A Note about Word Usage: In many countries, people use the phrase “gave the exam” to indicate that they have completed the test.  In the U.S., it is more common to say “taken the exam.”  On this site, we may use the U.S. convention, but will attempt to use a more generic wording (completing an exam) for clarity.  If you catch a location that could be clearer, please tell us .  Thanks for that and any other input you send our way.

You definitely should prepare for the GMAT. This includes both the verbal and quantitative sections. There are exceptions to the rule, but you need to study and at least take a practice test to see how you do.  It is not related to ones intelligence, and it's not like most problems that people solve on the job, and the grammar is certainly not what people tend to use every day.  The concepts are generally not difficult, but there are specific problem types that can be hard to recognize.  You must be fast at recognizing the problem types, fast at recognizing the missing pieces, then fast at solving them.  This requires practice for almost everyone.

Related Sections: Admissions Criteria - GMAT, Decide Target GMAT

Consider reviewing the section Admissions Criteria - GMAT again.

By now, you should know your target schools list.

The median GMAT scores of schools on your target schools list should be your basic target.  A reasonable target for the top programs is 80% (read “the 80th percentile) in each of the quantitative and verbal sections.  For schools that are in your target list that have a lower median GMAT score, achieving a higher score than the median is nice and could help toward a scholarship, but it's not a big advantage for acceptance.  Of course, if you are Steve Jobs (of Apple Computer fame) reading this, don't worry, you'll be accepted with a 550 GMAT.  For the rest of us who don't have such credentials, the above applies.

For those who are really gunning for a high score, go for it, yet consider this too: While any amount higher in a well-balanced score is always good (with “well balanced” being a critical factor that many forget) there are diminishing returns to increasing your score above, say, a well balanced 700 overall score.  Assume all scores in these examples are well-balanced!  Yes, a 740 is better than a 700, but that increase does not buy you as much as rising from 650 to 690.  While exact comparisons are difficult here's a specific scenario: For a big name school like Duke's Fuqua School of Business, even a smaller 30 point increase under the median (e.g. 650 to 680) is likely a bigger jump than even a 40 point increase that is above the school's average (e.g. 730 to 770).  The impact of that is that you should only consider retaking if you did poorly.  What is “poorly”?  Consider each schools' middle 80%.  If you're at or below the bottom, it will be a warning flag. If you have anywhere near your target school's median score, don't even consider retaking; spend your time on the essays.

It's nice to have a reasonably strong AWA (maybe 5.0 or better) but this does not contribute to your overall score and some schools don't really use it.  Spend time understanding a basic format, practice a few essays, and then focus on the other two sections. 

Each school will compare people within groups, so if you are an engineer, you will be expected to have a strong quantitative score because Engineers tend to do well there (the “rule of diminishing returns still holds true… that is incremental amounts over 80% are progressively better, but have diminishing returns).  If you are a magazine editor, freelance writer, or an author, etc., you will likely be expected to have a strong verbal score (with the same “rule of diminishing returns” applying).  This grouping can be complex and can include backgrounds, geographic regions, age, etc.  However, it's best not to focus too much on this; focus on achieving a reasonably high score, then spend most available time on stand-out essays.

For those who don't do as well as you wanted: If you achieved a score above the bottom 80th percentile and if you can prove quantitative and/or verbal skills in other ways too, don't spend the time retaking the GMAT; instead spend the time on your essays.  However, if you are below the bottom of a school's middle 80%, your chances dwindle rapidly, so you likely should consider retaking.  In all cases, put high priority on the essays.

Of course, a good approach will vary from person to person, in part, depending on how practiced they are at specific problem types and how fast they tend to be (being ABLE to solve a problem is not the same as being FAST at solving a problem). 

