GMAT study plan from scratch

1. Books required:
For concepts/fundamentals
->Manhattan Strategy Guides (all except CR)
->Powerscore CR bible (helped me with CR after lot of struggle)

2. Time: 2.5 months -forever (depending on commitment and belief)
-
Focus on Manhattans strategy guide tips for quant section in the additional topics.
It will help you with the speed , especially in DS.
eg:

Rule 1:
If a Data Sufficiency question asks for the relative value of two pieces of a ratio, ANY statement
that gives the relative value of ANY two pieces of the ratio will be sufficient.

Rule 2:
If a Data Sufficiency question asks for the concrete value of one element of a ratio, you will need
BOTH the concrete value of another element of the ratio AND the relative value of two elements
of the ratio.

•When a Data Sufficiency question asks for a combination of variables, don’t try to solve for the value
of each variable. Manipulate the statements to solve directly for the combination.

GMAT is an exam which can be cracked by practice and doesnt require extremely high levels of intelligence.
. Once you have mastered the content, all the GMAC can do to make the test difficult is:

a) find new ways of asking the same question
b) combine multiple concepts into a single question
c) throw in simple tricks that might lead to careless errors
d) ask a lot of questions in a short period of time (such as 37 math questions in 75 minutes)

Take the OG Diagnostic Exam.


I did my research on these boards first and concluded that the first step in my GMAT studying process should be the series of Manhattan GMAT guides. That turned out to be entirely correct.

I can't speak to other guides since I didn't use them, but Manhattan guide will cover 100% of the content that will be on the GMAT. On the actual exam, I don't think I saw a single question that tested something I didn't know, and any questions I missed were because I made a careless error or I was running low on time and had to guess (and that was only one question). The Manhattan GMAT guides are also very compact: they don't include any extraneous content that isn't tested on the exam.

The 4 absolutely essential Manhattan GMAT guides are:

1) Sentence Correction - As everyone here points out. Even if you are an excellent native speaker and writer, there are many, many grammar rules that the GMAT tests which you won't know. What "sounds right" to your native ear is in many cases wrong.

2) Number Properties - Because no matter how naturally good you are at math, you won't be able to figure out the properties of a consecutive set of integers in the 2 minutes you have to answer a question.

3) Geometry - Same as #2, except insert "properties of an angle inscribed in a circle" instead.

4) Word Translations - Nothing in here is too advanced, but this book fills in the topics that aren't covered in Number Properties and Geometry: rates & work, combinatorics, probability, statistics, and overlapping sets.

Equations, Inequalities, & VICs, but the knowledge in there can be attained by searching for guides on inequalities and absolute value problems. The guide has a few other tips for how to approach different types of questions, but it's not nearly as essential as the four I mention above.

How to Use the Manhattan GMAT Guides

There are probably a few ways to approach this, but the method that worked for me was:

1) Read through each section carefully and take notes on everything I didn't already know cold (which was most things). For example, I knew that all triangles have interior angles that add up to 180 degrees and I remembered the formula for area, but I didn't remember that the sides of a 30-60-90 triangle were in the ratio of 1-2-root 3.

2) Make those notes comprehensive enough that I wouldn't have to refer back to the book later. This will save you a ton of time in the long run, because you WILL need to review these concepts repeatedly in order to know them cold.

3) Do the problems at the end of each section. It's really helpful to apply all that knowledge you just learned.

This will take you a long time. The Sentence Correction guide in particular will take forever, as it is gigantic and there will be many things you don't already know. However, going through these books will be far more effective than just whipping through questions in the OG and trying to learn concepts from their explanations of the answers.

Once you know the content, take a GMATPrep exam to test for speed

Powerscore CR is really helpful for approaching Cr questions and developing correct thinking for those questions.
Highly recommend to go thorough theory as well as exmaples.

Also look at the type of incorrect choices mentioned like shell game choices,out of scope etc so that you can easily eliminate.

For RC,develop a mind map with summaries and try to ask yourself what the author is trying to say and jot down the points.
Practice as much as possible

Once you know the content cold and you know where to focus, practice for speed

I'm sure there are 1,000 different ways of doing this, but the one that worked for me was:

a) Choose 10 questions in order from the OG
b) Time myself doing them
c) As I work through, mark any questions that I wasn't 100% sure I got right
d) Check the answers and additionally mark any questions I got wrong
e) Go back and review the questions I got wrong to see if I could figure out the right answers without looking at the OG's explanation
f) Review the explanations for questions I was unsure about but still got right


With the math section, I started off sometimes taking over 25 minutes to do 10 questions, but by the end, I could do even difficult math questions in 15-18 minutes.

Going through the entire sections in the OG also has the pleasant side effect of revealing any gaps in content that you may still have. I found that there were many points that seemed very minor when I was first working through the Manhattan GMAT guides but that turned out to be essential for answering a question in the OG. Use this opportunity to review, until you know even the smallest details cold. The Manhattan GMAT guides are really, really good. They don't include extraneous information that the GMAT doesn't test, so know absolutely everything they say.

Final tips:
->Try to maintain error logs in word on your system and keep revising those.
-> while practicing aim to finish questions within 2 minutes
-> Make some guesses if required and do not spend more than 3 minutes on a question.

If this post helped please assign kudos

All the best