760 in 5 weeks: you can do it!

Question

Hello Gmat clubbers,

I took my GMAT last week and scored better than I would have dreamed of : 760, Q49 and V45

Before sharing my experience I want to thank all the great people who have taken the time to write their stories it really helped me find the right strategy. I decided only 2 months ago that i was going to apply to MBAs and had only 5 weeks to prepare for the scary GMAT (while working, needless to say)

I started with the GMAT Prep first exam and scored 620. I realized my main problem was not the knowledge but mostly the format of the questions/test that i was really not used to. So I went through all the OG 11 to get familiar with the format of the questions. It seems like a lot but it does not take that much time, especially for the quant (took me 2 evenings to complete each section). 
By that time i had a few math skills i knew I needed to review, as well as grammar rule and idioms.GMAT Club was the best tool I found. Some clubbers have done an amazing job at summing up the idioms or math skills. Use their documents!

Practice :

Following the advice of a friend I then got the Kaplan book and CATs. This was useful mainly for the strategies that are well explained (well for me at least), especially for SC ( parallel reading) and CR (do not read the answer choices, come up with your own and then choose the best fit: this saved me a lot of time).
After going through the whole book I took a Kaplan CAT: 610. No need to say this got me pretty depressed...
So back to GMAT Club, and I noticed I was not the first one going through this. Decided to suscribe to get all the tests available. I did 2 math tests every night, untimed. I never scored high on these, usually around 60%. The explanations are great, and it really helped skill building. 
With only 5 days to go I took a Manhattan test: 760 . Yipee! Decided it was time to do some more timed tests to prepare for G-Day:
Kaplan 790 and 740, Gmat prep 760. 
Two days before the tests i took some rest. All I did was review the guide to 6.0 AWA (dont have my score for this yet). I could take some time off work but I used it to rest and get some oxygen in my brain.

Test Day:

I had to take the test at 8 am and I am not a morning person. So I went to bed early the night before and got up at 6. I did not want the actual exam to be the first thing I did so I did 4 quant questions from GMAT club and 2 SC just to get my brain working. Easy ones, no need to stress, just to get my brain in gear. I found this worked really well my brain was fully awake when I started.

During quant section I found the questions were getting harder then easier then harder, but I have never been good at guessing the difficulty level. I had always finished the practive tests with 15mn to spare but for the real one i was right on time (did have to guess the last question, but i dont think guessing 1 question really hurt the final score)

In the middle of verbal section I started feeling stressed, thinking about the final score, and trying to guess if i was doing well. Luckily I was ahead of shcedule and took a couple minutes to close my eyes and relax. But my hands were shaking by the time I hit submit...

My two-cents:

- Practice practice practice, but efficiently. If you re aiming at 700+, go for the GMAT Club Tests
- Do at least a CAT as soon as possible, I found them much harder than the linear tests...
- On teste day make sure you re brain is ready for math problems before you go to the test center
- If you have to take the TOEFL like I did, take it before: you will get used to the test center environment ( I never had to take a standardised test before, I m sure I am not the only international in that case)

Practice Material :

- OG 11 and OG 12 (did only a handful of questions from OG 12): good to get used to the format of the test with actual questions but not enough on its own
- Kaplan: good for strategy, exercices are ok but not great
- GMAT Club Math tests: great for skill and confidence building if you re aiming high
- Manhattan: only did the free test but found it pretty accurate
- GMAT Prep: a must!

Good luck to every one! Hope this helps

11MBA · Answer

Milie, congrats on the great score and thanks for the debrief! I have about 5 weeks to go for my test. It's also at 8 in the morning and I'm really really not a morning person, either. Hopefully, I'll get a score as good as yours. *fingers crossed*

smashzone · Answer

Congratulations!! 760 is a terrific score!
I am planning to take my GMAT for the second time in 7 weeks. 
You used to finish the quant section on the practice tests with 15 mins to spare??? I still have a long way to go to get there! 
Anyways, good luck with your apps!

shalva · Answer

Holy sh*t <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" />

Pepto · Answer

Wow, I'm taking the test in about 5 weeks and your score is inspirational! Thanks for posting, it gives me hope :-)

Posted from my mobile device

burnttwinky · Answer

Congrats. Thats an amazing score.

