Oh hello, sorry, listening to some of my favorite music. Uh welcome, I'm Kevin. Uh in this video
we're gonna be talking about how long you should study for the GMAT. Which is actually
a great question. You need to sort of map out um how much time to spend uh preparing for
the GMAT and to fill out your applications for MBA for your MBA program and so um we're gonna
look at some of the considerations um that you should think about when mapping out your time.
Unfortunately there's no sort of direct answer I can't just look at a person and be like you should
spend three months and four days preparing for the test, it's just not that simple but
with these questions and considerations you'll have a very good idea of how long you should
spend studying. So the first question um and a good one to ask is: how do you handle testing? how do you
handle specifically standardized testing? And so some of us out there are just naturally blessed,
not that I'm in that group, but some people out there are naturally blessed they can just ace
standardized tests all the time. Other people struggle a little bit more with standardized tests
and need a little more preparation. So take that into consideration. Are you a person who has always
felt really comfortable taking tests? You don't sort of get stressed out about the time limits,
um you find preparing for them pretty easy. Um so take that into consideration if you're someone who
does struggle preparing for tests or worries more about time you're going to want to spend a little
more time preparing so you can feel comfortable on test day. Okay and then the other important question
to think about is how much time do you have to study? Um so some people have more time time
some people have less time. You're going to want to take that into consideration, so um if you have one
to two hours... there's a fire truck driving by right now, I'm gonna let it go. Okay, it's gone. If you have
let's say uh one to two hours that you could spend studying d- each day and then maybe on
Saturday spend or Saturday or Sunday spend three or four hours. Then you could probably spend about
three months preparing for the test depending on other considerations. Um if you have less time
than that you're going to need to dedicate you know maybe six months to your studying.
If you have a really short amount of time if you only have a month
to prepare for the test then you're really going to have to dedicate some quality studying time
during the week to be prepared. I would say ideally you would want you know to spend
a longer amount of time preparing for the test with short study periods each day, that's ideal.
The other important thing to consider is your base score. So the score that you have right now
versus the target score that you're going for. Um so some people out there maybe only need to
increase their score maybe 20 points to get um to the school that they want to go to, others
might need to boost their score 100 points and so that's another factor to think about. Um obviously
the greater point increase you you're looking for the longer you're going to need to study
and so I have some parameters here that you can think about. So if you're looking to increase your
score 50 to 100 points you're gonna want to do that three months with an hour to two hours of
studying each day and then kind of a big hunk on the weekend. So like four hours on the weekend.
That should be enough to get you to at least a 50 point um increase, maybe a hundred. Um
if you are looking for more than a hundred points and uh you're going to need to spend
probably about six months studying and again using sort of like an hour or two hours each day.
So this is just a rough guide to consider um again if you're really good with standardized
tests then maybe you won't need to do this but really to get 100 points or more you're going
to really need to dedicate a lot of time to studying, especially if you're looking for like
200 points that's going to be a dramatic amount of studying, you know possibly a year of preparation.
Finally, uh the other thing to think about is what are your strengths so, are you really strong in
math? Are you really strong in verbal? And you really want to focus on your weaknesses, so if
you're strong in math you're going to want to focus on verbal over the course of your
studies and so that means not just preparing for the sections of the test but reading a lot
the more that you read and the more that you can make that a habit during your day. Say you know
you're going to take the test in a year and you want to go to business school start reading now,
start making reading a habit where you're spending an hour a day two hours a day just reading and the
same goes for math. If you're strong in verbal and you're a strong reader but sort of weak in math
you're going to want to start doing math as much as you can. So looking at high school math books,
reviewing geometry and algebra concepts, doing mental math. You know calculating your tax uh at
the grocery store or calculating your tip in your head or figuring out your um like how long it's
going to take you to travel from point a to point b in your car if you go a certain amount of miles
per hour. I know it sounds crazy but you really want to start working on the mental math now
so you're more comfortable when test day arrives. All right um those are all the boards that I have
so consider those things when uh trying to decide how long you have to study, obviously there are
limitations based on when you have to submit your application but ideally you should be spending
a good amount of time long over a long period with short uh periods of study each day, that is
my recommendation. All right be excellent to the universe and I will see you next Tuesday.