1 Month Study Guide - How to modify : Magoosh

I am looking to take the GMAT in 1 month, and shooting for a 710+ score. I took it in the Spring of 2013, and received a 690 (V35, Q48, IR8). This was with little prep (just going through the free stuff on the GMAT website). I have purchased the MGMAT books, along with the Magoosh program. I am looking at how to best use the materials I have to study everything to get to my target score, and have looked through the 1 month plan from Magoosh. My issue with this is that it says that it is for people just starting to study. With my situation (already being at a 690), and also working a full-time job, I want to really narrow down what I should focus on. Is there a modified plan that I should look at? Any suggestions? Thank you!

dj22 wrote:I am looking to take the GMAT in 1 month, and shooting for a 710+ score. I took it in the Spring of 2013, and received a 690 (V35, Q48, IR8). This was with little prep (just going through the free stuff on the GMAT website). I have purchased the MGMAT books, along with the Magoosh program. I am looking at how to best use the materials I have to study everything to get to my target score, and have looked through the 1 month plan from Magoosh. My issue with this is that it says that it is for people just starting to study. With my situation (already being at a 690), and also working a full-time job, I want to really narrow down what I should focus on. Is there a modified plan that I should look at? Any suggestions? Thank you!

I think the area in which you can improve the most in one month is the verbal part. Q48 is, in fact, a good Quantitative score, and it would take you more time to improve from a Q48 to Q50 than to improve from a v35 to v40.
I suggest that you continue working on free stuff especially that there are some files out here that are priceless.

Below are the links for critical reasoning and sentence correction practice. These mainly come from GMATPrep questions, which are retired GMAT questions. Don't forget to give souvik101990 and carcass Kudos for providing us with these documents.

the-most-comprehensive-collection-of-everything-official-cr-140375.html
sentence-correction-oldy-but-goldy-question-banks-212199.html#p1634093


If you need any more practice for SC, RC, PS, or/and DS, hit me up.

--
Need Kudos

dj22 wrote:I am looking to take the GMAT in 1 month, and shooting for a 710+ score. I took it in the Spring of 2013, and received a 690 (V35, Q48, IR8). This was with little prep (just going through the free stuff on the GMAT website). I have purchased the MGMAT books, along with the Magoosh program. I am looking at how to best use the materials I have to study everything to get to my target score, and have looked through the 1 month plan from Magoosh. My issue with this is that it says that it is for people just starting to study. With my situation (already being at a 690), and also working a full-time job, I want to really narrow down what I should focus on. Is there a modified plan that I should look at? Any suggestions? Thank you!

Dear dj22,
I'm happy to respond.

That's a great question. Here's what I'll say. Probably that first batch of lessons, intro to the GMAT, is something you could skip wholesale. You know that. Also, you are clearly very strong in math. Here's what I'll say. If you look at a math module, such as "Percents and Ratios," and you feel that you already know all this, don't watch the lessons. Just take the quiz at the end of that module. If you ace the quiz, then you know it--move on. You should be able to dispatch several math lesson modules that way. If you think you know the subject and are not sure, you could breeze through each lesson by skipping to the summary page: again, if there are no surprises on the summary page, then mostly likely you know everything in the lesson. There probably will be a handful of math lessons with some time-saving tricks that are new to you. You may find these as you move through the math lessons, or you may encounter these if you get a math question wrong and are directed to a "related lesson." Overall, there probably are exceedingly few math lessons that you will need to watch from beginning to end.

As long as you are taking the quiz at the end of every math module and passing them, to demonstrate that you own that material, my understanding is that you would still qualify for the score guarantee.

I would urge you to be a little more diligent on the Verbal side. It's probably important for you to watch those lessons thoroughly. Don't underestimate the verbal section: even the easiest ideas involve subtleties.

As you practice Magoosh question, the Adaptive feature will feed you mostly medium, hard, and very hard question. There are a few hundred easy question, and you really don't need to spend any time with these. Keep in mind that if you were to use up all the medium & hard & very hard questions in Magoosh, the algorithm would start feeding you easy questions, even though these are not appropriate to your level, simply because the computer has nothing else to give you. You don't want to reach that point. On the "Custom Practice" page in Magoosh, if you select each question difficulty, you can see at the bottom how many questions are remaining for each difficulty level. As you move through the month, monitor how many medium, hard, and very hard questions are remaining. As these start to dwindle, you may want to select one of those difficulty levels specifically, rather than "Adaptive," so you finish out the questions in that difficulty level. You can pace yourself, so that you are on a pace to finish the medium, hard, and very hard questions. You're a math person: you can figure out what your rate should be, so that you do only the difficulty levels you need! If you don't see a single easy question during the month, that's OK, because you are likely to see very few of these on the real GMAT.

