Just Starting Out – What Should I Do?
Don’t worry. We’ll address what to do if you’re already studying – and struggling in some ways – in another article coming later this week.
If you’re just starting out and trying to figure out what to do, we’ve got several big categories of things to discuss: mindset, devising a study plan, and learning how to study.
Mindset
What do I mean by mindset? It turns out that, if you do what most people do and try to prepare for this test in the same way that you prepared for tests in school, you’re not going to get the best score that you could get. The GMAT is constructed and scored very differently from school tests, and the school focus on “getting everything right” will hurt you on the GMAT.
If you aren’t sure what’s tested on the GMAT or what the different question types look like, take some time to wander around this section of the official GMAT website. Here you can find information on the different sections of the test, as well as sample problems to illustrate what you’ll actually have to do when you take the test.
Next, everyone should read this short article: In It To Win It. This will help you to start to adjust your mindset so you can maximize your GMAT score. One important detail: you’re only going to get about 60% of the questions right. That’s true for almost everybody – even those scoring in the 99th percentile are not answering everything correctly (though we are answering more questions correctly – maybe 80% to 90%).
How can that be? Glad you asked. : ) Read the “Scoring” section of ManhattanGMAT’s free e-book The GMAT Uncovered Guide. If you have an account with us (even a free account), the Guide is already sitting in the Downloads section of your Student Center. (Note: it’s in the Downloads section as of the date of publication of this article; it could move over time.)
The Scoring section of this guide explains how the scoring works – which will help you to better understand why trying to get everything right is a really bad strategy on the GMAT. (Or you can just decide that you believe what I’m saying in the In It To Win It article – that is, you’re wholeheartedly convinced and can make the mindset shift.)
Next, quality of study is more important than quantity. Many people do huge quantities of problems over and over, but we’re not going to memorize all these problems. What we want to do instead is use the current practice problems to help us learn how to think our way through future new problems. After all, whatever problems we do study, we’re never going to see those problems on the test. But if we can use those problems to learn how to think our way through GMAT problems in general, then we can answer most of the problems we’ll see on the test (and we’ll also know, from our mindset studies above, that there will still be plenty we can’t do, and we’ll guess and move on when needed.)
Okay, we’re done with mindset but I have to say one more thing. I put mindset first for a reason: if you have the wrong mindset, it won’t matter how much you learn or practice. You still won’t get the best score that you’re capable of getting.
Devising a Study Plan
Get started with this article: Developing a Study Plan. This will orient you to the test and help you get started with necessary resources and activities. Note: make sure to follow the instructions about taking and analyzing a practice test.
Next, read this article about Time Management. As you will have already learned from the Mindset and Scoring discussion, effective time management is crucial to your success on this test. You’ll be coming back to this article multiple times – bookmark it. Note that this article contains links to two more articles on Educated Guessing; make sure to read those, too.
You may also be trying to decide whether to study on your own, take a class, or hire a tutor. All three are viable options with different pros and cons; the linked article will help you determine the best option for yourself.
Going for an extra-high score? Learn the differences between a 700-scorer and a 760-scorer.
How to Study
Many of the articles in the previous sections will already have given you some ideas about how to study. Let’s talk about a couple of key points.
As we discussed earlier, you’ll never be able to study the actual test questions in advance. You may see similar problems on the real test, though, so one key skill is learning to recognize problems. “Recognize” means that we actually have a little light bulb go off in our brain – hey, I’ve seen something like this before, and on that other one, the best solution method was XYZ, so I’m going to try that this time, too!
When you recognize something, you’ve given yourself two big advantages: you save yourself time, because recognizing is faster than figuring something out from scratch, and you’re more likely to get it right because you know what worked – and what didn’t – last time. You won’t be able to recognize every problem, but the more you can, the better.
In addition, a new problem will often share some aspects of a problem you’ve seen before, but not all aspects. If you can recognize the parts that you have seen before, that will give you a better shot at figuring out the twists that this new problem is throwing at you.
How do we learn how to recognize things? By analyzing our practice problems. I can easily spend 5 to 10 minutes, and often longer, analyzing a single problem that only took me two minutes to do – even if I got it right! One of my favorite questions to ask myself is: what was most annoying about that problem or solution method and is there a way to do it that lets me avoid the annoying part?
After reading the first “overall” article linked in this paragraph, you may want to see how this process works on real practice questions. If so, take a look at these five articles (one for each main question type):
Sentence Correction
Critical Reasoning
Reading Comprehension
Problem Solving
Data Sufficiency
Next, a short but sweet article: Too Many Decisions Can Drive You Crazy.
If you want to take advantage of online forums to chat with teachers and other students (and I strongly recommend that!), learn how to make the best use of the forums.
Finally, ask for advice! There are so many resources out there that it can be overwhelming, but most companies offer free advice and you can also benefit from talking to fellow students. (We offer free advice on our forums.)
Key Takeaways for Just Starting Out:
(1) Make sure you know how this test works. The GMAT is NOT like the tests you took in school; if you just do what you did in school, you almost certainly won’t get the best score you could get.
(2) Know what your goals are and what resources are available to use. When setting up a study plan, educate yourself and ask for advice from others (but remember that what worked for someone else may not be the best way for you).
(3) When studying, you’re trying to learn how to think your way through a problem and you’re trying to learn how to recognize things that you’ve seen before, and you do that by thoroughly analyzing the problems that you practice. You’re not trying to do 8 million problems and memorize them all.