Journey to 7x0

Question

I have been hanging around here for months now.

After reading various debriefs, I am very much interested/inspired to script one too.

I took my OFFICIAL GMAT earlier and scored 550 (Q-48, V-19). Non Native.

Planned preparation time - 100 days. 
 SC – 15 days
CR – 15 days
RC – 15 days
Quant – 15 days
Refine my weak areas and improve – 40 days. 
Booked my exam on  July 22nd.

Resources 
EGMAT
Manhattan

Plan would be to complete the concepts by June first week and then begin with Manhattan Tests.
Will have a daily update on my progress. Hoping to get any possible help in this journey.

Starting with SC today.

Never give up

dabral · Answer

maddy10,

You are making the right decision by focusing on your verbal performance. If you have already taken the two free GMATPrep practice tests, then I would recommend you to practice with the verbal questions in the practice test database. You can obtain them from this gmatclub post: all-gmatprep-questions-quant-verbal-187679.html

Also, add the GMATPrep Question Pack 1 for additional verbal practice, and the two official CATs that are part of Exam Pack 1 extension of GMATPrep.

best wishes,
Dabral

alexau · Answer

I think this a good start to your plan, but there are also a few other things you should consider throughout your studies.

How much time will you spend each day?
How often do you plan to take CATs?
What other resources should you use? (Answer should be all of the official stuff from GMAC, e.g. OG, Verbal Review, Quant Review, GMATPrep exam and question pack 1, etc...)
What other obligations do you have leading up to your exam?

I would almost suggest a day by day schedule, rather than large blocks. It's very easy to tell yourself you have 15 days to work through a SC book and leave it until the last day. You may be better off partitioning it a bit and setting a concrete schedule for each day depending on how much time you will actually have to study.

Personally, I would recommend that you break up your verbal studying into smaller sessions, but that may just be my own personal preference. 2 Weeks is a long time to put a topic to rest, and the last thing you want to do is have to refresh stuff that you already spent time on. I would recommend a week or so on each topic, but really the most important thing is that you are going back and revisiting the old material. If you do SC to start, and then ignore it for 3+ weeks, you are likely to forget things. Try to get everything into your brain by studying the topics in smaller chunks over a longer period of time.

For your "official GMAT" that you mentioned, was this a practice exam or the real thing?

For your CATs, make sure you do the entire exam (AWA and IR included) under testlike conditions (no cellphone, 8 min breaks, etc...)

I definitely think this is a great start to a plan, but would also recommend that you make a slightly more detailed timeline (and maybe set up a schedule in Excel). I think this will help make sure you tackle a little bit each day, rather than starting and stopping throughout your planned period.

Best of luck!

RichEconomistGMAT · Answer

Hi maddy10,

I'd also be curious to know more about how you're planning on keeping track of your errors. You don't want to bog yourself down by reviewing too many concepts you're comfortable with and ignoring the ones you need work on. We posted recently on our blog about how to get started with logging your mistakes, which you can check out here: https://bit.ly/1BMokVu

Additionally, here's a link to sign up for a free 7-day trial of GMAT Tutor: https://bit.ly/1BMoyvJ

Keep us posted!

Best,
Rich

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi maddy10,

You've given yourself plenty of time to study before you retake the GMAT, which is good. I'd like to know a bit more about how you studied before this first attempt at the GMAT. If you're repeating 'elements' of that approach this time around, then the results might not necessarily be better.

1) How long did you study?
2) What resources did you use?
3) What was your weekly "routine?"
4) How were you scoring on your practice CATs?

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

maddy10 · Answer

Sure dabral. Thanks for sharing me the link. That will be really helpful.

Will add the mentioned remaining resources soon.

maddy10 · Answer

I think this a good start to your plan, but there are also a few other things you should consider throughout your studies.

