Military Officer 580 to 750 in 1.5 years

Learn from my mistakes and avoid preparing for the GMAT the hard way.

Background: Service Academy graduate and current military helicopter pilot

I began GMAT prep in February 2021 by taking the OG test #1 and scored a 580 (V34/Q36/IR5). I did some research and saw that it is very difficult, but possible, to increase your GMAT score 150 points from your baseline score. Further research indicated about 6 months of study to reach my goal of 730 (average score for the M7 schools).

My story is unique in that I had years before I planned to apply for business school. I began studying in early 2021 and did not plan on applying to schools until the Fall off 2024. While this is definitely the preferred method (instead of waiting until the last minute to start studying for the GMAT), there was actually a major drawback of having so much time to prepare for the test- It was difficult to find motivation to study, and I only half-heartedly studied for the first year of prep.

I purchased the Kaplan GMAT Prep Plus book and began casually working through the sections. I was six years out of school, so I had to re-learn a lot of the basics of the quant section (ex. how to find the area of a triangle, etc). After studying for a month and a half, I took a Kaplan test and was shocked when I scored a 590 (V36/Q35/IR5). I thought I had made a lot of progress, and I was very disappointed with my performance.
Throughout my prep, I never kept a formal error log. Instead, I used flash cards, which I highly recommend. Write down concepts and questions that you missed on practice problems and review them regularly.

I continued to half-heartedly study for the rest of the year and only worked my way up to 700 (V39/Q47) after 12 months of studying. I decided it was time for a change and reached out to a fellow Naval Officer who had just been accepted to HBS. He recommended Magoosh’s Study Plan, and I immediately purchased the materials and began the 3 Month Gmat Study Plan - Advanced. If you download the app on your ipad, you can access all of the Magoosh lesson videos for free, instead of paying $189 for the Premium Subscription. This was a great study plan and it kept me consistently studying. It’s quite a lot of material, so it took me 4.5 months to actually work through the entire plan.

Magoosh’s study plan includes taking the Manhattan Prep practice tests, which are consistently more challenging than the OG or Kaplan test. Taking these exams was demoralizing, but it also made the quant section of the official exam seem easy in comparison. This plan also uses a Magoosh question bank, which has video explanation for every problem. This was probably the single best resource for GMAT prep. The plan also uses the OG, OG Verbal, and OG Quant textbooks which are an absolute must for getting a good score. Working through the Magoosh Study Plan, I consistently scored in the high 600’s/low 700’s until my very last practice test, the OG Test #2. I scored a 730 and decided to take the real exam.

On test day, I was nervous but forced myself to chill out. Watch the great video from Dominate the GMAT on how to approach the day of the exam - Last Minute GMAT Advice - 5 Tips for a Test-Day Edge. Don’t study or drink alcohol the day before and just CHILL OUT! You can always cancel your scores and take the test again, and that’s the mindset I had going in to the test. I was pleased when I finished and saw 750 (V44/Q48/IR8) on the screen. I was a little disappointed with my quant score, but decided to accept the score.

Summary of tips and resources:

1. Exercise- I made the mistake of thinking that I would use the hour a day that I used to exercise and put that time toward studying- Big Mistake. It wasn’t until the last month of studying that I started running every day, and that gave me so much more energy for studying and it also kept my mind clear.

2. Follow a structured study program - 3 Month Gmat Study Plan - Advanced | Magoosh Study Resources. If you use the ipad Magoosh App, all of the resources will only cost you around $150-$200

3. If you have a long time before business school apps, I recommend focusing intensely on GMAT prep for a shorter amount of time as opposed to casually studying for a longer period. Set a target test day and study hard for a few months instead of dragging the process on for a year.

4. Quality over quantity- This advice is all over GMAT Club, but I didn’t heed this advice until my last month of study. I finally started doing fewer problems each day and focused on making flashcards for the concepts and questions that I missed. If you miss a problem, look at the book explanation and also look at the different solutions posted online (forums or videos). Sometimes you need to look at three or four different solutions to see one that clicks

5. As you work through the different GMAT books, keep a post-it note in each section with the number of the problems that you miss or don’t feel confident about. When you go back and re-do those problems, put an x or check mark next to the problem number, so you can track if you keep missing the same problem. This acts as an efficient error log without having to maintain an excel sheet.

6. Managing frustration – Watch the video from Dominate the GMAT on the GMAT learning curve. It ended up being very true in my case and may help you to get through the dark times of GMAT prep (The Learning Curve of GMAT Mastery).

7. The best way to prep for RC is to read Wall Street Journal (or similar) articles every day and think about what kinds of questions could be asked about the passage

8. GMAT Timing – Check out the video from Magoosh for timing checkpoints on the test (Top 3 Pacing Tips for GMAT) and Stacey Koprince's articles on GMAT time management. Remember, you will likely have to guess on some questions, and it’s better to get a question incorrect quickly than spend 4 minutes and still get it wrong.