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atlashugged
Joined: 16 Jan 2017
Last visit: 11 Jan 2018
Posts: 7
Location: United States
Schools: HBS '20 (D) Stanford '20 (D) Sloan '20 (D)
GMAT 1: 760 Q49 V45
GPA: 3.5
04 May 2017, 16:21
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Long time lurker who got a lot of help from reading the Quant forum here. I wanted to share my GMAT studying experience in case it may help others.
The TLDR Summary
* If you get a question wrong, look at multiple explanations to see which approach works best for your style. (GMATClub forum, Magoosh video explanation, OG explanation)
* Keep track of the questions you get wrong so you can re-do them until you get them right.
* Buy a premium subscription to Magoosh!
* Don't worry about practice test scores. Only the GMATPrep mock tests are close to the truth.
Background
Nearly a decade ago, after working my butt off for just an OK score on the quant section of the SAT, I had become a little cynical and assumed that I was just not cut out to excel at standardized testing. I approached taking the GMAT quant section with a little bit of trepidation. I remember my first day of prep: I opened up the OG and was shocked to read about isosceles triangles, a concept which I had entirely forgotten. I knew it was going to be a long road.
Critical reading had always been a strong suit of mine, so I decided to split my studies with 80% focus on quant and 20% on everything else.
Study Time
I started in mid-January and studied about 2 hours a day, 4 days a week. I meant to take the test in April, but work travel in March made this less than ideal, so I booked a test date in early May. I almost never studied on Fridays or Saturdays and kept nearly my same social schedule.
Materials Used
I rented the Manhattan Prep GMAT guides from Amazon, signed up for a Premium account at Magoosh, and bought the Official Guide for the GMAT 2017 books. All in all, my costs were < $200. The most expensive part of GMAT prep was purchasing a more comfortable office chair.
First, I read through the "refresher" pages on the Official Guides. After reading through these and re-familiarizing myself with the fact that isosceles triangles existed, I took a GMATPrep test to get my baseline score - 680. Then I went through the MGMAT strategy guides in order, spending an hour on the strategy guide, and my second hour on official practice problems from the OGs. If I got an OG problem wrong, I would mark it in my notebook and re-do it 2 weeks down the line.
The MGMAT strategy guides for quant are really good. Out of the books on verbal strategy, I only read the Sentence Correction one, which was fine. Watching lessons on Magoosh was a great way to strengthen what I had learned from the MGMAT strategy guides. Each company presented similar concepts in sometimes different ways, and simply being able to learn via two modes - written word and narrated video - was helpful.
After a few weeks, I started digging into the Magoosh practice problems. I thought they were similar to the OG ones, and I liked how in-depth their explanations were. The Magoosh software platform has some awesome features; I liked making practice sets of problems that I got incorrect the first time around. Another feature that I often used was configured study periods. I always allotted 75 minutes and 37 problems for quant study, so that I could practice pacing.
After I did my first read-through of the MGMAT strategy guides, I relied solely on Magoosh and the OG for the rest of my studies. Overall, I completed over 700 problems on Magoosh.
Practice Tests
After my GMATPrep baseline test, I tried taking the MGMAT CATs. They are notoriously difficult, and not in a good way for me. The test started to make me think about solving quant problems with little tricks, which made me overthink my practice problems in the OG. The MGMAT CATs were also bad for my morale, so I stopped taking them. I could see how they would be useful for people starting from a higher quant baseline, so YMMV. Manhattan's scoring algorithm also seemed a lot more accurate than Magoosh's. My advice here is to try a few of the CATs, but don't get disheartened if they're not for you.
Magoosh also offers a "practice test," but these seemed no different than problem sets with a random score attached. I remember taking a practice test where I got 10 geometry questions in a row - highly unrealistic. By the way, their score prediction over my practice problem performance was a Q43 - 45, V35-42.
January - GMAT Prep - 680
February - MGMAT CAT - 660 (Q44, V36)
March - MGMAT CAT - 680 (Q41, V41)
April - GMAT Prep - 730
May - Actual Test - 760 (Q49, V45)
I probably spent an hour total looking at IR (scored a meh 6) and AWA.
Test Day
Signed up for an 11 AM test slot because I am not a morning person. After so much prep, I wasn't nervous. AWA and IR passed by without incident, but I had to keep checking the clock during the quant section of the exam. The questions felt really difficult, and I wasn't sure if I would break 700.
After finishing the quant section with less than a minute to spare, I could take my time on verbal and think pretty exhaustively about the questions there. The verbal section seemed pretty similar to the OG and Magoosh practice problems, so I didn't break a sweat. When the final page of the exam came up, I was honestly shocked. It really exceeded my expectations!
