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28 Jul 2020, 10:09
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Hi everyone,
I've been on the forum for quite a while and benefited a lot from the free materials and great GMAT sharing, so I would like to give back to the forum some experience I got from the GMAT preparation and test taking.
Overview: I took the GMAT last Saturday and got a 760. This was my third attempt after a 680 (which I canceled) and a 720 (accepted the score but I decided to retake because I felt not really satisfied). My background: I'm from Vietnam, better at Quant than Verbal.
1. General rules while studying GMAT:
a. Focus on quality, not quantity: and regarding quality, there are three parts:
+ Quality of the questions: Use Official Guide! Especially in SC and CR, the originality of the questions is crucial. I have a superficial belief that I will waste my time on each unofficial question. GMATNinja said on one of his Youtube video that GMAC spend several thousand dollars on each question; and while I don't really believe they spend that much on each question (my guess would be around $200 but who cares how much I guess), I do believe that official GMAC questions follow strict standards that no test prep company can have.
+ The time that you spend studying each question: So instead of spending time on unofficial questions, invest more time on scrutinizing each official questions that you bump into. I've read somewhere in this forum that it's better to study 1 question thoroughly than to study 5 questions outwardly, and I believe so
. During my preparation, I would do one first time without looking at the official answer, then I spend time analyzing each option (try to answer why each option is right/worng, what are the traps, what to remember, how to tackle the same type of question in the future, what are the concepts that the question tests), take note on that, close the book and do the question again later. It is a tedious process, I know 
, but I believe that way is better than spending time answering too many questions without understanding what's behind.
+ The quality of the answer explanation: For each question you need a good source of explanation. My first choice is obviously the official answers in OG, however not all of the OG explanation is detail enough, so I usually look for answers on the internet. I find explanation from GMATNinja, E-Gmat, GMAT with CJ, or Ron Purewal very valuable.
b. Focus less on too hard questions, more on easy & medium questions: The GMAT will punish you hard if you miss or spend too much time on easy & medium question, harder than when you fail at hard questions; so during preparation, ensure that you can solve those questions skillfully before looking at hard/very hard questions. As for me, I kind of "ignore" most of the 85% - 95% verbal questions on GMAT Club (too hard, some with logic that I can't even understand).
c. Time your practice: this one is easy
. For me, I did set of 10 to 20 questions each. 1.5mins/question for SC and 2mins/questions for CR on average. Make sure you don't hit the time limit of the question set, but also make sure you don't spend too much time on each questions. (if you do, that's fine, it's just practicing, but make sure you have at least some sense with regard to how long is too long when answering each question)
2. By each section:
a. Quant
I don't have lots of tips when studying quant (my quant base was good, I just needed to familiarize myself with the question types and English math terminology (as I've only studied math in my mother tounge)
In terms of materials, I strongly recommend GMAT Club Maths book (actually pretty much all you need to know is there), and use GMAT Club tests to practice. But again, if you have different maths background you might need another approach.
I did solve questions on GMATclub regularly to keep my brain in shape though - filter questions by topic & difficulty (eg. Geometry 700 levels and solve all of them)
b. Verbal is the part that burnt my time the most
- Reading Comprehension:
+ Concept materials: Veritas book
+ Practice questions source: OG & Verbal
+ After reading the Veritas book (key thing is the STOP strategy - summarize in your head the main idea of each sentence/paragraph), my score improved quite significantly. I also realized that my RC just got naturally better after I do lots of CR questions (I guess it's because my vocabulary and reading speed improved when doing CR)
- Critical Reasoning:
+ Concept materials: PowerScore (read some key concepts) - the book is good but don't spend too much time on it, it's better to practice.
+ Practice question source: OG & Verbal & GMATPrep & LSAT (I find LSAT questions very close to GMAT questions. Go to GMAT practice question banks-> filter LSAT 600 - 700 levels. You can either do sets by type (assumption, strengthen, weaken) or mixed, your choice)
+ My way to solve CR questions is: 1. Read the prompt first (to have an idea in mind of how I will think about the questions) -> 2. Read the paragraph, identify conclusion and premise -> 3. Think about how you can answer the prompt without looking at the choice, the target is not to answer the prompt right away, but to understand the paragraph deeply -> 4. Read all choices and eliminate
- Sentence Correction:
+ Concept materials: Manhattan book, GMATninja videos, E-gmat videos (I find e-gmat meaning based approach very powerful, I use it in all questions)
+ Practice source: OG & Verbal & GMATPrep & GMAT Advanced (all available for free on this forum)
+ My approach: 1. read the sentence and try to understand its meaning -> 2. read the choices and eliminate
+ For both SC and CR, I realize it's very easy to lose your skills if you don't practice. There was a 2 week period that I ignored SC (after my 1st GMAT attempt - I was too bored of it), I found myself falter at SC after that. So I would recommend anybody to keep doing 5-6 questions of SC and 5 - 6CR everyday (of course with quality, try to understand deeply each question). 2 weeks before my last test, I solved around 150 SC + CR on GMATClub (guess doing so helped me a lot)
c. IR and AWA don't focus too much on both of them.