Common Traits of Good Approaches

1. Solving Many Problems until you recognize problems quickly and become faster
2. Staying focused, not allowing your mind to wander (thus, avoiding re-reading sections)
3. Guarding your Study Time Carefully
4. Pacing (Timing Yourself)

Solving Many Problems
This is the biggest key to any good approach.  To be clear, this does NOT mean study the descriptions of the test, dissecting every minute detail of how the GMAT is assembled and graded.  Some of that can be valuable, but keep your focus on actual study time. You must solve problem after problem, then spend time understanding your answers (right and wrong) then go back to problem after problem, until you quickly recognize problem types and become fast at solving them.  Recognizing problem types is CRITICAL because it makes you fast AND prevents test panic. To be clear, we are not talking about general reading about the GMAT; this is actual problem solving and studying solutions to specific problems (then going back and solving more).  One candidate solved about 3500 problems, spending 266 hours on problem solving and problem understanding.  Not everyone will require that, but if that's what it takes to accelerate you on the course toward your goals, do it. 

Staying Focused
Every section on the test (and almost every problem) will be accelerated by tight focus.  Otherwise, some will spend time re-reading sections and losing track of problem details, requiring a problem restart.  These are damaging time absorbers.  You absolutely cannot allow that for a good score.  If you re-read ANYTHYING during a test, you've wasted valuable time that should be reserved for problems that you do not know.  Practicing focus is often very hard to do, but is equally very helpful and will yield test many points.

Guarding your Study Time Carefully
Because it is grueling to spend hours studying, it would be easy to be distracted by otherwise legitimate activities (and even by frivolous time wasters).  You must guard your study time carefully.  Talk to your family and close friends so they know what you're doing and understand why you cannot have the same level of “go have fun” that you usually do.  For some it will be helpful to log your time and only include hard-core study time in that timed log (e.g. stop the time for eating) so you have a record of how much you studied.  Total it for each week and keep this in front of you to monitor your progress.  Do whatever you need to do in order to tenaciously avoid empty study time: time that is not as valuable because it's diluted with other activities.  One price is that you will miss some very fun events in order to study.  Of course, your schedule will be legitimately interrupted sometimes and you don't need to make your family resent the study time be being too militant, but be sure to put in the hard-core problem solving time that you intend. 

Pacing (Timing Yourself)
The pacing is critical.  At the very beginning you can orient yourself without timing, but after that, anytime you sit down to work problems, even if it's for 15 minutes, time yourself.  We recommend tracking your timing.  Some will do this for a question set, and then look at the average.  We recommend a small investment in an athletic watch with 50 or more laps.  Alternatively, consider a computer program with this feature (if you know of an inexpensive source for such a program, please contact us with that information).  This will allow you to track the timing for every single question.  Consider looking for a watch that shows your average lap time, which translates into your average time per question; a valuable bit of info.  If you have the timing for each question, you can quickly see where your time was spent.  With a bit of math, you can use a wall-clock with no money invested.

Here are notes for specific test takers. For those of you who:

