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What is the ideal preparation time for GMAT exams?
Many test-takers want to know how long they’ll need to study for the GMAT exam. This is an important yet challenging question.Students come from different walks of life and educational backgrounds, and have different skill levels and GMAT score goals. Furthermore, students have varying levels of work, family, and personal commitments, rates of learning, and access to quality GMAT prep materials.
Still, you do need to start with a tentative schedule, so in this article I’ll provide some guidance regarding how long you might expect to study. Let’s start with the motivational advice and then delve into some practical advice.
The Motivational Advice
Look at just about any news headline or announcement about business school admissions, and you’ll see that competition for business school seats is fierce. Statistically, you’ve never been up against a tougher field of competitors.If you plan to go to business school, you’ll be taking a standardized test (GMAT or GRE). If you choose to take the GMAT, you might as well take the necessary time to prepare properly. A high score on the GMAT can be a tremendous gold star in your portfolio. Instead of taking a time-based approach to studying, why not take a results-based approach to studying?
In other words, why not begin your GMAT preparation early enough in the application process that you won’t be constrained and stressed by time? Do a little bit of GMAT prep each day. Over time, these incremental gains in knowledge, content, strategy, and skills will compound. If you wait until fall (or, worse, winter) to begin preparing, you run the very real risk of either not making the business school application deadlines or applying with a less-than-competitive GMAT score. Why let either of these outcomes occur? Instead, why not plan to earn an impressive GMAT score early in the admissions process, leaving you ample time to work on your applications, which are also a very important part of the process. It’s really no fun working on personal statements and trying to finish up the GMAT simultaneously. The best GMAT is a completed GMAT!
Remember, often the quality of your life comes down to a few large decisions. Perhaps the decision to earn a competitive GMAT score is one of them?
OK, now for the practical advice.
Start With the Goal in Mind
If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you get there? Before you begin preparing for the GMAT, it’s important to determine your GMAT score goal. After all, the course of study for a student whose goal is 720 will be much different from that of a student with a goal of 650. Research the schools you’re interested in. What are the average and median GMAT scores at these schools? For example, at the time of this writing, the average GMAT at Stanford GSB is 733. Thus, if you have your sights set on a Stanford MBA, your GMAT goal should be close to 730.In addition to knowing your overall GMAT score target, it’s also important to know your score goals on each of the quant, verbal, and IR sections. For example, some of the top MBA programs are unapologetically quant-driven. Schools like Wharton, Booth, Columbia, and MIT Sloan place a strong emphasis on numbers, sending many of their graduates into financial services. Wharton is not unique in looking for percentile rankings in the quant section of the test that are above the 85th percentile. Schools like Haas, Yale, and Kellogg subscribe to the idea that regardless of whether you’re embarking on a career in consulting or in marketing, a world of big data and analytics requires solid quant skills. As a result, determined MBA applicants must show an ability with numbers. Of course, one way to demonstrate your numbers savvy is a strong quant score on the GMAT.
Determine Your Current GMAT Ability
Now that you have a GMAT goal, you’ll next determine where you currently stand. To get an accurate assessment of your current GMAT score, take a full-length practice test from the official MBA website here. These practice tests have been created by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), the company that creates the GMAT. When taking this practice test, try to replicate test day as best you can; go to the library or another quiet spot, take all of the GMAT test sections under proper timed conditions, and do your best. Do a High-Level Analysis of Your Practice Test Results, But Don’t Over-Infer
At this point, your goal is to conduct a high-level analysis of your test results. What was your overall score? What were your quant and verbal scores? What was your Integrated Reasoning Score? Don’t worry so much about topic-specific questions you answer incorrectly; the sample size of these questions is small. For example, just because you were presented with one right triangle question and you answered it correctly doesn’t mean you can skimp on your geometry study. Likewise, just because you got one Venn diagram question wrong doesn’t necessarily mean you’re terrible at overlapping set questions. You’ll need more data to make overarching statements about where to focus your study efforts. For now, keep your analysis simple. Just ask, “In general, how did I do?” Are you 100 points from your goal? Two hundred points?Now that you know your goal and know where you currently stand, you’ll want to devise a tentative yet thoughtful plan. To make such a plan, it’s helpful to know how long other students have studied to earn a high GMAT score.
Get an Idea of How Other Students Like You Have Studied
Let’s start by talking about the minimum threshold that most competitive students strive for: a 700 GMAT. GMAC did some research on the number of hours students who scored 700 or higher studied. In one study, they found that students who scored 700 or higher studied on average for 121 hours. Now, even though 121 hours may seem like a lot, many students will actually find they must study for 300 hours or more to reach a 700. Furthermore, if you’re a student who has been out of school for some time or one who has large deficiencies in the content tested on the GMAT, you may find yourself studying for 450 hours or more to earn a 700 score. In general, hard work and devoted study are the norm for competitive applicants. Yes, I have had students earn 700+ scores in far fewer than 121 hours, but it’s better to go into this process expecting more work rather than less.Determine How Much You Can Realistically Study Each Day and Understand Your Learning Habits
All students learn differently, and it’s important to know your learning style. For example, many students learn most efficiently when they spread out their studying. For example, they do an hour in the morning, an hour at lunch, and two hours in the evening. If you could keep such a schedule, you’d be logging about four hours per day, or 28 hours per week. At that rate, you could rack up about 300 hours of studying in about ten weeks. If, on average, you could only study two hours each day, you would need about twenty weeks to build up 300 hours of study. It’s important not to cram the material in an attempt to shorten your study duration. Do a little bit each day, but make your studying count. Remember, it doesn’t do you any good to rush through a study session only to realize that the information washed over you and you wasted your time. Instead, strive to build deep mastery. Here are some practical strategies you can use to study for the GMAT while working a demanding job.Devise a Strategic Plan
You know your GMAT goal and you know where your score currently stands. Your job now is to create a strategic plan. Let’s discuss some scenarios that students commonly face.To read the complete article, view my full article on Target Test Prep’s blog.
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