Dawgie · Answer

Wow you got a 760 with only OG books and CATs? I'm about to start studying too. Question, OG 11 and 12, are all the problems unique?

BM · Answer

Great job! A score of 760 in only five weeks; that is very, very impressive. Actually, it's intimidating.

burnttwinky · Answer

It seems like you were already great in the verbal section. A 45 is an amazing score.

wilbase · Answer

You are so amazing! Only used 5 weeks to prepare while you were still working. It's insane.

Milie · Answer

Hey everyone! I have been travelling for a while didn' t have the chance to reply.
11MBA: good luck for your GMAT. If you are really not a morning person like me i would recommend getting up at the same time you will have to wake up for GMAT a few day before and trying to go to bed earlier to be wide awake on test day. I noticed it systematically improved my score by at least 20 to do some warming up exercises before i took a practice test.
Dawgie: yes, i did not have time to go through a lot of extra material since i had so little time. This forced my to work smart and i cant state enough how much GMAT club tests helped!
smashzone: yes I always forced myself to go as fast as possible, never redoing any calculations. This helped me improve my calculus skills and be confident on test day, and know i could take a few micro breaks ( a few seconds here and there to re read the questions or just close my eyes to evacuate stress)

Thank you all for your comments. Actually I almost postponed my test because when I read the debriefs I noticed most people had studied way harder then I had. I still decided to give it a go thinking at least I ll know....Good luck to all!

burnttwinky · Answer

Thats how I felt. When I came to this board, it was like a whole new world. I have been come a lot more aware of the time and preparation I need to get above a 700 on the gmat.

gurpreetsingh · Answer

Nice Milie

good luck for your application

MMMs · Answer

Ditto!!! Inspiring and intimidating all at once. Anyhow, congrats on a great score!

wilbase · Answer

Would you suggest I do some warm up before the real test then?

Milie · Answer

Wilbase, I know that in my case it definitely helped, my getting my brain ready for math at 8 am. If I had managed to get a later appointment I am not sure it would have made such a difference....This is just my two cents, I can just tell it worked for me, maybe you re a morning person and won t need that :-D

wilbase · Answer

Thanks. That's a great and interesting idea either ways.

bonvivz · Answer

Hi Milie,

Firstly Congratulations for such a great score! I was wondering if you can share your study plan, how many hours did manage to study each day? were you working while preparing for the exam? any strategies you'd advise?

Thanks,

bon

Acc3ss · Answer

Wow .. congrats ..

Milie · Answer

Hello all,

Bonvivz: Yes i was working during the gmat preparation, except for the last 3 days. I did my best to squeeze in two hours everyday (more than that I felt I was not as efficient), focusing either on quantitative or verbal but not both on the same day, and worked the same during weekend (I have a job where sundays are just the same as any other day, so no extra gmat hours on week end). If you have week ends off, I would suggest doing 1 test on either of the days. 
What you decide to do during these two hours will depend on your weaknesses. For me it was quantitative because although I am an engineer I was very disturbed by the data sufficiency questions. 
My thoughts about the different sections:
Verbal: I found that critical reasoning does not need a lot of practice once you have understood the "trick" to formulate the answer before reading the question choices. For SC, practice really helped me recognize the patterns of gmat errors. I am a foreigner but due to m y limited time, I chose to focus on strategy instead of grammar rule for this part. As for RC, i had enough time on my hands to read calmly. I always took notes because it helped me remember the passage better, but almost never referred to my notes.

Quantitative: For problem solving, I spend about 3 days reviewed math basics and then did practice exercises to improve my calculus skills: faster, less mistakes. DS was another story, I am pretty sure it is the reason of my not so high quant percentile... GMAT club tests really helped for these, the answers are very helpful (as opposed to the OG which details all the maths....exactly what you want to avoid doing...)

I am not going to post a detail of how many exercises I did each day, or error log, because I am trying to make a point that you can do it if you work smartly, which means finding the material that is best for your, and using the famous 80/20 strategy...I did spend about 3 hours at borders going through most of the study books before i bought the one that seemed best for me. I hope this is helpful to you, and good luck!

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