MGMAT books - best way to go through them?

Have you taken a diagnostic test to assess your current weaknesses?

Going slow through the books is not necessarily a bad thing.
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Hi,

Yeh i'm having the same problem. I started the 5 maths books a few weeks ago and its really slow going. I haven't much experience but like mohater said, going slow may be quite a good thing. If you're going slowly through the material, understanding everything you read and doing all of the questions, it is better than skimming through the books and having a patchy understanding of the topics. Go through it slowly once and the next time you go through it, even if its just for making detailed notes, all of the topics should 'click' in a fraction of the time.

If you're feeling it may be a mental block doing so much maths and seemingly going very slow, maybe try doing a couple of chapters and then a chapter or two of sentence correction. That way you can be making progress in both areas. It's not usually recommended, but each to their own.

You want to be able to remember what you cover (duh) and that may mean you will go slower at some point. Fast =/= good. Also what do you mean by too much time? How long is that?
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Well,

I just started going through the books (all 5 math) 2 weeks ago, but here is what i'm doing.

(1) read the chapter thoroughly, making sure I understand everything as I go.

(2) answer all the questions at the end of the chapter.

(3) outline the chapter. During lawschool, I found that was key to me. I do it in Word, so I can revise it as I go and later down the road.

(4) Repeat for all the chapters

(5) Redo any questions I get wrong for that book when I finish the last chapter.

I plan to use the outlines on a continuing basis to skim over to help long-term memory, and will update with any pertinent tips from wrong answers I may have on other problems on that topic.

Tom

I'm currently on Book 6, but have been slowly trudging through them for the past couple months.

My strategy was/is:
1) Review Books 1-5, doing every problem at the end of chapter, but NOT doing any of the OG problem sets or Advanced sections. Taking detailed notes on each chapter by hand. (took about 4-5 weeks)
2) Summarize the "easy" sections, do the OG Quant v2 problems, and then review the Advanced chapters, taking detailed notes, and finishing the Advanced OG Quant problems. (took about 2 weeks)
3) Review Verbal books (6-8), taking down notes, doing the OG Verbal problems. (in the middle of this right now)
4) Quick-review the Math section, do OG 12ed. problems.
5) Summarize the Verbal section, do OG 12ed. problems.
6) Run through a week or two of practice tests, and hone down sections I have issues on (SC, Word Translations, and general DS right now).

My diagnostic test had me doing well on Verbal (40) but slow on Math, so I tried to focus more on the Math books. I just took another diagnostic that had me great on Math (48) but my verbal skills decreased (36), so I'm thinking I should've balanced my studies more evenly.

I'm getting good results by the initial review + writing notes, then a re-review. The only problem is that it is slow. It first took about 2 hours per chapter, but I'm getting it down to about 1-1.5 hours. Cutting out the unnecessary examples and summarizing less on paper. The note-taking part is pretty important to me -- I'm sure I would've missed some key points if I just quick-skimmed through the chapters.

How much time are you spending per night on your studies? When are you looking to take the GMAT?

I'm spending 4 hours a night on them My exam date is November 8 and I'm on holidays for 2 weeks in september... so am worried a bit I won't finish all the books in time - thus am doing 4 hours daily. I'm also only doing every other question now at the end of each chapter to speed things up and somewhat solidify each chapter's concepts, then I'll go back, skim over each chapter again and re-do the questions.


I realized since I posted the first post that to go back over the notes I'd already made and quickly skim over each chapter again is invaluable to go over the stuff I didn't quite understand the first time. I managed to condense all my notes from each chapter into 1/2 a page each. I've attached my notes for Equations and VICS (E's & V's I called it) as an example, maybe it will help someone.

But I'm still open for any advice on how to make the best use of these books. I think NewSc2's strategy is good - I won't focus on the problem sets now until I've finished each book.

I am currently studying MGMAT Number properties and this is what I am doing -

1. Reading the material.
2. Taking brief notes (only of key points and points I dont know already )as I read.
3. Doing the questions at the end of each chapter.
4. Reviewing explainations for wrong answers.

I completed upto Chapter 7 PEMDAS and on an average took about 1 hr on chapters on Exponents, Roots, PEMDAS etc. I took more than 2 hrs for Consecutive numbers.