How to Approach the GMAT or/
Beginner's Guide to GMAT materials
[Note: If the links provided here are not working (or for more direct links) you can check the original article
Thank you.
Note2: If you like this article, you might also this one have a look]
The first thing any MBA aspirant should do is
visit Official site for MBA/ GMAT
spend some 2-3 hours there. (or maybe 2-3 days!)
read as much as you can. The information published there is genuine, eye-opener & myth breaker.
So you should do that first.
Then you should
download a sim C A T GMAT test available there: name is
GMAT Prep; it’s of ~25MB
The site mba.com will help you understand: whats GMAT in general terms, its significance, its structure and the way company conducts the test worldwide.
(i wont go into GMAT structure deeper since i am going to present only resources in this post)
Then you'll need some books to prepare for GMAT.
GMAC, the company that set GMAT test, came up with three books recently, official guides.
They are:
- Official guide for GMAT review, 11th edition,
- The Official guide for verbal review
- The official guide for quantitative review
they are nicknamed as orange, purple and green guides respectively
Official guide 11th edition is
THE book you should start with and end your preparation.
You should trust these guides along with GMATPrep software (~25 MB)
Although these guides and a software are fantastic for the practice problems, they don't provide (/come up with) strategies..
In short: when it comes to problems solving in practice sessions, nothing beats above mentioned materials. But for strategies (read shortcuts ) you need to look for some extra materials. Other books i would recommend:- Kaplan GMAT, 2007 Edition: Premier Program (latest edition with CD : best buy /2006 edition will also do ( both are same) : comprehensive book, covers everything)
- Cracking the GMAT with DVD, 2007 Edition by Princeton review (Caution: it doesn’t have C A T in its DVD; good strategies & comprehensive, covers everything though )
- Kaplan GRE & GMAT Math Workbook ( very elementary good for starters & weak at math : not recommended )
- Kaplan 800 (for advanced students who want to score higher; caution: AWA essay section not included )
- Sentence Correction GMAT Preparation Guide (Manhattan Gmat Prep) (PURE GOLD I CANT WRITE MORE :A MUST HAVE BOOK FOR ‘weak in SC’ )
(Read the review on amazon.com before purchasing them. )
These books offer good strategies to attack GMAT, they’ll show you how to approach each section and each problem individually.
but then for taking the test in one go you need to have a patience, faith and stamina. & for that you need to take as many GMAT sim C A Ts as possible.
[Note: dont rush and sign up for just any sim C A Ts available in would wide web.]
Following are the GMAT prep companies you should trust:
Reason : they have done enough research to come near to the real GMAT test... (still they are not as near as GMAT Prep or POWER Prep)
[Note that I am not talking about GMAT coaching institutes but the online resources for practice tests ]
- mba.com (nearest possible)
- manhattangmat.com (?yet to be tested)
- 800score.com (easier)
- kaptest.com (tough)
- pricetonreview.com (neutral)
They offer good Sim GMAT tests.
note that i have not mentioned about other books or other sites for practice tests that means they are NOT worth your time & money.
Now lets have some non-brand materials,
Materials those are freely available on cyberspace and have no copyright issues.
BeattheGMAT’s flashcard (best flashcards you could get )
Grammar Notes:
Sahil’s Sentence Correction Notes Spidey's Sentence Correction Notes Rajat-nda’s Grammar Notes
Sorry I have not provided the hyperlinks for these since I am sure they must be here on pagalguy.com itself…
(if anybody know where they are at PG post a links for the same , thank you.)
The reason why I am so selective in mentioning about the resources is, people just take any damn test or soft copies of books available on internet just to end up in pracitcing non-GMAT questions.
Therefore I am with trusted and reputable sources.
DONT WASTE YOUR TIME IN STUDYING AND PRACTISING WRONG SETS OF PROBLEMS.
still if you want more practice problems then i would advise you to download
These documents are available freely available everywhere on internet. Note that documents do not have explanations to the problems. You will have to join some GMAT realated forums to discuss those problems.
[OK! after some time, you should start realising the easy methods to solve the problems, you should discover some shortcuts; You should collect the strategies that are discussed in prep books and use them according to your needs.] (that is the sign of good approach )
While prepping for GMAT you should also be aware of the b-schools you want to apply. You must have a long term plan & You should do some research on the b-schools that suits your long term target.
For such informations you have schools' own web-sites along with plenty of other good sites:
Dave's MBA Journey Hjort’s b-school corner:
Then, you should also aware of admission process:
Accepted.com ClearAdmit Stacy Blackman Co. blog
Keep tab on all these site.
Hope that helps everyone who's new to GMAT prep world
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