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I just came out of my test and I'm over the moon. It’s been almost a decade since I graduated college, and I’ve been working in creative roles in a nontraditional industry where relationships, charisma, and innovation matter far more than reasoning and logic. So when it came to the GMAT, I thought I was ****; but after 6 months of work, I pulled out a 750 (Q47, V47, IR8).
Here's my story:
Everyone on this sub said to do TTP, so I started doing it in April; my diagnostic test was in the high 600s range, but my quant was really suffering. By May, it was going pretty slowly, especially since TTP is so exhaustive, but I hoped I could spend all summer and fall just hammering studying. Jump to June 2022, and suddenly I get offered a time-intensive internship in a completely different field (VC). I said yes because it made me a better contender for applications, but I was worried I'd be hurt from a GMAT perspective. I made the decision to start doing weekly tutoring with Jeff from TTP, in addition to the course. It tacked on a lot more cost to the price tag of my total GMAT experience, but given the lack of time I had, it was really my only option. TTP is an amazing course, but tutoring allows you to reiterate the lessons you learned in each chapter in a different forum. Your brain learns better when you use learned knowledge in diverse situations: it's one thing to read a chapter on ratios and take a quiz, but it's another altogether to finish the quiz and then go to the supermarket and look at the ratio of the price of a single Apple to its per-pound price, in comparison to the same ratio for a banana. And then hop on Zoom to do math problems in front of a tutor (which is helpful because it simulates the performance anxiety you'll feel when actually taking the test).
Two things that did work in my favor: 1) I got Extra Time accommodations due to ADHD/learning disabilities; 2) I had aced Calculus back in college, so it was more about relearning everything I forgot when I was 20, rather learning math for the first time.
In the end, Target Test Prep is by far the best resource for taking the GMAT, but I do have some thoughts about how to best use it, based on my experience:
1. **Take an active role your own study strategy and adjust your approach when necessarily**. TTP has been criticized on this sub for being overly exhaustive and time consuming. Those criticisms are valid, but there are ways to circumvent the burden. TTP presents itself as the most thorough, complete approach to prepping you for the GMAT; if you do the material exactly as they recommend, in the exact order they present it, you’ll get a good score. That’s an absolute fact. The issue is that many people don’t have the time or discipline to follow their curriculum to the letter - myself included. I'm not very disciplined, I'm not autodidactic, but I am mentally nimble. So if, like me, you have outsize strengths in some areas and knowledge gaps in others, you'll have to take a more active role in your TTP approach. By that I mean you should skip or skim some sections in favor of hitting other sections. Each chapter has sections on important core concepts and then sections on special variations of that core concept. What TTP does poorly is differentiate between the two, so as you're going, try to identify for yourself "What are things that I absolutely need to know in order to get a good score, and what are things that *might* appear on the test in a single question, if at all".
2. **Don't do all the End of Chapter Tests Immediately**. I would do one Easy, one Medium, one Hard, and then move the **** on. You'll want to be able to come back to the earlier chapters and retest yourself on them, and no matter how hard you try, you *will* be rusty on Chapter 4 by the time you're on Chapter 14. You're going to have to retread old territory, so I recommend keeping some chapter tests available. But you should also realize that all of the chapter tests are highly relevant to that chapter - it's likely that the questions on the test will have backdoors or workarounds that could be approached from many different chapters.
3. **If TTP's course plan seems impossibly lengthy and dense, find ways to lighten the load**: After the internship, I had to make several changes to my study plan in the interest of time. First, I stopped studying verbal altogether. I was crushing verbal and reasoning, and decided to focus entirely on quant. I was always really good at Sentence Correction - I had done the first few Verbal Chapters for TTP, but after I took two practice tests and got above a 95% on the Verbal for both, I realized it simply wasnt worth my time studying verbal. If you're an imperfect student like me and you're on a time crunch, you'll realize that you will have to selectively *not memorize* some things. For example, I skipped Geometry entirely. Seriously. I literally knew I'd have to make a choice between getting really good at statistics and word problems (which I was already pretty good at) and learning Geometry and *maybe* becoming passable at it (but still likely very weak). Obviously, I don't recommend skipping Geometry, but just realize that you are a human being, not a super computer, and there's only room for so much material. Would I have been able to get 780-800 if I'd studied been more disciplined in my study and learned everything? Maybe, but it's more likely that I would have gotten so dispassionate and frustrated that I stopped eating well, sleeping enough, and working out properly. You'll only have a couple questions, max, on Geometry. But not having enough emotional and mental energy to do well will affect every one of your test questions.
4. **Read the Strategy Sections**: To me, the most useful part of TTP wasn't the material in the chapters but rather the Strategy Chapters and Chapter Tests. Also the Equation guide. Things like "If you're short on time, narrow it down to two answers and guess rather than waste 3 more minutes on a problem you still might get wrong" or "try to use Quant Math tricks and write using GMAT-correct grammar in your daily life" were a godsend for me. So don't skimp on the strategy sections. In fact, once you do a practice GMAT and have some familiarity with *how it feels* to take the test, I would go ahead and read all the strategy chapters.
TLDR; Do Target Test Prep, but be the master of your own destiny and make changes where needed. Need a tutor for supplemental work? Get one. Do you have ADHD and need extra time? It's worth looking into. These things all cost extra $$$, but coming from a creative field in a non traditional industry, I had no idea how to prepare for this exam on my own, and I'm really glad that I went the path I did.