How much time will you spend each day? 
  Around 2 hours a day. 6 hours during weekends.
 How often do you plan to take CATs?
  I have planned to complete concepts by June 1st week. And then only tests. Say 2 during weekends and then refine mistakes during weekdays.
 What other resources should you use? (Answer should be all of the official stuff from GMAC, e.g. OG, Verbal Review, Quant Review, GMATPrep exam and question pack 1, etc...)
  The course structure that I am planning (EGMAT) will include solving OG Review, Quant and Verbal Reviews as well. Completing the concepts means completing these as well
 What other obligations do you have leading up to your exam?
  I work for a fortune 500 company full time. And an Internet marketer. Putting the night job to rest until GMAT is over.
 
I would almost suggest a day by day schedule, rather than large blocks. It's very easy to tell yourself you have 15 days to work through a SC book and leave it until the last day. You may be better off partitioning it a bit and setting a concrete schedule for each day depending on how much time you will actually have to study.

Personally, I would recommend that you break up your verbal studying into smaller sessions, but that may just be my own personal preference. 2 Weeks is a long time to put a topic to rest, and the last thing you want to do is have to refresh stuff that you already spent time on. I would recommend a week or so on each topic, but really the most important thing is that you are going back and revisiting the old material. If you do SC to start, and then ignore it for 3+ weeks, you are likely to forget things. Try to get everything into your brain by studying the topics in smaller chunks over a longer period of time.

I have started to make notes with evernote. Like the concepts and an error log as well. I will have to travel a lot for work. Planned to utilize that time for reviewing the concepts.

For your "official GMAT" that you mentioned, was this a practice exam or the real thing?
  REAL GMAT.
 
For your CATs, make sure you do the entire exam (AWA and IR included) under testlike conditions (no cellphone, 8 min breaks, etc...)
  Sure
 
I definitely think this is a great start to a plan, but would also recommend that you make a slightly more detailed timeline (and maybe set up a schedule in Excel). I think this will help make sure you tackle a little bit each day, rather than starting and stopping throughout your planned period.
  The study plan has like detailed topics and things to cover. Given by EGMAT.

Best of luck!

maddy10 · Answer

Hi maddy10,

You've given yourself plenty of time to study before you retake the GMAT, which is good. I'd like to know a bit more about how you studied before this first attempt at the GMAT. If you're repeating 'elements' of that approach this time around, then the results might not necessarily be better.

1) How long did you study?
Not more than 50 hours. Mostly it was working math and TRYING to prepare for Verbal.

2) What resources did you use?
Magoosh for quant. Little of Manhattan as well. And OG and Magoosh for Verbal. Total prep time was not even 10 hours for verbal i think.

3) What was your weekly "routine?"
No routine at all

Tried to study during weekends. And took a week off before exams. It was very vague.

4) How were you scoring on your practice CATs?
Took two practice tests in official guide. 550 and 570 i guess. And 590 in free princeton test.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made --> Made my day

,

Thanks a lot for your reply

Tried to study during weekends. And took a week off before exams. It was very vague. 4) How were you scoring on your practice CATs? Took two practice tests in official guide. 550 and 570 i guess. And 590 in free princeton test. GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made --> Made my day

, Thanks a lot for your reply

maddy10 · Answer

Started with Sentence Correction. With fundas and Subject Verb agreement.

Will be doing OG Review and Verbal Review related problems related to SV agreement as well. And make an error log with Evernote.

SUCCESS IS WALKING FROM FAILURE TO FAILURE WITH NO LOSS IN ENTHUSIASM.

maddy10 · Answer

Kind of done with

SV Agreement 
Verb Tenses

Worked on OG sums as well. Made note of mistakes in evernote app.

Will start with Pronouns today.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi maddy10,

After reading through all of your responses and your overall plan again, I'm going to make a suggestion. While what you've planned out could work just fine, I think that we'll be waiting too long to see if it actually IS working or not. So I'm going to suggest a slight 'modification' to your timeline:

Trying doing about 1 week of solid work on SC, RC and CR (for a total of 3 weeks), then take a FULL-LENGTH CAT (including the Essay and IR sections). We're not expecting you to be perfect in Verbal - we're just looking for some measure of improvement. That score result will provide some valuable information about how effective you are at studying and if there are any other Test-Taking factors that you have to work on.