For AWA -> you all know the legendary Chineseburn post. Just follow him/her
For IR -> familiarize yourself with the question types during mock tests. I believe this one increase after you do lots of CR + quant questions.
3. Other tips:
a. Being nervous really affects your score
My score improved from 680 to 720 to 760 even though I did not study much during the three attempts (2 months). The only thing that I see improved was my mentality. I was less stressed and nervous.
I was very nervous before my first attempt. Too nervous that I couldn't sleep for the whole night before ended up taking a sleep pill and was sleepy during the test
.
Then I retook the test, less nervous but still a little. Retook again for the third time, I was totally familiar with the test center (even with the receptionist), the environment, and I also got a 720 to back me up, so I guess that's why I was totally comfortable and scored way better than I expected. Before the 3rd attempt, I also got better sleep compared to the 1st one (because of less stress, again)
So my tip will be: retake if you believe you were nervous/stressed on your last attempt. I guess there would be a less expensive way (doing mock tests for example), but for me the feeling of doing mock test at home is very different to doing real test at the center.
b. Save time using "the incredible hand trick" read the debrief from spitfire1 and follow the hand trick, it helped a lot (I used to write A B C D E and do elimination on the scratch paper before, I never did it again after I found this amazing tip - thanks a lot spitfire1! (sorry I can't post link)
Above are some of my tips, hope those can help anybody struggling with the GMAT (like me). Good luck!
I've been on the forum for quite a while and benefited a lot from the free materials and great GMAT sharing, so I would like to give back to the forum some experience I got from the GMAT preparation and test taking.
Overview: I took the GMAT last Saturday and got a 760. This was my third attempt after a 680 (which I canceled) and a 720 (accepted the score but I decided to retake because I felt not really satisfied). My background: I'm from Vietnam, better at Quant than Verbal.
1. General rules while studying GMAT:
a. Focus on quality, not quantity: and regarding quality, there are three parts:
+ Quality of the questions: Use Official Guide! Especially in SC and CR, the originality of the questions is crucial. I have a superficial belief that I will waste my time on each unofficial question. GMATNinja said on one of his Youtube video that GMAC spend several thousand dollars on each question; and while I don't really believe they spend that much on each question (my guess would be around $200 but who cares how much I guess), I do believe that official GMAC questions follow strict standards that no test prep company can have.
+ The time that you spend studying each question: So instead of spending time on unofficial questions, invest more time on scrutinizing each official questions that you bump into. I've read somewhere in this forum that it's better to study 1 question thoroughly than to study 5 questions outwardly, and I believe so
. During my preparation, I would do one first time without looking at the official answer, then I spend time analyzing each option (try to answer why each option is right/worng, what are the traps, what to remember, how to tackle the same type of question in the future, what are the concepts that the question tests), take note on that, close the book and do the question again later. It is a tedious process, I know , but I believe that way is better than spending time answering too many questions without understanding what's behind.+ The quality of the answer explanation: For each question you need a good source of explanation. My first choice is obviously the official answers in OG, however not all of the OG explanation is detail enough, so I usually look for answers on the internet. I find explanation from GMATNinja, E-Gmat, GMAT with CJ, or Ron Purewal very valuable.
b. Focus less on too hard questions, more on easy & medium questions: The GMAT will punish you hard if you miss or spend too much time on easy & medium question, harder than when you fail at hard questions; so during preparation, ensure that you can solve those questions skillfully before looking at hard/very hard questions. As for me, I kind of "ignore" most of the 85% - 95% verbal questions on GMAT Club (too hard, some with logic that I can't even understand).
c. Time your practice: this one is easy
. For me, I did set of 10 to 20 questions each. 1.5mins/question for SC and 2mins/questions for CR on average. Make sure you don't hit the time limit of the question set, but also make sure you don't spend too much time on each questions. (if you do, that's fine, it's just practicing, but make sure you have at least some sense with regard to how long is too long when answering each question)2. By each section:
a. Quant
I don't have lots of tips when studying quant (my quant base was good, I just needed to familiarize myself with the question types and English math terminology (as I've only studied math in my mother tounge)
In terms of materials, I strongly recommend GMAT Club Maths book (actually pretty much all you need to know is there), and use GMAT Club tests to practice. But again, if you have different maths background you might need another approach.
I did solve questions on GMATclub regularly to keep my brain in shape though - filter questions by topic & difficulty (eg. Geometry 700 levels and solve all of them)
b. Verbal is the part that burnt my time the most
- Reading Comprehension:
+ Concept materials: Veritas book
+ Practice questions source: OG & Verbal
+ After reading the Veritas book (key thing is the STOP strategy - summarize in your head the main idea of each sentence/paragraph), my score improved quite significantly. I also realized that my RC just got naturally better after I do lots of CR questions (I guess it's because my vocabulary and reading speed improved when doing CR)
- Critical Reasoning:
+ Concept materials: PowerScore (read some key concepts) - the book is good but don't spend too much time on it, it's better to practice.
