I thought a number of times before writing this topic on whether i should at all waste my energy to write with no good reason. I felt this sense of responsibility to share as i felt i was benefited from some blogs in gmatclud. So, this is my story,
Like many of you, I'm currently working for a financial institution that demands more than 10 hours of work. On top of that, I just got married. So, giving time to my wife and in-laws and attending so many social programs eat up 4 more hours on an average.
The idea of giving GMAT suddenly occurred to my mind somewhere in the middle of last month. I was going through some university website and realized that the deadline for Oxford MFE program (stage 1) was on 8th of October. So, I registered. A lot of people around me said that the timeline is too tight...it’s very unlikely that you can cover everything within this timeline and so on. And here I am…I would not say 720 is an extremely good score, but it surely allows me to apply in most of the universities. In my following schedule of study, I have tried to portray what I did and felt the best way to manage a quick win. However, this does not confirm that you are going to get 720. However, this may lead you to gain significant expertise within short period of time.
Let me put it this way, you will probably end up scoring 100 marks more than you’d have two weeks earlier. Studying for 1-2 more months would probably increase the score by 20-30 more. So, without further waste of time, I’ll try to put this point by point:
- Prepare a routine; make sure you study at least one hour on working days. At least 5 hours in weekends.
- Syllabus: GMAT official guidebook, 800score tests and mba.com GMAT prep software.
- First give the diagnostic test in the book and find out what’s your strength. You can focus on your weakness later on…preferably do those exercises twice.
- Do your strength subject first…for my case it was quant. This will build your confidence and make you feel that you can do it.
- Keep the mistaken places marked…if you have time…come back to these 3-4 days before you appear.
- Then go through your weaker subject…make sure you understand all the explanations of the answers.
- Once you are finished, start appearing tests…this will add a lot of value to your learning curve. Start with 800score. Appear every test twice. You should score significantly higher than you’ve scored last time.
- Appear the gmatprep software tests at the end. Time it properly…try to finish it at least 5 minutes earlier than stipulated time cuz in all likelihoods, you will perform a little slower than normal in the actual exam.
- Appear each of the gmatprep tests twice. They will pose slightly different questions and will eventually increase your expertise through experience.
And one big tip on the original test:
Allocate more time to the first 10-15 questions. You already know that the questions become tougher as you answer them correctly…in reality if you’ve answered the first 15 right, you’ve probably reached a level from where you won’t score too bad even if you do significant number of mistakes later. What I’m trying to say here, in quantitative for example, if you correctly answer 16 out of first 19 and 14 in next 18, you’ll score higher than if you correctly answer 14 out of first 19 and 16 in next 18.
Wish me luck…I’m planning to shoot really high…
Hope this helps.