Those are a few things you can do to streamline your experience of Magoosh. Let me know if you have any questions.

Mike
_________________

mikemcgarry wrote:

dj22 wrote:I am looking to take the GMAT in 1 month, and shooting for a 710+ score. I took it in the Spring of 2013, and received a 690 (V35, Q48, IR8). This was with little prep (just going through the free stuff on the GMAT website). I have purchased the MGMAT books, along with the Magoosh program. I am looking at how to best use the materials I have to study everything to get to my target score, and have looked through the 1 month plan from Magoosh. My issue with this is that it says that it is for people just starting to study. With my situation (already being at a 690), and also working a full-time job, I want to really narrow down what I should focus on. Is there a modified plan that I should look at? Any suggestions? Thank you!

Dear dj22,
I'm happy to respond.

That's a great question. Here's what I'll say...

Thanks Mike for all of the help! I really appreciate it. It seems like you insinuated that I should just go through the videos in order and work through that. As far as plans though, are you suggesting the 1-month plan? The advanced 3-month and condense that? Or some sort of combination? Possibly going through the 1-month plan and skipping what I know, then moving on to portions of the advanced 3-month plan? Thanks!

dj22 wrote:Thanks Mike for all of the help! I really appreciate it. It seems like you insinuated that I should just go through the videos in order and work through that. As far as plans though, are you suggesting the 1-month plan? The advanced 3-month and condense that? Or some sort of combination? Possibly going through the 1-month plan and skipping what I know, then moving on to portions of the advanced 3-month plan? Thanks!

Dear dj22,

I was suggesting the one month plan. If you have about one month to study, as you said, then this would be the appropriate plan--too much to cut out from one of the three month plans. Even with these shortcuts, the one-month plan will keep you plenty busy! If you can handle everything in the one-month plan and still want more practice, perhaps use an extra practice source from the 3-month verbal-focus plan, such as the Nova GMAT Math Prep Course. Nevertheless, given that you have a full time job, I would be surprised if even this abbreviated version of the one-month plan leaves you the luxury of tons of extra dancing time. The one-month plan is a super-intense plan as is! Don't underestimate it. It's a sprint!

I will also say: be suspicious of the "more is better" approach to studying. For the improvement you need at this point, improvement to get into the elite zone, depth is far more important than breadth. You already have much of the lay of the land from your first time: this time around, your job is to GO DEEP. It's not enough to understand any one concept: it's all about--can you understand each thing at a deeper level?

The lessons are designed to be approached in order. They build on each other sequentially: I don't mention related concept unless it has appeared in a previous video. Now, since you are so talented at math, it's probably somewhat less important the order in which you approach them, because probably the vast majority of the math is already familiar, but you might as well eliminate the modules in order, since the first modules have the easiest material and hence are easy to dispatch. If you took a couple math quizzes each day, you could eliminate the vast majority of the math modules in a week. I would recommend watching the General Math Strategies module, especially the mental math tricks if those are not familiar to you. You can probably skip most of the Intro to DS section: maybe watch the summary pages of a few, to make sure these don't say something that you don't already know. After that, it's content areas with quizzes, and unless there's one area that's a problem for you, I think you can quiz your way out of almost all this lesson watching. Cutting out all those math videos from ones you have to watch will streamline things immensely, but even then, the one-month plan keeps an intense pace.

The Chinese sage Laozi say: "The worst misfortune is to underestimate your opponent." Don't underestimate the GMAT in any way, and don't take anything for granted about this plan or about preparing for it. Conscientiousness and diligence are two priceless treasures of an excellent student.

Does all this make sense?
Mike
_________________

Hi mike,

genuinely want your suggestion for one month study.

I plan to take my second GMAT before 20 Dec 2016, my goal is 760, my first is 470 (Q 47, V 11) in Aug this year.
I feel I got the clue to CR and RC after my deep study of OG , while I practiced GMAT prep 90 questions recently, I am hurt by the poor result:
CR 4/15 correctly -- easy 4/8, media 0/3, hard 0/4
RC 6/15 correctly -- I actually totally mess when read the passage, merely got what the passage say, it happened many times when I was on mock,
I feel I got the structures, the logic, the questions when deeply studied the OG RC.
SC 10/15 correctly -- easy 4/4, media 6/10, hard 0/1


I practiced on Magoosh under adaptive mode , poor results
SC 11/21 correctly -- media 3/5, hard 8/16
RC 2/20 correctly -- same status as above,
CR -- none here, because I answered all CR practice question, but I failed same questions many times.


after reading the previous threads in this topic, it is low possible to ace 760 ...
I am lost, How to improve. is 1 month too tight?


