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THIS STORY SHOULD HELP YOU IF YOU ARE:
- in need for a detailed study plan
- under high time pressure (2 weeks) but can study up to 6 hours per day
- beginning from the 500 range
- short on cash (I only spent $1)
STRUCTURE:
1. INTRO
2. KEY NUMBERS
3. MY BACKGROUND
4. MY ULTIMATE TWO WEEKS GMAT STUDY PLAN
5. BEST STUDY TOOLS
6. OTHER ADVICE
1. INTRO
GMATClub has been a fantastic help through these two weeks of studies, so I'd like to contribute through sharing my story
.
I invested 75 hours in a rather disorganized fashion but was quite pleased with the 200 points gain. With the structure I outline below, I do believe that a member with similar background as mine could improve by about 200 points while investing a similar amount of time.
Disclaimer: the below content represent my best efforts in coming up with helpful advice. However, I do realize that my understanding of the GMAT is limited (76h!). Even if I am only one humble point in the overall data-set, I do believe that one is likely to achieve higher results than mine through following the below plan. If you think that, on the contrary, this plan if off the point and won't lead to substantial results, I would highly value your advice on how to complete it (and how to correct the grammatical mistakes)!
2. KEY NUMBERS
Time spent: 76h
Points gained: 200 (from 540, Q34 V30, to 700, Q46 V47)
Gained points per hour: 2
Total spendings: $1 (excluding the $250 GMAT fees)
3. BACKGROUND
I am a French undergraduate student in Hong Kong. Before my last semester, I took a gap year to learn Mandarin in Taiwan. Since my Chinese is still not as fluent as native speakers, I am a risky choice for consulting firms, so I decided to hedge my risk of not getting the job I want through applying for masters. I gave myself two weeks to study hard for the GMAT, with the option to sit the exam again in January.
4. MY ULTIMATE TWO WEEKS GMAT STUDY PLAN
Below is my study plan of 76 condensed into 68 hours (I spent about 4 hours studying irrelevant material and took another practice test):
Day 1
Take an hour to get familiar with the GMAT content and directly take a free test to evaluate your level
Hours: 4
Comments:
- download GMAT prep from the official website
- don't waste time reviewing the questions you missed this time
- If you're already above 650, find another study plan, this one won't help (my score was 540, Q34 V30)
Days 2 to 4
Study and finish the Economist free trial (see the "best study tools" section)
Hours: 15
Days 4 to 8
Go through the 8 Manhattan guides
Hours: 17
Comment:
My largest mistake was to not study them thoroughly enough. For quant (guides 1 to 5), don't move on until you finished all the questions 8 to 15 of every single chapter's problem set (questions 1 to 7 are easier)
Day 8
Use TestTarget Prep to identify and improve your quant weaknesses (see the "study tools" section)
Hours: 6
Day 9
Take another practice test, and spend two hours reviewing your mistakes to understand how you can best improve
Hours: 6
Comments:
- you can get another test from Veritas
- here, I took another practice test 630 (Q42, V34), but these 4 hours would have been better invested strengthening the concepts
Day 10 to 12
Practice on your weaker topics
Quant: use the OG
Verbal: OG explanations are weak (stating "awkward" doesn't help): use the GMATClub forum to find good questions (I found a few links for you but the system forbids me to post them!)
Hours: 15
Day 12
Study for the AWA: spend 30 minutes studying this amazing article (google: how to get 6.0 awa my guide), spend 3 * 10 minutes writing the structure to memorize it, spend 10 minutes typing keywords to memorize them (hence/thus/besides/...), take a practice test (30min of writing, 20 minutes reviewing)
Hours: 2
Day 13
Take a full length test two days before the exams
Review all your mistakes and compare them to the 2nd test ones.
Briefly review the AWA
Go for a run
Hours: 3 (excluding the run!)
Day 14
Do your best!
5. BEST STUDY TOOLS
Overall cost: $1
-According to my online researches, the best resources for people who begin as low as me (500 range) and need to review all the foundation are the 8 Manhattan guides. If you're short on cash, you can probably find them in the nearest library - if the guides won't be from the latest batch (I found the 2012 edition ones), they shouldn't be any major difference in terms of content.
You'll also need the Official Guide ("OG", made by the GMAC - you'll find it on their website)
To complement the book, I tried a few online resources and found two especially enjoyable:
- The Economist GMAT is great but way too expensive for a poor student like me. Still, I would advice on taking the free one week trail that teaches great techniques such as on ball parking and breaking down sentence correction.
