How much studying for gmat

Those who do better on the GMAT exam tend to spend more time studying for it. There is no cause-and-effect process at work, however. Studying 90 hours does not guarantee that you will score in the range. Those who began their preparation earlier accumulated more total prep hours.

Those who studied more scored higher—60 hours or more yielded scores of or higher. Use the information in the charts below as a guideline. Be mindful that the times shown in these charts are self-reported. You want your study time to be productive. However, how much time you can commit to per week also depends on your goals and responsibilities.

Remember, however, that your studying needs to be purposeful and useful. Fitting too much studying into a short period of time will tire you out.

Along the same lines, you want to have a rigorous and consistent schedule week to week. Studying for just one hour once a week will probably lead to gaps as you forget what you learned from the week before.

Set a consistent number of hours per week that is rigorous, but not overbearing. Divide the total number of hours you need to study the GMAT by the number of hours you can study each week. For example, if you need to study hours and you can study for 10 hours each week, you will need to study for 12 weeks.

When planning your GMAT study schedule, you may also want to build in time for retakes. You can take the GMAT up to five times in a 12 month period, but you have to wait for at least 16 days between exams.

Our proprietary GMAT Diagnostic Assessment creates a customized study plan for you that takes you from registration all the way to test day! It is included with every account and proven to significantly maximize your score. Double-check the application deadlines for your schools.

If you choose which schools to send your test scores before you take the GMAT, the schools will receive your scores in less than 20 days. So, to be safe, schedule your GMAT at least three weeks before application deadlines. First, you can eliminate a retake from your schedule and focus on acing the test the first time around. Second, you can try to fit more hours of prep each week.

Repeated exposure helps to encode material into long-term memory. Figuring out how many days you should study and when to take the GMAT depends in part on how many hours per day you can reasonably study. The caveat, of course, is most people have real limits concerning how much they can focus.

Many also have limitations on how much info they can absorb and assimilate in a single day. Can you put in six hours a day of quality, high-focus study time, day after day, for a month? However, for most people—not only because of the practical constraints of job and family but also because of the cognitive constraints on focus and assimilation—the best way to study for the GMAT would be to spend less-time-per-day over a longer number of days. Be gentle and reasonable with yourself by preventing stretching your limits too far.

Regardless of how much time you have available to study, the GMAT exam requires 3 hours of intensive brain power. Consider the two big categories —math and verbal. On a scale, how would you rank your relative aptitudes in each? This may play into extra time over and above the time you spend studying specifically for the GMAT. If you are a math whiz but weak in verbal, and most especially if English is not your first language, then yes, pursue a moderate study schedule, say, a three-month study schedule for folks stronger in math , and in addition to that, READ!

Read at least an hour a day—two hours a day would be better. You are building up your ability over time to do your best on the day. A large part of the GMAT skillset is gained through practice. Lots and lots of practice. GMAC is careful to note, however, that there is no cause and effect process at work.

Spending more hours studying does not guarantee a high score, but it is helpful to keep over a hundred hours of preparation as a ballpark figure for your practice.

Your natural abilities which we are not always good at accessing accurately may play some role in your score. Regardless of your natural abilities however, you will not achieve your best score without proper preparation.

Building GMAT knowledge is a bit like building muscles at the gym. You need to keep it up and do a bit every day.