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26 Jun 2020, 14:33
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Hey all! I just took the (Online) GMAT a few days ago and wanted to share my experience studying for it. I hope this gives people who might not be scoring well on practice tests some hope that they CAN do well on the GMAT. For some background, I was applying for M7 business programs so I wanted to score 750+. Without any studying or prepping, I took a GMAT Official Practice Exam last December and scored 650 (Q43, V36, IR8). On the actual GMAT exam, I scored 760 (Q49, V44, IR8). Keep reading if you want to hear about my journey and some advice that might work for you!
Due to school work, I didn't actually start studying for the GMAT until April the next year with a goal to take the exam in June. Both my Quant and Verbal scores were lower than I wanted, so unlike some people who only need to focus on one section, I had to focus on both. I decided to focus on Quant first because, even though my quant score was higher, I felt I struggled with it more than I did Verbal. I also consider myself a "quantitative" person, so I was more interested in studying for Quant anyways. I spent about 2 weeks going through the Quant section of the GMAT Official 2020 Guide. I read through the Quant section of the Guide, but honestly didn't learn very much. It wasn't the concepts I had an issue with, but rather the timing and knowing the right methods to solve these problems (ie. number properties). I did the practice problems under a timed setting, giving myself 2 minutes per problem. I would normally do, in one sitting, about 30 questions in one hour to mimic the actual test. I’m not sure if this is true, but I felt the problems in the Official guide got increasingly difficult. In the first half, I was consistently scoring near perfect, but towards the end I had an accuracy of about 80%. This was pretty disappointing because I was aiming for at least a 90% accuracy.
During this time, I was also studying Art of Problem Solving questions. If you’re aiming for a 49+ Quant score, I’d recommend this because AOPS questions resemble some of the more difficult Quant problems and really help train the kind of problem solving strategies you need. (Note: I can't add a link to their website because this is my first post, but if you just search it up on Google, you'll find it).
Once I completed studying for the Quant section, I moved onto Verbal. In hindsight, I should’ve taken another practice exam to see where my Quant stood, but at the time, I didn’t want to take an exam without having studied Verbal. For verbal, I did the same thing. I read through the Official Guide section and then completed the practice problems. Again, the Verbal section was not very informative and I don’t think I learned anything from reading it. Like I did with Quant, I was scoring about 80% accuracy on the Verbal questions. Again, pretty disappointing.
By the time I completed the Official Guide, it was already May. I didn’t take another practice exam because I had to switch gears and work on my MBA applications. I pretty much stopped studying for the rest of the month, except for occasionally doing AOPS problems.
The beginning of June is when I really started to pick up the pace with GMAT prep. I took a Manhattan Prep CAT on June 2nd and scored 680 (Q47, V36). I wasn’t terribly disappointed by this score because I heard Manhattan Prep exams are harder, so I assumed this score would probably equate to a low 700 on the actual GMAT. Not the best news given I had less than 3 weeks till the GMAT.
At this point, I started to really grind. In less than a week, I read through the entire 10-book Manhattan Prep Strategy Guide (excluding IR). For me, I didn’t find the Quant books to be very helpful. However, I found the Verbal books to be game-changing, especially the Critical Reasoning book. Before reading the Manhattan books, I had no strategy going into Verbal. I simply read and answered, falling prey into many of the GMAT trick answers. But the Manhattan CR book laid out useful tips and tricks and the Sentence Correction book covered every grammar rule you’d need to know. After reading these books, I felt more confident that I actually learned new things and could improve my score. On June 7 (16 days before the GMAT), I took an Official Practice Exam and scored 730 (Q47, V44). I was okay with this score, but wanted to do better.
I decided to do the practice problems in the Official Verbal and Quant 2020 books. I focused mainly on timing because that was the biggest issue I had. On June 18 (5 days before the GMAT), I took an Official Practice exam and scored 730 (Q50, V39). I was very pleased with my Quant score, but still not satisfied with my Verbal score, especially because it went down from the last test. I decided to focus entirely on Verbal until the exam. I went through the Official Verbal Review 2020, doing the practice problems under a timed setting. I would give myself 2 min per CR and RC question, and 1.5 min per SC question. On June 20, I took another Official Practice Exam and scored 750 (Q50, V41). I was satisfied with the score, but knew I could improve on Verbal still. I continued to grind on Verbal, working mainly on time management. I took one last Official Practice Exam on June 21 (2 days before) and scored 760 (Q50, V44). I was pleased with this score.
On exam day, I had so many issues with the Online GMAT (read: incomplete problem, test shutting down randomly), but to my surprise, I received a 760. I completed the Quant section with 6 minutes to spare and the Verbal section with 2 minutes. It was quite an arduous, but doable journey.
