NEED HELP ONLY 1 MONTH LEFT!

Question

Hi everyone!

I've just finished by Bachelor's degree in Business and I'm about to start working from May end. Before I join the company, I wanted to take the GMAT so that I can work peacefully and apply after 2-3 years without worrying about my GMAT score.

I've been studying on and off for the past three months. My first free Kaplan test score was 550 in which verbal was better than quant. Then I started studying the CR bible ,MGMAT quant books and Aristotle SC guide and did a MGMAT free test in March in which I scored 630, again my verbal had improved a lot but my quant was still bad. Early April, I had to give my final semester exams, so couldn't focus on the GMAT much. Now I finally have time to focus on the GMAT again, however, I'm not entirely sure whether I'm ready to take the official test in 1 month. I've not booked a GMAT date yet, since I'm thinking I would take the Official CATs before booking a date (it is easy to get a date in my town).

Now, I'm doing the GMAT club questions for quant and verbal as I've completed the OG 2019 and Quant review. I need advice as to how should I proceed? Should I join a one month course or stick to books and GMAT club questions? Is it possible to improve your score 70-90 points in 1 month? (My target score is 710-730). I don't intend to spend huge amount of money on my prep, so any free resources/ cheap resources would be appreciated.

Thanks.

aventus · Answer

ss13ny

I still do not understand why the big rush. I mean you still have up to 2 years. Why not take more time and hopefully get a much higher score? Which schools are you targeting?

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi ss13ny,

To start, focusing on your GMAT now - years before you actually "need" your Score - is a smart choice. In addition, raising a 550 to a 630 while studying inconsistently shows that you're a fairly strong critical thinker and you have the capacity to learn and improve - which is good. That having been said, if you've only scored in the 600s once, then it will likely take at least another 2 months before you can get to the point that you can consistently score 710+ on the Official GMAT.

Before I can offer you the specific advice that you’re looking for, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

1) What type of study routine have you been following? How many hours do you typically study each week (and did you take any "time off" from your studies over the last few months?)?
2) How have you scored on EACH of your CATs/mocks (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?
3) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

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

rohan2345 · Answer

Hi ss13ny,

Welcome to GMATCLUB! Its a good thing you have taken some GMAT Mocks. You now know your weaknesses and can work on them. If you are willing to study dedicatedly for that period, you are sure to achieve your goal. I think you need to solidify you base and adopt a proper technique to answer the questions. I believe you may benefit from taking a GMATPREP course. If you are willing, there are some great GMAT prep companies that can help you with your preparation.

To improve your scores in verbal, you can consider e-gmat verbal online or the e-gmat verbal live course. They are both amazing courses especially designed for non-natives. They offer almost 25% of their courses for free so you can try out their free trial to decide which one you want to go for. Plus the e-gmat Scholaranium which is included in both the courses is one of the best verbal practice tools in the market. You can easily track your progress in that you can identify your strengths and analyze and improve on your weak areas.

For Quant, I would encourage you to first focus on solidifying your base. Only once you reach a Q45+ should you start doing GMATCLUB Quant tests as the questions are certainly a bit more difficult.

Further taking multiple mocks might help. Apart from the GMATPREP, Manhattan GMAT tests and Veritas Prep Tests in my experience have good verbal and Quant section and will certainly help you point out and improve your weak areas.

Further another advantage of taking many mocks is to build up your stamina. Apart from the GMATPREP tests, taking practice tests of any major GMATPREP company ought to do that.

I would also encourage you to purchase the GMATPREP QP 1 for some great additional practice.

Hope this helps. All the best.

gmat1393 · Answer

Hi ss13ny,

For Quant, I would suggest you go thru Manhattan Quant guides and couple them with GMAT club tests, which will solidify your concepts and help you reach Q48+.

For verbal, I would suggest you to enroll for egmat.It has pretty good reviews on Gmat club.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi ss13ny,

I’m glad you reached out, and I’m happy to help. So, I realize that you want to be done with your GMAT before you start working; however, an improvement of 70+ points (all in quant) in just one month is a pretty tall order. Thus, rather than rushing your GMAT, you should continue to study, even after you start working, and then take the GMAT when you are truly ready to do so.

In any case, to improve your quant skills, you need to follow more of a structured and linear study plan, one that allows you to individually learn each GMAT quant topic and then practice each topic until you’ve gained mastery. For example, if you are learning about Number Properties, you should develop as much conceptual knowledge about Number Properties as possible. In other words, your goal will be to completely understand properties of factorials, perfect squares, quadratic patterns, LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, and remainders, to name a few concepts. After carefully reviewing the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer Number Properties questions, practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties. When you do dozens of questions of the same type one after the other, you learn just what it takes to get questions of that type correct consistently. If you aren't getting close to 90 percent of questions of a certain type correct, go back and seek to better understand how that type of question works, and then do more questions of that type until you get to around at least 90 percent accuracy in your training. If you get 100 percent of some sets correct, even better. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.

When you are working on learning to answer questions of a particular type, start off taking your time, and then seek to speed up as you get more comfortable answering questions of that type. As you do such practice, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get right. If you got a remainder question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not properly apply the remainder formula? Was there a concept you did not understand in the question? By carefully analyzing your mistakes, you will be able to efficiently fix your weaknesses and in turn improve your GMAT quant skills.

So, work on accuracy and generally finding correct answers, work on specific weaker areas one by one to make them strong areas, and when you take a practice GMAT or the real thing, take all the time per question available to do your absolute best to get right answers consistently. The GMAT is essentially a game of seeing how many right answers you can get in the time allotted. Approach the test with that conception in mind, and focus intently on the question in front of you with one goal in mind: getting a CORRECT answer.

In order to follow the path described above, you may need some new quant materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the  best quant courses . You also may find it helpful to read this article about  How to Increase Your GMAT Quant Score .

Feel free to reach out with further questions. Good luck!

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