Calling all GMAT Test Takers Who've Earned +700.

Be sincere and honest to ur self...
Concentrate on ur weaknesses!!!
What you know will stay with you,so you should work on the things that you don't know.

If you want to just get to about 700 or so, practice alone should be enough. Practise, practise, and practise some more; at some point you'll practically be able to answer questions in your sleep.

If, however, you're aiming even higher - say, at a score of 750+ - learn every concept that the GMAT tests, and learn them well. Practice alone won't be enough - when you get to the higher score ranges, you run into questions that come in all sorts of weird forms. These forms are likely to be very unfamiliar to you, which is why you'll need to know the concepts and the principles behind their applications, as opposed to only knowing how some types of questions are answered.

Last, but certainly not least... relax a little! Take time to rest before your exam, and make sure that you get enough sleep in. You're also allowed rest breaks in between the various GMAT segments, and I found that it was helpful to take the breaks, even though I didn't really feel like I needed them. Might have helped my brain "reset" in between segments, giving it time to switch from Q mode to V mode. Who knows?

My first practice exam I scored a 530. After 300 hours of study, I sat for the real GMAT. I scored 750. The best advice I can give is that you have to put in the dozens, even hundreds, of hours necessary to learn the test inside out. There really isn't another way to do it. If you're of average intelligence and can focus hard enough to shut off Facebook, email, etc and grind it out, you can probably get to 700 within 50-100 hours. But expect to put in significantly more time and effort to increase your score after that.

Posted from GMAT ToolKit

@Ebon101, @ Donquixote,@Bananas, @Nikhelalora88, how many times when you started studying did you take a practice GMAT, Which one, and how frequently? My goal would be to finish the MGMAT 8 books, and then start working on the OG Guide Problems. Would you suggest I start studying with the gmat problems? Before reading and reviewing the concepts, I'm finishing the last chapter of the Foundations of Math GMAT math.

Also, how many problems should I focus on daily, when I finish all the 8 books?

I forgot to say this, but it's an important point: just because someone didn't get a certain score on the GMAT doesn't mean his/her advice will be any less valuable. You can get incredible insight and learn a lot from anyone.

have nothing to say but this...all the best for prep & GMAT. i am also yet to take the exam

I second - No FB. GMATClub is itself a great social network there is just so much around! Before i used to open firefox open facebook.com, now i open firefox, and type gmatclub.com

A lot of practice tests, and revising over the mistakes you made in them. I think that was the most useful thing I did, by looking over the strategies that the test solutions suggest you quickly learn the fastest way to solve things.

Advise Needed !!

I have completed doing SC and Quant from OG 12th edition. I did well with all the Quant in OG but in SC my accuracy is around 70 percent.
Can someone please advise me from where should I practice some more Question for Quant and SC.?
I plan to give GMAT in September.Any advise that can help me score 700+?

Make any break in your day an opportunity to study- 30 minutes on your commuter train? Do the Manhattan GMAT iPhone app flashcards. I also realized I need absolute silence for studying so I would go in to work early/stay late to get in studying without distractions. Nothing is worse than mentally preparing to study to find your roommate has friends over or your neighbor is blasting the TV.

Also, the 20minutes on/10 minutes off formula. Set a timer and study straight through (20, 30, or 40 minutes). NO bathroom breaks, no checking your phone. Then take the next ten minutes to do whatever you want. This system made sure I was banking study time and not just drifting through practice problems while getting distracted.

I won't mention that you need to know every single concept very well if you target 750+. It's obvious and it's a must.

Here is some logistics advice from me.


1. Discipline

a. Daily practice after work at the same time for the same duration (2 hours in my case)

b. Full practice test every day-off (weekend or public holiday)

c. Go to lunch alone and study for at least half an hour

d. Abandon your car and study in public transport (MGMAT books!)

e. No distractions except for absolutely necessary - work and family


2. Attitude

a. No bar is too high - imagine a 770! I was slightly "upset" by scoring 750 but had I targeted 750 I would have probably scored below that.

b. I have a whiteboard at home. I drew 770 on it and it was my mantra.

c. Somebody wrote about imagining a GMAT dragon that you cut in pieces with your sword. I had a 3-headed dragon as well - one head for each Quant, Verbal and AWA - with a desired score on each. May sound silly but it materialises the bloody thing!


