Starting GMAT journey

Question

Hello Experts,

I am starting my GMAT journey and I need all your help to get there.

I am yet to give a mock prep test but did the mini test in mba which gave the score to 510-530. I am guessing this might not be accurate but do not wish to waste a prep test without going through the basics first.

Now for Study plan: Self-Study

Target score: 750+ (Highly ambitious at the moment)

GMAT planning to take in end of March - beginning of April. That's a clear 5 months ahead.
I fumble with both quants and verbal, primarily due to lack of basic concepts and hence the longer time frame.
Looking to start on Quants first since I find that brushing up on concepts will help me get back on the groove.

Books bought so far: OG verbal and Quants + Manhattan Quant guide. (Need help in refining for quants and suggestion for verbal)
Mock tests list: GMAT Prep (2) - Free
 Manhattan Prep(6) - Book purchased
 Powerprep 2012 (2) - Does this still hold relevance now?
 e-gmat (1) - Free
Questions:
1) Is the target score possible with self-study only or is online/classroom course required?
2) Must have books refinement. I read through most of the forum on verbal must haves and Powerscore CR bible comes highly recommended. 
3) Do I need to include veritas prep test as well or is the test list enough. And I do need review on e-gmat free test.

tapasgupta · Answer

Hi  sandy1091 ,

Welcome to GMAT Club.

1) Is the target score possible with self-study only or is online/classroom course required?

I would advice you to first give the GMAT Prep CAT 1. This will help you to understand the pattern of the test. Secondly, It will help you to know the status of your current level.

2) Must have books refinement. I read through most of the forum on verbal must haves and Powerscore CR bible comes highly recommended.

If you are weak in CR, (for which you have to take the test or Mocks), then Powerscore is must for it. 
 
3) Do I need to include veritas prep test as well or is the test list enough. And I do need review on e-gmat free test.

I would advice you to take E-GMAT subscription. Verbal is quite weak for all non-native speakers. E-GMAT will help you to understand the very basic concepts and help to learn the concepts in fun way.

EducationAisle · Answer

Hi  sandy1091 ,  any  score is possible, thru self-study.

A bit of self-introspection on this topic might result in self-realization on whether you really need coaching for GMAT. While there are no perfect answers to this (and no studies available, which show whether people who do self-study fare any better or worse than people who join coaching), it is really an issue that is very subjective.

Following are some of the points that will work for you if you join coaching. If none of these points resonate with you, then chances are that you do not need coaching:

1. Speed up the on-boarding process : Since you seem to be starting cold, then chances are that you would spend significant amount of time to just get into the  groove  and understand how to get into the  thick of things . This would include getting a hang of the exact structure of the GMAT, knowing the best practices, and appreciating the  dos and don’ts . A coaching institute would obviously have all these laid out for you.

2. Study Resources : As opposed to most other exams, GMAT suffers from a  problem of plenty . If you look for GMAT material on Google, you will literally get millions of hits, and GBs and GBs of data available for "free" download. Unfortunately, most of the material that is available on the net for free download, is neither authentic not representative of the actual questions on GMAT. For unsuspecting students who are self-preparing, chances are that they would burn their fingers a few times, before realizing the sanctity of authentic study-material for GMAT. If you join a coaching institute, then obviously the institute would ensure that you have firsthand access to the best study material.

3. Instructors : Passionate and genuine Instructors of GMAT can make every dollar and every minute of yours, worth the experience. Teaching for GMAT for years, these instructors thrive in explaining the concepts to the students in an extremely articulate manner. If you do not join a structured coaching, then chances are that the learning curve will be slightly more elongated. However, if self-learning is something that has always worked for you, then perhaps this is a point that would not appeal to you too much.

4. Support outside the classes : Apart from the classes, coaching provides an invaluable support with concepts and doubt clarification all through your GMAT journey. In the current scenario, there actually are some good freely available support forums (such as GMATClub) available for students. These support forums can actually act as substitutes for "outside the class" support that coaching institutes provide. However, since these GMAT forums are obviously available to public at large, you have to be extremely judicious in terms of filtering out the advice and the solutions that people offer on these platforms.

5. Structured approach : The  kind  of material that you need to get access to, the  sequence  in which you should be studying the various concepts, and the best sources of those concepts are few pieces of the GMAT puzzle that coaching centers would have solved for you.

6. Discipline and group-study : Classroom coaching, by its virtue of fixed timings, rigorous schedule, and predefined pace, would necessitate that you are disciplined in your preparation. It would also give you a  group-study  environment, wherein you are likely to find students who are as committed to making it work, as you are. On the other hand, if you feel extremely self-motivated  without  any external intervention, then this benefit of the coaching classes would not appeal to you.