Here’s some test-taking advice that really helped improved my scores:
Quant
- Practice, practice, practice! The only way to become familiar with all the “tricky” strategies is by becoming familiar with every type of question asked. The Official Guide plus the Quant review book will give you over 500 problems to work with. Do them all!! By the time test day came around, I pretty much knew how to do any type of problem thrown at me (eg. rates, polygons, factorials)
- For Data Sufficiency, if it seems too easy, you probably missed something! If you’re asked to solve a 2-variable equation, check to see that the two equations given aren’t the same. Double check if they specify whether the variable is an integer (people often forget to check fractions!). Try to answer the question with each condition ALONE, before checking to see if both are sufficient together.
- If a question takes longer than 2 minutes, it’s better to guess than to figure it out (unless you have extra time to spare). If you don’t know how to solve it after 1 min, chances are you won’t be able to at all without using brute force which will be too time consuming
Verbal
- Critical Reasoning: summarize and write down the main point of the argument. The answer choices will often refer to random parts of the paragraph that will distract or confuse you from the main purpose. Don’t infer beyond what is provided in the text, even if it might logically make sense. CR might seem easy, but it isn’t! Take your time with these - I averaged about 2.5 min on CR questions.
- Reading Comprehension: don’t skim through the essay. It’s important you have a very clear understanding of the main point. Take 3-4 min to read the essay and take notes! Taking notes will keep you focused and force you to really understand what you’re reading.
Sentence Correction: don’t always rely on the one that “sounds” the best. Study all the grammar rules. Each incorrect sentence will have at least 2 mistakes. If you’re unsure about one thing, look for the other mistake. Some people like to write out the sentence structure to spot subject-verb or parallelism errors. I didn’t do this because I already had time management issues and couldn’t afford to use too much time on SC, but I’ve heard it’s useful. Something to consider if SC is your weak spot. My biggest issue was idioms (I guess I didn’t read enough when I was younger), but Manhattan Prep has an entire appendix with all the idioms you’d expect to see on the GMAT.
- The Manhattan Prep books are enormously helpful for the Verbal section and I highly recommend if you’re struggling with Verbal!!
Note: I never really cared about IR because it doesn’t factor into the overall score, so I didn’t do any prep for it. I always skipped the IR section during my practice exams (ie. I’d guess on all the problems). The only advice I have for it is to take your time. It’s not a time-crunch at all (I had ~15 min to spare on the real exam).
I know this was a very long-winded story, but I hope it helps folks out there who might be feeling a little defeated. While the whole process took around 2 months, I really only spent about 3 weeks total seriously studying for the exam. It’s all about familiarity, so the more practice you do, the better you’ll get! Good luck, and feel free to ask me questions.
Due to school work, I didn't actually start studying for the GMAT until April the next year with a goal to take the exam in June. Both my Quant and Verbal scores were lower than I wanted, so unlike some people who only need to focus on one section, I had to focus on both. I decided to focus on Quant first because, even though my quant score was higher, I felt I struggled with it more than I did Verbal. I also consider myself a "quantitative" person, so I was more interested in studying for Quant anyways. I spent about 2 weeks going through the Quant section of the GMAT Official 2020 Guide. I read through the Quant section of the Guide, but honestly didn't learn very much. It wasn't the concepts I had an issue with, but rather the timing and knowing the right methods to solve these problems (ie. number properties). I did the practice problems under a timed setting, giving myself 2 minutes per problem. I would normally do, in one sitting, about 30 questions in one hour to mimic the actual test. I’m not sure if this is true, but I felt the problems in the Official guide got increasingly difficult. In the first half, I was consistently scoring near perfect, but towards the end I had an accuracy of about 80%. This was pretty disappointing because I was aiming for at least a 90% accuracy.
During this time, I was also studying Art of Problem Solving questions. If you’re aiming for a 49+ Quant score, I’d recommend this because AOPS questions resemble some of the more difficult Quant problems and really help train the kind of problem solving strategies you need. (Note: I can't add a link to their website because this is my first post, but if you just search it up on Google, you'll find it).
Once I completed studying for the Quant section, I moved onto Verbal. In hindsight, I should’ve taken another practice exam to see where my Quant stood, but at the time, I didn’t want to take an exam without having studied Verbal. For verbal, I did the same thing. I read through the Official Guide section and then completed the practice problems. Again, the Verbal section was not very informative and I don’t think I learned anything from reading it. Like I did with Quant, I was scoring about 80% accuracy on the Verbal questions. Again, pretty disappointing.
By the time I completed the Official Guide, it was already May. I didn’t take another practice exam because I had to switch gears and work on my MBA applications. I pretty much stopped studying for the rest of the month, except for occasionally doing AOPS problems.
The beginning of June is when I really started to pick up the pace with GMAT prep. I took a Manhattan Prep CAT on June 2nd and scored 680 (Q47, V36). I wasn’t terribly disappointed by this score because I heard Manhattan Prep exams are harder, so I assumed this score would probably equate to a low 700 on the actual GMAT. Not the best news given I had less than 3 weeks till the GMAT.
