How to Study for the GMAT While Working

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Last Updated on October 6, 2023

So you’re preparing for the GMAT — no easy task by itself — and you’re also working a demanding job that has the uncanny ability to usurp your every waking moment? Do you worry about how to prepare for the GMAT efficiently without going bonkers? There are a few time-tested strategies that you can use to achieve a top GMAT score while balancing work demands.

In this article, I’ll give you 20 practical and highly effective strategies for preparing for the GMAT while working. Let’s begin with a discussion on the importance of committing yourself to the goal, and then continue with a focus on carving out sufficient time for GMAT prep.

20 Tips for How to Prepare for GMAT While Working

1. Commit to Your Prep and Be Proactive
2. Chart a Realistic Course of Study
3. Make Time Each Weekday Morning to Study
4. Study Right After Work
5. Study During Your Commute
6. Study During Lunch
7. Get Some Exercise After Work
8. Use the Evening to Reinforce Knowledge
9. Study While Waiting
10. Cut Out Unnecessary Stuff in Your Life
11. Form a GMAT Study Group
12. Hit the Books Hard on Weekends
13. Take Some Vacation Time
14. Be Flexible With Your GMAT Study Schedule
15. Start Your GMAT Prep Sooner Rather Than Later
16. Leverage Time in Between Jobs
17. Leverage Slow Work Periods
18. Have an Honest Conversation with Your Boss
19. Reward Yourself
20. Prepare with Accurate, Applicable, Efficient, and Effective Material

Strategy #1: Commit to Your Prep and Be Proactive

Too many people get up each day, go to work, and come home, all without ever making an investment in themselves. Preparing for the GMAT will be one of the most significant professional investments you’ll make in yourself. The knowledge and skills you develop via GMAT prep will serve you for years to come, not to mention the not-so-subtle fact that earning an MBA from a top school will advance your life personally and professionally (and monetarily). 

But earning a competitive GMAT score will require time and effort, and it’s all too easy to procrastinate, using the self-justification that “you’re just too busy to study.” How often have you heard someone say, “I don’t have time for X” or “I don’t have time for Y”? Here’s the reality: there is time only for the things we make time for, GMAT prep included. With a demanding job, it’s important to make time for your personal growth and development. Otherwise, you may find that your days become occupied with the demands of your job, with stagnation resulting.

There is time only for the things we make time for, GMAT prep included.

Don’t let this stagnation happen! Your first step on the path to business school is to commit yourself to preparing for the GMAT and making that preparation a priority. Often the most difficult part of any process is getting started, so once you’re “in it to win it,” you’ll already be ahead of the competition.

Once you’ve committed to making GMAT prep a priority, your next step is to chart a pragmatic, realistic course of GMAT study. If you don’t have a realistic GMAT study plan, you risk burning out.

Strategy #2: Chart a Realistic Course of Study

So you’ve committed to making GMAT prep a top priority. Now it’s time to be realistic about how long the GMAT prep process will take.

If you’re unrealistic about how long preparing for the GMAT will take, you’ll commit yourself to an unrealistic GMAT study schedule. Most people preparing for the GMAT are working 50+ hours per week in fairly demanding jobs. Once you’ve factored in the necessities — eating, sleeping, exercise, errands, and some downtime — you’ll quickly see that you don’t have copious amounts of time left for GMAT prep. Therefore, it’s important to be realistic about how long you’ll need to prepare for the GMAT. Otherwise, you’ll try to cram your study into too short a timeline, leading to stress, burnout, and less-than-optimal performance come test day. 

Unless you have an unusually high level of stamina, studying for 5-6 hours a day on weekdays is probably not realistic. To study for that many hours, you’ll invariably be skipping the things that will help you to stay physically and mentally healthy. For example, people often decide that they’ll skip their nightly exercise to study, a bad idea.

Exercise will help keep your mind and body fit, and the fitter your mind and body, the more productive your GMAT prep will be. Other people skip cooking healthy food in place of eating unhealthy takeout, which does their bodies no favors. Others skip getting together with friends or family, another bad idea. Humans are social animals, and having a social support structure will be an asset in your GMAT prep.

On top of all that, you’ll begin to get diminishing returns when you study for too many hours each day. It’s hard to study with a high level of productivity for 5-6 hours each weekday and 7-8 hours on Saturday and Sunday, even during the best of times.

However, when you attempt (usually unsuccessfully) to increase your score from, say, 550 to 700 in only two months, studying those insane hours each day is exactly what you’re going to be forcing yourself to do. Who wants to spend 40 hours a week preparing for the GMAT, anyway? A GMAT study plan for working professionals that demands that many study hours each week simply isn’t realistic.

