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Apr 1612:00 PM EDT
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You’re first to know: Save $200 on GMAT prep starting tomorrow, 4/13. Get 6 official practice tests and study with real questions. Be ready to save!
Apr 2212:30 AM EDT
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At one point, she believed GMAT wasn’t for her. After scoring 595, self-doubt crept in and she questioned her potential. But instead of quitting, she made the right strategic changes. The result? A remarkable comeback to 695. Check out how Saakshi did it.
Apr 2301:30 AM EDT
-02:30 AM EDT
Struggling with GMAT Verbal as a non-native speaker? Harsh improved his score from 595 to 695 in just 45 days—and scored a 99 %ile in Verbal (V88)! Learn how smart strategy, clarity, and guided prep helped him gain 100 points.
Apr 2308:00 PM PDT
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Video explanations + diagnosis of 10 weakest areas + 150+ short videos + study plan!
Apr 2610:00 AM EDT
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The Target Test Prep course represents a quantum leap forward in GMAT preparation, a radical reinterpretation of the way that students should study. Try before you buy with a 5-day, full-access trial of the course for FREE!
Apr 2711:00 AM EDT
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Prefer video-based learning? The Target Test Prep OnDemand course is a one-of-a-kind video masterclass featuring 400 hours of lecture-style teaching by Scott Woodbury-Stewart, founder of Target Test Prep and one of the most accomplished GMAT instructors
Apr 2808:00 AM PDT
-11:00 AM PDT
Whether you are just beginning your MBA journey or fine-tuning your path to a 700+ score, GMAT Day is designed to give you a competitive edge.
Hello everyone. Firstly, apologies to bb that this took so long, even though I had promised (https://gmatclub.com/forum/what-are-my-chances-profile-evaluation-tool-309854-180.html#p3172454) to do this way back.
A little bit of my background: I started my preparation for MBA in December 2022, by creating an account on GMATClub. By mid-January 2023, I had purchased the OG books to kick start my preparation in all seriousness. I gave my exam in first half of March 2023. Prior to this, I had not prepared for any MBA related exams/courses.
Now let me get straight to business. The overarching theme of this article is: Prepping for GMAT in under 2 months.
A. The Strategy:
1. Focus on the Essentials & not the exceptions: There is a tendency to compulsively prepare for 700+ questions, without getting the basics right. Even I did that mistake initially, but to get there one needs to get his/her/their basics strong. For example, a 700+ question on critical reasoning would still test your ability to.... reason critically! Thus, you must make your way through the thicket of 'under 700-questions' to get your basics right.
2. Adopt the 'agile' model for studies:
a. When you first start, you must have an overarching vision on what you think are your weak/strong areas are. Validate this vision right away by giving an OfficialGMAT mock. This would help you verify if your initial hunch about your weak/strong areas is correct, who knows you may think that you are good at quant and yet struggle to finish the questions on time! Also, if you are someone like me who hates doing stuff without preparing, then feel free to study for around a week to get an idea about the exam and its sections and then attempt your first Official Mock.
b. Based on the results of your mock you now know which areas you should prioritize. It is important to stress that GMAT mocks are NOT holistic evaluation of the whole syllabus of GMAT. For example, I'm not good at sets, yet I didn't come across any questions on probability in my first test, this created a blind spot in my preparation as I remained unaware that I've this chink in my armour. One must be aware of this limitation of mocks while preparing.
c. This brings me to the third point: Iterate. To make sure that you can have maximum exposure to all types of questions GMAT has to offer, you should attempt as many official mocks as you can. After my first two official mocks, I had purchased all the remaining official mocks and had made a calendar to attempt them. The calendar was there to keep me on track and to ensure that I do not lose my focus- It looked something like: Mock3- 10 days gap- Mock4- 8 days gap- Mock5-7 days gap- Mock8.
You can evolve your own timelines, although I would recommend to keep the gaps at maximum of 2 weeks between the mocks, and to progressively decrease the gaps between the mocks as your skill level rises.
Based on the results of the mocks you can constantly adjust your tactics and focus of your studies.
B. The tactics
1. For Quant:
a. I purchased both OG GMAT and GMAT Quant Review by the official test makers. They served as the foundation stones of my preparation.
b. I had purchased the Magoosh GMAT course, and found the Quant aspect quite good. It helped me get an overall idea about the type of questions too.
2. For Verbal:
a. Again, I relied on OG GMAT and GMAT Verbal Review by the official testmakers.
b. Unfortunately, the verbal section of Magoosh didn't work out that well for me. More specifically, I struggled at understanding the sentence correction (SC) videos as they were jargon-heavy and as someone who learned basic grammar terms such as gerunds, participles etc only recently I found them quite difficult to follow. I realized after studying the whole course that maybe I was not cut for that course.
It was at this time I stumbled across the GMATNinja 's resources, please refer the following for a great Verbal score:
1. GMAT Ninja's guide for Critical Reasoning (CR) & Reading Comprehension (RC) on this forum
2. GMAT Ninja's videos for SC, RC & CR on youtube
c. Two bit of advices by the venerable Ninja that I would like to emphasize on for verbal are:
(i) Have reading precision: Please don't skim the sentences instead try to read them carefully. For instance, the words 'eat' & 'eating' may be something you may skim over in a hurry, but in a SC question they can give vital clues.
(ii) Build your aptitude: Instead of being obsessed with (dare I say) artificial rules such as 'touch rule' in SC or classification of question into types in CR/RC, it would be better to build skills to understand the exact demand of the question. This would take time and would come with practice. But take it from a guy who got 650 in his 2nd mock, you can build this skill within 2 weeks.
