Can work this study plan?

Question

Hello all, 
I'm new here and I hope to write in the right section.
I'd like to receive some tips and feedback about my study plan. 
First at all, I'm studying for two weeks and I started from Gmat Official Guide. I'll take test around 15/18 December and I can study 6/7 hours for day ( I know that it's not so productive but i have time and I'll put a lot of my hopes in this test). I made Q42 V25 in my first test and after that I ended up with 2 huge problems: time management and of course RC. I'm not good at English so I read so slowly. Two days ago I made this study plan: I bought MGSG ( all ten books), I want to cover Quiz from Gmat Verbal and Math review, quiz from this forum and to read 30 minutes/ 1 hour per day from University researches to improve reading skill. 
Now, i want to ask if all this is enough to reach at least 700? Should I cover some other material? Should i buy online platforms ( my budget for these is around 200/300)? And which posts of this forum do you strongly recommend me? 
I hope for a strong help and sorry in advance for the long text

gmatkillerdude · Answer

Try doing the veritas official guide for RC. Its good. Other than that RC is lot about practise...and try to answer every qiestion using a framework

Sajjad1994 · Answer

Hi  Pierpaolo

Welcome to GMAT Club

Here is my study plan

Best Books

For learning Concepts

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

Best Courses

1. Empower GMAT
2. Math Revolution (Only Math)
3. E-GMAT (Only Verbal)

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

imranbhagat · Answer

Hi

I've been preparing for the test too. But I haven't been able spend enough time considering I'm working and that work takes about 12 hours/day on average for five days a week. The best chance I have is weekends but I spend just around 4 hours. I've been struggling with time management in verbal and this is a concern. I know I can do much better and I need to pick up the pace for each question. To tackle this while solving practice questions I keep a timer and try to solve within the stipulated time. I'm yet to take another mock to see if this works. At the same time I would like to get my hands on some more material. Is there a database where I can download content from on gmat club? Or do I necessarily have to purchase study plans from the above mentioned suggestions?
Hope to hear from you soon. Thanks.

Posted from my mobile device

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Pierpaolo,

I’m glad you reached out, and I’m happy to help. So, you have successfully completed step one: taking a full-length diagnostic test to determine your baseline GMAT score. Now let’s address your two main issues, starting with time-management.

Timing on the GMAT, as in life, improves as your knowledge, understanding, and skill improve. Timing does not improve simply by “trying to go faster.” In fact, when people try to force speed before they’re ready to go faster, they tend to end up making a significant number of preventable mistakes. Sometimes these mistakes badly erode people’s test scores. In addition, when people rush learning -- a common pathology of those trying to force speed -- they actually never end up developing the speed they seek. One of the great paradoxes of learning is that to develop speed, a student must slow down to ensure that he or she masters the material. Consider the following examples, which hopefully will bring you some more clarity:
 
Imagine your goal were to run a mile in four minutes, a difficult feat even for professional athletes. So, you get yourself a running coach. You show up on the field and ask, “Coach, how do I get faster?” The coach responds, “Well, just run faster.” So, you try your best to “run faster,” but you can't; you’re running a 12-minute mile. Out of breath, you come back to the coach and say, “Coach, I stink. How do I get faster?” Again, he says, “Just run faster.” So, you try again, but this time you fall and skin your knees. You keep trying to run faster. On the tenth attempt, you pull your hamstring, falling to the ground in pain. Over your next four months of recovery, you ponder why you couldn't run faster.

That situation would be insane, right? No qualified running coach would ever provide you with that advice, because the coach would understand that no one gets faster merely by trying to run faster. Instead, the coach would set you up on a linear, comprehensive plan to make you a BETTER runner. He may have you run progressively longer distances at relatively slow speeds. He may have you run up and down the stairs at the football stadium. He may have you run up and down hills. He even may have you engage in strength training, yoga, or Pilates to make you a more fit athlete. After all of that training, he finally would bring you back on the field and time you running the mile. At that point, he’d coach you on how to push yourself through the pain of sprinting and help you to understand what a four-minute-mile pace feels like. He now could help you with those things because you would be in the necessary shape to be receptive to them. So, you begin your run, and BOOM! You run a 6-minute mile. What happened? Well, you became a better runner. You became a fitter athlete. You became stronger. Although you’re not yet at the four-minute-mile mark, your training has yielded considerable improvements.
 
Now imagine your goal were to play a complicated song on the piano. The tempo at which a pianist plays greatly impacts the way a song sounds. To make songs sound the way they should, often a pianist must play at a fast pace. But your experience with the piano is limited. Can you imagine trying to play the complicated song at full speed right at the outset? Doing so wouldn't be possible. Instead, you first need to master many aspects of the piano -- without really trying to get faster. In fact, you need to proceed slowly at first, sometimes very slowly. As you master the piano, you find that you’re able to play your song at progressively faster tempos. With time and dedicated, proper practice, you’re able to recreate the sound you seek. If in the early days of practicing you had tried to force speed instead of mastering your technique, you never would have become truly accomplished at playing the song. 
 