So, there you go! Based upon the above points that come to my mind right now, do a self-introspection and decide accordingly. Before I end, if you do decide to opt for coaching, an earnest piece of advice would be to attend a  free  trial class with at least few coaching institutes or online coaching classes, before you finalize one.

Good luck with your prep!

sandy1091 · Answer

Just gave a prep test on Economist attempting only quants.
Q30.

This looks like a good start although am not sure how representative Economist exams are to the actual GMAT.
I certainly lack basics in Geometry and a lot silly mistakes in problem solving.
Any tips on this would be appreciated.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi sandy1091,

To start, the 750+ score is approximately the 98th percentile - meaning that 98% of Test Takers never score that high (regardless of how long they study or the number of times that they take the GMAT). Thankfully, NO Business School requires a score that high - so it's important to realize that the score that you "want" and the score that you "need" are not the same thing.

Unfortunately, none of the practice work that you have done so far has been thorough enough to define your current 'ability level.' The only way to properly assess your overall Test Taking skills is to take a FULL-LENGTH practice CAT and take it in a realistic fashion (take the FULL CAT - with the Essay and IR sections, take it away from your home, at the same time of day as when you'll take the Official GMAT, etc.). Beyond the 6 Official CATs, there are a number of high-quality CATs available from Kaplan, MGMAT and Veritas - meaning that you do not have to worry about 'wasting' one CAT. If you are serious about a 750+ Score Goal, then you have to put in the necessary time and effort to make your practice Exams as realistic as possible. That all having been said, we can proceed under the assumption that your general ability level is probably in the low-500s.

From what you describe, your immediate study plan is 'book heavy'; unfortunately, many Test Takers who study in that way end up getting 'stuck' at a particular score level. There's no harm in starting off your studies in that fashion, but you'll likely end up needing to invest in some additional, non-book resources at some point. If you'd prefer to work with the study materials that you current have, then I suggest that you study as you like for the next 1-2 weeks, then take a FULL-LENGTH CAT as described. Once you have that score, you should report back here and we can discuss the results and how you might adjust your studies going forward.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

sandy1091 · Answer

Thank you for giving a detailed answer.

I am aiming at a high 700 because my profile is from an overcrowded Indian Female Engineer. And also I need the high score to offset my masters marks which unfourtunately is not that high. 
I got a profile evaluation done here and the comments were to score 30 points higher than the average which stands between 730-750.

Posted from my mobile device

sandy1091 · Answer

So I took the GMAT prep CAT 1 and scored a meagre 380 with 4 on IR.
I still had time to spare on both quant and verbal.
Percentiles were 9 for quants and 33 for verbal.
Now is this the worst starting point possible ?

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Sandy1091,

I’m glad you reached out, and I’m happy to help. Since you scored 380 on your initial practice exam and are around 350+ points off your score goal, you need to ensure that you follow a study plan that allows you to learn GMAT quant and verbal from the ground up. In other words, follow a study plan that allows you to learn each GMAT quant and verbal topic individually and then practice each topic until you’ve gained mastery. Let me expand on this idea further.

If you are learning about Number Properties, you should develop as much conceptual knowledge about Number Properties as possible. In other words, your goal will be to completely understand properties of factorials, perfect squares, quadratic patterns, LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, and remainders, to name a few concepts. After carefully reviewing the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer Number Properties questions, practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties. When you do dozens of questions of the same type one after the other, you learn just what it takes to get questions of that type correct consistently. If you aren't getting close to 90 percent of questions of a certain type correct, go back and seek to better understand how that type of question works, and then do more questions of that type until you get to around at least 90 percent accuracy in your training. If you get 100 percent of some sets correct, even better. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.

When you are working on learning to answer questions of a particular type, start off taking your time, and then seek to speed up as you get more comfortable answering questions of that type. As you do such practice, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get right. If you got a remainder question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not properly apply the remainder formula? Was there a concept you did not understand in the question? By carefully analyzing your mistakes, you will be able to efficiently fix your weaknesses and in turn improve your GMAT quant skills. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.

Each time you strengthen your understanding of a topic and your skill in answering questions of a particular type, you increase your odds of hitting your score goal. You know that there are types of questions that you are happy to see, types that you would rather not see, and types that you take a long time to answer correctly. Learn to more effectively answer the types of questions that you would rather not see, and make them into your favorite types. Learn to correctly answer in two minutes or less questions that you currently take five minutes to answer. By finding, say, a dozen weaker quant areas and turning them into strong areas, you will make great progress toward hitting your quant score goal. If a dozen areas turn out not to be enough, strengthen some more areas.

