The best book for GMAT preparation ? Your advise will be helpfull
OG 11
a great undergrad
If you wanna score well on the GMAT is suggest you do this; Sign up for Manhattan GMAT and get a study guide from Kaplan. Read up on the strategies for sentences and types of verbal problems. I’m going to guess that your quant skills are pretty solid if your on level II of the CFA. Your time would most likely best be spent improving your verbal as high as you can get it. You’ll get more bang for a high score on the verbal as opposed to quant, however don’t neglect quant. Make sure you know those geometry formulas none of us have seen since high school. Work through the entire Kaplan book and do all practice exams in Manhattan GMAT plus the official GMAC ones. Manhattan GMAT is harder than the real thing. If you can knock a 670+ you should be able to get 700+ on the real thing. Don’t worry about the writing, schools really don’t pay attention to it. You only need 3 or 4 wks of study. After that your going to plateau. The most you’ll get out of the extra 2-4 mths is 10 or 20 pts, which is waste of life in my opinion. As long as you get 700 or above you’ll be competitive for any program in the world, better to concentrate on other aspects of your application. The whole week leading up to the exam, which I suggest you make for the afternoon 3-4PM on a Saturday (this is when our brains operate at their peak), eat fish with gills. Salmon, pollock, halibut, perch etc. to build up omega-3 fatty acids in your brain, or you could take supplements. Also start using ginko biloba, this increases blood flow and oxygen to your brain. On game day have a good breakfast, 1 cup of coffee (no more than this) and ginko biloba supplement. Give it your best shot. I increased my score from 660-670 (on official GMAC tests) to 720 on game day with about 1 month of study. Outrageous claims from test-prep providers of raising your score 200pts are full of sh*t. It’s not that kind of test. By becoming familiar with the test and being well rested and alert on game day, you can expect to increase your score 50-80 pts max with 1 month of study or more. After that you reach a mental limit you can’t think beyond. The test itself is designed to find your ability level and consistently test you at that level to zone in on your score. Your not going to outsmart the test or luck out with an 800 GMAT. Just do your best. Best of luck
Thanks for the insight
I will agree on a few things: -schedule something post 11am -use ginko biloba while studying and on exam day, it really does help you focus. If you want good test prep mats, use veritas. I went through all the materials by the major providers and found Princeton Review and Veritas in particular, the most helpful for studying in the 650-800 range. I scored a 720 this past Dec. The math is easy to learn and memorize, the verbal is the tough part.
this LSAT stuff is making me dizzy - I’m almost excited to switch to the GMAT and get back into math
Any suggestions on how to improve verbal let say if you have 2 years before taking the test? Do you guys think taking some grammar classes would help?
Movado1108 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Any suggestions on how to improve verbal let say > if you have 2 years before taking the test? > > Do you guys think taking some grammar classes > would help? I heard the New Yorker magazine and Economist are good assets to help with verbal if you just keep up and read every issue. Also, maybe reading grad level english books would help, but I cannot speak from experience. http://www.english.ucla.edu/academics/graduate/current/reading_lists.asp Best thing to do would be to ask this question on www gmat club dot com or www beat the gmat dot com.
Movado1108 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Any suggestions on how to improve verbal let say > if you have 2 years before taking the test? > > Do you guys think taking some grammar classes > would help? Verbal section on gmatclub.com is great. You can find nice collections of best SC questions there.
Graduate level books, New Yorker, The Economist (maybe not a good one; their British English might cause issues for the exam, no offense). What else?
is it easy to brng 700+ in gmat ? 1 of my friend got 750 in gmat .still he did not got call from top 5 b-school
chiank123 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- still he did not got call from top 5 b-school With your grasp of English grammar, it would be certainly very hard for you !
A case of the pot calling the kettle black, no charu?
10 years ago, 600+ was high, but now 700+ is very common, try to focus on something else, I think most Top 5 applicants have 700+, you only can catch their eyes if you got 800
Guys, only 10% of the class at Harvard scores above 770. The GMAT doesn’t matter once you cross ~700. The median is around 720. A significant portion of the class scores below 700. What matters more are your accomplishments, confidence, knowing what you want and having a good story to tell. 800 will not impress them anymore than 750.
FinanceMBA2011 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Guys, only 10% of the class at Harvard scores > above 770. The GMAT doesn’t matter once you cross > ~700. The median is around 720. A significant > portion of the class scores below 700. What > matters more are your accomplishments, > confidence, knowing what you want and having a > good story to tell. > > 800 will not impress them anymore than 750. This is truth. and a 600+ is still high, the median GMAT score is about 600. In recent years, the average GMAT score worldwide is 570. For top 50 programs, the averaged is 660. Harvard MBA Program 720 UPENN Wharton MBA Program 710 Stanford MBA Program 720 MIT Sloan MBA Program 710 Yale MBA Program 710 As far as top schools calling you, you apply and they will email/mail you either way. Thats a guarantee. They will not proactively call you like universities do at the undergrad level for the sat. Keep in mind that an academic test like that is one of only two things they have to go on at undergrad; for an MBA, they look at your work experience quite abit. If you have junk work experience (or no work exp), then they will not like you even if you had a 4.0 from Harvard with an 800 GMAT. A big part of it is how you present that work experience btw; you will go through this excersise once you pass L3 when it comes to selling your work exp as qualifying work exp lol.
Just in case anyone is planning to apply for Harvard http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/jul2009/bs20090723_112095.htm probably worth doing the GRE instead of the GMAT now. Possile shift towards the GRE for future B-school admissions? Comments?
you guys do realize that the top 10 schools will likely ding you without an interview if you do not have a 700, in a competitive year such as this? once you reach 700, or higher, THEN your essays and story start to matter.
niraj_a Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > you guys do realize that the top 10 schools will > likely ding you without an interview if you do not > have a 700, in a competitive year such as this? > > once you reach 700, or higher, THEN your essays > and story start to matter. This isn’t necessarily true. There are plenty of people with <700 who get accepted to all schools. I was looking online at a class profile at Harvard and they accepted someone with a 550. Edit: I also met a Wharton grad recently and she said she got a 590 on the GMAT.