How I Scored A 725 On The Gmat Focus And How You Can Ace The Gmat Too

hello my friends my name is Kobe Hunter and I went from scoring the 46th percentile on the GMAT in the summer of 2022 to scoring the 99th percenti on the GMAT focus in the winter of 2023 my score jumped by almost 200 points as I went from not being able to be even in the top half of test takers to being in the top 1% and this is a pile of all of my textbooks and a lot of my scratch paper that I Ed to get that score and today we're going to do three things first we're going to outline how I would recommend that you prepare to get a score like mine second we're going to burn this scratch paper because I don't need it anymore and third we're going to give you specific things that will help you increase your score that help me increase my score and don't worry I will not be selling you a course on how to rock the GMAT I will mention the prep courses that I use to study so you can know what courses are most helpful and you then don't have to purchase two different prep courses like I did but you don't need to buy anything for this video to be worth watching so if you appreciate me sharing what helped me to rock the GMAT consider hitting that like button and if you like learning about preparing for an MBA or you just like learning about business consider clicking that subscribe button now let's get into it the first thing you should do when preparing to take the GMAT is figure out where you're going to take it and I don't just mean like oh I'm going to take it at home I want you to figure out exactly where you're going to take it and then make sure you spend the majority of your time practicing for the test in this location this may seem like a silly thing to specify but it really helped me there are a couple of things to consider when picking your spot does it have natural lighting is it free of distractions do you have a comfortable chair to sit in and most importantly does it have Good Vibes for me I feel like studying in a space that just makes you feel good really helps make the hours you spend studying more enjoyable and the test less stressful for my successful GMAT run I brought an office chair to my front dining room and studied there because of how bright it was in the morning hours when I studied and this brings me to my second point on physical preparation which is to study at the same time as you're going to take the test if you study for the test in the evenings but then take it on a Saturday morning like I did my first time your mind will just not be in as sound of a place to remember everything you've practiced the more similarly you can make your practice to the actual test the better you're going to do as long as we're talking about little practical things to help simulate the exams using a book stand like this one can help simulate looking up at a screen compared to looking down at the book on the table does this make a huge difference I don't know but it's something I did while studying for the second test and I did a lot better on the second test plus it kept my neck from hurting while I was studying so you figure out where you're going to study what time you're going to study and now we need to talk about how long you're going to study I would recommend you study for at least 2 hours and 15 minutes 5 days a week if you can study for closer to 3 hours that's ideal an oddly specific time to recommend right yeah I guess but there's a logic to the specificness the GMAT focus is 2 hours and 15 minutes long so if you want to prepare for it it makes sense to train your brain that will have to exert itself for a longer time than it's used to by training a bit longer than the test is actually when you take the test your brain will be less fatigued and therefore less likely to make some silly mistake than if it was just used to studying for an hour a day now is there actually hard science behind this strategy yeah there is there are lots of studies out there but if you'd rather think about it in a simple way think about it like this if you're a wrestler or a boxer and you're used to competing in 3 minute periods but the other guy is used to competing in two-minute periods you're going to be a lot less winded after a couple of two-minute bouts or let's say you're an Olympian and you're training for shot put when you throw the heavier shot put over and over again rather than the lighter one when you have to throw the lighter one you'll get to be able to throw it farther mental fatigue can seriously hurt your score because being tired can cause you to make simple and silly errors which can make you a couple more questions wrong which thus hurts your score which is why we need to prepare our brains for the marathon that is the GMAT Focus test now that we have that all figured out how many months do we need to devote to studying for the GMAT Focus before we actually take it well most prep courses will say two to three months but I would actually recommend four to five months out and here's why the GMAT focus is not a measure of intelligence it's a measure of how well you can prepare for and take a test yes some skills transfer over if you're naturally good at critical thinking on the GMAT Focus you're probably you better at critical thinking in business school but ultimately just like anything else the more you practice it the better you'll get if one or two additional months of studying means you go from scoring a 655 to a 685 or a 655 to