720 GMAT First Attempt - Debrief

Hi y'all,

I just finished the GMAT and scored (unofficially) 720 (Q49 V40), IR 7.

The two materials that I relied heavily on were the OG 17 (with the Quant and Verbal Review books) and "Ace the GMAT: Master the GMAT in 40 Days" by Brandon Royal.

My preparation schedule didn't really follow a format. Two months out, I was studying a few times a week for at most an hour. One month out, I stuck to a strict schedule of 2 - 3 hours a day. At first, I started sequentially through the OG's but as time went on I would skim through the book and only tackle problems I couldn't solve right away. When doing so, I would avoid looking at any answers as best I could. If I needed to spend 10 minutes cracking a question, so be it - independently finding the solution really develops the problem solving skills necessary to tackle unknowns quickly on the test. As time went on, I got a lot better at this.

One thing that I think is really important - you can't start with hard questions. I believed that if I kicked off my studying with 700 level questions, everything underneath that level of difficulty would be easy. For me, this wasn't the case - although I'm sure I was applying simple concepts in solving difficult problems, I found easy problems difficult because I couldn't recognize simple concepts in their basic forms. For example, ratio questions - I could solve difficult ones, but when a simple question of "What is the ratio of A/(A/B)?" or something to that extent came up, I would mess up the order of A:B.

The strategy that helped most was tackling every question in the guide - from easy to hard. In one 6 hour (or so) session, I did every single PS problem in the book, taking notes of where I messed up. Later, I would redo the problems I messed up. This process allowed me to work through the whole book and pick up everything I needed to tackle GMAT style questions.

Nevertheless, it takes time. I didn't know a thing when I started and the learning curve was discouraging. However, with time, things just got easier and stuff clicked. Studying is a matter of hours - if you are focused, I strongly believe that with enough dedication anyone is able to score where they want.

With respect to verbal, I didn't really study it.

I didn't take a GMAT course either. I don't think it is necessary if you have the time and willpower to go through the material yourself.

One thing I will also note - practice with GMAT style questions (GMATPrep and the OG). I like this website, but when I did the Quant CAT two weeks before the test, I didn't score anywhere near as high as I did on the GMAT. This is an excellent resource, but you need to familiarize yourself with the style of the material that you will see on the actual test.