Follow a similar routine for verbal. For example, let’s say you start by learning about Critical Reasoning. Your first goal is to fully master the individual topics: Strengthen the Argument, Weaken The Argument, Resolve the Paradox, etc. As you learn about each question type, do focused practice, so that you can track your skill in answering each type. If, for example, you get a weakening question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize the specific question type? Were you doing too much analysis in your head? Did you skip over a keyword in an answer choice? You must thoroughly analyze your mistakes and seek to turn weaknesses into strengths by focusing on the question types you dread seeing and the questions you take a long time to answer correctly.

When practicing Reading Comprehension, you need to develop a reading strategy that is both efficient and thorough. Reading too fast and not understanding what you have read are equally as harmful as reading too slow and using up too much time. When attacking Reading Comprehension passages, you must have one clear goal in mind: to understand the context of what you are reading. However, you must do so efficiently, so you need to avoid getting bogged down in the details of each paragraph and instead focus on understanding the main point of each paragraph. That being said, do not fall into the trap of thinking that you can just read the intro and the conclusion and thereby comprehend the main idea of a paragraph. As you read a paragraph, consider how the context of the paragraph relates to previous paragraphs, so you can continue developing your overall understanding of the passage. Furthermore, as you practice Reading Comprehension, focus on the exact types of questions with which you struggle: Find the Main Idea, Inference, Author’s Tone, etc. As with Critical Reasoning, analyze your incorrect Reading Comprehension answers to better determine why you tend to get a particular question type wrong, and then improve upon your weaknesses. Keep in mind that GMAT Reading Comprehension passages are not meant to be easy to read. So, to better prepare yourself to analyze such passages, read magazines with similar content and style, such as the New York Times, Scientific American, and Smithsonian. 
 
Sentence Correction is a bit of a different animal compared to Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning. There are three aspects to getting correct answers to GMAT Sentence Correction questions: what you know, such as grammar rules, what you see, such as violations of grammar rules and the logic of sentence structure, and what you do, such as carefully considering each answer choice in the context of the non-underlined portion of the sentence. To drive up your Sentence Correction score, you likely will have to work on all three of those aspects. Furthermore, the likely reason that your Sentence Correction performance has not improved is that you have not been working on all three of those aspects.

Regarding what you know, first and foremost, you MUST know your grammar rules. Let's be clear, though: GMAT Sentence Correction is not really a test of knowledge of grammar rules. The reason for learning the grammar rules is so that you can determine what sentences convey and whether sentences are well-constructed. In fact, in many cases, incorrect answers to Sentence Correction questions are grammatically flawless. Thus, often your task is to use your knowledge of grammar rules to determine which answer choice creates the most logical sentence meaning and structure.
 
This determination of whether sentences are well-constructed and logical is the second aspect of finding correct answers to Sentence Correction questions, what you see. Likely, the main reason that Sentence Correction has not "clicked" for you is that you have not put enough work into developing your skill in seeing what is going on in the various versions of the sentence that the answer choices create. To develop this skill, you probably have to slow way down. You won't develop this skill by spending less than two minutes per question. For a while, anyway, you have to spend time with each question, maybe even ten or fifteen minutes on one question sometimes, analyzing every answer choice until you see the details that you have to see in order to choose the correct answer. As you go through the answer choices, consider the meaning conveyed by each version of the sentence. Does the meaning make sense? Even if you can tell what the version is SUPPOSED to convey, does the version really convey that meaning? Is there a verb to go with the subject? Do all pronouns clearly refer to nouns? By slowing way down and looking for these details, you learn to see what you have to see in order to clearly understand which answer to a Sentence Correction question is correct.
 
There is only one correct answer to any Sentence Correction question, there are clear reasons why that choice is correct and the others are not, and none of those reasons are that the correct version simply "sounds right." In fact, the correct version often sounds a little off at first. That correct answers may sound a little off is not surprising. If the correct answers were always the ones that sounded right, then most people most of the time would get Sentence Correction questions correct, without really knowing why the wrong answers were wrong and the correct answers were correct. So, you have to go beyond choosing what "sounds right" and learn to clearly see the logical reasons why one choice is better than all of the others.
 
