GMAT Study Strategy

Hi MicCat,

Nice work with 700! Great job so far. To improve your GMAT score to a higher level, you need to go through GMAT quant and verbal carefully to find your exact weaknesses, fill gaps in your knowledge, and strengthen your skills. The overall process will be to learn all about how to answer question types with which you currently aren't very comfortable, and do dozens of practice questions category by category, basically driving up your score point by point. For example, if you find that you are not strong in answering Number Properties questions, then carefully review the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer Number Properties questions and practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties: LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, remainders, etc. When you are working on learning to answer questions of a particular type, start off taking your time, and then seek to speed up as you get more comfortable answering questions of that type. As you do such practice, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get right. If you got a remainder question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not properly apply the remainder formula? Was there a concept you did not understand in the question? By carefully analyzing your mistakes, you will be able to efficiently fix your weaknesses and in turn improve your GMAT quant skills. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.

Each time you strengthen your understanding of a topic and your skill in answering questions of a particular type, you increase your odds of hitting your score goal. You know that there are types of questions that you are happy to see, types that you would rather not see, and types that you take a long time to answer correctly. Learn to more effectively answer the types of questions that you would rather not see, and make them into your favorite types. Learn to correctly answer in two minutes or less questions that you currently take five minutes to answer. By finding, say, a dozen weaker quant areas and turning them into strong areas, you will make great progress toward hitting your quant score goal. If a dozen areas turn out not to be enough, strengthen some more areas.

You can work on verbal in a similar manner. Let’s say you are reviewing Critical Reasoning. Be sure that you practice a large number of Critical Reasoning questions: Strengthen and Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, find the Conclusion, Must be True, etc. As you go through the questions, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get correct. If you missed a Weaken question, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize what the question was asking? Did you skip over a key detail in an answer choice? Getting GMAT verbal questions right is a matter of what you know, what you see, and what you do. So, any time that you don't get one right, you can seek to identify what you had to know to get the right answer, what you had to see that you didn't see, and what you could have done differently to arrive at the correct answer.

So, work on accuracy and generally finding correct answers, work on specific weaker areas one by one to make them strong areas, and when you take a practice GMAT or the real thing, take all the time per question available to do your absolute best to get right answers consistently. The GMAT is essentially a game of seeing how many right answers you can get in the time allotted. Approach the test with that conception in mind, and focus intently on the question in front of you with one goal in mind: getting a CORRECT answer.

In order to follow the path described above, you may need some new quant and verbal materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the best quant and verbal courses. You also may find it helpful to read the following articles about
How to Score a 700+ on the GMAT and The Phases of Preparing for the GMAT.

Feel free to reach out with any further questions. Good luck!

Hi MicCat,

I agree that waiting to take the GMAT at a Test Facility would likely give you a much better chance of hitting your Score Goal. As an aside, the 750+ score is approximately the 98th percentile - meaning that 98% of Test Takers never score that high (regardless of how long they study or the number of times that they take the GMAT). Thankfully, NO Business School requires a score that high - so it's important to realize that the score that you "want" and the score that you "need" are not the same thing.

There's no harm in making that your Score Goal - although you will have to hone some really specific skills to consistently score at that level. From what you describe, your studies so far have been 'book heavy'; unfortunately, many Test Takers who study in that way end up getting 'stuck' at a particular score level. There's no harm in studying with another book right now, but you'll likely end up needing to invest in some additional, non-book resources at some point. As a gauge for how well you are continuing to improve, I suggest that you study as you like for the next 1-2 weeks, then take a new, FULL-LENGTH CAT - and make sure to take it in a realistic fashion (which, assuming that you take the GMAT at a Test Facility, means that you have to take the FULL CAT - with the Essay and IR sections, take it away from your home, at the same time of day as when you'll take the Official GMAT, etc.). Once you have your next score, you should post back here and we can discuss the results and how you might best proceed with your studies.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Hi Rich,

I think this is a great feedback. I'll schedule a CAT as you suggested (probably 16 or 17 May) and I'll let you know the results.