+ Practice question source: OG & Verbal & GMATPrep & LSAT (I find LSAT questions very close to GMAT questions. Go to GMAT practice question banks-> filter LSAT 600 - 700 levels. You can either do sets by type (assumption, strengthen, weaken) or mixed, your choice)
+ My way to solve CR questions is: 1. Read the prompt first (to have an idea in mind of how I will think about the questions) -> 2. Read the paragraph, identify conclusion and premise -> 3. Think about how you can answer the prompt without looking at the choice, the target is not to answer the prompt right away, but to understand the paragraph deeply -> 4. Read all choices and eliminate
- Sentence Correction:
+ Concept materials: Manhattan book, GMATninja videos, E-gmat videos (I find e-gmat meaning based approach very powerful, I use it in all questions)
+ Practice source: OG & Verbal & GMATPrep & GMAT Advanced (all available for free on this forum)
+ My approach: 1. read the sentence and try to understand its meaning -> 2. read the choices and eliminate
+ For both SC and CR, I realize it's very easy to lose your skills if you don't practice. There was a 2 week period that I ignored SC (after my 1st GMAT attempt - I was too bored of it), I found myself falter at SC after that. So I would recommend anybody to keep doing 5-6 questions of SC and 5 - 6CR everyday (of course with quality, try to understand deeply each question). 2 weeks before my last test, I solved around 150 SC + CR on GMATClub (guess doing so helped me a lot)
c. IR and AWA don't focus too much on both of them.
For AWA -> you all know the legendary Chineseburn post. Just follow him/her
For IR -> familiarize yourself with the question types during mock tests. I believe this one increase after you do lots of CR + quant questions.
3. Other tips:
a. Being nervous really affects your score
My score improved from 680 to 720 to 760 even though I did not study much during the three attempts (2 months). The only thing that I see improved was my mentality. I was less stressed and nervous.
I was very nervous before my first attempt. Too nervous that I couldn't sleep for the whole night before ended up taking a sleep pill and was sleepy during the test
.Then I retook the test, less nervous but still a little. Retook again for the third time, I was totally familiar with the test center (even with the receptionist), the environment, and I also got a 720 to back me up, so I guess that's why I was totally comfortable and scored way better than I expected. Before the 3rd attempt, I also got better sleep compared to the 1st one (because of less stress, again)
So my tip will be: retake if you believe you were nervous/stressed on your last attempt. I guess there would be a less expensive way (doing mock tests for example), but for me the feeling of doing mock test at home is very different to doing real test at the center.
b. Save time using "the incredible hand trick"
read the debrief from spitfire1 and follow the hand trick, it helped a lot (I used to write A B C D E and do elimination on the scratch paper before, I never did it again after I found this amazing tip - thanks a lot spitfire1! (sorry I can't post link)Above are some of my tips, hope those can help anybody struggling with the GMAT (like me). Good luck!
28 Jul 2020, 12:21
Kudos
Bookmarks
Congratulations, Tdsftu, on achieving a fantastic GMAT™ score. I am glad to hear that that part of your application is behind you now. Your post rings so true to the tenets I teach my students. I particularly enjoyed the parts about getting accuracy up on Easy and Medium questions, as well as using 600-700-level LSAT questions (again, not the tougher ones that I end up spending a lot of time explaining in my posts). Appreciating that CR and RC go hand in hand is another notion that I stress to students, yet it is often overlooked.
On a side note, I was pleased to see such praise for the Veritas RC book. Was there a reason you chose it over the corresponding book by Manhattan Prep? I ask because in debrief after debrief, I read about MGMAT, but the Veritas books seem lesser used (or at least written about), unless people have gone through the entire Veritas course. Likewise, why PowerScore over the Manhattan Prep guide for CR? I have read that non-native speakers may find the former more useful, but I am curious as to what enticed you to select it in the first place.
Thank you for sharing. I am glad that all your hard work paid off, even if you say you may not have worked too hard between successive tests. Best of luck to you, going forward.
- Andrew
On a side note, I was pleased to see such praise for the Veritas RC book. Was there a reason you chose it over the corresponding book by Manhattan Prep? I ask because in debrief after debrief, I read about MGMAT, but the Veritas books seem lesser used (or at least written about), unless people have gone through the entire Veritas course. Likewise, why PowerScore over the Manhattan Prep guide for CR? I have read that non-native speakers may find the former more useful, but I am curious as to what enticed you to select it in the first place.
Thank you for sharing. I am glad that all your hard work paid off, even if you say you may not have worked too hard between successive tests. Best of luck to you, going forward.
- Andrew
28 Jul 2020, 13:17
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Tdsftu
Congratulations for scoring amazing 760. Thanks for taking your time to share your debrief.
Can you please let me know your answers to the questions below
1. What is the Mock tests that you used during your prep ?
2. How did you manage time between Verbal and Quant during your prep. Since you said you were comfortable in Quant, would you say you spent more time on verbal ?
3. Can you let us know your split ?
All the best for your applications
Congratulations for scoring amazing 760. Thanks for taking your time to share your debrief.
Can you please let me know your answers to the questions below
1. What is the Mock tests that you used during your prep ?
2. How did you manage time between Verbal and Quant during your prep. Since you said you were comfortable in Quant, would you say you spent more time on verbal ?
3. Can you let us know your split ?
All the best for your applications
