Advice for first time GMAT taker / Ideal Plan

I’m a rising senior and decided to pursue a Master in Finance at a top school (Vandy/UT-Austin/MIT/Georgetown) to break into IB. I figured I should start studying for the GMAT exam sometime in November or December.I recently purchased the GMAT manuals and did a bit of research but I wanted to hop on here and ask how I should start and prep for the next 4-5 months to achieve a score of 700+. What advice do you guys have, and what would be an ideal road map for me?Looking forward to your responses!

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Here's what I did and how I would advise anyone to proceed:

First, familiarise yourself with the format of the exam, the types of question asked in quant and verbal, then straight away take a mock exam to assess where you are at

Then, get the Manhattan gmat books and do everything, most of the stuff is trivial but it's still nice to have a refresher. I found the books on number properties, geometry and sentence correction to be the most useful but I'd still advise you to do them all as you have a lot of time to prep

After that, another full mock exam, check your progress and start banging mock questions from the official book, with a focus on your weakest areas, I'd try to do at least 25-30 a dayTry setting a date for the exam well in advance, maybe after 2 months of prep, so that if you have to retake it no stress

1 week before the exam, full mock exam (including AWA to get used to the timing), then back to the questions from the official bookDay before, same thing (try to start the mock exam at the same time as your actual exam)

Good luck!

 

Hire a tutor - go on Wyzant or one of the other tutoring marketplaces. They'll teach you strategy, how the test works, what types of questions for ea section, etc. Rich kids do it religiously for the ACT/SAT - you know why? Bc it works. The GMAT is no different. I am not a good test-taker, not that smart (less than 2000 SAT) and got a 750+ after using a tutor. 

 

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