a 705 it's totally worth it because that jump opens you up to a whole another level of business school and getting into one of these top schools can seriously change your life for the better okay before we go on I'm going to take these off of here because they're about to melt so I'm going to keep burning them but uh they melting so this wasn't I thought putting a rubber thing a bob hot on top would keep them safe but it didn't and now this one is really hot okay anyway also drop a like if you appreciate me sitting next to this fire for your Your Entertainment while I try to teach you all this stuff anyway okay where were we oh yes whether or not we should use the GMAT Focus official guide which is this guy which luckily did did not light on fire so now you're probably wondering if you should just buy the GMAT official guide question book for 40ish bucks or if you should pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a course from the likes of kaplan's Manhattan prep the Princeton Review mou prep Scholars or test Masters now if you're serious about attending business school you should definitely do a prep course this is for two main reasons first the explanations in the GMAT official guide are just not that good when compared to the explanations the prep courses offer you the GMAT Focus guide answers are usually overly algebraic for the math section and they don't only show you the shortcuts to do problems more easily or show you the why behind things the second reason you should do a prep course is that if you're planning on spending well over $100,000 going to business school you shouldn't bulk at spending $1,000 on the prep course that will give you the training you need to succeed at getting into the best business school you possibly can now I took two different prep courses one by the Princeton Review while preparing for the GMAT and one by kaplan's Manhattan prep When I Was preparing for the GMAT Focus now I can't speak to all the other companies out there but at least out of these two companies I would definitely say the Manhattan prep is better I took a comparable class for each and although their online courses were pretty on par with each other the amount of study material that the princ and review gave me was significantly less than the material the Manhattan prep gave me just look at how different these two stacks of books are honestly for me I feel like the books and the practice problems were way more helpful than the classes because all you really do in the classes is go through the practice problems and have them explain it both Princeton and Manhattan prep have in-depth question explanations in their online dashboards but Princeton uses its own internal practice problems or at least they did back in 2022 when I took it while in contrast Manhattan prep uses the official guide and I feel like having the practice problems coming from the official guide was really helpful because they're just a bit more similar to the questions you're actually going to see on the test now Manhattan prep isn't perfect because it doesn't offer a score guarantee program like some other courses do but do you really want to spend several months of your life studying only to not get the score you want and just be at net zero I mean maybe that's important to you but the thoroughness of Manhattan prep's books for me at least outweighed the lack of a score guarantee now let's assume you have your place to practice you have a time frame all figured out of when you want to take the test and you picked which GMAT Prep course you want to do how should you go about studying well first things first before you even get to your study materials you need to start practicing your mental math if you don't instantly know what 9 * 7 15 squar or 4 cubed is you need to start doing your mental maths right away by the way it's 63 225 and 64 if you're wondering you probably haven't had to do mental math in a long time and you're going to need to rebuild those skills because the GMAT Focus does not allow you to use a calculator now this is actually kind of nice in its own way because it means that usually GMAT Focus numbers stay relatively friendly without any crazy decimals but it does mean that you need to be able to know certain numbers instantly and confidently now once you finish your Tim tables work on your squares and cubes each up to 15ish although I can't actually remember having to ever Square 14 but anyways while you wait for your book you should also be working on memorizing your prime numbers up to 97 which is the largest prime number underneath 100 the GMAT Focus loves testing your understanding of whether numbers are prime or not in clever and tricky ways so if you've got all your prime numbers memorized that will really help it's also really important that you memorize the difference of squares equations as far as preparing for the verbal and data Insight sections while you wait for your prep books it would be a good idea to read articles from the likes of Harvard Business review or scholarly journals to work on your comprehension skills a huge part of both verbal and Data Insights is being able to understand complex and sometimes boring essays and graphs and answer questions about them so practicing this skill is a must once you get your prep books keeping it chill for the first week or two of class may be really tempting after all the material seems relatively simple right but no if you do find the first week easier