While waiting for the results, I’m already preparing myself to take the GMAT test maybe next september.
My plan is to study the kaplan premier, kaplan verbal (as a non-native english speaker) and kaplan 800.
Any tips, resources, sites that you want to share? Anyone doing the same?
Thank you & best of luck for everyone.
I’m prepping for the GMAT also. I’ve heard very good things about Manhattan. But not sure if I want to shell out the money.
i bought used manhattan prep guides on craigslist. I thought they pretty good, had different books for algebra, geometry, sentences, etc.
I took the live class and thought the price for all the materials was worth it.
I am a big Manhattan GMAT fanboy. I certainly didn’t ace my SAT’s in college, but got a 98th percentile on the GMAT simply by devoting about 3 months to MGMAT prep materials and practice problems from the Official Guides pictured above. The official guide is nothing but old test questions from the real exam. I also took the 6 practice tests offered by MGMAT and used their online tracker to see where I could improve.
Best prep you can do is take the first of the free practice tests you get when you enroll for the GMAT and see where you are. (ie how close to 700+ are you).
Then either take a MGMAT class or do all the self-study guides. They teach you the test. The GMAT is basically math you learned in 7th grade and the ability to learn the sentence correction rules, which are black and white. The critical reasoning can be learned by focusing on why certain answer choices are WRONG, and that isn’t quite as easy.
Finally take the 2nd free practice test and I can guarantee your score on the real exam will be within 30 points.
The criticisms I’ve heard of the KAplan materials are similar to the Schweser criticisms: there are practice problems that aren’t representative of actual exam questions, and they don’t do a good job of actually teaching you the test. MGMAT doesn’t offer any other prep materials, they just do GMAT and they seem to do it well.
Just curious, but how many hours per day did you study?
Jesus Christ… 3 months? After studying for CFA, anything remotely close to exam prep makes me gag haha.
I studied maybe 2-3 hours per day, but not every day. It is absolutely NOTHING like CFA prep because everything on the GMAT is easy if you just know how to solve it quickly. When you’re not doing practice problems and are just learning tricks or the sentence correction rules, you could probably study in front of the TV.
GMAT questions are:
Is 98464 divisible by 7?
What is the length of this side of a triangle?
If you just go through the books they give you all sorts of tricks to make 80% of the math problems easy and solvable in less than 30 seconds, that way when you advance to the harder ones that put you in the 700 range, you have some time to think through them.
The writing section is 50% computer graded, so you just learn how to get a perfect score from the computer.
The sentence correction rules are probably 99% learnable - where do you need a comma, is this clause describing what it should, etc.
Critical reasoning was probably the hardest because I read into things too much, but if you learn to only take into account what they give you, its not so difficult.
Anybody who can make it through level 1 should not have a problem getting 700+ once they learn how the test works.
I forget the name of it, but there is forum out there where people who have scored very well share some insight into how they prepared. Its interesting seeing a retaker go from a 600 to a 750 in 6 weeks.
I don’t now why, but I find it hard to stay motivated for the GMAT. The material is boring, especially those science related reading comprehension passages. I’ve been half ass studying since last August and the highest I ever scored on a practice exam was 650, 85 percentile in verbal but 64 percentile in quant lol. If I had to take it now, I don’t even think I could break 600.
BTW from what I heard they changed the format a bit. Instead of writing two essays, you write one essay and take a new section focused on interpreting charts and other data.
Ridiculous, I think you would easily break 600.
The other year I discovered, to my dismay, that I needed a GMAT score to enroll to a local study program here in my country, without any particular need to achieve a certain score level, just that you had taken it so you could prove you had a certain level of English skill. Which of course felt a bit outrageous, requiring an American test score to take a brief class at a non-American local university, but the score is used as an acid test to separate those who know enough English from those who don’t I guess. Anyway, I rushed out and bought a book on the GMAT (like the prep course suggested above) and studied for fifteen (15) hours in total, had one week to my disposal or really it was more like over the week-end. Took the test and scored 600 sharp and then English is not even my first language…
So don’t doubt that you can score 600. Now, pushing the score towards 700 or above, that’s an *entirely* different story and will probably require lots of study time.
