yipeekaiay

Forums like this provide a valuable service. I hope to make a small contribution by sharing my GMAT experience. I took the Princeton Review online diagnostic before I started to study for the GMAT, and scored somewhere between 400 and 500 (the diagnostic gave only a range). I was a little worried. After studying for a couple of weeks, I took the 1st PP, and scored a 650. I stuck to my plan (see below) and took the real GMAT last week. I got a 670, with a 66% Q score. I was an engineering major in college, and was not happy with my score - never mind business school, I thought my alma mater might want its degree back. Against conventional wisdom, I signed up for the next available session, which was 4 days later (in a new calendar month). I studied over the weekend, and got a 730 - I get to keep my degree. Now, the question most people ask by the time they get to this point in this type of post... For me, there was no secret; however, there was a plan. First, I knew that because I never faired-well on standardized tests, I would need to put in the time. I spent ~20 hrs creating a plan that I felt would give me a good chance to get the score I wanted (I thought mine would give me a 90% to score >= 700), and that I could execute (190 hours over 11 weeks). Next, I made a daily schedule including date, lesson, location, and duration. I marked my progress so that I would stick to my plan - I missed one day because of work. I ended up spending > 200 hours over the 11 weeks. Next, I took an active approach to studying - there are many good posts on various techniques - that included using not only [tooltip=Official Guide]OG[/tooltip] and Princeton/Kaplan books, but also outside resources such as grammar texts and the web. I found that I needed "extra" explanation - especially on grammar - not covered in the GMAT prep books. Finally, I made sure that I solved ALL problems, instead of EACH problem - that was my biggest mistake on the 1st pass. Although I timed myself during every study session, I was getting so familiar with the questions that I didn't have many problems that required a lot of time. By the time I took the real GMAT, I had forgotten how to deal with the clock - I guessed on the last 7-8 math questions and didn't even finish. The 2nd pass I made sure to give enough time to solve all problems, and finished with 1 second left! One change that I made over the weekend for the 2nd pass was to keep a running total of +/- minutes based on 2 min/question. So, that's it. For those of you who are studying for the GMAT, or thinking about it: you CAN do it! Good Luck -