Background:
- 32 year old Professional Engineer (Civil) in London, Ontario, Canada
- Passed Level 1 and 2 of CFA Exams (registered for Level 3 next June)
- Work full-time (40+ hrs per week);
- Number of Hours studied for GMAT was 215 hrs over 4 months.
Useful Review Materials:
1) OG 11, OG Verbal Supplement & OG Quant Supplement;
2) Powerscore Critical Reasoning Bible;
3) Manhattan GMAT Sentence Correction Guide;
4) GMAT Prep Software; and
5) Manhattan GMAT Forums for GMAT Prep Solutions.
Not useful Review Materials (questions not realistic in my opinion):
1) Kaplan Premiere Program; and
2) Kaplan 800.
Strategy:
**Note: All questions were done under timed conditions with no exceptions.
To get acquainted with the material:
1) Solve OG 11 once;
2) Solve OG Verbal Supplement while doing Quant questions off the forums during your lunch during the week (ie. 1/2 to 1 hr per day - you don't need much, just enough to stay sharp);
3) Solve OG Quant if needed;
4) Work through Powerscore Critical Reasoning Bible and Manhattan SC Guide while keeping up the daily Quant practice;
To push yourself above 700:
5) Print all posts (yes, all of them) from the GMAT Prep solutions Quant forum on this site (double-sided for those environmentally friendly people);
6) Attempt the questions from the printouts while making sure to cover the answers. Proceed to fail every question miserably like I did;
7) Study the CONCEPTS for the questions as well as the SOLUTIONS from the INSTRUCTORS (this is key);
8) Take the GMAT Prep.
9) Keep attempting the questions (trust me, you will keep forgetting how to do them) and keep attempting the GMAT prep.
Comments:
1) I agree with those who complain that the OG Books aren't difficult enough. That is why I recommend studying them once and only returning to the questions you have problems with. Yes, you can study the solutions for the questions you got right and wrong in the OG books, but why? A lot of the solutions they give you for the harder problems are ridiculously long-winded 5 minute solutions that aren't practical. I think that most people have problems solving the same questions (ie. for the most part, we all eventually get stuck on the same ones), and it takes an instructor to smack you (jokingly) and show you an entirely different approach. I spent the remaining 3 weeks before the exam strictly studying the GMAT Prep Quant and Verbal (which I didn't print) posts from this website. Also, I didn't throw out repeated questions that I printed, only because many of them had an entirely different approach or outlined a different important concept. As an additional note, after solving the GMAT prep questions 10 times over and not seeing the OG books for about 2 months, I returned very briefly to the OG books to try a few "difficult" questions and absolutely killed them in under 2 minutes each.
2) My engineering background and CFA exams surprisingly did not prepare me well for this exam. I thought it would be easy and, of course like many other people, I was very easily humbled. The only thing that I was used to was the time constraints, which is why I practiced everything timed.
3) Many may argue that spending too much time on GMAT prep software does not give you an accurate representation of your score. I personally memorized the concepts behind almost every question in that software, using the forum post solutions on this site. Yes, I knew the answers to everything the 10th time around and was getting 760's which probably was not a good representation of score. However, I think there is merit to getting familiar with staring at an ugly blue screen with cheesy text for hours on end. When it came time for the exam, I was comfortable with what I was looking at. Not to mention, how many people get 760's on practice tests and get 660 on the exam? Lots. Of course this could boil down to many different reasons, but the bottom line is that the 760 on practice tests does not always correlate to the real thing (obviously). Where else are you going to get 700+ level questions from the people who actually make the test? Definitely not OG books.
4) For the AWA, I studied essay templates during the week of the exam. In my opinion, you have to do this. I know so many people who bombed the GMAT only because they bombed the essay portion and lost focus for the rest of the exam. Don't let this happen to you for something that is so easily prepared for. Either study essay templates or make one up if you have to.
5) If I had to do this over, I would purchase some of the MGMAT quant materials instead of the Kaplan stuff. From speaking to many people who used them extensively, they were all breaking the 700 barrier. I'll be using the Kaplan books as firewood this winter.
6) I actually used the Powerscore Critical Reasoning Bible to prepare for Critical Reasoning questions. Although some may look at this 300 page beast as cumbersome, it really broke down the questions for someone like me (an engineer with zero verbal skills), and if you have time, I would highly recommend it.
7) Sentence correction is where you can gain time on the exam. MGMAT Sentence Correction Guide is great for that. The only strategy I can recommend for this is to focus on parallism, verb tenses and pronoun errors, which is what most other posters say from what I've read.
8) And finally, I only got a 710 on this wretched, mind-numbing and torturous exam. I say "only" because there are people on here getting 760's and it seems like 700-ish is the new average. Use their recommendations to break the 700 barrier. I guess the main point from my post is that you should study the ridiculously hard stuff and how the pros (ie. instructors) solve them. I repeat: You need to see how the instructors solve the questions. Understanding the concepts behind really hard questions allows you to tear through the OG book stuff like its a joke. Using number lines to sketch absolute values, and stupid stuff like exterior angle rules for triangles and simple equations like Avg = sum/n can make the most difficult problems a lot easier to deal with, especially on data sufficiency where you don't always have to fully solve a question.
Some may ask why I am writing such a long-winded post. I just want to give back to the community that got me the 710 by posting my approach.
Huge, mega huge ungrammatically correct thanks to Ron Purewal, Emily Sledge, and Stacey Koprince. You have no idea who I am but I stared at your names and solutions for 20 hrs per week for 2 months. Your help was invaluable and for that, I recommend MGMAT materials to everyone I know who is interested in writing the GMAT. Hopefully you get some kickbacks!
Good luck to those scheduled to write!
Hercules
P.S. In defence of Kaplan, they do make excellent CFA study materials....so for those who want more hell in their lives in addition to the GMAT, give the CFA a try...