As for the third aspect of getting Sentence Correction questions correct, what you do, the main thing you have to do is be very careful. You have to make sure that you are truly considering the structures of sentences and the meanings conveyed rather than allowing yourself to be tricked into choosing trap answers that sound right but don't convey logical meanings. You also have to make sure that you put some real energy into finding the correct answers. Finding the correct answer to a Sentence Correction question may take bouncing from choice to choice until you start to see the differences that make all choices wrong except for one. Often, when you first look at the choices in a Sentence Correction question, only one or two seem obviously incorrect. Getting the right answers takes a certain work ethic. You have to take the time to see the differences between answers and to figure out the precise reasons that one choice is correct.
 
To improve what you do when you answer Sentence Correction questions, seek to become aware of how you are going about answering them. Are you being careful and looking for logic and details, or are you quickly eliminating choices that sound a little off, and then choosing the best of the rest? If you choose an incorrect answer, consider what you did to arrive at that answer and what you could do differently to arrive at correct answers more consistently. Furthermore, see how many questions you can get correct in a row as you practice. If you break your streak by missing one, consider what you could do differently to extend your streak.

As with your Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension regimens, after learning a particular Sentence Correction topic, engage in focused practice with 30 questions or more that involve that topic. As your skills improve, you will want to practice with questions that test you on skills from multiple Sentence Correction topics.

In order to follow the path described above, you may need some new quant and verbal materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the  best quant  and  verbal courses . You also may find it helpful to read the following articles about 
 How to Score a 700+ on the GMAT  and  The Phases of Preparing for the GMAT .

Feel free to reach out with any further questions. Good luck!

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi sandy1091,

Many Test Takers are unhappy with their initial practice scores, but you really shouldn't be. This 380 is just a measure of your skills right now - and how you currently 'respond' to the GMAT; you'll improve on that result over time as you learn more about the content, Tactics and little 'secrets' of the Exam. That having been said, a lot of work will be required for you to get to the point that you can hit your Goal Score. While 5 months of potential study time is great, you will have to be really 'efficient' with that time going forward (as you'll have to learn, practice and master a variety of skills to score 750+).

1) On this CAT, did you run out of time on any of the sections (and leave any questions unanswered)?
2) Going forward, how many hours do you think you can consistently study each week?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

sandy1091 · Answer

I had almost 20 mins left on both the sections. I am currently reviewing my answers and the pattern is I am making lot of silly mistakes. 
I been practicing wuants from gmatclub and thats bringinng back muscle memory.

Posted from my mobile device

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi sandy1091,

When a GMATer finishes any of the sections THAT 'early', one of two things has likely occurred: either that person is exceptionally strong in that section and put together a brilliant performance OR that person made a lot of little mistakes on questions that he/she could have correctly answered, but didn't (BECAUSE he/she was moving too quickly). From what you describe, your performance on this initial CAT probably could have been a lot better - which is both good and concerning. Right now, you have the capacity to Score higher, but you weren't willing to do the necessary work on this CAT to EARN those points.

This is meant to say that beyond having the proper Study Plan and materials, YOU have to be willing to put in the proper effort - into every aspect of your training - to hit your Score Goal.

In my prior post, I asked about your availability to study. That's important to define (if possible), so that we can plan out an approach that you can properly integrate into your weekly routine. How many hours do you think you will be able to commit to your studies each week? Will you have to take any lengthy 'time off' from your studies over the next several months (for work, travel, etc.)?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

sandy1091 · Answer

I have a regular day job. Having said that, I am ready to put in 2 hours on weekdays and 5-6 hours on weekends. Thats 20-22 hrs per week.

Posted from my mobile device

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi sandy1091,

Given your general study timeframe - and the amount of potential study time that you can reasonably commit to each week - I think that you could potentially improve a great deal. Based on your Score Goal, you would likely find it beneficial to invest in a GMAT Course of some type (either Guided Self-Study or instructor-led), so you should plan to look into the available options.

Most GMAT Companies offer some type of free materials (practice problems, Trial Accounts, videos, etc.) that you can use to 'test out' a product before you buy it. We have a variety of those resources at our website (www.empowergmat.com). I suggest that you take advantage of all of them then choose the one that best matches your personality, timeline and budget.

If you have any additional questions, then just let me know.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

sandy1091 · Answer

So after taking a 6 month break, I retook the GMAT prep exam and I scored Q41 and V21. A massive improvement in Quants from 19 to 41. This is encouraging given that I didn't study for 6 months and this time around I was more relaxed and spaced my time to finish Quants. I still make silly mistakes but will continue improving on that before i hit Q48.

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