Anyway, wherever you are on your GMAT study journey, I wish you the best of luck. Don't be scared - you can definitely beat it
The TLDR Summary
* If you get a question wrong, look at multiple explanations to see which approach works best for your style. (GMATClub forum, Magoosh video explanation, OG explanation)
* Keep track of the questions you get wrong so you can re-do them until you get them right.
* Buy a premium subscription to Magoosh!
* Don't worry about practice test scores. Only the GMATPrep mock tests are close to the truth.
Background
Nearly a decade ago, after working my butt off for just an OK score on the quant section of the SAT, I had become a little cynical and assumed that I was just not cut out to excel at standardized testing. I approached taking the GMAT quant section with a little bit of trepidation. I remember my first day of prep: I opened up the OG and was shocked to read about isosceles triangles, a concept which I had entirely forgotten. I knew it was going to be a long road.
Critical reading had always been a strong suit of mine, so I decided to split my studies with 80% focus on quant and 20% on everything else.
Study Time
I started in mid-January and studied about 2 hours a day, 4 days a week. I meant to take the test in April, but work travel in March made this less than ideal, so I booked a test date in early May. I almost never studied on Fridays or Saturdays and kept nearly my same social schedule.
Materials Used
I rented the Manhattan Prep GMAT guides from Amazon, signed up for a Premium account at Magoosh, and bought the Official Guide for the GMAT 2017 books. All in all, my costs were < $200. The most expensive part of GMAT prep was purchasing a more comfortable office chair.
First, I read through the "refresher" pages on the Official Guides. After reading through these and re-familiarizing myself with the fact that isosceles triangles existed, I took a GMATPrep test to get my baseline score - 680. Then I went through the MGMAT strategy guides in order, spending an hour on the strategy guide, and my second hour on official practice problems from the OGs. If I got an OG problem wrong, I would mark it in my notebook and re-do it 2 weeks down the line.
The MGMAT strategy guides for quant are really good. Out of the books on verbal strategy, I only read the Sentence Correction one, which was fine. Watching lessons on Magoosh was a great way to strengthen what I had learned from the MGMAT strategy guides. Each company presented similar concepts in sometimes different ways, and simply being able to learn via two modes - written word and narrated video - was helpful.
After a few weeks, I started digging into the Magoosh practice problems. I thought they were similar to the OG ones, and I liked how in-depth their explanations were. The Magoosh software platform has some awesome features; I liked making practice sets of problems that I got incorrect the first time around. Another feature that I often used was configured study periods. I always allotted 75 minutes and 37 problems for quant study, so that I could practice pacing.
After I did my first read-through of the MGMAT strategy guides, I relied solely on Magoosh and the OG for the rest of my studies. Overall, I completed over 700 problems on Magoosh.
Practice Tests
After my GMATPrep baseline test, I tried taking the MGMAT CATs. They are notoriously difficult, and not in a good way for me. The test started to make me think about solving quant problems with little tricks, which made me overthink my practice problems in the OG. The MGMAT CATs were also bad for my morale, so I stopped taking them. I could see how they would be useful for people starting from a higher quant baseline, so YMMV. Manhattan's scoring algorithm also seemed a lot more accurate than Magoosh's. My advice here is to try a few of the CATs, but don't get disheartened if they're not for you.
Magoosh also offers a "practice test," but these seemed no different than problem sets with a random score attached. I remember taking a practice test where I got 10 geometry questions in a row - highly unrealistic. By the way, their score prediction over my practice problem performance was a Q43 - 45, V35-42.
January - GMAT Prep - 680
February - MGMAT CAT - 660 (Q44, V36)
March - MGMAT CAT - 680 (Q41, V41)
April - GMAT Prep - 730
May - Actual Test - 760 (Q49, V45)
I probably spent an hour total looking at IR (scored a meh 6) and AWA.
Test Day
Signed up for an 11 AM test slot because I am not a morning person. After so much prep, I wasn't nervous. AWA and IR passed by without incident, but I had to keep checking the clock during the quant section of the exam. The questions felt really difficult, and I wasn't sure if I would break 700.
After finishing the quant section with less than a minute to spare, I could take my time on verbal and think pretty exhaustively about the questions there. The verbal section seemed pretty similar to the OG and Magoosh practice problems, so I didn't break a sweat. When the final page of the exam came up, I was honestly shocked. It really exceeded my expectations!
Anyway, wherever you are on your GMAT study journey, I wish you the best of luck. Don't be scared - you can definitely beat it
18 May 2017, 09:11
Kudos
Bookmarks
Congratulations on the awesome score, ! And especially on that killer quant score.
Good luck with your applications!
Good luck with your applications!
