Practice Test Strategy

[HarshalR346]

Hi,

Can you please advise me on designing my Practice Test Strategy?

I am in the early stages of preparation and wish to create a calendar schedule for studies. Being a working professional, I can take out about 12-15 hours per week for the prep.

I started going through the OG'16 & MGMAT strategy guide (full set) just about a month ago. I have not yet taken the diagnostic test & saving it till I get my work schedule sorted. I have set a steep target of 750+ score on GMAT - I took GRE in 2012 and the score conversion tool predicts about 630.

I would be really grateful if you can advise me on the following-

With my available material (OG & MGMAT), how many free practice tests do I have?
Can you please suggest when I should be taking these test for the best outcome?
For the admission cycles of 2016 (courses of Fall-2017), is July-August '16 a good window for GMAT, or should I plan for earlier?

Thank you!

- Harshal

[StaceyKoprince]

First, 750 is a REALLY high score. Just FYI - I can't give anyone a "reasonable" general timeframe for that goal because only 2% of people ever hit a score like that in the first place. But it's good to have ambitious goals!

Most schools release their applications around June or July, and first round deadlines are often in September or October, so if you want to be able to start working on them right away, then you may want to aim to try to have your studies done by June. (That also gives you a bit more time just in case you get sick or something else happens to delay your studies.)

You can download 2 free practice tests from www.mba.com (the official website) - look for GMATPrep in their store. (The cost is $0.) You have 6 tests that come with our books, for a total of 8. GMATPrep also has two more paid tests that you can unlock (last I checked, they cost about $40), but 8 tests should be more than enough.

We have our class students take a test right at the beginning - before they even start studying! This allows you to see your baseline and to get a handle on your strengths and weaknesses. That will help you to prioritize your studies, so I strongly recommend taking a test ASAP.

Next, I'd recommend taking your second test when you've worked about 50-70% through our books. Don't expect a huge jump in score. In fact, a lot of people see a score decrease at this point. Essentially, they've learned a lot of stuff that they think they "should" be able to do now when they see it on the test - but they're still a bit slow or not entirely comfortable with whatever that thing is. So they spend too long on a bunch of questions and really mess up their timing - and if you mess up your timing, you're going to hurt your score.

But you still want to take a test at that point so that you can continue to acclimate and get used to the testing environment. You also, again, want to see what your strengths and weaknesses are so that you can continue to appropriately prioritize your studies.

Plan to take another test when you're through all of the books for the first time. After that, you're going to use your test results to drive your review (more on this below) and you're going to take a new test approximately every 2 to 4 weeks (depending upon how much you're studying - the general rule is that you take a new test when you feel that you've tackled all of the major issues you wanted to tackle based on the results of your previous test).

Here are some resources to help you with the strategic side of things:
Mindset:
http://tinyurl.com/executivereasoning
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... -the-gmat/

How to study:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... our-score/
http://tinyurl.com/2ndlevelofgmat
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2015/07/ ... s-say-what

Timing:
http://tinyurl.com/GMATTimeManagement

Analyze your MPrep tests:
http://tinyurl.com/analyzeyourcats

Good luck - let us know how it goes!

[RAHULZ400]

Hi Stacey,

I am about to begin my GMAT preparation. Shall I appear for the diagnostic CAT without any basic content knowledge before starting out with the guides as the MGMAT CATs are considered to be comparatively on the higher side of difficulty level. Also what should be the order of topics to be covered i.e. shall I begin with covering the topics which have a higher frequency (numbers,algebra, word problems) in the exam rather than geometry or Probability? Can you help with the approach to go about regarding the order of strategy guides to be followed in both verbal and quant?

[StaceyKoprince]

Hi! Short answer - but first, can you please start your own post and we will contiue the discussion there? I can't mix two different students in one thread without mixing up their cases and then mixing up my advice!

If you have absolutely no prior knowledge of the test, first learn how the question types work - otherwise, you'll miss questions just because you're not sure what you're supposed to be doing in the first place (especially on Data Sufficiency!). Look at the first chapter for SC. Read enough of chapter 1 of CR to get a sense of what's going on with those. Go to Appendix A of any math book (I'd suggest starting with Fractions, Decimals & Percents) to read about DS. You're probably okay already on PS and RC - those are pretty straightforward problem types.

Other than that, no, you don't need to learn a bunch of formulas, grammar rules, content before your first test. The idea is to use that first test as a diagnostic, to see what your "raw" strengths and weaknesses are.

You then use that data to help you set up your study plan accordingly. But I'm not going to talk about that part here - start a new thread for yourself and we'll talk about it there!