba.com sells it. The official practice tests are free, tho. Look for the GMATPrep tests on mba.com. There are a few batches of practice questions on there too.

Did you buy the individual math and verbal workbooks from PR and Kaplan, or their overall review guides? If you bought the review guides, do the tests from the PR one (Cracking the GMAT), but don't do the Kaplan ones unless you're ready for really hard questions (and then, disregard the scores. Their tests aren't adaptive and the scoring is really off.). Kaplan's good for math but PR is better for verbal.

Hope this helps.

Fig · Answer

GMAT?, your time is short in my eyes.

I suggest u to write a test from GMATprep as fast as u can. U will see thereby where u stand now and u will be able to define some weakness areas in both verbal and quant sections to study.

From this first score, u will already have a better idea and other members should be able to advice u more accurately.

dennisquah · Answer

Hi guys, am new to the GMAT club, just found it a week ago. But what a resource !! I'm in a similar position as Gmat?, my test is on 1 Nov, that means 2 weeks. But i've got some public holidays and will be taking 10 full days off before 1 nov to prep. I did the diagnositic test with the official guide, and my quant was week at a low average, and my verbal was strong at a high above average. Over the past 2 weeks, I moved on and started doing practice questions on the official guide. strangely some of the questions do seem very easy, and the multiple choice options sometimes seem a little too obvious. do you guys find it that way too? i'm not sure if this level of difficulty is indicative of the real GMAT test. I've been working on it in batches of 25 at a time, and will be finishing up quantitive section by tonite. I average 22 correct out of 25 attempted (with a lowest score of 20 and a highest of 24), so far for that past 225 questions in quant. I aim to complete all practice questions in the official guide within the next 4 days. I plan to move on the the kaplan compreensive program and finish up as many of the practice questions as i can. At which stage do you guys think I should do the Gmatprep test? Is it indicative of the actual test? I'm planning to save the final sample test on kaplan for 2 days before my test. I do hope to score at least 600 this round, considering my short prep time, many years from college(5 years). But considering the programme i'm looking to get acceptance in, my target is really 650. thanks guys, good stuff all around.

Fig · Answer

Hi dennisquah and welcome

Well... I suggest u the same advice as for GMAT?. U need to know where u stand by doing as soon as possible a full lenght test (AWA+both V & Q) in the real time condition. This will provide u a good indication of your weak areas. After that, u would be able to focus on them.

In any case (Tests or practices of questions), u should spend the necessary time to understand completly your wrong or "right by luck" questions: search the concepts behind the correct answer and why u got it wrong. In addition, u should keep your mistakes in an error log file in order to come back later and watch/analyse/practice on your mistakes. One important thing is the concentration. Like me, several gmat attempters have serious problem of concentration during the V section after almost 3 long hours of hard work in other sections. The way that I use to address this problem was to practice in bunches of questions the verbal section and correct all of them right after. That forced me to stay continuously focus during 3 hours. I suggest u as well to write at least 4 full GMATPrep tests. It will train u to pace yourself, a very crucial skill to success the GMAT.

This website is full of advices...

compluse it, it's worth it :D

dennisquah · Answer

Hi Fig, Guys

Yeah I work on sample questions and set aside a study time of 3 hours at a go. so far i've been giving myself 5 minute breaks every hour or so of work. And i'm totally wasted afterwords. This could be contributed by the fact that I study at night typically from 9 or 10pm to 1 or 2am, and after a day's work.

My actual test is at 1.30pm, and by next monday, I'll be climatising my system to accomodate max attentiveness and mental alertness in the afternoon.

I've got my next 2 weeks planned out to the minute, with rather arduos 11 hours of study a day, with 2 hour breaks every 4 hours (for meals and stuff). But that also gives me 7 hours of solid rest every night.

I've also planned to take 5 full length tests, from Kaplan and GmatPrep. My first full length test will be tomorrow afternoon. Wish me luck!

Question though: does it make sense to go purchase other books? Such as PR which comes recommended. I did take a look and much of the material is repeated. Prob won't for this round at least, don't think i've the time!

Cheers guys,

Dennis

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4 wks 4 days to GMAT....PLEASE advice?

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