Instead, start studying for the GMAT well in advance of when you’ll need to take the test. Plan a course of study that will allow you to reach your GMAT score goal by studying for 2-3 hours each weekday and 3-4 hours each weekend day, for a total weekly study time of about 18-23 hours.

By studying a little each day and not flirting with burnout, you’ll learn more, learn faster, and ultimately perform better come test day. The question then becomes, how do you fit in productive time each day for GMAT prep? Everyone is a bit different when it comes to their study schedules, their sleeping schedules, their work schedules, and their other daily commitments. The key is to find a schedule that works and stick with it. Having a routine will make studying for the GMAT while working easier and more effective.

So, let’s explore some strategies for fitting your study hours into your day.

Strategy #3: Make Time Each Weekday Morning to Study

One smart GMAT prep strategy is to go to bed early on weeknights and wake up early on weekday mornings. When you wake up, get some coffee, and then spend two uninterrupted hours studying before work.

One great benefit to studying early in the morning is that your brain and body will be well-rested and ready to absorb new information. In addition to being fresh for studying, there is something very satisfying about beginning the day by doing something for yourself, something that will help you grow and that will have a positive impact on your future.

If you study for the GMAT early in the morning, by the time you get to work, you’ll have put in a solid amount of GMAT study time. That’s a great feeling to have in the morning, and by having already gotten in some solid GMAT prep, you’re actually setting yourself up to have a more productive day at work because you won’t have the nagging worry that you haven’t done enough GMAT prep yet. You’ll be freer to perform at your best at work, and performing at your best at work will allow you to be more productive in your GMAT prep because you won’t be worried that you’re not giving your job your best efforts.

Strategy #4: Study Right After Work

If you can’t study early in the morning because you start your workday early, plan out a GMAT study schedule that allows you to study after work. A good plan would be to get a quick snack and cup of coffee as soon as your workday concludes, and dive right into your GMAT studying.

Studying immediately after work, as opposed to later in the evening, is ideal because you will still be in the “zone” from your workday. So, you’ll have the right mindset to effectively tackle your GMAT prep. If you push off your studying until later in the evening, you may get tired and lose the motivation to study. So, if possible, try to knock out your GMAT studying right when you conclude your workday.

Strategy #5: Study During Your Commute

If you commute to work by train, bus, plane, or rideshare, use this time to study. You can drill flash cards, rewrite some notes or key concepts, review your notes, solve problems, or even listen to a GMAT-related podcast. In addition to using paper-based materials, you can review test material using digital apps or different websites.

For example, you could go through some Target Test Prep GMAT questions on your iPhone or watch TTP videos on content areas you’re still trying to master. There are a number of ways to use this otherwise wasted time effectively. You may even find that you start looking forward to the commute — that half-hour or hour-long trip could become your prime bonus time for GMAT prep.

Strategy #6: Study During Lunch

Learning is best accomplished in strategic and well-spaced chunks. Thus, your lunch hour is another optimal time to study. If you studied in the morning before work and maybe a bit during your commute, by lunchtime, your brain will have had a few hours to assimilate and store what you’ve studied.

During your lunch break, skip eating with colleagues and instead find a quiet place where you can sit alone. You could bring a healthy meal replacement shake, so you don’t spend time procuring or preparing lunch. Instead, use that time to prepare for the GMAT. Continue studying the topics you worked on in the morning. Your lunch break is the perfect time to tackle practice questions and reinforce the earlier topics.

How cool is this? If you studied in the morning and on your commute, by the time your lunch hour ends, you may have already logged 3-4 hours of quality GMAT study. As a result, you can go into the afternoon more relaxed and productive at work, knowing that you’ve already made great daily progress in your GMAT prep.

Strategy #7: Get Some Exercise After Work

Exercise has proven health benefits. In addition to being essential for the body, exercise is just as necessary for the brain. Exercise balances and recalibrates neurotransmitters such as dopamine. Without this adjustment, it’s easy to feel stressed and anxious. These emotions are never optimal for learning and growth. Furthermore, exercise substantially improves your ability to learn and process new information.

Since you know all this, get some exercise after work! Go for a run, take a long walk, hit the weights, or do some yoga. If you’re a multitasker, hit the elliptical or the treadmill at the gym and review your notes or flash cards during your workout — just be careful! Or, while you’re running, mentally review all the math formulas you have memorized. Evening exercise is a great way to destress, leave the day behind, and prepare for a productive evening of studying.

Strategy #8: Use the Evening to Reinforce Knowledge

Once you get home, study for another hour. Depending on your stamina, you may be a bit tired, so instead of starting a new topic, you can use this study session to reinforce what you’ve already learned. For example, if you studied ratio questions in the morning and reviewed them during lunch, the evening may be a good time to work through several high-value ratio practice questions. Once you get tired, stop studying and relax. It makes no sense to study when you’re too tired to retain information.

