I'm applying to business school this cycle (early January deadline) and taking the GMAT. I'm looking for advice on how I can study while working full time. The hours at my shop have been crazy. There hasn't been a single slow period yet and my manager keeps pressuring me into working longer and longer hours. Since the deadlines are two months away, I have only a month and a half left to study.
I've been studying seriously since the summer and recently finished a prep course. I recently took an official exam and got a 625 (680 equivalent / 80th percentile). I need about a 685 to get into my top schools. I got nearly perfect scores on verbal and data insights, but my quant score is seriously lagging behind. I've been getting up at 6AM to study before work, but I'm not sure how much longer I can keep this up if I'm going to sleep at 12 or 1. Bonus season is coming up too and I know my hardo manager is going to factor my "laziness" into it.
Has anyone studied for the GMAT while working full time? What worked for you and what would you recommend someone else do?
I studied while working full-time and achieved a score similar to your target. Especially for quant, I think it depends a lot on whether you don't understand the content or need to work on your test-taking strategy.
If you don't understand the content, sign up for a live course (e.g., Menlo). This is beneficial because these courses outline key question types, which helps narrow your studying. If you're in a rush, I would advise against using TTP, which can be overly exhaustive.
If you are having issues with your test strategy - Get a testing tutor/coach on the weekends. These can be expensive, but you will likely only need 1-3 sessions to improve your score dramatically. For instance, for quant, I generally had the mentality that "I could solve all the questions if I had more time." However, with that approach, I was wasting time on questions I was better off skipping, as just guessing gave me more time to focus on those I was confident in. Talking to a coach helped me realize this, and gave me a few more strategy tips (ex., using more time on the first ~7 questions to get them 100% correct, 2 mins on the middle 7, and less time on the later questions, since missing hard questions lowers your "elo" less).
TLDR - Don't understand content -> Sign up for a course; Have bad testing strategy -> Get a Coach/Tutor
Thanks for the help and congrats on your score. The course I took was TTP. It provided a great foundation, but there was so much content that I started forgetting what I learned a few months ago. I also spent the last few weeks learning topics that didn't end up being on my test.
Ill look into live courses and tutors/coaches. Do you happen to have any recommendations on a tutor? I can DM you if you're more comfortable.
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