• Believe that you cannot do math quickly, allow us to be blunt.  You can, but you must practice problem after problem.  Trust us; you WILL become good at this. Don't waste time focusing on your doubts. Study problem after problem and time yourself. You will see improvement very soon.
• Tend to figure things out on the fly (like some of us do) a critical facet of your approach must be to stop relying on your ability to analyze on the fly.  You cannot afford the time to do that for the GMAT.  You must recognize the problems early and know the general approach immediately, which will allow you to immediately get to calculating and quickly arrive at an answer.
• Tend to allow your mind to wander (when bored, disinterested, etc.).  You must practice focus; not allowing your mind to wander.  Catch it earlier and earlier until you can prevent it.  This will save you an amazing amount of time when solving problems.  The typical section that really highlights this is Reading Comprehension, but don't underestimate the benefit of focus; it can affect every section of the GMAT, including Problem Solving (especially word problems), Data Sufficiency, Critical Reasoning and Sentence Correction.  Practice focus all the time, even when not studying!
• Are not detail oriented may believe that you cannot solve these very detailed questions.  It will be harder for you, but you certainly can do this.  Your performance will likely be related to the number of practice problems you solve and understand.  Invest the solid problem practice time and it will pay off.  You will be tempted to skip problems that you don't know.  Do so in the practice test period (time set aside for simulating the test) but come back to the problems you don't understand (even if you got them right) and assure that you have a good understanding.  If you spend too long on a problem, ask someone for help and move on to the other problems.
• Want to understand every detail before moving on.  You may be more natural at this test than others.  However, you will need to put guardrails on your detailed curiosity in two ways: First, When practicing for the test, pretend that it's the real test, and learn guess with what you know, and move on to the next problem.  Come back and get your desired understanding AFTER the practice session.  Second, when you are really stuck on a problem and have spent 20 minutes trying to understand why, ask someone else and move on to other practice questions.  Some of these problems are very hard and subtle and you can burn a lot of good study time if you try to get every single detail immediately. It's not natural for you to move on without the understanding, but you must do it to maximize your practice benefits.
• Become nervous on tests.  It's very difficult to simulate a test because of how nervous some become, but only on the real test.  Recognizing problems early will help you more than you realize because once you know how to approach it, you become so focused on the mechanics of solving the problem that you forget the nervousness for a bit.  The best defense against nervousness is practicing thousands of problems.  There's one more technique that you might test to see if it helps (but it will not take the place of solving TONS of problems).  This has a higher chance of working if you are competitive with a friend.  Ask that friend to come over and watch you for a 15 minute session of problem solving. Tell them the average time you have for each problem (roughly 2 minutes) and have them use a stopwatch to time you.  You may naturally want to do well while they are watching.  If it doesn't increase your nervousness, then it may not help.  If it does, you can use this once in a while.  But focus on solving thousands of questions.
• Want to ignore verbal because you're good at that, don't ignore it!  The problem types are trickier that you may be thinking.  Sentence corrections with punctuation or parallel structures may trip some, but others may be tripped more by reading comprehension, or tricky idioms.  You can safely reduce the emphasis as you learn more and adjust as you learn.  But don't ignore it.  If you do, you likely will do poorly.
• Want to ignore the quantitative section because you're an engineer, rocket scientist (or some other tech related field), don't make that mistake!  Do practice at least some to see how well you do.  These questions are likely trickier than you're thinking and rely on some facets of math that you may not have used a great deal.  You might be good at velocity (rate) questions, but might miss a more obscure data sufficiency issue.
• Did well on one section before, so are only spending time on the other… don't.  Adjusting the amount you study one vs. another is likely OK, but don't ignore either section even on repeat attempts.

We are attempting to address many types of people.  Feel free to contact us if you think of other types of people with other needed approaches.

Study Materials/Tools

Test Preparation Materials

We have no intention of duplicating the instructions offered by Kaplan and other test preparation providers.  We will give tips that helped many and leave most test specifics to those that do them best.

There are two types of GMAT learning that you will do, the second should receive the biggest part of your attention by far: 

1. Learning the basics of test itself: structure, basic content, types of questions, etc.
2. Solving problem after problem to be come good at them

The first type of learning (about the test itself) is important, but only to a degree and many people spend way too much time here.  All basic materials will do this to a degree.  After you've learned the basics about the test itself, quickly move on to actual problem solving.  This should be BY FAR the main focus.

For learning the basics of the test we recommend Kaplan.  They each have a relatively inexpensive core book that discusses the test in detail, providing sufficiently strong background knowledge of how the test works and providing usable tips.  They have a combination of XXX features that are extremely helpful:

1. Solid explanations of the test in general
2. Strong descriptions to specific sections and problem types that do NOT rely on tricks
3. Solid and frequently difficult questions with good explanations

There are several sources that describe the test well (number 1).  Concerning descriptions of specific sections and problem types, many test preparation materials have a general approach that relies too much on tricks While tricks may work for lower target scores (far below 700) techniques that rely on tricks do not provide a solid foundation for understanding problem types and assuring yourself of a strong score.  Kaplan's materials do not rely on such tricks; rather, they guide you to a stronger understanding of each section and how to approach it quickly and methodically.  There are some useful guessing methods to be used only when there just isn't time to solve the problem. 

Kaplan's current year edition of their book simply called GMAT (the word “Premier” was recently added to the title) offers a strong history of questions with good explanations and are known to be among the most difficult available.  Note: The online account that comes with the book, while valuable, is not transferable to others (for when you're finished) and it is valid only for a limited time so be sure you're ready to hit it hard once you register your account.  This is a weakness for any student that needs longer than their timeframe (6 months as of early 2010).  However, it comes with an impressive number of online GMAT preparation tests and quizzes. 