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

maddy10 · Answer

Thank you so much for your reply.

I would like to add a few more things which I missed earlier.

I had the 1 week solid work you wanted me to do. But not so solid as you would have wanted. But to some extent atleast. I started it and later wanted to see if there are any improvements.

So I bought Enhanced Score Report and took a  FREE VERITAS TEST   this march 3rd. Took only Verbal Test.

I have attached Enhanced Score Report and Veritas prep screenshot.

I am not really sure if I am strong in SC or CR and weak in RC. So thought of going along with this 2 weeks per topic plan.

Please let me know your comments.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi maddy10,

If you want to do a little more work in some specific areas before that next CAT, then that's fine. I wasn't suggesting that you stop studying Verbal material after 3 weeks (you'll end up studying more of everything in the Verbal section later on), I wanted to point out that such a LONG period of study with no CATs could be problematic (and it's better to catch the little mistakes and fix them earlier than have them all pile up).

One of the reasons why I always advise Test Takers to practice the ENTIRE CAT is so that they can get used to dealing with the Verbal section after already working on other things for the first 3 hours of the GMAT. On Test Day, you'll have to deal with fatigue and "attitude" issues that you won't end up facing if you just take the Verbal section of a CAT. Test Day is a specific "event" that you CAN train for, but you to accept the reality of Test Day and adapt your studies to fit that reality.

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

maddy10 · Answer

Yeah Rich.. I wanted a confidence builder for Verbal so that I can push to 700s .. So quit quant

Will complete this plan and then take a CAT .. Or a CAT mid way .. I was thinking like I will not see any improvement in neither math or verbal if I dont work on all the topics .. The last time I did math was during the official exam .. So I was like didnt want to see less marks in quant. Is it okay to complete all the topics and then go for the CATs .. Later work on specifics .. Does this work fine?

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi maddy10,

I'm suggesting that you try to avoid too long a time-period between your CATs. How you choose to study is up to you and what you're planning might work perfectly. However, there is no way to KNOW if your plan is working unless you take FULL-LENGTH CATs, at regular intervals, to measure your progress. If you spend 45 days studying, then take a CAT and realize that you have not improved, then something is "wrong" and you have far LESS time to fix it than if you had taken the CAT earlier and caught the issue.

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

maddy10 · Answer

Sure Rich. 
Will do 1 week each for every topic which sums up to 4 weeks. Will take it forward after CATs.

maddy10 · Answer

As stated in the above post will complete the concepts within a month(HOPEFULLY).

Then will start with Veritas Prep tests and then move to Manhattan tests.

Mixing and matching stuffs to make things interesting.

Saw almost of 60% of SC concepts.
CR yet to start with concepts and practice.
RC is more of practice.

On my way to CONGRUENCE.

maddy10 · Answer

Doing good with my SC prep. Will continue till this weekend and then move on to CR.

Planning to take me CAT when the concepts are over i.e. 3 - 4 weeks from now.

I see CAT as a motivation. Say for example I score a 25 in Verbal, I need to make sure I dont go less than 25 in the next CAT. This way I will have my graph upwards.

Hopefully it happens.

maddy10 · Answer

Working on SC now.

Will stop SC by today and start with CR for the next week.

I can see progress. Not sure if it is good enough.

Also I am starting to feel insecure wrt to quant. May will spend one week on quant before the first CAT.

DONT STOP WHEN YOU ARE TIRED. STOP WHEN YOU ARE DONE.

maddy10 · Answer

I think I am really weak in my RC

Took three passages. 1) EGMAT (Timed) --> 4/6 -- 12 min. 2) EGMAT (Timed) --> 2/7 -- 14 min. 3) Untimed OFFICIAL GUIDE --> 2/8 Should I move to CR and quant for the time being . And read the recommended books https://gmatclub.com/forum/books-to-read-improve-verbal-score-and-enjoy-a-good-read-76079.html After 2 odd weeks get back to RC ??? Need HELP !!!

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