Please notice this was first posted in the period 2012-2014 and can be outdated
Week 14 of studying for the GMAT started this week. At first I was planning to study for 10-12 weeks, doing about 10 hours a week. This plan didn’t seem too hard since I have studied for other exams (CFA, FRM, etc) in the recent past and did not have that much trouble with 10 hours a week. Weeks before the CFA exam I even reached 20-25 hours a week while still working full-time (although I did take a day off from work now and then to study). But with the GMAT it is going differently.
Time spent studying for the GMAT
The first two weeks went fine, I was motivated to get started and the Princeton Review was a nice book to start with (easy language, and even some jokes in there). Then the rollercoaster ride started. One week I did almost nothing, and the next week the 400+ minutes per week came easily. In week 6 I missed the whole weekend because I needed to pack to go to Thailand, but the weeks 7 till 9 went all right because I had time to study during my holidays.
The past three weeks were less productive, and I guess the reason is that I do not have a deadline to work towards. If I don’t feel like studying, I just don’t study and there is no penalty since I will just do the test a bit later. But everything changed this week. It appears it takes GMAC about 20 working days to grade the GMAT, so if I want to have my test graded before application deadlines I will need to hurry up.
My seat is booked for the GMAT
On November 16th I will do the GMAT test, and since I have invested 300 USD in the exam and about 60 USD in books I will be motivated to study hard. The coming 2 weeks I will try to do at least 15 hours a week. Time will be mostly spent on doing the last 2 books of GMAC (the Official Guide for GMAT Review; the green and blue book) and doing practise exams online.