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05 Dec 2015, 22:01
Kudos
Bookmarks
After finding these forums so useful I thought I would share my story now that my GMAT journey has (hopefully) come to an end.
I originally took the GMAT about 5 years ago when applying for masters of accounting programs. I knew which school I wanted to go to and they didn’t care about my GMAT, just that I took it so I put zero effort into studying and score a 610, no idea what my split were but most likely high verbal and low math.
Fast forward sometime and I decided to give the GMAT another go. Prior to reading these forums about how valuable the GMAC tests are I thought the best way to start my studying was to take a GMAC test and see what my “baseline” score was. Had I read through GMATclub I definitely would not have done this but oh well you live and you learn. The result of this test, despite having zero idea how many degrees were in a triangle, was a 650 with a 40Q/39V. Sufficiently enthused by this 40 point improvement from my first GMAT attempt I decided to start studying. I used the following study materials:
Manhattan Foundation of Math
Manhattan Guides (1-5 Math, Sentence Correction)
OG 15
GMAC Question Pack 1
GMAT Club tests
Based on my weakness in Quant my plan was to study for quant for 1.5/2 months and then spend a month on verbal/review. In general I studied 1 hour or so after work and maybe 3-5 hours each weekend day.
I started with Quant by going through the foundations and other guides. For me the Manhattan books were great as I failed to grasp even the most basic math concepts on the exam and I felt stating with the foundation and working the way through the series started to give me a good grasp of the concepts. After doing the guides I went through and did all the OG 15 questions. Based on the ones I got incorrect I re-read/did the problems of the relevant sections from Manhattan. After getting to what I thought was an ok (but not great place in Quant) I decided to take GMAT Prep Test 1 (just the quant part) again (this was months after I originally took it so I did not remember any of the problems). I scored a 47 which while not great I felt was good enough to get a score in the range I wanted if I improved my verbal a bit.
Prior to transitioning to studying for verbal I did something very dumb – I took a three week break from studying for a vacation. It just worked out that way due to timing but this ended up causing me to forget a lot of math and waste a lot of valuable study time. After returning from vacation I spent one week studying sentence correction by reading through the Manhattan guide and doing the OG problems. After doing this I took GMAT Prep Test 1 again (verbal only this time) and got a 44. Based on this I decided my verbal was good enough and to go back to Quant as a practice CAT I had taken had seen my score drop quite a bit (due to not touching quant for a month with verbal studying and vacation)
In an effort to improve my quant score at this time I purchased the GMAT club tests. These tests received glowing reviews on the forums so I thought they may help push me over the edge. I hope this doesn’t get my post deleted but I did not like these tests for my own personal reasons, namely they were HARD. So hard that I would get discouraged/frustrated while taking them. Had I had more time to study (my exam was about 2.5 weeks out at this point) I’m sure the GMAT club tests would have help my quant greatly. In fact my plan for if my GMAT did not go well was to go back and master the GMAT club exams. However, given my timeframe, I did not enjoy the GMAT club tests as I felt like rather than challenging me they just made me lost and want to give up.
In the last week before the exam I went back through the OG questions and redid the ones I got wrong (conveniently tracked in GMATClub analyzes of the book) as well as redid all the questions I got wrong in question pack 1.
I did very minimal for RC (just whatever questions I did in practice tests) and the hard question pack one logic questions. Generally I could hit on about 90-95% of these questions so I did not focus on them with the thought it would be hard to improve much.
I did not spend any time studying for IR beyond taking it in GMAT prep and did not write any AWA, only memorizing the template from GMATClub yesterday (waiting for that grade to come back to see if that strategy worked).
During the few weeks after I took the verbal portion of GMAT prep 1 and my actual exam I took several CATs and scored the following:
Manhatten Q45/V40 - 710
GMAT Club Free Test Q40
GMAT Club Test 1 Q39
Veritas Q39
GMAT Prep Test 2 Q47/V42 – 720
To be honest I skipped the AWA for all full practice exams and only on GMAT prep 2.
Today I took the exam and I scored a 740 (Q49/V42/IR 8) which I am very happy with and do not plan on retaking.
Looking back on my studying experience a few tips/things I would do differently:
• Do not take a long break during your studying. You will waste time relearning. I think the three month time frame given in many GMATclub study guides is fair.
• Do not freak out about low CAT scores on the non GMAT prep tests. Given I some of the tests I took after long day of work+studying but overall I think the non-offical ones are generally more challenging and you tend to score lower (likely due to the fact that the percentiles are based on the subset of the GMAT population who would even take these exams).
• Just because you are lower percentile in one means you should focus exclusively on it. I did and I most likely left some points on the board by not spending more time on sentence correction.
Best of luck to anyone still studying for the exam. If you put in the effort you will get there.
I originally took the GMAT about 5 years ago when applying for masters of accounting programs. I knew which school I wanted to go to and they didn’t care about my GMAT, just that I took it so I put zero effort into studying and score a 610, no idea what my split were but most likely high verbal and low math.
