I dream of GMAT

Another day of waiting is nearly over for me (b-schools - will you ever call??), but to prevent any further obsessive checking of forums, I thought I'd mention a bit about the GMAT

I studied for about 6 weeks in total: around 4 hrs per day at weekends and an hour in the evening a couple of times per week. That amount of revision worked pretty well for me, and I felt I was fully prepared by the time I sat in the exam.

First thing to note is that I am a native English speaker in an analytical job, so both the quant and verbal sections probably came easier to me than many people. That said, here's my study schedule, in case it helps:

I started by reading the Princeton Review, on a recommendation from my boss. I like the down-to-earth chat in the book, and its a good intro to the GMAT exam (especially for people, like me, that had never heard of computer adaptive testing before). I do think its aimed more for people in the mid-tier though - some of the tips were common sense to me, and their methods often slowed me down on the quant stuff. The verbal was good though. I confess to skipping most of the practice questions...

The best advice from Princeton is to write down ABCDE for each question on your rough paper, then cross off each choice as you discount it (there's more to it than that, but you should read the book if you want the detail!). This worked really well for me on all sections.

I also had a copy of McGraw Hill's GMAT: I did not get along with this book at all, or the accompanying CD-ROM! The tips were not as clear as princeton, and the practice tests had questions with errors in (plus the scores in practice exams were not representative of the real thing). Not what you want in your revision!!

The one book you MUST use is the GMAT Review (the official guide). If you even think about doing the exam before you have completed EVERY question in this book (except the essay ones - I'm not THAT crazy!), you need your head examined. I wasnt sure if they were ordered by difficulty, so I used to practice doing 20 questions at a time, but picking every tenth one (e.g. 1,11,21 etc). On reading comprehension, I just did all the questions relating to one or two of the passages in each sitting. I timed myself, but not obsessively - just wanted to check that I was roughly going at the right speed (there is a great GMAT timer iPhone app for that)

Key thing here is to produce an error log - I had a traffic light system when I marked my answers: Green if I knew it, Amber if I took an educated guess but got it right, Red if I got it wrong. I'll come back to this later...

For the essays, I developed a first sentence e.g. "The argument that...is flawed as it stands..." in the way that the books tell you (but not copied word for word!). I also made sure I had lots of signals in there e.g. firstly, secondly, finally etc., but didnt have a defined structure for the middle part. I also had an idea of how my conclusion would work (but no firm template). I basically practiced one of each essay (from the Review book) each weekend for 6 weeks. That was enough. My main issue was that I used to get fired up by the questions, and would end up going over time, or spend too long trying to refine my points. In fact, this happened to me in the actual exam - the issue question basically said that computers had not been a good thing for the world, and I got so passionate in my argument against this, I almost forgot I was in the middle of the GMAT and that I needed to conclude in a specific way etc.! Watch out for that one.

Three weeks before the exam, I did the first test on GMATPrep. This software is your friend - use it well, young Skywalker. I did the first exam under timed conditions, but then went back a week later and took that same exam - the questions were different (not sure how many are actually contained in the software). These are actually real questions, and the layout is EXACTLY the same as the exam. Use it as much as possible. I did the 2nd test, twice, on the weekend before the exam, and it gave me a lot of confidence. My only issue is that it doesnt save your essays for review after you have written them (at least I couldnt find it if it did!)- be warned!

In the evenings of the week before the exam, I went through every question in the book that I had flagged amber or red, and made sure I could do it (even if I had to refer to the answers). This made sure that the topics I was not great on were at the front of my mind on exam day (I assumed the rest of it would take care of itself!)

On test day, I started well on the essays (with the minor blip that I got far too involved in my second essay, as described above!). Then I hit the quant. And I mean hit. First couple of questions, no prob, I was ahead of time, but then one came up that stumped me. Worst thing was, I knew it was an early question (ie. important!) and I couldnt let it go. I ended up spending 5 mins and still semi-guessed it. Aaargh! I'd hit a wall. Panic set in, but I soldiered on. I finished the section bang on time (although had to guess the last question with 10 secs to go). My advice - try not to let an early question stress you! I'm pretty sure the examiners throw a tricky one in there early to see how you cope!

I'd been completing the verbal section with lots of time to spare, so was less worried about timing on this one. However, on the verbal questions it is less easy to 'work out' the answer than on the quant, so the extra time wasnt necessarily that helpful! Again there were a few guesses, but I got to the end and felt I'd scored solidly.

Then it asked whether I wanted to see (and therefore record) my results. Suddenly I had an urge to cancel the exam - where did that come from? This was the worst part of the exam for me! Nightmare. Finally, I sucked it up and checked my score: 780 - phew! Stage one, over.

Hope that helps any prospective GMAT takers out there...I'm off to watch Glee.

If you have any questions that you think I can help with - drop it in the comments!