Strategy #9: Study While Waiting

We all have necessary appointments from time to time — the dentist, the doctor, renewing a driver’s licence. Unfortunately, these appointments usually involve waiting rooms. Not to worry! Grab a seat, open your laptop or your phone app, and use this time to study. Instead of reading magazines you’re not really interested in or mindlessly surfing the web, you’ll be making progress toward your GMAT goals. During brief waiting times, such as waiting to check out at the grocery store or waiting for your morning coffee to brew, you can review some quick facts or memorize a few formulas.

Strategy #10: Cut Out Unnecessary Stuff in Your Life

We all have different priorities in our lives. What is necessary for you may be unnecessary for me, or vice versa. However, we can’t change the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day, nor can we change the fact that proper sleep is critical to health and well-being. If we assume 8 hours of sleep a night, we have roughly 16 hours of awake time, which most likely won’t be enough for you to do everything you’d like to do.

So, before you begin your GMAT prep, it’s helpful to decide what is essential in your schedule and what you can put on hold until you’ve taken the GMAT. For example, dinners with friends, happy hours, ski trips, and movie nights are all enjoyable activities, but they’re time-consuming. Only you can decide, but perhaps sitting for two hours in a dark movie theater is not the way you want to spend your limited free time with your best friend.

In that case, decide in advance to avoid the movies until you’re done with the GMAT. On the other hand, perhaps you genuinely value having coffee for an hour with friends, so you meet regularly at your local cafe instead. The beauty is that you get to decide what is and is not worthy of your free time.

Once you decide what to keep in your schedule and what to place on a temporary hold, stick to your guns. If your spouse invites you to Paris for the week, although saying no will be hard, doing so might just be the best move for your GMAT prep. After all, a week in Paris here, a weekend in Cape Cod there, a few dozen late-night shots of tequila somewhere in the mix, and by the time you know it, you’re way behind in your GMAT prep.

It will help to let your close friends and family know that you’re preparing for the GMAT and that you’ll be limiting your engagements with them to those that are most meaningful. Let your spouse know that that trip to Paris will be a wonderful celebration once you earn a top GMAT score.

Keep in mind that the sacrifices you’re making are temporary, but a top GMAT score and a degree from a reputable business school are assets that pay dividends for a lifetime. A little sacrifice now will go a long way in the future.

Strategy #11: Form a GMAT Study Group

One great way to fit in quality time with the people important to you is to share common objectives, and then work together to meet those objectives. If you have friends or colleagues who are thinking about business school and preparing for the GMAT, convince them to begin preparing now. Then, form a study group in which you all meet a few nights per week to study together at a coffee shop or each other’s homes. This kind of group study is a great form of multitasking because it allows you to continue enjoying your all-important social network while preparing for the GMAT.

Strategy #12: Hit the Books Hard on Weekends

Get up early on Saturday morning (5 a.m., anyone?) and head to your local coffee shop. Grab a light breakfast and whatever else you need, and then spend the morning studying. You can cover new content areas, review old material you’ve worked on that week, and run through a bunch of practice questions. Study until lunchtime.

If you’ve studied hard on Saturday morning, reward yourself by doing something enjoyable in the evening. Then follow the same schedule on Sunday. If you’ve followed the GMAT study schedule I’ve laid out so far in this article, by Sunday night, you’ll have logged as many as 23 hours of quality GMAT study. Over a few months, that number can result in a substantial increase in your score. Always keep your eyes on the prize! These few months of commitment are an investment that will pay dividends throughout your career!

As your test date nears, you’ll want to spend some weekend time taking full-length practice tests. Focus for the entire test and simulate the test environment as much as you can (no cell phone, no calculator, no interruptions). Regardless of whether you’re using your free hours on the weekend to learn new material or sit for practice tests, you should take that time seriously, avoid distractions, and put in your full effort.

Strategy #13: Take Some Vacation Time

Although it would be considerably more enjoyable to spend two weeks in Positano sipping Aperol Spritz cocktails, one smart play to maximize your GMAT score is to take some time off from work to focus on studying full-time.

Many people decide to take a week off at the beginning of their GMAT prep to get a jump start on their studies. Without the responsibility of your job, you’ll find that you can really hammer your studies for a full 7 days. Although boot camp-type approaches to GMAT prep almost never work, you can absolutely invest more time each day in your GMAT studying. Yes, studying for long hours each day will begin to yield diminishing returns, but diminishing returns does not mean no returns. Unless you are just fried, you can obtain value from your study hours.

In fact, depending on your vacation time available, you could strategically space out another two weeks of full-time study, one in the middle of your prep and one near the end, close to your GMAT test date.

