720 after 8 days prep, where to go from here for a 740+?

Question

Greetings all,

I rush prepped for the GMAT over 8 days (had school deadline to meet) using Magoosh at 1.5x speed (got through 2/3 of the quant and 4/5 of the verbal). I didn't do any practice problems, just took 3 practice tests over the week: Experts Global free (520: 45q, 17v), Kaplan free (640: 44q, 33v), GMAT official #1 (700: 42q, 44v).

I got a 720 (47q, 42v) on my first sitting, 29 Dec. 2018.
I hope to get a 750 (49q, 44v), which would be a +2 for each section. I need an impressive score not to get into HSW, but rather because I hope to get into a top 15 program sans work experience (I'm a 32-year old former medical student aiming for a JD/MBA at Cornell).

Any advice on what materials to use for a 740+, especially to raise my quant score (it's 61st percentile)? Should I just finish the final Magoosh quant videos, do practice problems, or restart with a new program? I have the official GMAT guide and quant books, but don't really like prepping for a computer exam with a book.  Money isn't an issue, rather it's time--I need the fastest material possible , I have maybe 2 weeks to prep this time considering upcoming deadlines. Also for reference, I got a 161q, 159v on GRE back in 2012 after 3 days prep, so I'm a relatively fast learner...

Regards,
ss57

AjiteshArun · Answer

If you have the OG, you can access all the official questions it contains online (look for the access code in the book). I'd focus on the "hard" questions if I were you (you can filter OG questions by difficulty level). You could also consider using the  official practice questions pack .

Work through any theory that you need to (focus on quant, as your verbal scores are already very high). Take maybe 2-3 official practice tests before the exam to lock down your exam taking strategy.

cfc198 · Answer

First off,congratulations on the great score!

To jump from a 720 to 740+ in 2 weeks,I would recommend to practice only official GMAT material. Stick to investing your time and money only on offical GMAT CATs, question banks and OG to get a complete feel of the level of questions. Enrolling yourself into a course now will just make things more complicated and could be counterproductive. Best wishes!

billionaire · Answer

Hello ss57 Congrats on such great score

It becomes even more impressive, when we account your time period of prep invested

Okay you want to boost quant score. Sure, do all Magoosh hard quant problems and take their mocks. Complete their quant videos. Also, buy Manhattan mocks. Finally, GMATPrep and official mocks are the best and most accurate material available. In next two weeks, just take Manhattan and official mocks and review them. Dont be surprised if Manhattan seems harder than official ones. That is a good thing for prep

You can take either full test or just quant part, depending on mood. This should be sufficient to surpass 740+. Good news for you is that 720 is already enough to put you in top 15 (or Cornell), and to put things in perspective, for HSW that you mention as NOT being your target average score of admitted students is around 730. In another words, you dont really need 740+, but since you are able to reach it, I agree why not go for it, just dont stress much about it. Good Luck with Cornell

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi ss57,

First off, given your lack of study time, 720 is really impressive, my friend. Normally, I would tell you that two weeks probably is not enough time to improve from 720 to 750, but given that you were able to score 720 in just 8 days, you have a real shot at improving your score.

That being said, to improve your score to 750, you need to go through go through GMAT quant and verbal carefully to find your exact weaknesses, fill gaps in your knowledge, and strengthen your skills. The overall process will be to learn all about how to answer question types with which you currently aren't very comfortable and do dozens of practice questions category by category, basically driving up your score point by point. When you do dozens of questions of the same type one after the other, you learn just what it takes to get questions of that type correct consistently. If you aren't getting close to 90 percent of questions of a certain type correct, go back and seek to better understand how that type of question works, and then do more questions of that type until you get to around at least 90 percent accuracy in your training. If you get 100 percent of some sets correct, even better.

For example, if you find that you are not strong in answering Number Properties questions, then carefully review the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer Number Properties questions and practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties: LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, remainders, etc. When you are working on learning to answer questions of a particular type, start off taking your time, and then seek to speed up as you get more comfortable answering questions of that type. As you do such practice, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get right. If you got a remainder question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not properly apply the remainder formula? Was there a concept you did not understand in the question? By carefully analyzing your mistakes, you will be able to efficiently fix your weaknesses and in turn improve your GMAT quant skills. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.

Each time you strengthen your understanding of a topic and your skill in answering questions of a particular type, you increase your odds of hitting your score goal. You know that there are types of questions that you are happy to see and types that you would rather not see, and types of questions that you take a long time to answer correctly. Learn to more effectively answer the types of questions that you would rather not see, and make them into your favorite types. Learn to correctly answer in two minutes or less questions that you currently take five minutes to answer. By finding, say, a dozen weaker quant areas and turning them into strong areas, you will make great progress toward hitting your quant score goal. If a dozen areas turn out not to be enough, strengthen some more areas.

You can work on verbal in a similar manner. Let’s say you are reviewing Critical Reasoning. Be sure that you practice a large number of Critical Reasoning questions: Strengthen and Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, find the Conclusion, Must be True, etc. As you go through the questions, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get correct. If you missed a Weaken question, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize what the question was asking? Did you skip over a key detail in an answer choice? Getting GMAT verbal questions right is a matter of what you know, what you see, and what you do. So, any time that you don't get one right, you can seek to identify what you had to know to get the right answer, what you had to see that you didn't see, and what you could have done differently to arrive at the correct answer.

So, work on accuracy and generally finding correct answers, work on specific weaker areas one by one to make them strong areas, and when you take a practice GMAT or the real thing, take all the time per question available to do your absolute best to get right answers consistently. The GMAT is essentially a game of seeing how many right answers you can get in the time allotted. Approach the test with that conception in mind, and focus intently on the question in front of you with one goal in mind: getting a CORRECT answer.

In order to follow the path described above, you may need some new quant and verbal materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the  best quant  and  verbal courses .

You also may find my article with more information regarding
 how to score a 700+ on the GMAT  helpful.

Feel free to reach out with any further questions.

Good luck!

ss57 · Answer

thank you all and kudos for the helpful responses, have my 2nd attempt scheduled for Mar. 8, which is 5 days from now.

been casually prepping over the last month by completing then rewatching all the magoosh videos and doing kaplan adaptive q bank questions.

first practice test i took cold a month after my actual 720 and got a 600 on Veritas #1 free (37q, 36v). i then finished watching the last third of the magoosh videos, and got a 680 on Official #3 (42q, 41v) a week later. i've since rewatched every magoosh video lesson, and i'm gonna take Kaplan #2 today/Mar.3, Official #4 on Mar.5, and sit for my retake on Mar.8.

any last week advice on honing my skills?  have loads of materials i've bought but haven't touched, including:
- kaplan gmat 800 book
- 30 day gmat success book
- manhattan prep gmat foundations of math book
- veritas practice tests
- gmat club practice tests
- kaplan practice tests
 anyone recommend touching any of these? not sure what to do on non-practice test days this week.

also, gotten over my fears of leaving the country for schooling and currently aiming at a Oxford financial economics master (stretch) and Cambridge entrepreneurship masters (ideal as i can largely do it online over two years with a few campus visits while i gain the requisite 2-years work experience to apply to Oxford Said's MBA program (my girl is a brit living in Scotland so there's that)).

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720 after 8 days prep, where to go from here for a 740+?

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