These strong GMAT materials will help you better understand issues like:

• How the CAT (Computer Adaptive Test) works
• Problem types and how to recognize them
• Specific trends in problems (so you can focus on the most likely)
• How to make educated guesses to increase chances of a correct answer
• When hard and easy questions are coming your way
• Much more (not even going into the actual problems to which you'll have access)

For later phases, we recommend Kaplan's GMAT 800 book for advanced tips that few offer.  Again, we appreciate these because they do not rely on tricks, but rather solid understanding.  However, some of the questions in this book overlap with questions from other Kaplan sources, specifically the Quiz Bank.  That's unfortunate when one wants to time themselves on all new questions.  However, the extra tips they gave were worth reviewing.  These were some of the toughest problems available which we greatly appreciate.

For more questions, we highly recommend Kaplan's Quiz Bank which offers a large set of solid problems, answers and explanations.  We have experience with this set and examined the explanations in detail (and were at times in communication with Kaplan about them, and not under our company name, so Kaplan didn't know we would tell others).  Kaplan was responsive and open about all discussed issues.  Their explanations were the best we've seen available.  If you need a lot of questions and can afford it, this is a worthwhile package.

We recommend using heavily using Kaplan from the beginning to near the end, because it's tougher than the exam and is great training.  Nearer your test date, you'll need to perfect your timing and thus, we recommend tapering off the use of Kaplan.  Not only will this boost your confidence (there's a temptation to be discouraged by results from Kaplan tests because they are tough) but very importantly, it will give you a better feel for timing… when to invest in a known solution vs. when you should make an educated guess and move on to the next problem.  The Official Guide (OG) is not adaptive, but still has some difficult gems that help.  The difficult ones are at a similar level to the difficult ones of the actual test but the actual GMAT is adaptive (the OG is not) thus as you score well on the actual GMAT, you will have a higher concentration of difficult problems than you will with the OG questions. 

So, the big advantage to using The Official Guide near the end is that it will help you learn appropriate pacing.  Kaplan is so tough that one will learn pacing that is too pressured.  You may finish early which sounds good at first, but that is not the ideal.  You want to go through easy problems quickly, but spend any extra time on tough problems, finishing with just a little time to spare. 

Course vs. Studying on Ones Own

A course can be very helpful, yet they are very expensive.  We believe that the best preparation is powering one's self through thousands of questions always practicing strong focus and leveraging question sources such as Kaplan, The Princeton Review, Barron's Guide and the Official Guide. 

There are scenarios in which people would benefit from a course.  First, you must be able to part with that much money; these courses are expensive.   Other heavily contributing factors are:

• You need to follow a set schedule and cannot easily do this independently
• You have very little time and want direct access to resources for help/answers
• You will be motivated by the social aspect and you don't know others who are studying

If you are taking these courses to avoid studying, you will be wasting your time and money; these courses will not take the place of solving problems for yourself.  But they can be beneficial for some.

Other Notes for Materials

Notes about Practice Tests:

• Practice tests are invaluable, because they provide a simulation, allowing you to learn the basics of the exam; they provide many problems, and you have hours of focused study time.  They only lack the nervousness of the real exam.  Plan your studying so that you don't take all of these up front.  You want to take them periodically and assure that you have some left a little closer to your exam date.
• Do not worry about initial scores, especially those of Kaplan.  They are notoriously difficult.  We've advised clients not to be concerned about their roughly 400 to 500 level initial Kaplan scores, especially if they just took the exam with little studying.  Also, if you ran out of time (which is a common beginner mistake) don't worry; this is also a problem that will be fixed by your practice with thousands of problems.  It will highlight the importance of pacing yourself and knowing when to make an educated guess and move on.  These things happened with some of our clients who ended up with scores deep in the 700s.

