So my history is a little different.
I am not the usual 'working/studying' type of GMAT takers and my biggest concern wasn't time.
I had just moved to another country with my husband and a 6-month baby.
I am from Brazil and we moved to Japan. I cannot speak Japanese (yet) and finding a job proved to be a challenge. After a two months trying I decided to move on to the GMAT and my new plan was to do an MBA and use that as a way back in the market. (Now currently pregnant with second baby and my daughter is 11 months)
At the beginning I could not study more than 3 hours a day. My baby was still breastfeeding and I had to stop every now and then to do all the rest like: grocery shopping, laundry, cooking, etc.
I needed a course to keep me on track of my studies, afordable and that could be done at my own pace.
I had tried a year back manhattan-prep - which gave me a score of 640 at Oct/2016 (Q45 V32 IR5 AWA4)
This time I looked for a course that was more non-native-english-speaker firendly, since my weakness was Verbal.
My strategy had a few main points:
1) Trust the data. a. Do diagnosis tests to understand my strenghts and weakness and through those, decide where to begin. It ended up beign CR - RC - SC > Quant. Even though Quant was my stronger section.
2) Use of Takt time. a. Understand how much time you need to get each section question right is key. In my case, I needed more time than I had for RC. With this in mind, I focused extra hard to improve my SC in order to save time for Reading Comprehension without compromising accuracy.
3) Live Sections a. I updated my
e-gmat course with live sections towards the end of my study because I was struggling to break through the 690 barrier. The live course helped me with the details and concepts that I was missing on the 700+ questions.
Three advices that I would call your attention to:
1) Let go of questions you know will take too much time. (Even though you can solve it). This is because it may cost you 2 questions right, instead of one. Or it may just be too hard for you and you would get it wrong anyway.
2) Recognize your takt time and manage your time appropriately.[b]3) Don’t ignore your strong section – continue to improve the strength of your strong section.
Some data here:
Actual score (Jun/24/18) - 720 (Q49 V40 IR8 AWA5)
e-GMAT couse: From March to June > 4 months
Mocks:
660 - Q44 V36 -
Manhattan Prep (Apr/04)
650 - Q47 V32 - e-GMAT (Jun/01)
690 - Q45 V38 -
Manhattan Prep (Jun/05)
660 - Q47 V34 - Veritas (Jun/08)
690 - Q48 V36 -
Manhattan Prep (Jun/16)
730 - Q48 V42 - e-GMAT (Jun/18)
690 - Q49 V36 - Veritas (Jun/20)
710 - Q49 V36 - Gmat Prep (Jun/21)
720 - Q49 V40 - Actual Test (Jun/24)