Going to start studying for the GMAT next week and was wondering if anyone had any tips, resources or recommendations that they found helpful for themselves when going through this process....

Manhattan GMAT was most helpful for me.

Start off figuring out what your weakest areas are. Once you round yourself out sufficiently, start working on full tests to give you a simulation of the test environment. You really should aim to get at least 5-10 of these in before taking the actual test.

I'm actually using Veritas because my friend hooked me up with a good deal (using his log-in) Looking forward to getting after it. Definitely need to improve in a lot of areas but I'm confident I'll be fine as long as I put the 2-3 hours a day in for a few months.

How hard can geometry really be? 9th graders take it.

The math is way harder than you would think. Here is what you do:

- Take one mba.com GMAT official test as a self diagnostic (you get two for free)
- You only need two books imo, the Official Guide (only book with actual old GMAT questions) and the Manhattan book(s) on your weakest area(s)
- Read everything you can on gmatclub.com and beatthegmat.com, especially the sentence correction stuff
- Take Manhattan practice tests (were like 6 for $30 I think). Can't speak for Veritas
- Take the other GMAT official practice test last. This is a very close indicator to what you will score on the real thing.

Anyways that is what worked for me. I'm in b-school now so feel free to PM for other questions as well.

It's a pretty easy test, unless you care about getting like 760+ as opposed to 700+, which you really shouldn't because the difference rarely matters.

I just bought a book of practice questions (Kaplan I think) and did the two practice tests under test conditions, and I was fine.

I didn't study for my Gmat at all and the Math totally caught me off guard, i had never seen anything like it before and it kicked my ass. Just barely did good enough to get into grad school

If I were to do it over i would study for the math and try to get comfortable with the question style, the rest of the test is like any other standardized test imo.

The tough part is that it deals with a ton of material you simply haven't seen in awhile. Even if you could have crushed it in HS it's generally tougher 10 years later.


Truth. I studied hard to get a top score, got it, then still got rejected from Stanford & Kellogg. B-school apps at top schools are about way more than numbers.

I will be studying for the GMAT in August and aim for ~740 points. If enough other people are interested, we could arrange a Skype study group.

rather than make a new thread, I guess I'll bump this one:

Taking the GMAT in 2 months, will start studying in 1 month. I have a flexible schedule and can essentially study as much as I want. What sort of timeline should I take as I head towards the test in terms of studying/practice exams and what are the best study guides? I think I can get 700 easy, and am looking towards the 740 range so that means I will want to review topics in detail rather than in large strokes. Any advice would be appreciated.

I studied for it a bit (later ended up taking the GRE with a similar study plan). The minimum is to do the Official GMAT Review book in full. They also have official Verbal and Math guides which I think would be good ideas.

Those are great for practicing, but for learning don't go into much depth. I had good results using the Manhattan guides for that, so maybe review specific topics you need work on through Manhattan then do as many practice problems as possible using the official books. I'd avoid doing practices from Manhattan given your time constraint and given that they won't be quite as good as official ones.

manhattan gmat worked great for me. Just took the test today and I was sweating it because the math portion on the test was so much easier than the problems and practice tests I'd been taking with manhattan gmat (since the test is adaptive I figured I was just being a dumbass and getting a ton wrong on the math portion). Ended up with a 770 and finished all sections well ahead of schedule.

Though 2 months may not be enough time to work through all of the guides and take all of the practice tests, question banks. Depends on whether you have to work as well or can spend 4 hours or so a day studying.

I am finished with semester finals on Dec 14th. I am scheduled to take the test Jan 10th. No job, so I have all break to study, minus holiday time.

I'd recommend taking their free test over thanksgiving break so you can learn what your weaknesses are. Then order the manhattan gmat books that are based on your weaknesses (ahead of time, give them a week or so to arrive). Work through those, the question banks on manhattan gmat and the practice exams on manhattan gmat.

My best advice for the math section is to download some flash cards (Link Below to some decent ones) and just make sure you memorize all the specific rules with respect to geometry. There are lots of specific rules that they like to target.

Also do a little research into how the test works and make sure you spend extra time ensuring you get the questions at the beginning of each section correct because they have more value.

I studied for 2 weeks for and scored a 660/6.0 but I didn't do great on the quantitative section (like 68th percentile) and it dragged my score down.

The math is simple and just requires a little work, I only wrote the GMAT as a shot in the dark when I didn't get into a MSc program I wanted to take which explains the lack of preparation but my score was sufficient to get into a good (Canadian) school.

Nobody cares about the essay section but there is a formula to a perfect 6.0 essay which is a pretty simple layout. Its been 3 years and I forget exactly what it is but just do a little research and read some perfect essays and you should be able to put one together on any topic.

Get some kaplan practise tests, they are much more difficult than the real thing.

That's about all I can recall, good luck.

http://www.beatthegmat.com/download.php?id=6840

GMAT prep depends on what score you are starting out with, and what you want to improve to.

If you are shooting for high 600s / low 700s, it's really important to get books that help with time management, "gaming" the test and learning how to answer the easy to medium questions really quickly with high accuracy.

If you are shooting for 780+ then time management doesn't matter at all, and you just need to buy stuff that focuses on only the toughest questions that you only encounter at the very end of each section when you've gotten all the questions right up to that point. I found the Kaplan GMAT 800 book helpful, it's a collection of just the toughest questions.

They write a lot of the questions from scratch, and a lot of the other prep books have poorly written or erroneous tough questions that don't prepare you really well.



Also, I found immersion to be very helpful. A lot of people study part time for a year or more before taking the test. For me, I took like two weeks of studying non stop, took a couple days off and then took the test. Was a lot more effective if you can manage it.