Female, age 46. First attempt at GMAT – had never even heard of it until 3 months ago. First language German, but have worked in English and French for over 20 years (living in Montreal). Bachelor of Fine Arts (1979), M.Math. in Computer Science (1982). Last academic exam of any kind was 22 years ago…
Prep materials & schedule
After deciding in January that I wanted to return to school for an MBA, initial research on the web suggested I should give myself 2-3 months to prepare for the GMAT, particularly since I’d been out of school for “a while” (yeah, right…).
I read various reviews on Amazon and elsewhere, then ordered:
Towards the end of my prep I added deltacourse.com for additional background on combinatorics and probability (not covered in Kaplan Math book).After I had researched and ordered prep materials, I decided on my strategy, and set up a detailed study schedule. I figured that my main weaknesses would be very rusty math in general, data sufficiency problems (had never seen this format before), speed/time management, and exam psychology (handling the pressure, building up stamina to focus for 4 hours). My total prep, ignoring a 1-week break due to an urgent consulting project, worked out to 8 weeks, averaging 2 hours on weekdays, and 10 hours over the weekend = total of approx. 20-25 hours per week = 160-200 hours.
My overall strategy was to focus exclusively on math for the first four weeks, then work on math along with verbal for the second four weeks.I worked through all of KapMath (every single problem) in those first four weeks, and also did all the PS and DS practice sets in PowerPrep. Another part of my strategy was to complete all the Kaplan materials in the first 5-6 weeks, while also starting to introduce OG and PP practice sets in week 3.
This allowed me for the last 2-3 weeks to work only with OG and PP, which are definitely closest to the real thing. To build up speed and stamina, I did all PP practice sets and all OG problems under timed conditions. I also did both PP CATs, and 3 of the 4 Kaplan CATs (see below for scores). I decided to forget about doing the 4th Kaplan CAT because I was getting close to G-day, and didn’t want to risk undermining my confidence, so I finished on a high note with PP CAT2.
Getting the most out of Official Guide 10th edition Verbal ,Official Guide 10th edition Verbal ,Official Guide 10th edition Data-Sufficiency ,Official Guide 10th edition Problem-Solving
In OG, I did 100% of PS and DS problems, about 50% of CR, 80% of SC, and 30% of RC. In all sections, I did all the problem sets that are included in PowerPrep. I found that those are a good way to practice on the computer screen, which feels a bit different than reading problems in a book. Note that the practice sets are EXACTLY the same as the early questions in each section of OG (for example, the first 96 problem solving questions from OG are the ones that appear in the six PS practice sets in PowerPrep), so I skipped the early questions in each section when doing OG. The practice sets are not timed, but I just noted my start time on my scratch paper to get used to proper pacing.To get the most out of OG, I made myself a standard answer sheet with 40 rows for a batch of 40 questions. The sheet had these columns:
Time
Question #
A
B
C
D
E
Slow
Unsure
Correct
Wrong
Careless error
Concept error
In the Time column I wrote down the starting time on every 10th question, and the end time on the last question. For the Question #, I had preprinted 1-40, and then just wrote in the first actual # for that batch (e.g. 1 = 261). I recorded my answers in the A-E columns, and used the next two columns to track my reaction while I was doing a problem. For any problem where I felt it took me a long time, I marked an X in the “Slow” column – sometimes an “XX” if it was really bad. Similarly, while I was working through problems, I used the “Unsure” column to keep track of any questions where I wasn’t 100% sure of my answer, or where I ended up guessing. This allowed me later on to include those questions in a second review, even if I had been lucky enough to answer them correctly the first time.
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