GMAT Study Plan: The Best Way to Study for the GMAT

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Last Updated on October 6, 2023

Studying for the GMAT is a long and winding journey with many ups and downs, so it is absolutely essential to have a solid GMAT study plan in place to keep you from getting lost along the way. The fact is, the more comprehensive, well-thought-out, and realistic your GMAT study plan is, the more likely you are to reach your score goal — and stay on deadline.

In this article, I’ll give you a crash course in how to make a GMAT study plan, going step by step through all of the components that make up each of the two major phases of GMAT preparation in any thorough and effective GMAT study plan: the learning phase and the practice-test phase. 

First, let’s discuss exactly what those two phases are and why it’s important that you complete them in order.

• Your GMAT Study Plan: A Tale of Two Phases
• Using a Topic-by-Topic Framework
• Alternating Quant and Verbal Study
• Taking Notes as You Learn
• Studying Strategically with Flashcards
• Revisiting What You’ve Learned
• Reviewing Your Error Log
• Taking Full-Length Practice Tests

Your GMAT Study Plan: A Tale of Two Phases

Any truly comprehensive GMAT study plan should include two distinct phases. The first of those phases is the learning phase, in which you master GMAT content and develop your GMAT knowledge and skills. The second phase is the practice-test phase, in which you perfect all of your new knowledge and skills under realistic testing conditions. 

One of the most common errors I see when test-takers are trying to prepare for the GMAT is that they mix these two phases together, or jump into the second phase before the first, or skip the first phase altogether. Unfortunately, 99.9 times out of 100, those test-takers end up having to go back to the drawing board after earning disappointing GMAT scores on test day.

Unless you are already within a few points of your Quant section and Verbal section score goals when you take an initial practice test to get a baseline score, it’s really important that you don’t rely on quizzes and practice tests to guide your GMAT studies. If you do, you’re likely to be left with numerous gaps in your knowledge, so you’ll essentially be rolling the dice on what your score will be on test day.

Remember, on any given GMAT exam, you’re going to see only 31 Quant questions, 36 Verbal questions, and 12 Integrated Reasoning questions. However, there are hundreds of different concepts that could be tested in those GMAT sections. So, if you think you’ll be able to “catch” them all by just doing practice questions — even a large number of questions — chances are, you need to cast a wider net.

Think of GMAT practice as a way to refine your skills, not develop them from scratch. Practice questions don’t teach you the GMAT! They simply allow you to learn to apply the GMAT knowledge you’ve gained through dedicated study.

If you want to make sure that you are thoroughly prepared to knock the GMAT out of the park on test day, you’ll need a GMAT study plan in which you learn GMAT content first, and then refine your skills with ample practice. So, let’s talk about how to structure your learning in the first phase of your GMAT prep.

Using a Topic-by-Topic Framework

You’ve researched your target schools and figured out your score goal. You’ve taken your first full-length, official GMAT practice test under realistic testing conditions in order to determine how far you are from your goal. (If you haven’t completed these steps, check out this article on how to start studying for the GMAT.) You’re ready to start your GMAT prep!

For some test-takers, this is where the headache really begins. As I already mentioned, the range of Quant and Verbal concepts that GMAT questions cover is massive, and there is no way to know exactly which concepts will be tested on any one GMAT exam. So, simply diving into learning random GMAT concepts, with no order or logical progression to what you’re studying, is not a productive or efficient study method.

Take Sentence Correction in GMAT Verbal, for example. There are dozens of concepts to learn for Sentence Correction. The thing is, if you start trying to learn this or that SC topic in whatever random order, you’re going to end up wasting time and feeling frustrated because you haven’t built up the proper knowledge base to move successfully from one topic to the next. It doesn’t make sense, for example, to try to learn about modifiers before you’ve mastered sentence structure.

Similarly, if you pile topics on top of each other, trying to learn, say, how to answer Weaken the Argument questions and Inference questions in Critical Reasoning at the same time, you’re likely to experience a lack of progress on both question types.

The best way to ensure that you learn each GMAT topic thoroughly and don’t waste time trying to master advanced topics before you’ve solidified your foundational knowledge is by taking a linear, topic-by-topic approach to your GMAT prep. 

In other words, the framework of your GMAT study plan should be to learn one topic at a time, and then do numerous practice questions on just that topic. Using this approach, start with basic concepts and work your way up to more advanced ones.

For example, the TTP GMAT Study Plan starts students off with a chapter on essential GMAT quant skills such as multiplying and dividing fractions, simplifying calculations, reciprocals, and other foundational concepts. Each of those essential concepts is thoroughly explained in an individual lesson that then features a handful of questions on just that concept, so students can solidify each concept as they go.

Only after students finish all of the lessons in the essential skills chapter do they take a series of chapter tests featuring a mixture of realistic practice questions covering all of the lessons from that chapter and separated by difficulty level. Thus, they can complete all of the easy-level chapter tests first, then medium-level, and finally hard-level tests.

