There are all kinds reasons you might need last minute GMAT advice. You may be cramming for the GMAT (if that’s the case, please consider rescheduling your test!), you may want some last minute GMAT tips for studying in the final week or two, or you may not need a high score on the GMAT to get into your college of choice.
We’ll talk about 15 last minute GMAT strategies to help you ace the test. Ready? Let’s go! There’s no time to waste!
General GMAT Study Tips
It’s most effective to study for the GMAT in short periods of time, rather than marathon sessions. If you think about it, that makes the most sense. After a long time of sitting, reading, and studying, your mind (and body!) gets worn out, and you start remembering less of the information that you’ve studied. On the other hand, if you integrate frequent, shorter study sessions into your day, you’ll be more apt to remember what you’ve studied. Your mind is fresh for each session and ready to take in more information.
Get familiar with the format of the GMAT. Read up on each section (hint – we’ve listed them below), the types of questions asked in each section, the format of the test, and how much time is allowed for each section.
Practice, practice, practice. Practice problems are an excellent way to spend your time in the weeks before you take the exam. Sometimes, nothing helps you learn better than getting a question wrong, and learning why you made the error. That’s the important part. When you do practice problems, make sure you go over the ones you got wrong, and rework them. It’s also a good idea to make notes of the types of mistakes you have made, so you can determine if you are learning from your mistakes, or if you continue to make the same error time and again.
When you are doing practice problems, time yourself. Develop a strategy for how long you’d like to spend on each type of question.
You can find lots of practice questions for the GMAT here. Albert.io is organized by GMAT Verbal, GMAT Quantitative, and GMAT Integrated Reasoning, along with the subcategories within each section. Off to the right, you can simply click on a tag for an area you would like to focus on.
Five Last Minute GMAT Verbal Study Tips
The GMAT Verbal section includes three types of questions – Sentence Correction, Reading Comprehension, and Critical Reasoning. We’re going to give you some strategies to use on these questions to help you ace the GMAT Verbal questions.
1. For Sentence Correction questions, make sure all of the verbs are in agreement for the sake of parallelism. Verb agreement means that all verbs should be the same tense. For example – I went home and took a walk. Both went and took are in the same verb tense.
2. Another Sentence Correction tip is to find the split. What’s a split? The answer choices for Sentence Correction questions will generally allow you to group similar answers together, and eliminate the ones that immediately do not make sense.
3. It is important in Sentence Correction questions to determine whether the sentence has a modifier – a word that makes a change to another word or phrase – and make sure it is modifying the right thing. For example – Because she was so sweet, Linda gave her dog a pat on the head. Who was sweet? Linda? Or her dog?
4. For Reading Comprehension questions, the best thing you can do is very simple – read the passage first. Don’t look at the questions first. Read the passage first. Focus on the main ideas of the passage, and then read the questions. If you need to go back to the passage, that’s okay.
5. For Critical Reasoning questions, do not read the argument first. First, read the question stem. At that point, you can determine what type of question you are to answer. Then, you can read the argument.
Five Last Minute GMAT Quantitative Study Tips
The GMAT Quantitative section includes four types of questions – Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry, and Word Problems. Within each category, certain concepts are tested.
Arithmetic:
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- Digits and decimals
- Fractions
- Percents
- Ratios
Algebra:
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- Order of operations
- Formulas
- Inequalities
- Linear equations
- Quadratic equations
- Exponents
- Roots
Geometry
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- Polygons
- Triangles
- Circles and cylinders
- Intersecting lines and angles
Word Problems
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- Algebraic translations
- Rates and work
- Statistics
- Consecutive integers
- Overlapping sets
We recommend that, as a starting point, you take a look at each of these concepts, and determine which ones you know you feel comfortable with, and which ones you know you need some work on.
One of the most common types of questions on the GMAT Quantitative section are Data Sufficiency questions. Data Sufficiency questions, which have two statements, and five potential answers, ask whether the two statements, alone or by themselves, have enough information to answer the question. Our first set of tips is for Data Sufficiency questions.