3. Healthy lifestyle

a. Sleep well

b. Eat good home-made food

c. Go to work by bicycle, or go to gym, or do any other sports at least twice a week if you can

d. Walk a lot - fresh air helps your brain function


4. Play well

a. A couple of times per month on Sunday after you did well on a practice test give yourself a treat - I went to Hard Rock Cafe

b. If you study for more than 2 months, take one week break in the middle - go somewhere with your family or friends. I did school visits and a little travel in the US where I hadn't ever been before. That gave me a huge motivation boost.

c. After passing the real test make sure you celebrate


5. Before the exam

a. Stop preparing, take a rest

b. Sleep well. I must admit that I was so anxious that I only slept for about 4 hours the night before exam + I had to wake up very early to take a 2 hour train ride to the nearest testing center in Dusseldorf. I guess this screwed up my desired 770 because I couldn't concentrate well during the last 20 minutes of Verbal.

c. Eat well before the exam. Don't let it exhaust you and do worse than you can!

ilya.b thanks for your advice. I notice that I dont apply some of them, specially with the discipline(I always have distractions) Walk!!Great Idea!! Attitude!! Excelent!! I aim 600, I should think higher!!

notferprofit!! Cool!! I only use stopwatcher in practice questions!! I should use it when i study content!! Great Idea!!!

I will retake the test in August, I scored 430 in March this year, I need at least 600. My study discipline is sort of like this

Monday - Quant - One content(i.e. property number), then practice problems of property number, and then mix it up with other content(i.e. Geometry or equations) the practice OG questions PS o DS 30 minutes each, trying to pace 2 min per question. Then review the answers.
Tuesday - Verbal- Study one book for each section, i.e. Critical reasoning Kaplan 800, RC Manhattan Gmat, SC Crack the Gmat, after each study, OG questions in 30 min, again aiming 2 min per question.
W- Quant again
T- Verbal again
F- rest
S- The same cycle for Quant but including IR questions
S- The same cycle for Verbal

Am I doing right? What else you recommend me to get a 700 score??

Thanks!!

Ilya i love the lunch hour and public transport options, i'm going to do that. I'm one of those fools who couldn't crack it and apparently never learns from his mistakes, got a 640/640/710 in that order, retaking a 4th time! Your advice is supremely valuable. A few points I would like to add as well:

1) Once done with Quant, just wipe that performance out of your head irrespective of how it went and go into Verbal with a killer attitude.
2) Write the practice tests at the time of day you will write the real GMAT.
3) Study for 2 hour chunks (train yourself if you can't)
4) Don't practice more than 25 Verbal questions at a time (any section), doubtful you will absorb critical lessons)
5) Don't depend on any one practice test series if you have bought it, so if you buy any test-series, be sure to interrupt the cycle and take one of the free GMAT's from Manhattan/Knewton/Princeton/Varitas - mainly to ensure that you are not doing well on your test series because you figured out the algorithm/testing style.
Hope these help! I wish you luck, I'll need it too =)

I really tried to identify the causes of my mistakes, while solving questions.
I had a bit of rough time with SC, so I made a table and each question I answered wrong was listed in the table, with the topic (i.e. "tenses", "parallelism") of the question.
Later on I checked the list to see what are my weak spots, so I could read and learn better about these topics and train again on them.

Regarding quantitative, when I was really struggling with a specific topic, I sat down with a university book about it and solved questions until my brain went on fire. When I reached that topic again in the GMAT exercises, I had confidence in my knowledge and understanding, and so it went much easier.

I did the same, kept track of types of SC mistakes on a notebook with only answers, revisited only wrong ones the week before the exam..
Did the same for RC (from OG 12)

If people who are weak at Quant can add tips, would greatly appreciate that too!

iLya.b@"I won't mention that you need to know every single concept very well if you target 750+. It's obvious and it's a must."

Thank you and thanks to notferprofit, nano2013, axax, faro for responding to this thread I created, I did this thread for structure, not only on physical studying habits, but also for what, and how to study effectively.iLya.b, Can you be more specific on this sentence, you mentioned a great deal of items, this is the one that stood out the most for me. You mentioned that every concept must be mastered?