Note that the trial is locked as soon as you reach 20% of the study content.
According to their estimates, you should need about 130 hours to finish it, meaning that if you sleep about 6 hours per day and take very short breaks, you could easily finish about 75% of the content. This was my plan, and I was really motivated, until I reached the 20% limit on my second day of studies! The trial seemingly gets locked as soon as either verbal or quant training reach the 20% bar.
Bottom-line: to get the most out of this study tool, get both quant and verbal right below 20% progress, and then take the longest possible study session in either quant or verbal.
This should take you about 15 hours (11h in quant, 4h in verbal)
- If you are also under very high time pressure, TestTarget Prep Great is a great tool to identify your weaknesses in Quant.
Right after you are down with understanding the basic concepts (cf Manhattan 8 guides), I would advise on taking all their tests, which are organized by chapter and level, helping to single out your weaknesses.
In my case, I discovered that my understanding of number properties was close to zero, followed up through studying about 27 out of their 93 lessons on this theme, and thus considerably raised my success rate on these questions. Study the points you want to improve rather than bluntly follow their lessons, since some of the formula they teach seem to be of no use for the GMAT (or maybe for levels way above mine?).
They provide a 5 days trial for $1 (the only dollar I spent to prepare!).
6. OTHER ADVICE
- In your free time, explore the GMATClub forum. It is full of great content to help you improve your score as well as success stories to motivate you!
- On the motivation side, it helped me a lot to closely track how much I was studying. I would begin a timer and stop it as soon as I was loosing focus (after about 42 minutes on average), and use a 15 minutes alarm to force me to end the break!
- 6 hours of studies a day doesn't sound like much but it's actually pretty tiring. Monitor your health: run every morning, eat healthy food, sleep well, etc
- A dumb yet effective advice for the verbal part: try to feel interested! Texts in which scientists argue about the impact of fungus on tree health can be a lot more enjoyable if you give it a try.
- in need for a detailed study plan
- under high time pressure (2 weeks) but can study up to 6 hours per day
- beginning from the 500 range
- short on cash (I only spent $1)
STRUCTURE:
1. INTRO
2. KEY NUMBERS
3. MY BACKGROUND
4. MY ULTIMATE TWO WEEKS GMAT STUDY PLAN
5. BEST STUDY TOOLS
6. OTHER ADVICE
1. INTRO
GMATClub has been a fantastic help through these two weeks of studies, so I'd like to contribute through sharing my story
.I invested 75 hours in a rather disorganized fashion but was quite pleased with the 200 points gain. With the structure I outline below, I do believe that a member with similar background as mine could improve by about 200 points while investing a similar amount of time.
Disclaimer: the below content represent my best efforts in coming up with helpful advice. However, I do realize that my understanding of the GMAT is limited (76h!). Even if I am only one humble point in the overall data-set, I do believe that one is likely to achieve higher results than mine through following the below plan. If you think that, on the contrary, this plan if off the point and won't lead to substantial results, I would highly value your advice on how to complete it (and how to correct the grammatical mistakes)!
2. KEY NUMBERS
Time spent: 76h
Points gained: 200 (from 540, Q34 V30, to 700, Q46 V47)
Gained points per hour: 2
Total spendings: $1 (excluding the $250 GMAT fees)
3. BACKGROUND
I am a French undergraduate student in Hong Kong. Before my last semester, I took a gap year to learn Mandarin in Taiwan. Since my Chinese is still not as fluent as native speakers, I am a risky choice for consulting firms, so I decided to hedge my risk of not getting the job I want through applying for masters. I gave myself two weeks to study hard for the GMAT, with the option to sit the exam again in January.
4. MY ULTIMATE TWO WEEKS GMAT STUDY PLAN
Below is my study plan of 76 condensed into 68 hours (I spent about 4 hours studying irrelevant material and took another practice test):
Day 1
Take an hour to get familiar with the GMAT content and directly take a free test to evaluate your level
Hours: 4
Comments:
- download GMAT prep from the official website
- don't waste time reviewing the questions you missed this time
- If you're already above 650, find another study plan, this one won't help (my score was 540, Q34 V30)
Days 2 to 4
Study and finish the Economist free trial (see the "best study tools" section)
Hours: 15
Days 4 to 8
Go through the 8 Manhattan guides
Hours: 17
Comment:
My largest mistake was to not study them thoroughly enough. For quant (guides 1 to 5), don't move on until you finished all the questions 8 to 15 of every single chapter's problem set (questions 1 to 7 are easier)
Day 8
Use TestTarget Prep to identify and improve your quant weaknesses (see the "study tools" section)
Hours: 6
Day 9
Take another practice test, and spend two hours reviewing your mistakes to understand how you can best improve
Hours: 6
Comments:
- you can get another test from Veritas
- here, I took another practice test 630 (Q42, V34), but these 4 hours would have been better invested strengthening the concepts
Day 10 to 12
Practice on your weaker topics
Quant: use the OG
Verbal: OG explanations are weak (stating "awkward" doesn't help): use the GMATClub forum to find good questions (I found a few links for you but the system forbids me to post them!)
