My GMAT Strategy

As I said in my first post, my gmat date is set for August – August 19 to be precise. This means I have about 7 weeks left from today and I have been studying for 3 weeks already. I have taken 3 tests so far and the results have been:

Wk 0 – 690                       [GMAT Prep 1]

Wk 2 – 740 (Q50, V41)    [GMAT Prep 2]

Wk 3 – 720 (Q48, V40)    [Manhattan GMAT 1]

The books I have been using:

1.       OG 12^th Edition

2.       Kaplan Premier Online

3.       Manhattan GMAT SC Guide

4.       OG Quantitative Guide [Added yesterday]

5.       OG Verbal Guide [Added yesterday]

I did not record the individual scaled scores for the first test! But the test made it evident that I was very weak in SC (aren’t we all) and in DS. This meant that there was ample scope of improvement. I went through the SC strategy guide of Kaplan then that of MGMAT. I have to agree with all the people who recommend MGMAT SC guide that it is the bible SC strategy. It is very very detailed and you need to spend considerable time studying it.

In the past 3 weeks, I have gone through one round of studying all 5 sections; Spent almost 1 week on SC and 0.5 weeks on other sections. Practiced most of the questions in OG and Kaplan. After the 2^nd week (when I completed my SC) I gave my 2^nd test and my score immediately jumped to 740! But there was still a lot of room for improvement. My target score is 780-790.

After another week of RC and CR, I gave my 3^rd test and the score was 720. However this was a MGMAT test and both the verbal and quant section were seemingly tougher than on GMAT Prep. I also ran out of time in the quant section and had to guess the last 3 sections. This pulled my score down the most. However a thorough analysis told me that my SC is quite good now (11/14 correct) and CR and RC have to be worked upon. However, this was very surprising. I had assumed that the weak performance on the verbal was due to SC but a deeper analysis told me that I had done very well in SC and it was CR and RC which brought me down. This is good news ! This means my hard work on SC has paid off and I have to focus more on RC and CR which should not be so tough.

My learnings so far:

1.       It is a must to take the diagnostic test before starting the prep. Make sure you record the scaled scores on Q and V. This will help in analyzing performance later. If possible also record, the number of correct answers against total for each section.

2.       After analyzing the weak sections, target them systematically. Give more time to practicing problems and studying concepts.

3.       Make sure you give tests at regular intervals to monitor progress. Make sure you find out success rate in each section and don’t make assumptions without analysis.

4.       One very important learning which needs a post by itself – On percentiles.

My strategy over the next few weeks is to go through two rounds of studying; Making sure I practice a lot of questions and that I weed out silly mistakes (reason for poor performance in the Quant section).

Wish me best of luck!