you should take the time to really solidify these seemingly basic concepts by doing things like drilling yourself on divisibility rules an example of a divisibility rule is that any number is divisible by four if the last two digits of it are divisible by four here are some other divisibility rules right here for the verbal section you should be drilling the concept that an inference on the GMAT means something the passage empirically States or proves not how we lay people use it as a thing you could reasonably guess to be true the later parts of your class and the more challenging questions on the test will be built on these easier principles so if you don't have them down pat now you're going to struggle later as you read through your readings and do practice problems you're going to find topics and Concepts that give you trouble to help learn these principles I kept this little notebook with me where I would write down the important rules for questions that I had messed up you could write whatever key points you want to remember let's say for example you trouble in the verbal section if so it would be a really good idea to write down the key words to identify when a question is a strengthen or weaking question an inference question and evaluate the argument or find the flaw question or you could write math rules like I did like properties of overlapping sets now most books will have little cheat sheets like this one that you can reference but having it in your own writing all in one spot makes you a lot more likely to internalize it and makes you more likely to refer back to it it's also really nice because you can carry this around and read through facts while you're sitting on the toilet rather than scrolling Instagram and yes I did study while I was on the toilet also as you're doing your practice questions even if you get a question right you should still review the explanation because reviewing the explanation will help you cement the process in your mind and it will help you identify if you did it the wrong way but still somehow got the right answer the next point is that as you prepare for the GMAT Focus you should know that you get to pick what order you do the sections in you can do Quant verbal data data Quant verbal verbal data Quant you'll probably know intuitively what order you'd like them in some people like to do the thing they best at first to get themselves feeling good before the sections they are more worried about well others would rather do the hard things first while they're still fresh most people recommend that you don't put the data and Quant sections back to back because it's just too much math to do all in a row the way I did it was I took Data Insights first then verbal then Quant so I put my best one in the middle why well most data insights has a lot of little details that are really easy to miss if you're tired so I wanted to put that one first and I didn't want to put my best subject at the end where I'd be tired so I put my worst subject at the end so I could expel all my mental energy on that last one and not have to worry about a section after it now I've saved what I feel like are the two most important pieces of advice for last and in a weird way they kind of connect back to the beginning so here they are every single time you sit down to do practice problems or do a set of practice problems you should be timing yourself the real GMAT doesn't care if you can get a problem right in 6 or 10 minutes you need to get it done in a maximum of 3 or 4 minutes but more realistically on average you need to average out at about 2 minutes per question some will be more some will be less still you need to be able to operate under a timer and again like I said before practicing makes it easier there's a bit more heart racing that comes when you have the timer going but doing it over and over and over again makes you more used to it and better at it lastly and most importantly you've done everything I've said you practice where you plan to take the test you've done your Basics and drill the questions over and over again you've done lots of practice tests and the day finally comes to take the test the most valuable piece of advice that I have to give you to do well on the GMAT focus is to take a deep breath and not overthink things treat it like just another practice test ultimately if this test doesn't go well for you you can always take it again but worrying during the test won't help now if you struggle with anxiety like me you can get medication that enables you to manage this test anxiety I did terribly on the first test yet I could still come back and do well on it later and that first test didn't hurt me how you perform on one test does not make or break your chances of getting an MBA or determine your value now I know that if you put in the work you can rock the gmet now if you still have questions feel free to drop them in the comments and I'll try to answer them to the best of my ability remember if you enjoy learning consider clicking that subscribe button thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you guys next time

Channel: Coby Hunter

Views: 27,352

Keywords: gmat, gmat focus, gmat preparation, gmat study tips, gmat success story, gmat score improvement, preparing for the gmat, gmat prep courses, mba, mba application, mba application process, gmat success

Id: 0IxZLUWytFQ

Length: 12min 53sec (773 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 29 2024