r/GMAT_forum

Hey everyone,

I just took my first GMAT mock exam and got a 530, which honestly feels pretty bad. I realized very quickly that I don’t really know what I’m doing yet, especially on Quant. English is also not my first language, so I struggled quite a bit with the Verbal section as well.

My target score would ideally be around 700 by February. I know that’s a big jump, but I’m usually a pretty quick learner when I have the right structure and materials.

The challenge is that I currently work two jobs full time, so my schedule is pretty busy. Realistically, I can dedicate around 12 hours per week consistently to studying.

I’d really appreciate advice from people who improved significantly from a lower starting score:

• What materials would you personally recommend?
• If you had around a $1000 budget, how would you allocate it?
• Is something like Target Test Prep worth it?
• What would you prioritize first for someone at my level?
• Do you think 530 → 700 by February is realistically achievable with ~12 hours/week?

Would love any honest advice or study plans that worked for you.

Hello,
I am preparing for the GMAT, and I have about 4 months left before the exam. I have already reviewed all the quantitative lessons, but I still have not fully memorized or mastered them.
I am considering adopting a new study method for the coming months and would like your opinion.
Each week, I was thinking of:
working on two quantitative topics,
reviewing the strategies in the Manhattan Prep All GMAT books,
doing some practice questions from the book,
then moving on to questions from the Official Guide GMAT, organized by topic and gradually increasing the difficulty level.
Then I would repeat the same approach each week with a different topic.
Do you think this method is effective?

I currently have 938 incomplete questions. But when I start a session and filter by difficulty, the section wise question count does not seem to add up to 938. Is anyone else experiencing similar problems, or am I simply misunderstanding the issue at hand?