Posted from my mobile device
Here's my story:
Everyone on this sub said to do TTP, so I started doing it in April; my diagnostic test was in the high 600s range, but my quant was really suffering. By May, it was going pretty slowly, especially since TTP is so exhaustive, but I hoped I could spend all summer and fall just hammering studying. Jump to June 2022, and suddenly I get offered a time-intensive internship in a completely different field (VC). I said yes because it made me a better contender for applications, but I was worried I'd be hurt from a GMAT perspective. I made the decision to start doing weekly tutoring with Jeff from TTP, in addition to the course. It tacked on a lot more cost to the price tag of my total GMAT experience, but given the lack of time I had, it was really my only option. TTP is an amazing course, but tutoring allows you to reiterate the lessons you learned in each chapter in a different forum. Your brain learns better when you use learned knowledge in diverse situations: it's one thing to read a chapter on ratios and take a quiz, but it's another altogether to finish the quiz and then go to the supermarket and look at the ratio of the price of a single Apple to its per-pound price, in comparison to the same ratio for a banana. And then hop on Zoom to do math problems in front of a tutor (which is helpful because it simulates the performance anxiety you'll feel when actually taking the test).
Two things that did work in my favor: 1) I got Extra Time accommodations due to ADHD/learning disabilities; 2) I had aced Calculus back in college, so it was more about relearning everything I forgot when I was 20, rather learning math for the first time.
In the end, Target Test Prep is by far the best resource for taking the GMAT, but I do have some thoughts about how to best use it, based on my experience:
1. **Take an active role your own study strategy and adjust your approach when necessarily**. TTP has been criticized on this sub for being overly exhaustive and time consuming. Those criticisms are valid, but there are ways to circumvent the burden. TTP presents itself as the most thorough, complete approach to prepping you for the GMAT; if you do the material exactly as they recommend, in the exact order they present it, you’ll get a good score. That’s an absolute fact. The issue is that many people don’t have the time or discipline to follow their curriculum to the letter - myself included. I'm not very disciplined, I'm not autodidactic, but I am mentally nimble. So if, like me, you have outsize strengths in some areas and knowledge gaps in others, you'll have to take a more active role in your TTP approach. By that I mean you should skip or skim some sections in favor of hitting other sections. Each chapter has sections on important core concepts and then sections on special variations of that core concept. What TTP does poorly is differentiate between the two, so as you're going, try to identify for yourself "What are things that I absolutely need to know in order to get a good score, and what are things that *might* appear on the test in a single question, if at all".
2. **Don't do all the End of Chapter Tests Immediately**. I would do one Easy, one Medium, one Hard, and then move the **** on. You'll want to be able to come back to the earlier chapters and retest yourself on them, and no matter how hard you try, you *will* be rusty on Chapter 4 by the time you're on Chapter 14. You're going to have to retread old territory, so I recommend keeping some chapter tests available. But you should also realize that all of the chapter tests are highly relevant to that chapter - it's likely that the questions on the test will have backdoors or workarounds that could be approached from many different chapters.
3. **If TTP's course plan seems impossibly lengthy and dense, find ways to lighten the load**: After the internship, I had to make several changes to my study plan in the interest of time. First, I stopped studying verbal altogether. I was crushing verbal and reasoning, and decided to focus entirely on quant. I was always really good at Sentence Correction - I had done the first few Verbal Chapters for TTP, but after I took two practice tests and got above a 95% on the Verbal for both, I realized it simply wasnt worth my time studying verbal. If you're an imperfect student like me and you're on a time crunch, you'll realize that you will have to selectively *not memorize* some things. For example, I skipped Geometry entirely. Seriously. I literally knew I'd have to make a choice between getting really good at statistics and word problems (which I was already pretty good at) and learning Geometry and *maybe* becoming passable at it (but still likely very weak). Obviously, I don't recommend skipping Geometry, but just realize that you are a human being, not a super computer, and there's only room for so much material. Would I have been able to get 780-800 if I'd studied been more disciplined in my study and learned everything? Maybe, but it's more likely that I would have gotten so dispassionate and frustrated that I stopped eating well, sleeping enough, and working out properly. You'll only have a couple questions, max, on Geometry. But not having enough emotional and mental energy to do well will affect every one of your test questions.
4. **Read the Strategy Sections**: To me, the most useful part of TTP wasn't the material in the chapters but rather the Strategy Chapters and Chapter Tests. Also the Equation guide. Things like "If you're short on time, narrow it down to two answers and guess rather than waste 3 more minutes on a problem you still might get wrong" or "try to use Quant Math tricks and write using GMAT-correct grammar in your daily life" were a godsend for me. So don't skimp on the strategy sections. In fact, once you do a practice GMAT and have some familiarity with *how it feels* to take the test, I would go ahead and read all the strategy chapters.
TLDR; Do Target Test Prep, but be the master of your own destiny and make changes where needed. Need a tutor for supplemental work? Get one. Do you have ADHD and need extra time? It's worth looking into. These things all cost extra $$$, but coming from a creative field in a non traditional industry, I had no idea how to prepare for this exam on my own, and I'm really glad that I went the path I did.
Posted from my mobile device
Updated on: 12 Jan 2023, 15:13
Originally posted by GmatKnightTutor on 16 Dec 2022, 15:44.
Last edited by GmatKnightTutor on 12 Jan 2023, 15:13, edited 1 time in total.
Last edited by GmatKnightTutor on 12 Jan 2023, 15:13, edited 1 time in total.
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Gratz on the 750. All the best going forward.
17 Dec 2022, 07:51
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Nice work, Steviebwolf!
The TTP team is stoked to have been able to play a role in your success, and may all go well for you with your apps and everything else going forward.
The TTP team is stoked to have been able to play a role in your success, and may all go well for you with your apps and everything else going forward.
