Study intensive plan - 12 weeks?

Question

Hello All.

I have just initiated my study plan for GMAT and would very much appreciate your comments on that please.

Just for you to have a preliminary idea: I had 400 on my Diagnostic Test, with 0 experience on the test mechanisms/timings and also unexpected anxiety.
My background is Law, although my Master was in Management. This meaning that I am lacking some of the Maths's foundations and feel very insecure about that. My GPA is very high, and studying habbits are not a problem at all to me.
My aim is to apply for the top 5/10 business schools in the world next summer, so I scheduled my first official exam within 3 months (end of June).

Bearing all this in mind, my plan is to study for 12 weeks intensively (6 to 8 hours/5 days a week), according to the following plan:

Weeks 1-4: Going through the 5 Quant. Strategy Guides (ManhattanPrep), accompanied by Foundations of GMAT Math
(I am assuming studying 1,5 book / week. Is this doable considering I am 100% focus on this? Could this be enough considering by background?)
Is it a good idea to attack only Quant on the first month? Or should I mix it with other parts for motivation purposes?
How could I take care of my "Maths defficiencies" besides this?)

Weeks 5-6: Going through the 3 Verbal SGuides,
(Apparently when I pay due attention to questions, this part should not be a problem to me.)

Week 7: Going through the last SG on IR and Essay.
(Is this too little? On the Diagnostic Test, I got all stressed/nervous because of having to integrate such different infos on IR...
In relation to the essays, is there any way I could score them? Or someone/somewhere I could send them?)

Weeks 8-11: Practise, review, etc.
(This will obviously be adapted, depending on how the previous months go... But how do you think I should organise this last month before test day?)

What do you think about all this? Please let me know your thoughts.
Best regards and thank you very much!

DAVEexamPAL · Answer

Hey  joanap 
This does sound like a good amount of time, perhaps even more than enough. I think 2 months could be enough, and keep in mind that three months is a long amount of times, and you and the risk of forgetting things you've studied at the beginning. 
Your general schedule seems good to me - starting with material review, and moving on practice. Perhaps this is obvious, but during the weeks when you are going through strategy guides, it is crucial to both review material and practice relevant questions. your final practice weeks should be devoted to mock tests, and analysing those.

Take a look at this article I wrote on building a three month study plan, perhaps you will find it useful: 
 https://exampal.com/gmat/blog/how-to-prepare-for-the-gmat-in-3-months/

henryford · Answer

Hi  DAVEexamPAL

I saw the link its good plan , is that plan enough for the people who are doing job and preparing for the GMAT like me , i will be working in office for 10 hrs and traveling home to office and vice versa will take two more hrs , is there any plan / suggestions .

DAVEexamPAL · Answer

Hey  henryford 
It is enough for a person working full time, yes. Take a look at the template for the study plan - it shows someone who's working full time and studies about 1.5 hours per weekday, plus weekends.

henryford · Answer

Ya checked it , thanks for the help  DAVEexamPAL

joanap · Answer

Hi there, thank you very much for your comments!

After 1 month of intensive studies according to the plan, and first pass of (i) Foundations of Math and (ii) half of MP Strategy Guides, I decided to took a 2nd exam, to measure the progression made (I believed!).

And to my absolute surprise and disgrace, I managed to get an even worst result than my diagnostic test (400, I am even embarrassed to comment the percentiles as you can imagine)...
After this, and to be honest, i just think I should give up right now, I cannot even understand what happened...

Anyway, and trying to put in words what i think might have happened / be happening, so that you can send me your thoughts/advices:

I will now take more than the necessary time to review the exam, because I am aware of its utmost importance. Tomorrow that will be my only plan, to learn from my mistakes.

But in a sentence, I feel absolutely destroyed with this happening, with no motivation to keep going, and mostly to take the exam in the summer. How can I ever recover that? And believe me, I was full of it, everyday!

I have been studying everyday, in a very organised and diligent way, mixing up OG problems, and understanding each and every aspect of problems. I still need more time than what is supposed to complete the problems, but at this moment I was still (almost only) focused on understanding rather than on speed.

I think one of the things that happened is that I finally started to recognize the categories of problems, and with that tried to solve the problems, taking more time (rather then gessing), not being able to finish any section of the exam.

Besides that, I am feeling tremendous difficulties in not using calculator for Quant, although practising everyday on my scrap paper (nothing is as fast as a calculator!).

But the worst disaster is certainly IR - i haven't studied it until now, but will introduce a chapter once a week. What do you think?

I normally stand as one of the smartest (in college, work, and every other challenge that I have accepted until now), but in this case (GMAT) I have never felt so dumb or incapable to progress. After all, how can that be that after 1 month of studying, practising, understanding, etc, I manage to get an even worst result?!

Should I continue? give up? rearrange our studying plan? is this normal to happen? I am having millions of doubts right now...

Could you please send me some positive vibrations, advices, experiences, etc., whatever you think makes sense at this delicate moment?

Thank you very much for you help. Have a nice week.

henryford · Answer

Hi joanap

I cant say that " what study plan we need " and "how to study " , even i started just 2 months back, i have a bigger challenge than GMAT that is my self , since i am the laziest person in the world and most of all i dont have any collateral/friends/relatives to help me for financing my education [abroad MBA costs huge according my countries currency ] , am struggling a lot now days for changing myself physically and mentally to reach my ambition/goal/aim. So that it helps me to crack GMAT.

