Hey guys, wie geht’s?
On the 25th of October PRO – Students for Business held an event about the GMAT.
If you’ve missed the event and still don’t know what the GMAT is, or if you are simply looking for more information about it, then take a look at these websites:
About The GMAT Exam (gmac.com)
GMAT Exam Structure | GMAT Exam | mba.com
During the event I (Giorgio Mondini) also shared my experiences and explained how I am preparing for my GMAT-exam, which will take place next week.
In this post I am going to summarize what I talked about in my discussion, so that you can have this as a starting point for your own preparation.
DISCLAIMER: Everything you are going to read is the result of personal research and personal habits and routines. I did not ask for any help to professionals and/or tutors. This method could or could not be right for you, so just take it as one of the many experiences you can read online.
Define your goal
My goal is to be admitted to the Master of Finance at Frankfurt School of Finance and Management.
Through some conversations with representatives of the university, I defined my final score should be around 700.
Test yourself and analyse your results
After having decided to study by myself, without any help from any courses or tutors, the first thing that I did was to test myself: I took one test, without studying and just knowing the structure of the exam. I scored around 520.
I analysed the results, and what I discovered was that I was doing pretty good in the quantitative section (mathematics, etc.), while what really had a heavy impact on my final grade were my mistakes in the verbal section.
Apply the Pareto Principle (or 80-20 rule)
Pareto (an Italian economist) observed that originally in the 20th century in Italy 20% of the population held 80% of the wealth. Nowadays, this kind of distribution is observed in every kind of context, and also in the cognitive environment: 80% of outputs result from 20% of all inputs.
Therefore, after having decided the date of the exam (November) and after having decided to study 2 hours per day, I made a rough total of all the hours I had at my disposal and divided them in the following way:
80% of the hours dedicated to the verbal section (my weakest section),
and 20% of the hours dedicated to the quantitative section (my strongest section).
Plan your study sessions and use the Pomodoro Technique
Two hours per day is not much, but at the same time, they could be difficult to organize in your messy schedule. For this very reason, I suggest you dedicate the first two hours of your day (after having breakfast, doing yoga and meditation, and reading) to prepare for the exam. The advantage of picking early morning hours (mine are from 5-7am) is, that you are not bothered by any distractions.
In order to make the best use of the 2 hours, I suggest using the Pomodoro Technique: either 25 minutes of intense study and 5 minutes of break for 4 times, after which you take a longer break (10-15 minutes), or 50 minutes of intense study and 10 minutes of break for 4 times, after which you take a longer break (20-30 minutes). This method works particularly well for the preparation of the GMAT.
Also, if you time yourself while answering questions, you can also improve you’re your speed and timing in answering them.
That’s it! This is my whole process. One thing that I can recommend you is that if you have more time to dedicate to the preparation of this exam, and you want to invest more time, then you should totally do it.
Feel free to contact me for any further questions at info.probusiness@unibz.it
See you all!