I got a 710 with less than 40-50 hours worth of work last minute

Written on the 15th of Dec 2016
______________________

Hi

I had horrible work ethic and did not spend even close to 50 hours of personal study to get a 710 (Q - 46 / V - 41). I managed to focus on the important topics and found a few popular question patterns for the 700 target.

No one should be in the situation where they are aiming for 700. Everyone should be aiming 750+ because it is very much possible but if you are lazy and you procrastinate like me then you may have to crack at least 700 in a short timeframe to keep the momentum of your MBA momentum up. If you haven't studied at all in the past few months and have only 5 days left or less (10+ is fantastic) then you have to at least hit the rational benchmark of 700 (if someone can find a great way to hit 750+ in less than a week please let me know).

Lets be honest guys, GMAT 600 - 700 range questions aren't really that hard and there isn't too much variation. This wouldn't really be a superhuman feat but instead a last push to achieve some lvl of moral absolution.

To summarize what I did:

1) Did 6 full English verbal tests in a small time span (2-3 days) from test program 800 score which had tests that are supposed to be very similar to official gmat tests (someone told me this). These tests were godsend, manhattan had me extremely worried.

2) Do 3 math sections the night before the exam and look at challenging questions which tested fundamentals. The questions I focused on were definitely 600 - 700 range difficulty questions and I did this out of laziness and not strategy.

My 800prep score:

imgur . com/6jnNjPa

My Manhatten Score

imgur . com/OAjMrnD

Official Score :

imgur . com/KfAWBBf

6 Verbal Tests = 8 hr + abt 4 hr of analysis in total.

3 Math Tests = 3 hr + abt 2 hr of analysis

OG - 200 Questions - Abt 10 Hrs. Looking for some more challenging questions + Analysis - 10 Hrs

Divide this up into a few days or cram hard.

I think that a common mistake most make in last minute cram sessions is looking at some of the most challenging thought provoking questions that demotivates one. The truth is that I have found this adaptive scoring to be a boon for me as I recognized some patterns in terms of frequency of particular questions types from the questions when targeting certain score ranges.

I first saw mention of deliberate study to achieve a score range in a Manhattan Prep Book (part of the set of 10 books). First I thought why the hell is the book telling me to avoid this topic if I'm not aiming at 700+. Then I realized something so obvious, if you have limited time and you are not perfect with 600 - 700 range fundamental questions and you try to do some esoteric 700+ then you most likely won't breach 650+.

I spent maybe an hour in total in marking maybe 200 questions of the total 800 in the OG book from both the English and Math section combined. A few examples of repeating patterns I found are work/rate questions, tense parallelism etc. The solutions from the OG are fantastic. Completely eat them up and spend as much time as you need to crack these commonly repeated questions. If you stare at a equilateral triangle ratio problem or a dice probability question that you don't understand for long enough (20 mins), then you can crack the entire topic!

Spend lots of time going through each question you get wrong. Then spend about 10 minutes every few hours to look at your mistakes from tests you've recently taken. Keep doing this every day.

I haven't studied math or english for years and wasn't the best of Math students. I scored barely above 2000 in my SATs and was always held down by math. I am focused to turn into a hardworking motivated person who will score 750+. I know I can get to 50 in math and to 44 in English. I will retake in 1 month.

If you have a test coming up within 5 days you can hit 700 by focusing on topics that are frequently repeated in 600 - 700 range.