BTW, I quit my job.

waiting for your reply.

have a nice day.
>_~

chase dream Zoe

zoezhuyan wrote:Hi mike,

genuinely want your suggestion for one month study.

I plan to take my second GMAT before 20 Dec 2016, my goal is 760, my first is 470 (Q 47, V 11) in Aug this year.
I feel I got the clue to CR and RC after my deep study of OG , while I practiced GMAT prep 90 questions recently, I am hurt by the poor result:
CR 4/15 correctly -- easy 4/8, media 0/3, hard 0/4
RC 6/15 correctly -- I actually totally mess when read the passage, merely got what the passage say, it happened many times when I was on mock,
I feel I got the structures, the logic, the questions when deeply studied the OG RC.
SC 10/15 correctly -- easy 4/4, media 6/10, hard 0/1


I practiced on Magoosh under adaptive mode , poor results
SC 11/21 correctly -- media 3/5, hard 8/16
RC 2/20 correctly -- same status as above,
CR -- none here, because I answered all CR practice question, but I failed same questions many times.


after reading the previous threads in this topic, it is low possible to ace 760 ...
I am lost, How to improve. is 1 month too tight?


BTW, I quit my job.

waiting for your reply.

have a nice day.
>_~

chase dream Zoe

Dear zoezhuyan,

How are you, my friend? I'm happy to respond.

My friend, your goal of 760 is a lofty goal indeed. Every getting over 700 is hard: it unclear why you need to get that much over the 700 threshold.

Here's what I'll say. If you go through the Magoosh one-month plan, everything you need for a high score will pass before your eyes. The limiting factor is how fast you can learn, how much you can remember, how deeply you can make connections, etc.

See this blog article.
GMAT Study Plan for a 700 or More
What the one month plan is NOT is a step-by-step foolproof system for getting an elite score. There is no such thing. Getting an elite score requires excellence in every part of your studying.

In this blog, read the section on excellence. My friend, you want to make a truly monumental achievement, going from 470 to 760 in one month, an improvement better than 99% of test takers are able to make. This means you have to work more diligently, more dedicatedly, more assiduously, than do 99% of the test takers out there. The habits of excellence I list on that blog are just the tip of the iceberg. You have to pursue excellence in every facet of your work. You have to be most excellent video watcher, the most excellent practice problem reviewer, etc. etc. You have to want this more than you have ever wanted anything in your life, and over the next month, you have to work harder for this than you even had imagined that you could work for anything. You have to do all this, and that will give you your best chance of coming close.

Know that you may put in all this effort, and even then fall short of your goal. What you are trying to do is extremely hard, and there are no guarantees. Your only chance of success is al all-out 110% effort, but you must be able to sustain that superhuman effort without any expectation of success.

Does all this make sense?

Take very good care of yourself my friend.

Mike
_________________

mikemcgarry wrote:How are you, my friend? I'm happy to respond.

My friend, your goal of 760 is a lofty goal indeed. Every getting over 700 is hard: it unclear why you need to get that much over the 700 threshold.

Thanks so much mike,

Wow... great challenge... I wasted my life before, now, I prefer to do more, try something , and face the challenge

rough target, I target it to incentivize myself and continue to incentivize because I think I am easily complacent
I wanna try even though I will fail.
but my target seems too high, LOL...exceeds my acknowledged

of course, I wanna go to a good B-schools as well ,even I haven't decided which one.

mikemcgarry wrote:Here's what I'll say. If you go through the Magoosh one-month plan, everything you need for a high score will pass before your eyes. The limiting factor is how fast you can learn, how much you can remember, how deeply you can make connections, etc.

See this blog article.
GMAT Study Plan for a 700 or More
What the one month plan is NOT is a step-by-step foolproof system for getting an elite score. There is no such thing. Getting an elite score requires excellence in every part of your studying.


Mike

appreciate your articles and your effort on improve learners.