I found the grammar sections the hardest, there was a certain technique to decipher what they were after. Also the “essay”, where there is likewise a certain technique how to pull it together quickly. It helps a lot to have learned the technique to be able to get started when you stare at the blank computer screen and know you have so-and-so many minutes to come up with a coherent story on some peculiar topic that has just been given to you. For the essay - which wasn’t included in the prep material - I found there were chat rooms and web boards where these type of techniques were heavily discussed and it helped to learn the general outine of a standard essay by heart. As I remember it the test also required a certain basic level of maths skill, like quickly calculating the area of a circle or adding up some numbers and such stuff, which wasn’t included in the prep material. Here I simply relied on what I learned in school years ago, and didn’t do any preparation at all, but if it is a weak area of yours I guess you will have to practice that too.
I used MasterGmat and got a 730.
The first section they put you through is the strategy section, and even if you don’t end up buying the entire course, you should do the free trial and try to make it through the strategy section. I’d credit that section for a good deal of my success on the exam.
edit: I also purchased the ManhattanGMAT books on Amazon and reviewed the portions of the curriculum that I needed to brush up on most.
Thank you for the thorough breakdown! Did you use the classroom lectures or just the books? The lectures via intervet is about $1,100 and books are $300. I’m debating whether the lectures are really worth the extra $800.
I did do the course, and yeah it helped because it forced me to put in more hours. At the risk of sounding arrogant, most of the people in there were not very smart and slowed down the class to the point of it being annoying. If you think you’re disciplined enough to put in the hours and use the books, then stick to that. Also use their online tools and practice tests. Not sure if that is extra or not.
I would highly recommend gmatclub.com . I have also heard good things about the app with flashcards, official questions from Manhattan GMAT, Kaplan, etc that that website offers in addition to the forum.
I took the GMAT a couple years ago and just finished business school. My quick thoughts:
(1) Don’t obsess over the GMAT. Anything over 700 is fine. The essays are so much more revealing and people often spend more time on the GMAT and less time on the essays, which I think is a debatable tactic.
(2) The Official GMAT books are useful but seem most geared towards people trying to attain a mid-600’s score. It’s important to look at one or two of these exams before the test though just to get a taste for the real questions. I found Manhattan GMAT books more challenging and I ended up sticking with those exclusively. The most useful tool for me tohugh is the GMATPrep software you can download for free. This gives you a true sense of the CAT format and I would advise taking 4-6 of these exams beforehand. There is a library file (I forget what it’s called) which you should copy and save in a separate folder before you use it. Normally GMATPrep only lets you take two practice exams but if you keep a copy of the library file fresh, you can just copy it back to take multiple exams. I scored between 710-750 on on five practice exams from GMATPrep and my actual score was in this range, so I thought it was a good predicator of performance and more importantly, a good way to get myself psychology prepared.
(3) On both practice and actual exams, do NOT get discouraged if you see questions you’re struggling to answer. That’s the nature of the CAT format - the test adjusts itself to be more challenging the better you do. That said, do be smart about how to manage your time since you don’t want to leave any questions unanswered. Good test-takers know when to attempt a question and when to move on, but normally spending any more than 2.5 minutes even on a very difficult question becomes a very tenuous proposition.
(4) I was a pilot-user for GMATPill and have been impressed with their interactive approach towards teaching - it feels like you’re sitting in a one-on-one tutoring session and many of the frameworks they suggest are pretty robust and repeatable. Pricing for the product also seems very fair. Check out GMATPill.com and see if this fits your needs.
Hope this helps!
Thanks numi, I’ll check it out. Reading the Fundamentals of Math book by MGMAT gave me some confidence but doing their online question bank has brought it down to an all time low, haha.
if any of you guys are going to be taking the GMAT, i highly recommend that you guys visit gmatclub.com for discounts etc etc for courses and stuff. I’m a moderator there now. But two years ago I ended up getting a free kaplan GMAT course out of it and later on became a moderator for the off-topic forums 
it’s a good site.
Hey VWJETTY, what prep material would you recommend? There are just so many options out there.
I’ve almost narrowed it down to Manhattan Prep. I was just going to get these:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Official-Guide-GMAT-Review/dp/1118109791/ref=pd_sim_b_1
Do you think that’s sufficient? I just saw “The Prep Set” and “Prep Set Plus” on gmatclub. Are those overkill or do you think it’s necessary?