Thanks again,

Michele

Here I am with a new feedback! Today I did another practice test and scored 710 (Q47, V41). I'm still disappointed about the quant section because I missed some questions for silly mistakes. Here are my takeaways from today's practice:

1) I have to study in more detail GCF, lcm and combinations/permutations because they're my weak points for the quant section;
2) Bad time management: I rush a lot and I do not have any idea about how I'm going regarding time. Today I was at question 34 and I still had 12 minutes on the quant part. Same for verbal.. I finished the session and I still had 20 minutes!!!
3) Silly errors. I checked my answers and I could have answered correctly most of the questions that I did wrong on the quant part. I have the feeling I'm not really focused and I often do not apply the methodologies that I learned to solve quant problems.


I would really appreciate your feedback about it!

P.S.: I have booked my first GMAT test on 15 June.

Hi MicCat,

To start, I'd like to confirm that you are taking practice CATs/mocks that mirror the current version of the GMAT. The Quant section has only 31 questions (in the "old" version of the Exam, the Quant section had 37 questions) - but you mentioned that you were on question 34 in the Quant, which - if true - implies that you were taking an Exam that was modeled on the prior version of the GMAT. I assume that what you wrote there is just a 'typo', but I want to make sure that you're using up-to-date testing materials.

This Score is obviously remarkably similar to your prior CAT Score. That's not necessarily a 'bad' thing - but it implies that while you handle certain aspects of the GMAT consistently well, you also leave yourself open to making certain types of mistakes. It's possible that you could correct these issues on your own (by slowing down, taking more notes, etc.), so you can decide whether you want to invest in some new materials or simply try to work through these issues with heavy repetitions.

1) Going forward, how many hours do you think you can consistently study each week?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Hi Rich,

yes, it was a typo, the quant questions on my CAT are 31.

1) I can study around 15 hours per week (2 hours per day from Monday to Friday and then around 5 hours, but possibly even more, during the weekend).
So I have around 45 hours still to improve before my GMAT test.

Let me know which is the best way to proceed in your opinion.

Thanks,

Michele

Hi MicCat,

To determine whether you truly need a specific study plan at this point or not, some additional analysis is ultimately needed. "Review" is an exceptionally important part of the GMAT training process; your ability to define WHY you're getting questions wrong is essential to defining the areas that you need to work on (and the specific things that you need to 'fix'). As such, I'd like to know a bit more about your last CAT. While a full Mistake Tracker would provide a lot more information, there are some basic questions that you should be able to answer (and the more EXACT you can be with your answers, the better):

After reviewing each section of this recent CAT, how many questions did you get wrong....
1) Because of a silly/little mistake?
2) Because there was some math/verbal that you just could not remember how to do?
3) Because the question was too hard?
4) Because you were low on time and had to guess?
5) How many Verbal questions did you 'narrow down to 2 choices' but still get wrong?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Hi Rich,

below you can find the answers to your questions. Overall, I did 13 errors in the quant section and 8 errors in the verbal section.

1) 8 out of 13 in the quant are due to silly mistakes. Same reason for 4 out of 8 in the verbal
2) 1 question (about GCF and lcm) I did not remember the basic math behind it
3) 1 question in quant was probably too hard, but I immediately got the meaning of the question.. I just didn't know how to put it down
4) 0. I finished with a lot of time in the end, both in quant and verbal
5) About this, I'll write more below.

QUANT
As you can see I didn't include all the errors in the list. That's because the other quant errors (3) were not difficult and the math basic behind it wasn't difficult. I just didn't know how to put it down. I have the feeling I lack the methodology. I just took the Official GMAT guide and started doing exercising, with little theory review. I'll make an example. There was this question in the CAT: https://gmatclub.com/forum/for-every-in ... 88874.html. I got the logic of the sequence, but then I didn't know how to translate it into the right question.

VERBAL
Here the problem in my opinion is different. I have NO methodological approach. I do not take notes. I just read and answer. Probably I read too fast (I read your post about this, and I'm a little faster than I should be), but other than that I think I need to understand how to approach the questions.

Thank you very much for your help Rich!!

Hi MicCat,

I've responded to your email.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Thanks for the interesting topic guys!