GMAT Tip – Having Fun Reading

Over the last few weeks, I’ve gotten a bunch of compliments on my GMAT and inquiries about how I pulled it off. The most consistent piece of advice I’ve given people is simply READ for pleasure to boost your Verbal score.  This is what I did, somewhat purposefully, in the 6-12 months leading up to the GMAT and ended up with a 95% percentile V with almost no prep.

But when I say read, I don’t mean Harry Potter (though I’m a huge fan).  I mean high quality (mostly non fiction) publications like the New Yorker, New York Times and Washington Post.  And I didn’t just browse occasionally; I paid for subscriptions and probably spent 30-60 minutes per day reading them during my commute.  The Economist, Guardian, Atlantic, and NPR are also good as well.

So what does high quality reading do for the GMAT?  Well it starts by exposing you to more complex and nuanced perspectives on current events.  The opinion pieces always require inferences to understand and to do so, you are unconsciously considering diction, tone, and structure.  This is exactly what you do on any reading questions on the exam.  The publications are also copy edited an ungodly amount of times, and exemplify what grammatically correct and concise English language is.  This will build up the gut check of “does this sound right?” that happens in the SC questions.  Additionally you should also build a great foundational knowledge of  critical reading topics.  The GMAC isn’t making these articles up from scratch, but instead adapting them from real opinion pieces and articles.  It’s always easier to synthesize something if you’ve been exposed to the topic before.  So let me show you some examples.

Here’s a great fiction example – Netflix Love.  An amusing story about how binge watching shows is like an intense romantic relationship, but also a critique (in my opinion) on the amount of time our generation spends on netflix.

And here’s a more recent opinion – Boston’s Winter From Hell.  A serious thought piece about how the record snow is actually a slow moving natural disaster.

You should absolutely avoid the Facebook newsfeed as a way of finding articles.  I’m not an expert at how these articles populate, but I’d guess they are the result of what’s viral at the moment, what your friends like, and what you’ve clicked on in the past.  So unless you’re friends with all academics/activists/etc and immune from trivial LOLs, you’re newsfeed probably looks like mix of gawker, buzzfeed, and elite daily articles.  Sure there may be an article or two from a real news site if it’s a trending article, but the vast majority will be clickbait.  I’m guilty as anyone of continuing the cycle of clicks, but that’s why I made the intentional decision to pay for subscriptions to force myself to check the publication homepages regularly.

Nobody in b school will ask you to deconstruct two sentences for logical argument, but you will be asked to make inferences from case studies and understand what your classmates are arguing.  That’s what the GMAT verbal is proxying for.  So get good at the real life applications in a FUN way  and you’ll get better at the specific skills underlying it.  It’s a lot more fun to play pickup basketball than doing shooting drills and weightlifting.  While the latter is necessary to improve performance, the former is far easier to do on a consistent basis.  I’m sure if you play pickup games regularly, your shooting and conditioning will improve and you’ll get a lot more out of it.

Happy Reading!  Let me know if you’ve found this strategy helpful – it worked for me 🙂  Also let me know if you liked the two articles I picked!

One Shotting the GMAT

I think I got incredibly lucky with my GMAT experience.   I studied over a period of 2 months, didn’t take a class, took it once, and got a 760.  Here’s my saga:

Summer 2014.  Registered for an August 2014 admin date.  From research of schools’ GMAT ranges, I set the ambitious goal of a 720+ with a plan to retake if I couldn’t clear that bar.

I didn’t have much motivation to start study in the summer, and work got incredibly busy.  While I didn’t start studying, I did start acquiring study materials.  Many friends recommended the Manhattan GMAT tests as being the most comparable, so I went ahead and bought their 6 practice tests.  I also asked around for old study materials.  Ended up getting multiple GMAT prep books (the 2009 section editions, the official 2014 guide, a Kaplan 2014 prep book) from folks who had already taken the exam.  Lots of folks buy the books and either do all their work in a separate notebook (to simulate the actual test) or never get to using all the materials.  Both of which worked out well for me – since I saved a few hundred dollars on supplementary study materials!  Highly recommend doing this.

Anyways, ended up giving the GMAC 50 bucks to push back to December.

November 2014.  Took my first practice exam through Manhattan GMAT.  Did so totally cold, without looking at anything beforehand and did the AWA too.  Got a 670, with a 3 on the IR, which was a shocker since I do a lot of data analysis for work.  My math performance was also definitely a surprise: 65% percentile.  I had taken a fair amount of math in college (mathematical statistics) and high school (multivariable, diff eqn)  This was enough of a shock that I ended up pushing back my test again to the end of January.  Another 50 bucks to the GMAC – you’re welcome guys.

December 2014.  Started ramping up my studying.  After reviewing my responses in the first practice test, I started focusing on my weak spots: Quant and Sentence Correction.  I didn’t have a set schedule, but I started carrying around a study book to bust out whenever I had time.   I used the official GMAT 2014 study book and actually got through almost the entire book during December.  I knew Quant and SC were my major weaknesses, so I finished all of those questions in my study guide.

I also started taking practice tests every two weeks, but my score was relatively stable between 670 and 710.  I started getting worried but tried to stay optimistic because I was only using the Manhattan tests, which I hoped were more difficult than the real thing.

January 2014.  Started taking tests every week.  On my first GMAT Prep test I got 730, which confirmed my suspicion that Manhattan was more difficult, especially for math.  I was pretty confident on my Verbal throughout because of my liberal arts minor, which required lots of reading and writing.  On my final GMAT Prep, I scored 760, which was a major confidence boost, but on my last Manhattan GMAT, I scored a 700, which was a big scare.

I continued doing practice problems for a few hours every week whenever I had time: before work, after work, weekends, the awkward 30 minutes between activities.   I didn’t bother preparing for AWA too much; I just wrote simple outlines in each practice test.  I also spent a good amount of time with IR since my scores fluctuated between 4 (!) and 8.

Test day.  Had trouble sleeping the week before, but managed to get a solid 8 hours in because of a noon test time.  I took a cab to the testing center and got there ridiculously early (like an hour early), so I ended up going to a coffeeshop and drinking a small decaf to pass time.  Once the test began, time just flew by.  AWA was simple enough from all the outlines I had made earlier.  IR was a mad rush to finish, and definitely got me worried because I was forced to make educated guesses on several questions because of time constraints.

During the first break I wolfed down a cliffbar and sipped some water, before trying to calm myself down before the Quant section.  The real thing went surprisingly smoothly at first; the questions seemed easy and I was making good time.  I remember having 12 questions left with 30 minutes remaining, and thinking to myself “slow down and make sure you get all these questions correct.”  Well I went too far in that direction, and next thing I knew, I had 5 questions and 10 minutes left.  It was a rush to finish on time, and I ended up thinking I had really screwed up.  I was so pumped on adrenaline I couldn’t even take more than a bite of my second cliff bar during the next break.

Verbal was a similar situation: I did really well with pacing, then slowed down, then was in a rush to finish.  There were several questions that I spend 3-4 minutes on before hazarding a guess, which led to me doing the last 5 questions in 7 minutes or so.  By the time the section was over, I thought I would definitely need a retake.  To my GREAT surprise, the unofficial score page showed a 760.  Success!  For all you interested in the score breakdown: Q50 V42 AWA6 IR7.

My main takeaways from the entire process: start studying early, take practice tests to build stamina, focus on your weak spots, and keep an eye on time during the test.