3. Tying all these threads is the wonderful GMATClub.
a. I would highly recommend visiting the club when you get a question wrong. This was specially helpful for Sentence Correction where the OG answers are vague.
b. Not to mention, it does give you solace when you see so many people going through what you are going through right now.
Finally the GMATClub is a valuable resource to read motivational tips from people who have spent years to get a good score. So if you feel low or have exam/question related anxiety, please do visit the club to read success stories of folks whose journeys are a testimony to incremental improvement.
Thanks for reading this far. I hope you enjoy your journey
A little bit of my background: I started my preparation for MBA in December 2022, by creating an account on GMATClub. By mid-January 2023, I had purchased the OG books to kick start my preparation in all seriousness. I gave my exam in first half of March 2023. Prior to this, I had not prepared for any MBA related exams/courses.
Now let me get straight to business. The overarching theme of this article is: Prepping for GMAT in under 2 months.
A. The Strategy:
1. Focus on the Essentials & not the exceptions: There is a tendency to compulsively prepare for 700+ questions, without getting the basics right. Even I did that mistake initially, but to get there one needs to get his/her/their basics strong. For example, a 700+ question on critical reasoning would still test your ability to.... reason critically! Thus, you must make your way through the thicket of 'under 700-questions' to get your basics right.
2. Adopt the 'agile' model for studies:
a. When you first start, you must have an overarching vision on what you think are your weak/strong areas are. Validate this vision right away by giving an OfficialGMAT mock. This would help you verify if your initial hunch about your weak/strong areas is correct, who knows you may think that you are good at quant and yet struggle to finish the questions on time! Also, if you are someone like me who hates doing stuff without preparing, then feel free to study for around a week to get an idea about the exam and its sections and then attempt your first Official Mock.
b. Based on the results of your mock you now know which areas you should prioritize. It is important to stress that GMAT mocks are NOT holistic evaluation of the whole syllabus of GMAT. For example, I'm not good at sets, yet I didn't come across any questions on probability in my first test, this created a blind spot in my preparation as I remained unaware that I've this chink in my armour. One must be aware of this limitation of mocks while preparing.
c. This brings me to the third point: Iterate. To make sure that you can have maximum exposure to all types of questions GMAT has to offer, you should attempt as many official mocks as you can. After my first two official mocks, I had purchased all the remaining official mocks and had made a calendar to attempt them. The calendar was there to keep me on track and to ensure that I do not lose my focus- It looked something like: Mock3- 10 days gap- Mock4- 8 days gap- Mock5-7 days gap- Mock8.
You can evolve your own timelines, although I would recommend to keep the gaps at maximum of 2 weeks between the mocks, and to progressively decrease the gaps between the mocks as your skill level rises.
Based on the results of the mocks you can constantly adjust your tactics and focus of your studies.
B. The tactics
1. For Quant:
a. I purchased both OG GMAT and GMAT Quant Review by the official test makers. They served as the foundation stones of my preparation.
b. I had purchased the Magoosh GMAT course, and found the Quant aspect quite good. It helped me get an overall idea about the type of questions too.
2. For Verbal:
a. Again, I relied on OG GMAT and GMAT Verbal Review by the official testmakers.
b. Unfortunately, the verbal section of Magoosh didn't work out that well for me. More specifically, I struggled at understanding the sentence correction (SC) videos as they were jargon-heavy and as someone who learned basic grammar terms such as gerunds, participles etc only recently I found them quite difficult to follow. I realized after studying the whole course that maybe I was not cut for that course.
It was at this time I stumbled across the GMATNinja 's resources, please refer the following for a great Verbal score:
1. GMAT Ninja's guide for Critical Reasoning (CR) & Reading Comprehension (RC) on this forum
2. GMAT Ninja's videos for SC, RC & CR on youtube
c. Two bit of advices by the venerable Ninja that I would like to emphasize on for verbal are:
(i) Have reading precision: Please don't skim the sentences instead try to read them carefully. For instance, the words 'eat' & 'eating' may be something you may skim over in a hurry, but in a SC question they can give vital clues.
(ii) Build your aptitude: Instead of being obsessed with (dare I say) artificial rules such as 'touch rule' in SC or classification of question into types in CR/RC, it would be better to build skills to understand the exact demand of the question. This would take time and would come with practice. But take it from a guy who got 650 in his 2nd mock, you can build this skill within 2 weeks.
3. Tying all these threads is the wonderful GMATClub.
a. I would highly recommend visiting the club when you get a question wrong. This was specially helpful for Sentence Correction where the OG answers are vague.
b. Not to mention, it does give you solace when you see so many people going through what you are going through right now.
Finally the GMATClub is a valuable resource to read motivational tips from people who have spent years to get a good score. So if you feel low or have exam/question related anxiety, please do visit the club to read success stories of folks whose journeys are a testimony to incremental improvement.
Thanks for reading this far. I hope you enjoy your journey
22 Apr 2023, 22:23
Kudos
Bookmarks
Congratulations on your score and thanks so much for sharing your experience!
This is really helpful - really appreciate the kind words as well!
PS. Have you identified/zeroed in on the schools?
Posted from my mobile device
This is really helpful - really appreciate the kind words as well!
PS. Have you identified/zeroed in on the schools?
Posted from my mobile device
22 Apr 2023, 22:32
Kudos
Bookmarks
bb
Thank you!
I've zeroed in on a few colleges, and I'm in the process of finalizing two more colleges... I'm hoping to finalize the list by the end of this month.
