Take off Work the day prior? Study the day prior? Day of?

[jgranchi]

I am not sure I understand why one should not study at on the day before the exam. I hear mixed reviews too. Is studying really that bad the day before? I figure I would have better recall for things topics such as sentence correction and problem solving. . .Tomorrow (the day before my exam, which is July 2nd), I plan to do the sentence correction drill set from MGMT, and perhaps review a few problems that I got wrong from OG as well as the MGMT flashcards. Is this okay? Is it really critical to do nothing the night before? What about working? Should I take off of work or office space?

I also read that on the day of the exam, one should do a few problems. How soon prior? And specifically what should one do the day of in order to prepare for the exam (what types of drills)?

[StaceyKoprince]

It's okay to study for an hour or two the day before - we just mean: don't take a practice test or study for 6 hours. You can do other things that don't involve the GMAT, such as work. The general idea is that you don't want to tire your brain out with GMAT things, because then your performance won't be as great on game day. (Same thing as: if you're running a marathon tomorrow, you'd do some stretching and jogging today, but that's about it - you're resting up for the big day.)

In terms of helping your recall - on the day before, reviewing things you already know will help your recall, yes, but trying to learn new things or trying to do a bunch of new questions won't help you much because you're not going to learn a bunch of new things at the last minute.

I do think it's a good idea to do a few VERY easy problems (5-10) before the exam starts. You will have to do this before you even enter the exam facility, so I'd rip out the first page in the OG of whatever question types you like the most (eg, PS or SC) and take that page with you. Get to the test site early, find someplace to sit, and do some really easy problems for 15 minutes. Don't bring the answers with you - don't even think about that. And DO NOT do hard problems. It won't help and it will very possibly hurt if you get frustrated / psych yourself out.

The other thing you can do before you walk in is review VERY short notes about major things: pacing plan, overall strategies for question types (eg, SC, DS), that sort of thing. No more than 1 page (or 2, if you write big :).

No drills or other big study sessions on the day of. Good luck!