1. Memorize Data Sufficiency choices. They are always the same.
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- Statement 1 alone is sufficient but statement 2 alone is not sufficient to answer the question asked.
- Statement 2 alone is sufficient but statement 1 alone is not sufficient to answer the question asked.
- Both statements 1 and 2 together are sufficient to answer the question but neither statement is sufficient alone.
- Each statement alone is sufficient to answer the question.
- Statements 1 and 2 are not sufficient to answer the question asked and additional data is needed to answer the statements.
2. Don’t try to solve the problem. When you’re in the GMAT Quantitative section, and you see an equation, your first instinct is to try to solve it. Don’t. Keep your focus on the purpose of the Data Sufficiency questions, which is determining whether the information provided can answer the question asked.
3. First look at each statement separately. If the first statement is sufficient to answer the question, you can narrow down your choices to A, C, or D. If not, you are left with choices B and E. It’s all about narrowing down your choices.
The rest of the questions in the GMAT Quantitative section will be Problem Solving questions. Here are two tips for those questions:
4. Make sure you can quickly and accurately do basic mathematical calculations in your head or on paper. You can’t bring a calculator into the exam with you, so this is critical. If you can’t do this, you end up either wasting a lot of time doing your calculations and not getting to all of the questions, or doing calculations incorrectly, and, therefore, answering questions incorrectly. Either way, not being able to do basic calculations quickly and correctly is bad news.
5. Know that all of the information in a Problem Solving question is used. This means that, unlike some of the other GMAT questions, you’ll need to take every piece of information provided into account when calculating your answer.
Five Last Minute GMAT Integrated Reasoning Tips
The GMAT Integrated Reasoning section contains four types of questions – Multi Source Reasoning, Graphics Interpretation, Table Analysis, and Two-Part Analysis. Here are some tips to get you through this section:
1. Get to know the formats for each type of Integrated Reasoning question listed above by doing practice problems. Being familiar with the format helps you answer the questions more quickly, allowing you to get to more questions, and also increases the likelihood that you will answer the questions correctly.
2. This brings us to time manage me Most questions in the Integrated Reasoning section actually consist of two or three individual questions. But – this is important – there is no partial credit in the Integrated Reasoning section. This means, if you are stuck on one or two of the questions within the question, you need to move on to those that you are surer that you can answer the entire question with relative confidence.
3. Graphs are heavily featured in the Integrated Reasoning section. Get familiar with graphs. This will help you read them on the test, and correctly answer questions about them.
4. Consider everything that you see. This means titles, axis labels, column names, and footnotes can all be helpful in answering the questions. Don’t forget about the details!
5. Know that your preparations for the Verbal and Quantitative sections will help you in this section. The concepts that you are learning when studying for the Verbal and Quantitative sections will be used again in the Integrated Reasoning section. This means, if you run out of time to study for any section, it should be the Integrated Reasoning section.
Final Thoughts
Before we go, let’s talk about a few things. So long as you have time before your application is due (it can take up to 20 days to have your scores sent to your school(s) of choice), please consider rescheduling your test. If you schedule 7 or more days before your original date, it only costs $50 to reschedule. That’s a lot less than the full $250 that it will cost you to reschedule if you bomb the test.
The day before the test and the day of the test DO NOT CRAM. Seriously. We mean it. You can learn more about why not to do it in this article by the BBC. Bottom line is that you probably won’t remember most of the things you’ve tried to cram into your brain during the last 24 hours before the test anyways, so don’t waste your time.
Instead, spend that time eating healthy meals, getting in some exercise, organizing what you will need to bring for the exam the next day (identification, list of programs to which you’d like to send your scores, appointment confirmation from Pearson VUE, snacks), not drinking alcohol, and going to bed early.
Same thing goes for the day of the test. Grab your test materials and snacks, and head out the door. No studying. Did we mention that cramming that closely to test time does not work?
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