One Month Study Plan to Prepare for GMAT

Preparing for the GMAT in one month is almost like going on a crash diet. It requires undivided attention, focus and a lot of hard work. The reason why we begin with such a statement is because of the well-known fact that the required time to prepare for the GMAT is about 3 months on an average. So the first thing that one needs to understand is that this is almost a challenge that is taken by the candidate.

Given all that introduction, the one-month Study Plan will work only in the following situations,

1. If you are planning to resign your job and/or take a break from your usual routine to concentrate on the GMAT.
2. If you have already prepared for the GMAT earlier and you are now looking to improve your score by fine tuning your test-taking strategies.
3. If you are conversant with the strategies in either Quant or Verbal and are seeking help for the other section in which you are weak.
4. If you are pretty confident with the basic concepts and feel that you just need more practice.
5. If you are running short of deadlines and have a limited time window to apply.

Overall it must be understood that the one-month study plan for the GMAT will not be applicable for all candidates who aspire to write the GMAT. It is only for people who have customized needs and have decided to dedicate their time for GMAT preparation and nothing else.

Let us now look at the various cases in detail.

The one-month study plan for the GMAT is ideally applicable for college students and those who have over two years of work experience. The plan is more effective for this category of students simply because they will be more familiar with studies and will have the patience to hit the books and prepare for an exam. Preparation for this exam requires long hours of study and such students will be more familiar with earning in this pattern. As already mentioned, you need to be extremely focused right from the beginning as one will then have sufficient time for practice and make amendments to the strategies in case errors are found as we move on through the different phases of preparation. On an average, about 200 hours are required for a thorough preparation and this means you should be ready to spend 7 hours of preparation every day. Any other schedule that may take more time out of a usual routine must therefore be better planned or avoided. You should ideally spend the first fortnight of the month to understanding the basics of all concepts which will be evaluated in the exam and the second fortnight to practice questions of various difficulty levels.

As mentioned in the second situation, if you have already prepared for the GMAT, then it is sufficient to spend a minimum of three hours per day to study and familiarize yourself with the concepts and shortcuts. The rest of the time can be spent on fine tuning your strategies, practice them and take mock tests.

The third case is the most commonly sought after case. This is when some students feel that they are strong with Quant but consider that they need to work more on the verbal section of the exam. If you feel that you need more practice in the verbal section, then it is better to simultaneously practice Quant higher difficulty questions while revising the concepts of Verbal. The mistake that most students make here is that they concentrate only on the Verbal section that at the end of one month, the Verbal score goes up by a consistent amount but then there is a corresponding dip in the Quant scores as well. This doesn’t increase the GMAT score on the whole.

It is also advisable that if you are unsatisfied with the scores you secure in the mock tests, then you should go ahead and postpone the test for a later date. There is absolutely no point in taking the real test when you feel you are inadequately prepared. A more detailed study schedule is listed out below which you can opt for.

GMAT STUDY SCHEDULE

*Please note that time spent on analysis of the diagnostic tool has not been included in this schedule. Please factor in this time in your weekly study plan.

To sum-up, a snapshot of the one-month study plan is as given below.

Week: 01 – Take a mock test and analyze your weak areas. Make sure you brush-up on all those concepts first.

Week: 02 – Solve easy to medium level questions from those concepts. You can use the Official Guide for preparation in the Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning sections in the exam.

Week: 03 – Solve some high difficulty level questions from the same concepts. In case your accuracy doesn’t improve or you feel you are making many errors, then consider revising your concepts once again.

Week: 04 – Take mock tests and revise your concepts. Make sure that you get extremely comfortable with those topics on the day of the Test. Mock tests can be taken periodically to help you understand your strengths and weaknesses. They also help you to get accustomed with the testing conditions of the exam including the adaptive testing patterns (the difficulty level of the next section depends on your performance in the previous sections).

All throughout the 4 weeks make sure you also keep solving question types that you are already aware of to ensure that you don’t lose the momentum.

Draft:

GMAT 1 Month Plan:

Who and Why One Should Look for 1 Month Plan

• One who is planning to take some time off from work and concentrate only on GMAT.
• One who has already done some preparation earlier and wants some extra tips and tricks to boost their score.
• Students who have completed preparation in one of the sections ( Either Quant or verbal) and need assistance in the other section.
• One whose basics are strong and who just want to practice questions.
• One who knows that deadlines for application process are just 1 month away, and if he misses the same then he would lose one complete year.

How to Plan Your Studies to Cover the Syllabus in 1 Month

• First of all let me tell you that this plan might only work for students who are still studying in college or a working professional who is having maximum of 2 years of experience.
• If one has planned to write GMAT after a month and he is starting his preparation right from scratch, he needs to dedicate a minimum of 6-7 hours/ day just for their GMAT preparation.
• So to sum up, he needs to dedicate around 200 hours from his side, in which he should dedicate maximum of 100 hours in brushing up his concepts and rest 100 hours in the practicing.
• As you can see the requirement is 6-7 hours per day that simply means that any other activity that can lower the duration of study below 5 hours must be avoided. Compensating for any such lags will be difficult in the final few weeks of preparation. Therefore the entire focus should be undivided for 1 month towards your preparation.
• In the event that you are not beginning to study right from scratch, then it is sufficient if you dedicate a minimum of 3 hours to study.
• Let us consider the 2nd and 4th case. The student should dedicate maximum of 1 week time to brush up get familiar to the concepts and shortcuts.
• Rest of the time he should practice lots of questions and give maximum possible number of mock tests.
• For 3rd case, if we consider that the weaker section is verbal, the recommendation is to brush up with the verbal section concepts within a week and simultaneously you must also practice quants high level questions for at least 2 hours per day.
• The planning should be in such a manner that by the end of the week, he should cover most of the questions from all topics in quants. Once done with the concepts, time spent on practice should be dedicated towards the verbal questions only.
• The practice for quants will be done only with the help of mock test.
• For 5th case, one should definitely start with the 1 month plan and try to follow the 1st case suggestions. In case he is not able to complete or he is not getting satisfactory marks in the mock test which he attempts, then he should take a couple of months more for the preparation and then attempt his GMAT exam.

BYJU’S will be glad to help you in your GMAT preparation journey. You can ask for any assistance related to GMAT and MBA from us by calling us at +918884544444. You can write to us at gmat@byjus.com.

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