GMAT Study Schedule

I was recently talking to one of my friends who is planning to take the GMAT. He is working full time and is having some difficulties fitting in the GMAT study schedule. I personally think I did a good job of preparing for GMAT and I believe I did it efficiently and it got me the results that I wanted - getting a score starting with 7xx. I used the OG ( 10th and 11th editions) primarily with a jolt of Kaplan 800 and the Manhattan sentence correction guide.

Some things I did right

• Took a power prep test to determine where I stood

This was an important step because the last time I did any sort of studying for standardized test was about 8 years back. Everything seemed distant and I actually forgot the value of "pi".

• Carved about two hours on every work day and 5 hours a day on the weekend

This was important and I did not miss any study day. If I felt tired, I just did something -usually a section that I enjoyed and required less work.

• Took about 10 tests in all and was honest in my timing.

Helped me master the timing and the pressure of the stupid clock once it started showing the seconds.

• Decided what my average time should be for every question and did the OG in "Blocks of 15 questions".

This approach let me be work not only on my math and grammar skills but gave me a quick insight into which types of problems stumped me the most.

• Acknowledge my weakness and learn to positively deal with it

I have never been good at problems involving permutations and combinations. Under the gun, I go totally berserk and come out with a wrong answer 80% of the time. I decided that if I got a permutation problem during my GMAT, I would congratulate myself- because typically one gets these problems if they are doing well. I would then give myself 2 minutes to come up with an answer and then move on. In the real test, I did get one permutation problem, and that is the only one I got incorrect, but instead of trying to obsess on it, I tried to work on other areas like sentence correction etc.

Some Things I did not do right

• Spent time at the "Forums" like testmagic

While I got some use out of these forums, on the whole, I think they were just addictive for me. I learnt a bit but from my perspective anything over 1/2 hour a day on forums is not productive. This time can be better used for something else. I _was_ spending over 2 hours ( mostly during work and sometimes on the weekends)

• Should have planned to redo "all" questions I missed the first time in OG

I started tracking questions that I missed very late in the game. Tracking ones mistakes is the best way to maximize preparation time. Had I marked all the questions, I got wrong from the beginning, once I was done with the OG, I could have diligently worked to solve the one I missed the last time instead of using the random (pick 4 in a page approach)

• Did not eat something during the break in the test

For some reason, I was famished during the verbal section and my head was feeling light. Although, I do not think it really did impact my test.

I was relieved to see my score and I would like to emphasize ( like many other posters)- keep a positive attitude.