Strategy #14: Be Flexible With Your GMAT Study Schedule

During the GMAT prep process, it’s important to be flexible with yourself. Things are going to come up, and some weeks will be busier than others. For example, maybe you need to stay late at the office each night one week, or maybe your boss tasks you with a time-consuming project that has you working on Saturday and Sunday. The key is to expect in advance that you will have these lower-productivity GMAT prep weeks from time to time and not to let them derail your plan.

Remember, your success on the GMAT will be measured by what you do often, not what you do from time to time. So, as long as you’re adhering to your GMAT prep schedule most of the time, you need not worry about what happens from time to time.

Don’t get locked into an “all or nothing” mindset. The last thing you want is to become anxious that you’re not getting in enough GMAT prep during a given week. That anxiousness will make the time you do spend studying less effective.

Keep yourself on track and stay accountable to yourself and your goals, but be realistic and flexible, too.

Strategy #15: Start Your GMAT Prep Sooner Rather Than Later

Although the last thing that many people want to do right after college graduation is embark on the journey of preparing for the GMAT, doing just that can be a big help. People are still in full-time study mode right after college, and most people have far fewer work commitments at that time, allowing them to focus on their GMAT prep.

So, if you have the option, you might find that it makes sense for you to delay starting a job after college for some months, so that you can make GMAT prep your full-time priority. If you can take 5 or 6 months after graduation and earn a top GMAT score, you’ll be able to begin your first job with the satisfaction of knowing that you won’t have the stress of preparing for the GMAT while working full-time.

Just remember that GMAT scores are valid for 5 years, so plan accordingly.

Strategy #16: Leverage Time in Between Jobs

Often, people make career transitions around the time when they are preparing to apply to business school. If you find yourself switching jobs, you can leave yourself a month (or whatever amount of time you can get) in between jobs, so you can have some dedicated time for GMAT study. Talk with your new employer and request to begin your new job some weeks after leaving your prior job.

Strategy #17: Leverage Slow Work Periods

Many jobs have a cyclical nature to them. Perhaps your job is considerably less demanding in Q4 than it is Q1. In that case, it could make sense to plan your GMAT prep such that you do the bulk of your studying during Q4. Of course, doing so will take some advance planning, but it could help a lot.

Strategy #18: Have an Honest Conversation with Your Boss

Depending on your work situation and your relationship with your boss, you may consider having an honest discussion with him or her regarding your business school plans. You could explain that you’ll be preparing for the GMAT and seek to determine what types of flexibility he or she could provide to you for a few months.

Perhaps you could take some additional vacation time. Or maybe — especially if you’ve done exceptional work to date — your boss would reroute some of your lower priority tasks to other team members for a few weeks or months.

Only you know your unique situation at work, but talking with your boss about getting some enhanced flexibility might be a great move to help you better manage your GMAT prep.

Strategy #19: Reward Yourself

Let’s face it: GMAT studying will take up much of your time and energy each week. If you stick to a schedule, hopefully you will be studying for at least 18 hours each week. On top of a full-time job, that much studying certainly can take a toll. So, every so often, reward yourself for a good, consistent stretch of studying.

Perhaps for two weeks in a row, you have stuck to your GMAT study schedule by the letter of the law, studying every day, Sunday to Monday. After those two weeks, perhaps you could use a day off from studying. Use that day off to do something fun or relaxing. Meet up with some friends, go to dinner, go to the movies. Do anything that will give your head a rest from GMAT studying, so you can come back refreshed and ready to go the next day.

Strategy #20: Prepare with Accurate, Applicable, Efficient, and Effective Material

More than ever, test-takers preparing for the GMAT have a number of test prep resources and study guides available to them. However, not all of these GMAT resources are created equal.

The quality of your GMAT prep material matters! The materials you use while you study can be either assets or liabilities. So, do your due diligence on the courses and prep material you’re considering. See what other test-takers have said. Look at course reviews on sites such as Beat the GMAT and GMAT Club. Have a look at what people say on MBA Insights. Or, see what Redditors are saying about GMAT Quant prep courses, GMAT Verbal prep courses, and GMAT prep courses in general.

Your goal is to find a course that presents clear, practical, and actionable content in a way that makes sense to you, along with skills, strategies, and techniques for acing the exam.

If you’re looking for a top-rated GMAT prep course, sign up for a free trial of Target Test Prep’s GMAT Course, which is sure to be a game-changer for you. Whether you need to improve your GMAT score by 50 points or by 550 points, we’ve got you covered. Whether you’re completely new to the exam or whether you’ve been studying with limited success for some time is immaterial. Either way, Target Test Prep will provide you with the tools necessary to achieve an impressive GMAT score.

Now that you know how to study for the GMAT while working full-time, you may be interested in learning the best way to study for the GMAT.