I read Magoosh one-month plan,
.

and I have a question .
does the article for general students? same as for non-native students?no matter beginner or a period learners if a student want to refer ?
I scan the three - month one created by you.
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/3-month-gm ... beginners/
seems there is more event about outside source to improve skills, if I read Economist , its better to keep reading, right?

have a nice day
>_~

zoezhuyan wrote:appreciate your articles and your effort on improve learners.

I read Magoosh one-month plan,
.

and I have a question .
does the article for general students? same as for non-native students?no matter beginner or a period learners if a student want to refer ?
I scan the three - month one created by you.
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/3-month-gm ... beginners/
seems there is more event about outside source to improve skills, if I read Economist , its better to keep reading, right?

have a nice day
>_~

Dear zoezhuyan,

How are you, my friend? I'm happy to respond.

My friend, I am very sorry, but your limited English is making it hard to understand your questions.

You asked, "does the article for general students?" I don't understand this.

First of all, I think you mean, "IS the article for general students?" To my native ear, using "does" at the beginning of a question seems to indicate that another verb is coming ("Does the article make students feel X?") Also, when you say "the article," I have absolutely no idea what you mean. Do you mean the entirety of the study schedule? Do you mean one of the recommended readings in the study schedule?

You also mention "beginners or a period learners." First, the indefinite article "a/an" is always singular, so it never would be used with a plural noun. By contrast, definite article "the" can be used with singulars and plurals. I have no idea what you mean by "period learners." That is not a term I have ever heard nor is it one I can interpret. I infer from context that you mean something like "more experienced learners."

My friend, I genuinely want to help you. Help me to understand what you are asking. Thank you.

As tomorrow is our Thanksgiving in the US, I am not sure how much I will be on GMAT Club over the next few days.

Have a wonderful day, my friend.

Mike
_________________

mikemcgarry wrote:

zoezhuyan wrote:appreciate your articles and your effort on improve learners.

I read Magoosh one-month plan,
.

and I have a question .
does the article for general students? same as for non-native students?no matter beginner or a period learners if a student want to refer ?
I scan the three - month one created by you.
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/3-month-gm ... beginners/
seems there is more event about outside source to improve skills, if I read Economist , its better to keep reading, right?

have a nice day
>_~

Dear zoezhuyan,

How are you, my friend? I'm happy to respond.

My friend, I am very sorry, but your limited English is making it hard to understand your questions.

You asked, "does the article for general students?" I don't understand this.

First of all, I think you mean, "IS the article for general students?" To my native ear, using "does" at the beginning of a question seems to indicate that another verb is coming ("Does the article make students feel X?") Also, when you say "the article," I have absolutely no idea what you mean. Do you mean the entirety of the study schedule? Do you mean one of the recommended readings in the study schedule?

You also mention "beginners or a period learners." First, the indefinite article "a/an" is always singular, so it never would be used with a plural noun. By contrast, definite article "the" can be used with singulars and plurals. I have no idea what you mean by "period learners." That is not a term I have ever heard nor is it one I can interpret. I infer from context that you mean something like "more experienced learners."

My friend, I genuinely want to help you. Help me to understand what you are asking. Thank you.

As tomorrow is our Thanksgiving in the US, I am not sure how much I will be on GMAT Club over the next few days.

Have a wonderful day, my friend.

Mike

Hi mike,
I am sorry my poor articulation / description makes your understand hardly, causing waste of your time and viewers here.

first , I think I should change some ambiguous words.
"article" -- I intended to say the blog article that named one month strategy and that created by you, I think I did not get exactly meaning of "article" when I use this word.
"a period learners" -- I want to state the group of learners who have prepared for a period , I got a better word " preparedness" from one of your blog articles,

second, I think I should re-state my questions about your blog article -- one month strategy, Magoosh one-month plan,

1/ the application
Does it apply equally to anyone who wants to take GMAT , no matter beginners or students of different level preparedness ?

Does this articulation make you hard to understand ? if so, I try change another way.

2/ whether the tasks daily is minimal ?
if I want to improve my understanding of English, it is better to keep the daily tasks as the one month blog article ?

3/ raised a question after scanning three-month strategy for focusing on verbal, Magoosh three-month plan,

I keep reading 30 - 60 min almost everyday, and I have read a blog article about how to read Economists, but have not under time pressure,
based on desire of improving understanding level and time limitation, I genuinely want your suggest on reading Economists. should I mimic under time pressure and simultaneously write down some words?