I'm working through the Manhattan Gmat Books, and for example, the subchapters will have advanced techniques in determining an answer, these are all the concepts that you are speaking of? Can you elaborate, or provide further examples, you or any other high test taker. Also, would you provide some info on what to do if a concept is not sticking, or just don't understand the subject at all? Would you recommend skipping it, coming back to it at a later time, what's your recommendation for running in to a wall?

In addition to the habits I published before, this post outlines more preparation-specific points.

I have to make a couple of notes here, so you can better understand where I come from.
- I had very strong prior quant background and scored 710 on my first GMAT Prep practice test. I didn’t score below 690 on any practice tests except Kaplan.
- I am not a native speaker but speak only English at work


1. Books

a. Official guide 12 + Verbal & Quant guides

b. MGMAT - 8 guides + advanced quant


2. Knowledge is the king

a. Prepare well, make sure you understand the basics. Make sure you know how you are going to solve the question a few seconds after you read it or even mid-way

b. Don’t waste time on questions you can’t solve. Solve them afterwards.

c. Intelligent guessing in Quant section might work for some but it didn’t work for me at all. On 700+ level with a lot of stress I couldn’t spot any obvious patterns and guessed randomly. I noticed this lack of my ability early and focused on understanding every single concept instead of learning the tricks.


3. Think and live GMAT

a. Try to calculate equations in your mind. I would just make up random numbers and try to sum and multiply them, e.g. 14x12, 37 + 54, etc.

b. Use an app such as "Зарядка для мозгов". It’s in Russian but you don’t need to know the language to practice basic quant skills - math operations with 2 digit numbers, memorising of long sequences of numbers, etc.
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/zaradka- ... 32773?mt=8

c. Write emails without errors.

d. Write effective emails compliant with AWA requirements.

e. Spot errors in texts you read and speech you hear. Force yourself to speak without errors.


3. Timing

I could solve most questions but spent a lot of time on some.

a. Applying some of MGMAT’s templates aided a lot because it helped to structure the process.

b. Do timed tests - I did all free tests + MGMAT’s tests + a few GmatClub’s tests.

c. GmatClub’s iPad app to track the time is a great aid


4. Scratch pad is your friend

a. Especially if you are not a native speaker, make sure you use the notepad. In a stress environment, it is easy to ignore something or read 8 instead of 6 and come up with a ridiculous answer. The scratch pad really helps to structure your thoughts. Especially on RC

b. Get yourself one from MGMAT. At this point this might sound as if I over-promote MGMAT

c. Don’t worry about the size of your scribbles - you will be given a new scratch pad if you need. I used up 4 in total.

d. I drew 5 vertical lines on each page, each line representing an answer choice. I crossed out the ones I eliminated when I was using elimination technique. Drawing lines across the page helps to save time compared to writing A B C D E.


Question types hints

1. PS

a. Solve them. That’s the bottom line.


2. DS

a. Make sure you don’t over-solve but if the answer is too obvious make sure you solve it to the end. There are a lot of tricky questions that seem to have obvious answers but those are traps.

b. Eliminate wrong answers


3. RC

a. Take your time for reading the text properly and take notes

b. Eliminate wrong answers

c. Try not to return to the text or even to the notes! Notes just help you engage in active reading and memorise the text.


4. CR

a. Eliminate wrong answers

b. Negate the answer choices if in doubt

c. Guess and move on when in doubt


5. SC

a. Know the rules! I have gone through MGMAT SC Guide 4 times on my bus rides. Idioms were the most difficult part because as a non-native speaker I had to memorise those that I didn’t use.

b. Look for obvious errors and eliminate


6. AWA

a. Make sure you prepare - it's not that easy as it might seem.

b. I bought the official AWA rater and received a devastating 3.5 while I thought I was a great writer. It helped me realise that I didn’t write the way they wanted.

c. There are specific patters they look for. Apply them and you are done. Use this post to prepare how-to-get-6-0-awa-my-guide-64327.html

d. Once you pass the test, make sure you forget these aggressive criticising habits! They won’t serve you well in essays.


Hope this helps!