I know nothing can happen over night , but we need to try step by step and determined to achieve. "Rome wasn't built in a day"

I don't know about how smart a person need to be to crack GMAT.

But just ask your self no need to give reply also for these questions ?

WHY YOU DECIDED TO TAKE GMAT ?
WHAT YOUR GOING TO DO AFTER COMPLETING MBA ?
WHAT'S YOUR AMBITION/GOAL/AIM IN LIFE ?

You no need to give reply to these questions just ask your self .

As you mentioned you have taken many challenges and achieved it , remember your feeling after you have conquered those challenges .

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi joanap,

Based on what you've described, it's possible that the 'book heavy' approach that you've been taking so far just doesn't provide the type of guidance that you need. Before I can offer you the specific advice that you’re looking for, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on your goals:

1) What is your goal score?
2) Are you planning to apply to Business School this year or next year?
3) Going forward, how many hours do you think you can consistently study each week?

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

joanap · Answer

Hi Rich.
In reply:

1) What is your goal score? - 650/700
2) Are you planning to apply to Business School this year or next year? this year, september/october
3) Going forward, how many hours do you think you can consistently study each week? 30h

Any idea? Thanks

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi joanap,

Raising a 400 to a 650+ will likely require at least another 3 months of consistent, guided study - and you'll have to make significant improvements to how you handle BOTH the Quant and Verbal sections. By extension, you might need to push back your planned Test Date. Given what you've described, I think you probably can score a lot higher than these two CAT Scores, but studying for the GMAT is likely quite different from the type of studying that you may have done in High School or College - and you would likely find the structure and guidance of a GMAT Course to be beneficial.

"Review" is an exceptionally important part of the GMAT training process; your ability to define WHY you're getting questions wrong is essential to defining the areas that you need to work on (and the specific things that you need to 'fix '). As such, I'd like to know a bit more about your last CAT. While a full Mistake Tracker would provide a lot more information, there are some basic questions that you should be able to answer (and the more EXACT you can be with your answers, the better):

After reviewing each section of this recent CAT, how many questions did you get wrong....
1) Because of a silly/little mistake?
2) Because there was some math/verbal that you just could not remember how to do?
3) Because the question was too hard?
4) Because you were low on time and had to guess?
5) How many Verbal questions did you 'narrow down to 2 choices' but still get wrong?

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

Sajjad1994 · Answer

Best Books

For Concept Learning

Manhattan Quant Guides
Manhattan Verbal Guides
For CR: The Powerscore GMAT Critical Reasoning Bible
For RC: Aristotle RC Grail

For Practice

The Official Guide for GMAT 2015-18
The Official Guide for GMAT Quantitative Review 2015-18
The Official Guide for GMAT Verbal Review 2015-18

Strategies

You can start with Quant or Verbal which suits you. If you have started with Quant then Start with the Arithmetic but if started with verbal then start first with Sentence correction. One month for learning Quant concepts and one month for practicing question and same practice for Verbal. During you Practicing question don't forget to make an error log to track your weak areas after practice. Once you know your weak areas revise your Concepts related to those areas and do some more Practice. 6-8 CATs are enough for practice the real tests. Make your Stamina for sitting 3 hours in the test and don't study more than 2 hours in one sit and 4 hours per day

Top CATs for Practice

1. Official GMAC CATs
2. Manhattan CATs
3. Kaplan CATs
4. GMAT Club Quant CATs

Good Luck

rohan2345 · Answer

Hi joanap, Your schedule looks good!12 weeks is good enough to achieve a good score. It’s a good thing you have taken a GMAT Mock once. You now know your weaknesses and work on them. If you are willing to study dedicatedly for around that time, you are sure to achieve your goal. I believe you may benefit from taking a GMATPREP course. Your choice of using MGMAT guides for your preparation is great. MGMAT guides are phenomenal and cover the entire syllabus really well. I must add that if you are particularly looking to discover and improve on your weak areas in quant; a subscription to GMATCLUB tests is the best way to do that. They are indeed phenomenal and will not only pinpoint your weak areas but also help you improve on them. Also for verbal, I would highly encourage you to consider e-gmat verbal online or the e-gmat verbal live course. They are both amazing courses especially designed for non-natives. They offer almost 25% of their courses for free so you can try out their free trial to decide which one you want to go for. Plus the e-gmat Scholaranium which is included in both the courses is one of the best verbal practice tools in the market. Further taking multiple mocks might help. Apart from the GMATPREP, Manhattan GMAT tests and Veritas Prep Tests in my experience have a good verbal and Quant section and will certainly help you point out and improve your weak areas. Further another advantage of taking many mocks is to build up your stamina. Apart from the GMATPREP tests, taking practise tests of any major GMATPREP company ought to do that. I would also encourage you to purchase the GMATPREP QP 1 for some great additional practice. Here is a link that will help you with your decision. https://gmatclub.com/forum/best-gmat-ve ... 68383.html Lastly, you can check out a very interesting article by Mike McGarry from Magoosh detailing a 3 month study plan https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/3-month-g ... -students/. You will find it very helpful as it gives out a study plan as per your needs. Hope this helps. All the best.

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