Additional notes about the Kaplan materials:

• Because Kaplan tests are very difficult, it's common for candidates to be depressed after taking one.  Don't be.  You cannot compare Kaplan scores to actual GMAT scores.  We could state that it sometimes is considered to be “100 points” more difficult, yet it seems to fluctuate greatly from person to person and from time to time.  So just don't count on a clean mapping.  But they are very though, which makes for great practice except for the pacing, which you should learn closer to the test by using the Official Guide questions or PowerPrep tests.
• Some of the Kaplan materials greatly help in recognizing problem types.  The GMAT800 book has about ten categorizations for verbal and several for quant'; these help with the hardest 20% of the problems.  This becomes a big deal toward the middle and end of the actual adaptive GMAT because they come at you fast if you're doing well.
• Also, the Kaplan GMAT 800 book has a lot of great and tough verbal and math problems.  Note that these questions overlap with those in the Quiz Bank.  We have not found this to be a major problem, but be aware of it.
• Kaplan offers specific books for each of the two major categories of the GMAT Verbal Workbook, and the GMAT Math Workbook.  They have benefited some, but others report that they were of lower benefit.  We recommend first using their base GMAT book, then the GMAT 800, then the Quiz Bank.  If you want more, consider the workbooks.  (Please update us with your reaction to these if you choose to use them.)

Specific Test Section Tips

Quantitative

Create your own cheat sheet and definitely use it during your problem solving.  Don't worry about becoming dependent on it.  You will use it so much that you will begin discovering that you remember it.  There's no rule against memorizing, but in general, you won't have to… you'll pick it up as you study, so use it EVEN during your practice tests.  If there are any bits of the cheat sheet that you don't know toward the end, then go ahead and memorize it.  But that is not likely to happen.

Verbal

Our purpose here is to give you a few tips and then convince some doubters that you really do need test preparation materials.

Tips:

• Whenever you are reading (even recreationally) practice tight focus, never letting your mind wander.  Catch the wandering earlier and earlier until it doesn't happen.  That can turn even Reading Comprehension into a strong point even if it is now a weak point.
• This can be so beneficial, that one might choose to continue that practice even after the GMAT ordeal is over.
• For some who have trouble recognizing the very proper grammar that the GMAT often uses, consider reading in publications that offer such proper grammar (e.g. rules like never ending a sentence in a preposition, etc., so instead of “what is that for?” they would write “For what is that?”). 
• We do NOT recommend studying vocabulary in the sense of studying books intended on extending your vocabulary.  They tend to be less frequently used words, and that's not what the GMAT is about.  The GMAT will use fairly general words, but in very proper ways.  DO look up words that you don't know, which you see in every-day use, but don't study anything that is intended to provide more esoteric words. 
• For reading comprehension, tackle them aggressively, but don't try to read much faster than you normally do. Focus is the key. Read fairly quickly, but with TIGHT FOCUS, and understand the material. Don't allow yourself to depend on looking back at the passage very often. It soaks your test time away.
• We do recommend reading enough about grammar to learn the basics of the parts of speech (nouns, adjectives, adverbs, direct objects, prepositions, objects of the prepositions, etc.) and learning things like parallelism.  But we do not recommend more esoteric forms of general grammar reading because the test doesn't have extremely esoteric constructs.  It does have tricky parts but mostly using solid basic grammar.  The study guides (Kaplan's especially) can educate you in those.  Any extra reading should be about subjects that the study guide references.  If you go outside that, you'll likely not find it in the real test.

Here are a few teasers to help push you to toward proper test preparation. This is NOT intended to be test preparation; this is simply to show you the types of things one will likely need to study.

Be sure that your test preparation materials go over commonly misused words such as:

• Less v. Fewer
• Affect v. Effect
• Well v. Good
• Infer v. Imply

Learn the basic parts of a sentence so you can eliminate filler phrases (Kaplan goes more into this kind of instruction and they will be more complete than we will here).  For example:

The smaller sentence is "I went to the store and bought milk." But the rest, "in a green car that could generate 1.04 lateral g's," is a big phrase that could hide things. The sentence is clearer if you omit the phrase.  Try another...

It's wrong.  If you omit the phrases, you have the simple "The towels is green" and the error in plurality is clear.  If you cannot recognize the phrases, more complex sentences will disguise errors.  Here's another that is correct:

It would help to know why it is correct. It may be more clear if we complete the sentence by saying:

Try words that are closely (traditionally) associated with a particular preposition and for no great reason other than history. For example, it is incorrect to say "I concur with your decision." The correct form is to use the preposition "in" in which case the phrase becomes "I concur in your decision." Even some dictionaries will posit that "concur with a decision " is an optional use. But GMAT grammar is very formal and doesn't allow for that use.

