Hi all,
I've been studying intensely for the GMAT on a pretty tight timeframe for the past 2 months and finally got my desired 780 this afternoon, just in time for my MBA applications next month. I couldn't be happier and I am very happy with my performance. This has taken a lot of time and focus outside my job, and I wanted to share my thoughts on the experience if it's helpful to others.
SummaryStarted studying July 2018.
First exam, Aug 10: 750 (Verbal 46, Quant 48) / AWA 6.0 / IR 8.0
Second exam, Aug 29: 780 (Verbal 48, Quant 50) / AWA TBD / IR 8.0
My background/profileI'm a 26 year old female working in finance in NYC. I've been very comfortable taking tests and studying on my own my entire life--tested 2380 on my SATs, passed all 3 levels of the CFA on the first try.
In general, I'm strong and well balanced on both math/verbal skills. If I had to choose one, I'm better on verbal/writing--I'm not an engineer. But I've always felt highly confident in my math skills.
So, I expected to start from a high base going into GMAT studying but to spend relatively more time on quant.
My timeline & goalsI went into the study process on a tight timeframe. Up until the end of June 2018 I was focusing 100% on the CFA Level 3, which took up all my time outside working hours. I had found the SAT fairly easy as a kid and expected the GMAT to be similar to the SAT and easy compared to the CFA. I therefore felt OK with giving myself 2 months after the CFA exam to study. That gave me only a brief window of time to take the GMAT as I am applying to business school this September. Not ideal, but doable.
I have a 3.7 GPA from a high ranking college. That puts me about in the middle of the target range for my target schools. I can't go back in time and improve my GPA now but it was a priority to me to maximize my GMAT score to myself incrementally more competitive.
My study processStudying for the GMAT after the CFA was an interesting learning experience. The CFA happens to be an extremely dense exam that tests your memory and knowledge of a massive amount of material. I quickly realized the the GMAT was a totally different animal--it's about time management, your grasp of math/verbal fundamentals, and, at the 700-800 level, your ability to recognize and apply those fundamentals in a variety of different questions.
My process leading up to the first exam, July 1st - Aug 10th:
- Day 1-3: intro. Reading others' experiences here and online further assured me that a 780-score in ~2 months should be feasible. Based on friends' and online recommendations I bought the full Manhattan GMAT set, the 2018 GMAT OG, and the Critical Reasoning PowerScore Bible.
- Other materials I bought based on online recommendations but did not use/did not ultimately make sense for my study plan were Aristotle Sentence Correction and Manhattan GMAT Advanced Quant.
- Week 1: mapping out my starting baseline and weak areas. Scored ~680 on my first diagnostic test. Great--continued confirmation that most of the work would be incremental rather than learning the basics. I expect that most of the work will be practice questions rather than reading the Manhattan books.
- Week 2: The focus here was to drill through a good several hundred questions on the OG GMAT online question bank and build up a preliminary error log to map out my weak spots. I looked at level 700 questions only. I read through about a half of the Manhattan GMAT books based on this error log (number properties, geometry, algebra, sentence correction) and take notes on the content I've forgotten since high school (exponents, absolute values, combinatorics). The other Manhattan books I skim through and don't read.
- Week 3: Took 2 Manhattan CATs. First CAT: 670 total (40 verbal / 41 quant). Second CAT: 650 (40 verbal / 39 quant). Third CAT: 44 verbal (accidentally skipped quant)
I felt discouraged by the low quant score but more importantly was afraid it would be inaccurate to the actual content on the exam. Given the lack of remaining time I stopped using Manhattan entirely and focused my final 2 weeks on doing drills for the OG online qbank and OG tests. The error logs I maintained throughout and continued to review regularly. - Week 4-5: Focused 100% on the 6 OG tests. Once I get 5 posts I will attach my own excel file record of mistakes and scores--you will see I scored very high for all of them and therefore felt confident I would score close in the 750-800 range on the actual exam. At this point I was doing very well on both verbal and quant. But areas for further improvement were level 700 CR and RC questions and level 700 quant questions generally.
- Aug 10, exam day: I got a good night's rest the day before. Contrary to others' suggestions I continued to cram up until the hour before the exam. This is how I've always been and it's never been a problem for me.
I did not study for AWA until literally the day before the exam. For this I spent ~3 hours total reviewing Chineseburned's AWA guide post, the attached example 6 AWA essays, and doing the 2 practice prompts on GMAT Write.
1st Exam experience: I was surprised to find that the quant section was moderately, but noticeably, harder than any of the 6 OG exams--especially exams 3-5 which seemed almost suspiciously easy. I went through the test normally regardless but definitely noticed that I whiffed a good 3-4 questions on Quant. Verbal seemed in line with expectations and what I had taken on the exam.
Post-exam reflection750 is an extremely good score but I expected to do better and most importantly I felt strongly that I was capable of doing better, had I studied more of the right content for Quant. I gave it two days' thought, read through several re-take experiences on this forum, and looked at my ESR report. My ESR report made up my mind. It showed I got 43% of the questions wrong in the 3rd set of questions and 57% of the questions wrong in the last set; that I got only 33% of geometry questions and 50% of inequality/algebra questions right. Final score aside I know I'm capable of doing better than that. Here, I felt I could do better in as little as 2 weeks and was willing to put down another $250 to give it a try.
As others on this forum have observed, I spent way too much time going through dozens of advanced combinatorics/probability questions when the heart of GMAT quant is number properties, geometry, and algebra.
2nd exam attempt--2 week process- Focused this time on Manhattan, Veritas, and GMAT Club practice exams which had distinctly harder questions than the OG CATs/qbanks. Drilled these every day for the past two weeks, focusing on geometry, number properties, and algebra; and to a lesser degree on sets/statistics. Scored 650-710 on all 4 CAT tests.
- Spent very little time on verbal because I was confident I'd do well. Returned to verbal practice once every 3 days to make sure I wasn't backsliding but that was enough.
- Aug 29, Exam day: opposite of the first exam experience--after drilling through hundreds of GMAT Club questions, I found Quant noticeably easy compared to my practice experience rather than difficult. Verbal I found as straighforward as before.
---Tired and will stop here for now. Will update for more practical recommendations and materials on my error logs later tonight.General thoughts/advice, QuantTo edit later
General thoughts/advice, VerbalTo edit later
Suggested study materialsTo edit later
Reference materialsTo edit later
Congratulations !!!!............... what I have read just now is more than amazing. Thanks for sharing ........ It will motivate many of us .... Thanks again.