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I didn't study, I just took it, and got a 700. I wouldn't recommend this exactly, but I found it very similar to the SAT, so use that as a gauge for how much you will need to study (I didn't study for the SAT either).
Take this with a grain of salt because I took mine last year when I was 28 and had been out of school for six years. I borrowed a set of the Manhattan books to basically relearn a lot of the quant concepts that I hadn't looked at in almost ten years. I did that for three months, took it and got a 660. Then I spent about six weeks just crushing as many practice problems as a I could, retook it and got a 710. Honestly, the thing that worked best for me was doing 5-10 practice problems at a time then spending a few minutes watching a video of how each is solved. Best of luck.
Practice problems were effective way to study for me as well.
I spent 3 months and got 750.
I think I will spend about 2 months for prepare it, with books and tests. I severely need to pass it with >650 for the MsC admissions.
I studied by myself and used Manhattan Prep and The Official Guide for GMAT Review
If you're not familiar with quant concepts, skim over them quickly and start doing practice problems. Do everything in the official book + official quant book
As for verbal, I heard manhattan GMAT is god-tier for sentence correction, so maybe look into buying that only. Try to crush sentence correction as there's only a certain set of mistakes in the English language that they can test you on. If you can afford it, buy GMAT Pill to learn the other two verbal concepts (~$99 for 1 month is all you need). Then do all the verbal practice questions in both official book and official verbal book. Go over all your mistakes and pinpoint to exactly where you went wrong so it doesn't happen again. Take one or two mocks on GMATPrep software a few days before the test. For AWA, just memorize the framework in your head repeatedly until you can duplicate it on the exam, and you'll get a 6.
That was what I did and I got a 760. Was shocked when that scored popped up on the screen - I was running on four hours of shitty sleep because I procrastinated until the last minute to do my one and only mock (710 score). But also to note is that I had a lot of free time on my hands back then. Took up ~2 months of prep time in total maybe 4 hours a day. Best of luck!
I spent 4.5 months and got a 730. Total hours were somewhere around 400. Definitely overkill- haha.
620 cold on first practice, studied for 10 weeks/approx 200-250 hrs, 740 on actual. used mgmat, official guides, and gmatquantum online course
710 cold on the first practice. Then I studied 5 weeks and got 740 the on real one. I was pretty pissed because I improved only verbal score whereas quant stayed at 48.
Do as many official problems as possible. I recommend MGMAT with the official guide. gmatclub forum is helpful as well. Advanced GMAT quant is useful if u want to lift your quant score over 47
The most important thing is to identify your weaknesses as fast as possible. MGMAT practise tests are good for that. Good luck!
definitely agreed on the weaknesses. keep track of all the problems from the official guides that you get wrong and every week or so go through all of them and don't take the problem off the list unless you get it right and really understand it
Started around 640 and ended with a 760 after 2-3 months of prep.
I work in Corporate M&A, so the work comes in waves. If I wasn't working, I was on GMAT Club doing problems. I was surprised at how few "hardcore" 700-level questions I got on the actual test. The key to a respectable quant score is nailing the 600 level questions - when you are studying, spend the majority of your time practicing those.
IMO, the first month of prep should focus mostly on quant. You want to "find your quant score" or the number you feel that you can hit cold every time. For me, that number was a Q49 on GMAT Prep -- it's not spectacular, but good enough. I found that trying to get above that level wasn't worth the effort it would require. During the last month of prep, my suggestion is to focus more on verbal. Verbal drives your overall score. If you can get a 90+% verbal score, you're golden.
For practice tests, I initially focused on CATs from MGMAT, GMAT Club, and GMAT Prep. Halfway through my study, I stopped using MGMAT and GMATClub CATs and focused only on GMAT Prep tests. I feel this was the best decision I made throughout the entire prep period. My biggest challenge throughout the process was confidence, particularly in the Quant section. The MGMAT Quant CATs are unrealistically difficult. They test the right concepts, but there are way too many 700-level questions in the CATs and the solutions often contain too much busy work compared to real GMAT 700-level questions. IMO, these questions would be helpful in an untimed environment, but they are overwhelming in a test environment.
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