How to get 700 and above on the GMAT when you already have taken it and got 650 ?

Question

Supposedly the problem was using the straight forward approach and just solving everything, no tricks involved.
Please recommend strategy and materials.
My GMAT is on Oct 21st and I work full time.

Answer 1

Alexandra, it depends whether you need the most work on math or verbal, or if you need work on both.

There are many hidden patterns to the GMAT that you'd be unlikely to pick up on on your own. For the math, it is not enough to study the standard math strategies. The test is really trying to overwhelm your ability to organize complex math info. For most people the standard strategies are too abstract to do much good.

For example, you can memorize rt=d and you can use it if they give you a rate and a time, or even a rate and a distance. But when they say John is at one end of a race track and Sue is at the other and John goes 4 mph and Sue goes 5 mph and John starts a half hour before Sue and the track is 11 miles long and at what time will them meet, rt=d just doesn't help, unless you are a math wiz and even then you are likely to make a mistake.

So what to do? There are hundreds of much simpler, more intuitive, more direct and more powerful strategies one can use to do the math in a fool proof way. I've been teaching and developing these for over 15 years and have found that even totally math phobic people can be successful, not to mention people with a strong math aptitude already.

For the Verbal, there are specific reasons exactly why one answer is indisputably correct and the other answers (including the one you liked) are dead wrong. They have fatal flaws. Again there are hundreds of patterns of fatal flaw but it is possible to learn them with some help.

Finally, timing strategy is very critical for the computer adaptive GMAT. Most people do not use their time as efficiently as possible - and that doesn't mean getting all the way through the exam! Sometimes that is the worst thing you can do.

Hope that gives you some ideas of what is going on.

Jay Cutts
Cutts Personal GMAT Tutorial
http://www.cuttsreviews.com/jcutts/gmat/