I hope this post won't make you hard to read. if does, tell me, I will re-work.

thanks in advance.

have a nice day
>_~

dj22 wrote:I am looking to take the GMAT in 1 month, and shooting for a 710+ score. I took it in the Spring of 2013, and received a 690 (V35, Q48, IR8). This was with little prep (just going through the free stuff on the GMAT website). I have purchased the MGMAT books, along with the Magoosh program. I am looking at how to best use the materials I have to study everything to get to my target score, and have looked through the 1 month plan from Magoosh. My issue with this is that it says that it is for people just starting to study. With my situation (already being at a 690), and also working a full-time job, I want to really narrow down what I should focus on. Is there a modified plan that I should look at? Any suggestions? Thank you!

Given how far along you are score-wise, I don't think you will find a plan that works exactly for you in 1 month. I would recommend really focusing on your weaknesses

mikemcgarry wrote:

dj22 wrote:I am looking to take the GMAT in 1 month, and shooting for a 710+ score. I took it in the Spring of 2013, and received a 690 (V35, Q48, IR8). This was with little prep (just going through the free stuff on the GMAT website). I have purchased the MGMAT books, along with the Magoosh program. I am looking at how to best use the materials I have to study everything to get to my target score, and have looked through the 1 month plan from Magoosh. My issue with this is that it says that it is for people just starting to study. With my situation (already being at a 690), and also working a full-time job, I want to really narrow down what I should focus on. Is there a modified plan that I should look at? Any suggestions? Thank you!

Dear dj22,
I'm happy to respond.

That's a great question. Here's what I'll say. Probably that first batch of lessons, intro to the GMAT, is something you could skip wholesale. You know that. Also, you are clearly very strong in math. Here's what I'll say. If you look at a math module, such as "Percents and Ratios," and you feel that you already know all this, don't watch the lessons. Just take the quiz at the end of that module. If you ace the quiz, then you know it--move on. You should be able to dispatch several math lesson modules that way. If you think you know the subject and are not sure, you could breeze through each lesson by skipping to the summary page: again, if there are no surprises on the summary page, then mostly likely you know everything in the lesson. There probably will be a handful of math lessons with some time-saving tricks that are new to you. You may find these as you move through the math lessons, or you may encounter these if you get a math question wrong and are directed to a "related lesson." Overall, there probably are exceedingly few math lessons that you will need to watch from beginning to end.



I would urge you to be a little more diligent on the Verbal side. It's probably important for you to watch those lessons thoroughly. Don't underestimate the verbal section: even the easiest ideas involve subtleties.

As you practice Magoosh question, the Adaptive feature will feed you mostly medium, hard, and very hard question. There are a few hundred easy question, and you really don't need to spend any time with these. Keep in mind that if you were to use up all the medium & hard & very hard questions in Magoosh, the algorithm would start feeding you easy questions, even though these are not appropriate to your level, simply because the computer has nothing else to give you. You don't want to reach that point. On the "Custom Practice" page in Magoosh, if you select each question difficulty, you can see at the bottom how many questions are remaining for each difficulty level. As you move through the month, monitor how many medium, hard, and very hard questions are remaining. As these start to dwindle, you may want to select one of those difficulty levels specifically, rather than "Adaptive," so you finish out the questions in that difficulty level. You can pace yourself, so that you are on a pace to finish the medium, hard, and very hard questions. You're a math person: you can figure out what your rate should be, so that you do only the difficulty levels you need! If you don't see a single easy question during the month, that's OK, because you are likely to see very few of these on the real GMAT.

Those are a few things you can do to streamline your experience of Magoosh. Let me know if you have any questions.

Mike

Hello, Mike. I just discovered this thread.
A couple of points: I signed up for Magoosh Premium in April of this year, and after a month of studying, I took my GMAT Online in May and scored 530. (Q32, V30). It was very disheartening because it meant I wouldn't be able to apply to the college I wanted for the MiM program. I took a couple of months off before resuming my preparations in September, with the goal of taking the test in November or December. However, my procrastination and time-wasting habits got the better of me.
No matter what I do, I feel like I'm not doing enough or that there's something wrong that I can't figure out, aside from my procrastination habit.

I considered enrolling in some other courses, such as Target... and others, but I don't want to waste any more time looking for resources since I already have a Magoosh Premium subscription until April. I took the Manhattan CAT last week and received a score of 620. (Q40, V35).
My goal score is 700+.

Long story short, I'll be taking the test on January 27th. That gives me approximately 50 days. Could you please tell me how to go about it? Should I follow the Magoosh one-month study plan, and if so, how should I go about it?
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. I can't mess this up. No, not this time. Please help me. Thank you:)