If any of these even could have tripped you, take it as evidence that you should study some preparation materials to get solid training on these types of things. There are other materials that cover this type of thing better than we (note, the complete version is "...better than we can"). But do know things such as these.

AWA

We recommend studying some for the AWA, but don't let it be a focus.  Practice writing an outline quickly, then converting that to text.  Remember to always look at possible counterpoints and address them.  That really beefs up your argument.  We recommend jotting down an outline like this in an editor (especially if you can find an editor that mimics that used by the actual GMAT test):

Intro, telling general scenario and state the 3-4 points you intend to make, the last being the inoculation from counterpoints
Point 1 paragraph
Point 2 paragraph
Point 3 paragraph
Inoculation paragraph, for any arguments against points 1-3
Terse summary of points 1-3

Convert that basic outline to an essay.  Practice these once in a while and don't put much more focus on AWA than this.  Consider reading your test preparation materials re AWA, but be careful not to spend much time doing that.  Focus instead on doing problem after problem even after your sick of it.  Do more.

Other Considerations for Good Studying

This includes miscellaneous tips that have helped many.  The feedback from our readers and our clients has consistently shown that the most helpful tips are: Solving many problems, Staying focused and Pacing. So pay special attention to those.  These others may help also:

• Avoided all calculator use for about 6 months while studying for the test; do all calculations with pencil and paper (feel free to verify results with a calculator). 
• Assure that you get sufficient sleep so you can study well.  By experience you likely know already how much you need.  Just guard your sleep time.
• If you do not exercise, consider a light routine. This helps many think more clearly. (We recommend the C25K program because walking/running is easy, inexpensive and time efficient for the great cardiovascular workout earned.)
• Practice focus in all things, especially reading, especially boring reading.
• Schedule your study time and don't let it be open-ended.  Set a stop time and honor both the start and the stop times.  This will translate into consistent hours spent solving problem after problem.
• Consider ways of sequestering yourself for your predetermined study time.  Let voicemail answer the phones.  Close your email.  You know the pattern… what else should be done in your life to protect that time?
• Tell your family and closest friends about your study times.  They will be FAR more understanding about your need to ignore them (that's how it may feel to both of you).  It's a great inoculation against frustration.  You'll still miss some fun, but you will have fewer headaches from people who don't understand why you appear to be ignoring them.
• Get into a regular exercise routine.  Don't make it unusually strenuous, just either your normal, or upon a doctor's blessing (we have to protect ourselves!) just do light exercising.
• Diet can play a part… You know your body by now; if caffeine affects your sleep you when taken in the evening, don't do it.  If heavy foods cause you to be sleeping, or if overeating causes you to be tired, then avoid them.  Yes, it's common sense, but during concentrated studying, people tend to “take a break” in the wrong way.  Don't take a “pig out on ice cream” break if it will affect either your studying or your sleeping.
• Test Tip: Answering the last five problems wrong is better than not answering the last five; there is a penalty for not answering.
• Test Tip: On the real test, either section, click any answer to the last problem before reading it, then solve it as quickly as you can.  The reason?  If time runs out, the software will allow you to accept whatever answer you have selected.  If you did NOT select and time runs out, you cannot answer that problem (and you incur the penalty for not answering it).
• We do not subscribe to the idea that some are inherently good at tests like this and others simply don't have it in them.  Of course, that does happen, but most people intelligent enough to make that assertion are perfectly capable of achieving a high GMAT score.  Several that we've helped have been surprised at their end score.  (They tended to use words like: elated, shocked, etc. J)  You don't need to be smart.  You need to be persistent!
• Sometimes a benchmark helps one judge their readiness.  Consider the problem solving performance numbers from one person's experience with the Official Guide, just days before a goal-reaching GMAT performance.

Please be sure to adjust anything here for your particular needs, style, experiences, etc., but don't cut something simply because it's not fun or is a lot of work.  Consider what approach makes sense for you and attack that with all your might.