At this point, I started to really grind. In less than a week, I read through the entire 10-book Manhattan Prep Strategy Guide (excluding IR). For me, I didn’t find the Quant books to be very helpful. However, I found the Verbal books to be game-changing, especially the Critical Reasoning book. Before reading the Manhattan books, I had no strategy going into Verbal. I simply read and answered, falling prey into many of the GMAT trick answers. But the Manhattan CR book laid out useful tips and tricks and the Sentence Correction book covered every grammar rule you’d need to know. After reading these books, I felt more confident that I actually learned new things and could improve my score. On June 7 (16 days before the GMAT), I took an Official Practice Exam and scored 730 (Q47, V44). I was okay with this score, but wanted to do better.
I decided to do the practice problems in the Official Verbal and Quant 2020 books. I focused mainly on timing because that was the biggest issue I had. On June 18 (5 days before the GMAT), I took an Official Practice exam and scored 730 (Q50, V39). I was very pleased with my Quant score, but still not satisfied with my Verbal score, especially because it went down from the last test. I decided to focus entirely on Verbal until the exam. I went through the Official Verbal Review 2020, doing the practice problems under a timed setting. I would give myself 2 min per CR and RC question, and 1.5 min per SC question. On June 20, I took another Official Practice Exam and scored 750 (Q50, V41). I was satisfied with the score, but knew I could improve on Verbal still. I continued to grind on Verbal, working mainly on time management. I took one last Official Practice Exam on June 21 (2 days before) and scored 760 (Q50, V44). I was pleased with this score.
On exam day, I had so many issues with the Online GMAT (read: incomplete problem, test shutting down randomly), but to my surprise, I received a 760. I completed the Quant section with 6 minutes to spare and the Verbal section with 2 minutes. It was quite an arduous, but doable journey.
Here’s some test-taking advice that really helped improved my scores:
Quant
- Practice, practice, practice! The only way to become familiar with all the “tricky” strategies is by becoming familiar with every type of question asked. The Official Guide plus the Quant review book will give you over 500 problems to work with. Do them all!! By the time test day came around, I pretty much knew how to do any type of problem thrown at me (eg. rates, polygons, factorials)
- For Data Sufficiency, if it seems too easy, you probably missed something! If you’re asked to solve a 2-variable equation, check to see that the two equations given aren’t the same. Double check if they specify whether the variable is an integer (people often forget to check fractions!). Try to answer the question with each condition ALONE, before checking to see if both are sufficient together.
- If a question takes longer than 2 minutes, it’s better to guess than to figure it out (unless you have extra time to spare). If you don’t know how to solve it after 1 min, chances are you won’t be able to at all without using brute force which will be too time consuming
Verbal
- Critical Reasoning: summarize and write down the main point of the argument. The answer choices will often refer to random parts of the paragraph that will distract or confuse you from the main purpose. Don’t infer beyond what is provided in the text, even if it might logically make sense. CR might seem easy, but it isn’t! Take your time with these - I averaged about 2.5 min on CR questions.
- Reading Comprehension: don’t skim through the essay. It’s important you have a very clear understanding of the main point. Take 3-4 min to read the essay and take notes! Taking notes will keep you focused and force you to really understand what you’re reading.
Sentence Correction: don’t always rely on the one that “sounds” the best. Study all the grammar rules. Each incorrect sentence will have at least 2 mistakes. If you’re unsure about one thing, look for the other mistake. Some people like to write out the sentence structure to spot subject-verb or parallelism errors. I didn’t do this because I already had time management issues and couldn’t afford to use too much time on SC, but I’ve heard it’s useful. Something to consider if SC is your weak spot. My biggest issue was idioms (I guess I didn’t read enough when I was younger), but Manhattan Prep has an entire appendix with all the idioms you’d expect to see on the GMAT.
- The Manhattan Prep books are enormously helpful for the Verbal section and I highly recommend if you’re struggling with Verbal!!
Note: I never really cared about IR because it doesn’t factor into the overall score, so I didn’t do any prep for it. I always skipped the IR section during my practice exams (ie. I’d guess on all the problems). The only advice I have for it is to take your time. It’s not a time-crunch at all (I had ~15 min to spare on the real exam).
I know this was a very long-winded story, but I hope it helps folks out there who might be feeling a little defeated. While the whole process took around 2 months, I really only spent about 3 weeks total seriously studying for the exam. It’s all about familiarity, so the more practice you do, the better you’ll get! Good luck, and feel free to ask me questions.
26 Jun 2020, 18:09
Kudos
Bookmarks
yakamayo - Congratulations on getting a terrific 760 on the GMAT. I encourage you to verify your score on GMAT Club.
