emmaluo wrote:
A little background about myself: I just started off my self study with the
Manhattan Prep GMAT Interact. Right now I’m still trying to figure out what the GMAT Test is about and what study materials are to be digested before sitting in my first attempt. As far as my business school dream goes, and due to my rather unimpressive academic/professional history, I am being realistic and am looking at Master of Financial Engineering/ risk management/ data analytics realms - some of my dream schools require min score of AWA 5.
With respect of my study plan... after a couple of days researching, I jumped into
MGMAT Interact hoping for straightforward personalized study plan upfront. Unfortunately, as it happens I’m getting panicked about how overwhelmingly many books / CATs / questions I need to go through within 3 months.
At this point, it just appears to me like a mission impossible. Here I am seeking for your advices on my study plan.
Study Materials I’m currently holding onto:
1.
MGMAT mailed to me 5 books including the Foundations of Math (FOM) & Verbal (FOV). As a non native speaker, naturally I plan to finish the FOM and FOV, before trying out my first Practice Exam.
2. Then I would move onto
MGMAT All about Math and Verbal. Meanwhile, I shall take the advantage of GMAT club’s QBank and do questions in small bites on a daily basis.
3. I presume the
OG and the 6 official practice exams are to be cherished due to their relatively limited contents. So I think I would turn to
OG and official materials after finishing
MGMAT self study course.
4. In light of my unbearably slow reading speed, I plan to do vocabulary building with <Vocabulary Advantage> and put efforts in gramma with the help of <GMAT Club Gramma>
Additionally, to improve my reading capacity I just set up a daily routine to read/listen to a couple of articles from Economists / NYT / WSJ . And, despite it is already killing me and have kept me awake in the middle of the night struggling with my slow progress, I forced myself reading fictions as recommended on another topic thread on GMAT Club (and I dislike fictions in general). Will see how far I could go down this road.
I would appreciate your advice greatly. Thanks!!!
Posted from my mobile deviceHi emmaluo,
As you are a beginner, I would like to tell you that the key to scoring well on GMAT is to do your prep in the right way. And how do you do that? By knowing what is actually tested on GMAT. Let me help you with that.
What is tested on GMAT?
GMAT is a test of application of concepts. So, just the concepts won't fetch you good score. There are 'N' number of ways of solving a particular question but as GMAT is a time based test, you need to use the best possible method to solve the question under 2 minutes. To do this, your focus while preparing has to be mostly around learning the right methodology.
What should you focus on while preparing?
There are certain steps which you have to follow while preparing for GMAT. They are:
- Learn the concepts of a particular topic (For example, prime numbers)
- Learn the right methodology to solve questions of that topic (Very important)
- Practice a few questions of that topic to solidify your learning (Don't worry about solving the question under 2 minutes at this stage)
- Move to the next topic only if you get a decent accuracy in the quiz
- If not, revisit the concepts and the application of the topic and make sure you understand it perfectly this time
- Repeat the process for all the topics
This is how you should go about preparing for GMAT. Once you are done with all the topics, you can start taking timed quizzes. This way, you will learn the right methodology and at the same time will learn to solve the questions under optimum time.
Which resource to choose?
As you have to focus more on the methodology, the resource you use has to help you learn the methodology along with the concepts. And as GMAT is an adaptive test, it's better if you choose an online resource which can help you to make quizzes consisting of questions of all the difficulty levels. All in all, the resource you use has to help you with:
- Concepts
- Methodology (most important)
- Standard questions
- Their detailed solutions (very important as most of your learning happens when you analyze the solution)
- Your weak areas
- Study plan (Added bonus)
So, if the resource you are using right now helps you with all the above, then you can stick with it. If not, I would suggest you to switch to a standard resource which focuses more on the application and helps you to work on your weak areas. And it's always better to stick to one good resource rather than shuffling across multiple resources. As you have just started your prep, make sure you choose the right resource.
Hope it helped. If you wish to have a detailed discussion regarding how to plan your studies, you can get in touch with me using the below link.
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20 Jan 2021, 00:19