Hours: 15
Day 12
Study for the AWA: spend 30 minutes studying this amazing article (google: how to get 6.0 awa my guide), spend 3 * 10 minutes writing the structure to memorize it, spend 10 minutes typing keywords to memorize them (hence/thus/besides/...), take a practice test (30min of writing, 20 minutes reviewing)
Hours: 2
Day 13
Take a full length test two days before the exams
Review all your mistakes and compare them to the 2nd test ones.
Briefly review the AWA
Go for a run
Hours: 3 (excluding the run!)
Day 14
Do your best!
5. BEST STUDY TOOLS
Overall cost: $1
-According to my online researches, the best resources for people who begin as low as me (500 range) and need to review all the foundation are the 8 Manhattan guides. If you're short on cash, you can probably find them in the nearest library - if the guides won't be from the latest batch (I found the 2012 edition ones), they shouldn't be any major difference in terms of content.
You'll also need the Official Guide ("OG", made by the GMAC - you'll find it on their website)
To complement the book, I tried a few online resources and found two especially enjoyable:
- The Economist GMAT is great but way too expensive for a poor student like me. Still, I would advice on taking the free one week trail that teaches great techniques such as on ball parking and breaking down sentence correction.
Note that the trial is locked as soon as you reach 20% of the study content.
According to their estimates, you should need about 130 hours to finish it, meaning that if you sleep about 6 hours per day and take very short breaks, you could easily finish about 75% of the content. This was my plan, and I was really motivated, until I reached the 20% limit on my second day of studies! The trial seemingly gets locked as soon as either verbal or quant training reach the 20% bar.
Bottom-line: to get the most out of this study tool, get both quant and verbal right below 20% progress, and then take the longest possible study session in either quant or verbal.
This should take you about 15 hours (11h in quant, 4h in verbal)
- If you are also under very high time pressure, TestTarget Prep Great is a great tool to identify your weaknesses in Quant.
Right after you are down with understanding the basic concepts (cf Manhattan 8 guides), I would advise on taking all their tests, which are organized by chapter and level, helping to single out your weaknesses.
In my case, I discovered that my understanding of number properties was close to zero, followed up through studying about 27 out of their 93 lessons on this theme, and thus considerably raised my success rate on these questions. Study the points you want to improve rather than bluntly follow their lessons, since some of the formula they teach seem to be of no use for the GMAT (or maybe for levels way above mine?).
They provide a 5 days trial for $1 (the only dollar I spent to prepare!).
6. OTHER ADVICE
- In your free time, explore the GMATClub forum. It is full of great content to help you improve your score as well as success stories to motivate you!
- On the motivation side, it helped me a lot to closely track how much I was studying. I would begin a timer and stop it as soon as I was loosing focus (after about 42 minutes on average), and use a 15 minutes alarm to force me to end the break!
- 6 hours of studies a day doesn't sound like much but it's actually pretty tiring. Monitor your health: run every morning, eat healthy food, sleep well, etc
- A dumb yet effective advice for the verbal part: try to feel interested! Texts in which scientists argue about the impact of fungus on tree health can be a lot more enjoyable if you give it a try.
04 Dec 2015, 20:14
Kudos
Bookmarks
Thank you for sharing and congratulations on the great score!
P.S. Does Economist allow full access to their course during the trial or is it limited actually?
P.P.S. Very minor point of American English - the word advice is always singular - same way as evidence
P.S. Does Economist allow full access to their course during the trial or is it limited actually?
P.P.S. Very minor point of American English - the word advice is always singular - same way as evidence
05 Dec 2015, 20:27
Kudos
Bookmarks
bb
Thank you!
The Economist allows for access to 20% of the course content in both Verbal and Quantitative.
And thanks for the feedback, I corrected the mistake.