Fast forward sometime and I decided to give the GMAT another go. Prior to reading these forums about how valuable the GMAC tests are I thought the best way to start my studying was to take a GMAC test and see what my “baseline” score was. Had I read through GMATclub I definitely would not have done this but oh well you live and you learn. The result of this test, despite having zero idea how many degrees were in a triangle, was a 650 with a 40Q/39V. Sufficiently enthused by this 40 point improvement from my first GMAT attempt I decided to start studying. I used the following study materials:
Manhattan Foundation of Math
Manhattan Guides (1-5 Math, Sentence Correction)
OG 15
GMAC Question Pack 1
GMAT Club tests
Based on my weakness in Quant my plan was to study for quant for 1.5/2 months and then spend a month on verbal/review. In general I studied 1 hour or so after work and maybe 3-5 hours each weekend day.
I started with Quant by going through the foundations and other guides. For me the Manhattan books were great as I failed to grasp even the most basic math concepts on the exam and I felt stating with the foundation and working the way through the series started to give me a good grasp of the concepts. After doing the guides I went through and did all the OG 15 questions. Based on the ones I got incorrect I re-read/did the problems of the relevant sections from Manhattan. After getting to what I thought was an ok (but not great place in Quant) I decided to take GMAT Prep Test 1 (just the quant part) again (this was months after I originally took it so I did not remember any of the problems). I scored a 47 which while not great I felt was good enough to get a score in the range I wanted if I improved my verbal a bit.
Prior to transitioning to studying for verbal I did something very dumb – I took a three week break from studying for a vacation. It just worked out that way due to timing but this ended up causing me to forget a lot of math and waste a lot of valuable study time. After returning from vacation I spent one week studying sentence correction by reading through the Manhattan guide and doing the OG problems. After doing this I took GMAT Prep Test 1 again (verbal only this time) and got a 44. Based on this I decided my verbal was good enough and to go back to Quant as a practice CAT I had taken had seen my score drop quite a bit (due to not touching quant for a month with verbal studying and vacation)
In an effort to improve my quant score at this time I purchased the GMAT club tests. These tests received glowing reviews on the forums so I thought they may help push me over the edge. I hope this doesn’t get my post deleted but I did not like these tests for my own personal reasons, namely they were HARD. So hard that I would get discouraged/frustrated while taking them. Had I had more time to study (my exam was about 2.5 weeks out at this point) I’m sure the GMAT club tests would have help my quant greatly. In fact my plan for if my GMAT did not go well was to go back and master the GMAT club exams. However, given my timeframe, I did not enjoy the GMAT club tests as I felt like rather than challenging me they just made me lost and want to give up.
In the last week before the exam I went back through the OG questions and redid the ones I got wrong (conveniently tracked in GMATClub analyzes of the book) as well as redid all the questions I got wrong in question pack 1.
I did very minimal for RC (just whatever questions I did in practice tests) and the hard question pack one logic questions. Generally I could hit on about 90-95% of these questions so I did not focus on them with the thought it would be hard to improve much.
I did not spend any time studying for IR beyond taking it in GMAT prep and did not write any AWA, only memorizing the template from GMATClub yesterday (waiting for that grade to come back to see if that strategy worked).
During the few weeks after I took the verbal portion of GMAT prep 1 and my actual exam I took several CATs and scored the following:
Manhatten Q45/V40 - 710
GMAT Club Free Test Q40
GMAT Club Test 1 Q39
Veritas Q39
GMAT Prep Test 2 Q47/V42 – 720
To be honest I skipped the AWA for all full practice exams and only on GMAT prep 2.
Today I took the exam and I scored a 740 (Q49/V42/IR 8) which I am very happy with and do not plan on retaking.
Looking back on my studying experience a few tips/things I would do differently:
• Do not take a long break during your studying. You will waste time relearning. I think the three month time frame given in many GMATclub study guides is fair.
• Do not freak out about low CAT scores on the non GMAT prep tests. Given I some of the tests I took after long day of work+studying but overall I think the non-offical ones are generally more challenging and you tend to score lower (likely due to the fact that the percentiles are based on the subset of the GMAT population who would even take these exams).
• Just because you are lower percentile in one means you should focus exclusively on it. I did and I most likely left some points on the board by not spending more time on sentence correction.
Best of luck to anyone still studying for the exam. If you put in the effort you will get there.
06 Dec 2015, 20:37
Kudos
Bookmarks
dave15446
Thank you so much for this; on Thanksgiving I woke up early to do some of these questions off of all of the recommendations and they made me feel incredibly disheartened. I get the benefit of it for those that have a solid base in GMAT quant basically training against the best to be the best but if you're like me and looking to reestablish your math knowledge it makes you feel like you're going backwards (I do believe I probably didn't use them to their full benefit) and knowing someone who had similar problems scored a 740 is that much more encouraging.
Great debrief in general as well I just got a couple of those guides and agree the way they break it down is very beneficial, hopefully it leads me down the 49Q route as it did you!
08 Dec 2015, 21:33
Kudos
Bookmarks
redfield
Just my two cents but I wouldn't stress about it. Certainly good problems to practice with but unless you are really pushing the boundaries of quant (which I knew I wasn't) more difficult than anything you will see on the exam. Any percentile score you get IMO isn't really correlative with the exam either due to differences in style (CAT vs. random level difficulty of almost all hard questions). I will say somethings the GMAT Club drilled into (i.e dont assume its integer unless it states, comparing various exponents) did show up on the exam but i an easier format. IMO the questions ramped up in a similar way as the OG guide (i.e. first few questions were like the start of the book, last questions were similar in difficulty to the end of the book).