The process of getting faster at solving GMAT questions is quite analogous to the process of improving one’s running speed or ability to play the piano at the proper tempo! To get faster, you must get better. As you further develop your GMAT skills, you will get faster at a) recognizing what a problem is asking and b) executing the necessary steps to quickly attack the problem.

Thus, when you are just starting out, you should not be so focused on timing. For now, focus on simply improving your GMAT skills by engaging in linear learning that allows you to slowly build mastery of one GMAT topic prior to moving on to the next. Within each topic, begin with the foundations and progress toward more advanced concepts. Once you learn each individual topic, you should then engage in focused practice, which will help improve your timing.

As you begin your focused practice, consider timing this way: When you are doing practice questions, there are three levels of proficiency for each category. 
 
At Level 1, you understand the logic of GMAT quant questions in a category and basically know how to answer them, but you may not get them right, or you at least don’t get them right consistently. This level of proficiency is a good start.
 
At Level 2, you consistently get questions in a quant category correct, but you are not fast, taking on average well over two minutes per question. This level of proficiency is even better. If you can get right answers consistently, you are well on your way to hitting your GMAT score goal.
 
At Level 3, you get questions in a category correct consistently, taking around two minutes per question (or sometimes less). When you are at this level of proficiency for a category of GMAT quant question, you are ready to see questions of that type on the test. Now it’s time to work on another question category.
 
To develop the third level of proficiency, you must allow yourself ample time for deliberate practice. When you first begin practicing, if you try to rush through questions, you’ll find it extremely difficult -- if not impossible -- to progress to Level 3. So, when you are practicing, do the questions untimed. Yes, you can be aware of how much time you are taking, but don’t focus on the time. Generally, you need to focus on finding the correct response to each question by mastering the material and learning to use higher-level thinking, rather than on answering questions in less than two minutes (or any other preset time constraint).
 
The key takeaway is that once your GMAT knowledge improves, better timing will follow. In fact, a great way to know how well you have a mastered a particular topic is to be cognizant of your reaction time when seeing a particular question. For example, consider the following simple question with which many students who are beginning their prep struggle:
 
14! is equal to which of the following? 
 
(A) 87,178,291,200
(B) 88,180,293,207
(C) 89,181,294,209
(D) 90,000,000,003
(E) 91,114,114,114
 
Upon seeing this question, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Grabbing a calculator to add up the values in the expression? Or are you able to quickly recognize that using the “5 x 2 pair rule” will allow you to efficiently attack the problem? (See the solution below.)
 
Solution:
 
14! = 14 × 13 × 12 × 11 × 10 × 9 × 8 × 7 × 6 × 5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1. 
 
Notice that there is at least one (5 × 2) pair contained in the product of these numbers. It follows that the units digit must be a zero. The only number with zero as the units digit is 87,178,291,200.
 
Answer: A 
 
Although this is just one example of many, you see that you must have many tools in your toolbox to efficiently attack each GMAT quant question that comes your way. As you gain these skills, you will get faster. I can’t say whether your current prep materials will be enough for you to hit a 700 GMAT score. The best thing you can do is objectively evaluate your progress so that, in the event that the prep books aren’t meeting your needs, you don’t end up overinvesting time in a resource that isn’t working for you.

Now, regarding Reading Comprehension, you need to develop a reading strategy that is both efficient and thorough. Reading too fast and not understanding what you have read are equally as harmful as reading too slow and using up too much time. When attacking Reading Comprehension passages, you must have one clear goal in mind: to understand the context of what you are reading. However, you must do so efficiently, so you need to avoid getting bogged down in the details of each paragraph and focus on understanding the main point of each paragraph. That being said, do not fall into the trap of thinking that you can just read the intro and the conclusion and comprehend the main idea of a paragraph. As you read a paragraph, consider how the context of the paragraph relates to previous paragraphs, so you can continue developing your overall understanding of the passage. Furthermore, as you practice Reading Comprehension, focus on the exact types of questions with which you struggle: Find the Main Idea, Inference, Author’s Tone, etc. As with Critical Reasoning, analyze your incorrect answers to better determine why you tend to get a particular question type wrong, and then improve upon your weaknesses. You can perfect your reading strategy with a lot of practice, but keep in mind that GMAT Reading Comprehension passages are not meant to be stimulating. So, to better prepare yourself to tackle such bland passages, read magazines with similar content and style, such as the Economist, Scientific American, and Smithsonian.

If you’d like specific advice on how to study for other areas of the GMAT, feel free to reach back out. Also, you may find the following articles helpful:  How to score a 700+ on the GMAT  and  How to get faster at solving GMAT questions .

Feel free to reach out with further questions.

Good luck!

MathRevolution · Answer

Hi Pierpaolo,

Math Revolution offers many great basic math materials for those who want to build their math skills. You can begin by watching our “Math Review” videos (5 hours). We also have over 2,700 questions available through our site. All lectures are categorized based on subject matters, so you can begin with any subject that you wish to improve on. Also our questions are always up-to-date. Don’t waste your time learning outdated approaches to GMAT math. We continually refresh our math questions based on the types of questions appearing in the current GMAT exams.

If you are not good at English. The quant word problems might give you some trouble as well. Math Revolution has a technique called the IVY Approach to tackle some difficult word problems. For example, Math Revolution offers a series of formulas and equations for students to learn before the exam to apply to word problems. If a question states "x is m percent of y", you can easily rewrite this into x=m(1/100)*y without dissecting problems. We found out there are words that the GMAT likes to use repeatedly. If you know the formulas to rewrite certain expressions beforehand, you will be able to tackle word problems easier. Our IVY Approach provides students with many more techniques and tips to solve quant questions easily, with speed and accuracy.

You can sign up our product for as low as $99 for 3 month. You will have access to all our videos and 2,400 most-up-to-date problems. We continually refresh our math questions based on the types of questions appearing in current GMAT exams. For our analysis of GMAT quant trends, refer to this post.
https://gmatclub.com/forum/overview-of- ... 11809.html

Pierpaolo, we offer both free trial pack and free video lessons to students on our site mathrevolution.com So check it out to see if our material works for you. Also don’t forget to try our free diagnostic test!!

Please let us know if you have further questions.
You can reach us at [email protected]

Success is within your reach,
Good luck!

AjiteshArun · Answer

If you are asking about test prep material, then no, you don't  need  to purchase additional prep material, and it is possible to do well on the exam without doing any non-official material (or even official practice material, for that matter). Whether that is the best way for you to prepare is a call that you'll have to take.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Pierpaolo,

Based on this initial CAT Score, you 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. Thankfully, the GMAT is a consistent, predictable Exam, so you CAN train to score at a higher level. However, your planned Test Date gives you only 2 months of potential study time. While you don't have to change your plans just yet, you might need to consider pushing back your Test Date.

The OG books are great sources for practice questions, but they're not designed to teach you Tactics, patterns or the little 'secrets' behind the GMAT - for those, you'll need Course-oriented materials. Given your Score Goal, you would likely benefit from investing in a GMAT Course of some type (either Guided Self-Study or instructor-led), so you should plan to look into the available options.

Before I can offer you any additional advice, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on your timeline and your goals:

1) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
2) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

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

Pierpaolo · Answer

Thank you all for the support. I quickly summarize in case I had not explained well. I can study every day 5-6 hours a day for the next two months, because I planned the test for that date. I know that the learning process could be wrong not allowing the mind to gradually assimilate but unfortunately i should do in that time because the applications for BS will be in January.
Now I am moving through Manhattan strategic guides and I think I will integrate what I learn with exercises taken from OG and OG review verbal and quant. I wanted to move through an online platform but I considered two premises, the first is that I would not have enough time, the second I thought some concepts may be similar to the book that i'm using( a friend of mine showed me notes and the most useful screens that he had done in the Economist course for the verbal part and I found them very similar to those of Manhattan). Now don't get me wrong, I think that every platforms have so much different, different approaches and a good method, in fact I would have preferred to move through one.
Now a question that I move especially for the members (perhaps for the more experienced) of the forum: All this is enough to take a good score considering time and what material I'm using? I was considering buying the Gmat Club test to do many more exercises and learn from them. Which forum posts you absolutely recommend me to read and study? Do not consider me lazy but it is so vast that I do not know where to move in order to avoid wasting too much time. I read that for mathematical parts were brilliant Bunuel's posts. Please can you here recommend all the links to the most important posts and absolutely to consider to improve my knowledge and my score? Thanks in advance.

Arro44 · Answer

Hi Paolo, whether your study plan works depends to a large degree on yourself.

Everyone has different strengths, weaknesses and learning speeds. However, if you would like to have a more proven approach you might want to have a look here: https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-self-pr ... 45667.html Best regards & good luck, Chris

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Pierpaolo,

You appear to be basing your entire plan around the upcoming Business School application deadlines. You did not list your Schools though - and that information is really important, as it will help to define the type of GMAT Score that you might "need" to be considered a strong applicant at those specific Programs. If you think that you must apply by a certain date, then what would be the minimum GMAT Score that you would apply with? What Score would be too low - meaning that you would push back your applications?

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

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