Along the way, TTP’s built-in error tracker logs their incorrect answers, so that they can return to the appropriate lesson to refresh their understanding of the concepts they missed before they move up to tests of greater difficulty. And only after they’ve reached their desired accuracy level on the tests associated with that chapter would they move on to the next chapter — in the case of the TTP Course, Linear and Quadratic Equations.

So, by the time TTP students get to GMAT topics such as Coordinate Geometry or Functions and Sequences, they are already well-schooled in all of the other concepts they may need to tackle questions on those topics. And the same goes for GMAT Verbal.

Although this may seem like a painstaking process, the truth is, using a comprehensive and methodical topic-by-topic structure for your GMAT study plan will actually save you time in the long run. Because there is so much content to master for the GMAT, in order to give yourself the best possible shot at earning a high score on the GMAT, you have to be ready for anything and everything that could be thrown your way on test day.

With a linear, detailed study plan that goes topic by topic, concept by concept, you’ll always know exactly what you’ve already studied and exactly what is left to study. Furthermore, if you learn each topic before you attempt to answer many practice questions on it, your GMAT practice becomes a tool for not only honing your skills but also confirming that you’ve actually learned all of the concepts you studied.  

Trust me, trying to find and fix your precise GMAT knowledge gaps can become like a game of whack-a-mole if you don’t have a highly structured and organized study plan to follow. If you learn GMAT concepts in bite-sized chunks and have a logical progression to your learning, you absorb the information more readily. And if you follow up your learning with ample practice on each topic individually, targeting your strengths and weaknesses becomes a much more manageable task.

Plus, if your foundational knowledge is already fairly strong, you’re likely to move through more basic topics relatively quickly. Just don’t make the mistake of completely skipping over “easier” topics (for example, subject-verb agreement in SC). The GMAT can come up with some pretty tricky ways to employ basic concepts. So, even if you need only a quick review of some of the more basic topics, that review could still be quite valuable come test day.

So, now that you have a basic framework for your GMAT study plan, let’s talk about some of the study strategies you should employ as you learn each new GMAT topic.

Alternating Quant and Verbal Study

While some separation of Quant and Verbal study in your GMAT prep is a good idea (for all the reasons we just discussed), I do not recommend studying GMAT sections in completely different stages of your preparation timeline. For instance, I would never recommend that a test-taker study all of GMAT Quant for the first 2 months of her GMAT prep, and then study all of GMAT Verbal for the next 2 months.

For one, by month 4, when perhaps this test-taker who studies every section separately would be starting some dedicated study of Integrated Reasoning, many of the Quant concepts the test-taker learned in month 1 and even month 2 would be forgotten. And in fact, many of those Quant concepts would be necessary to successfully tackle Integrated Reasoning questions.

While we don’t want to let so much time pass that we forget what we learned, it is wise to give our brains a little “breather” when we’re tackling such a large volume of concepts in a particular subject. Imagine if being a math major in college meant attending nothing but math classes for an entire semester. That might get pretty draining, right? Even if you love math, studying math and only math for hours every day, for weeks at a time, can be a recipe for boredom, restlessness, and waning motivation. Moreover, your brain may start to feel overwhelmed by the flood of information.

So, within your study plan framework of learning one topic at a time, it’s smart to alternate Quant and Verbal topics. For example, let’s say a student using the TTP course spent 7 to 12 days working through our Quant chapter on Roots and Exponents — so, all of the lessons and chapter tests. At that point, his study plan would direct him to the Verbal chapter on Parallelism. After spending, say, 4 to 6 days working through the Parallelism lessons and chapter tests, he would then move on to the Quant chapter on Inequalities and Absolute Values. He would continue along this path, alternating between Quant and Verbal and taking the various amounts of time he needed to complete the different chapters, until he mastered all GMAT content.

By learning in this way, students have sufficient time and space to process what they’ve learned while keeping their GMAT prep moving at a steady clip. Furthermore, they are more likely to stay engaged and interested in what they’re learning and keep the study process from becoming stale. After all, when a process becomes monotonous, we tend to zone out, and new information washes over us instead of sticking in our brains.

Additionally, at the end of your GMAT preparation, you’ll want to start incorporating Integrated Reasoning practice into your studies, and you’ll need solid skills in both Quant and Verbal to master IR questions.

So, make sure that your GMAT study plan allows you to alternate between learning Quant and Verbal topics, so that you’re building your knowledge and skills in both sections as you go.

Taking Notes as You Learn

Another study strategy that is crucial to the learning phase of your GMAT study plan is taking notes as you learn new content. Taking notes is a key way to make your studying more effective because you are forced to be a more active participant in your learning. The simple act of writing down a concept or principle in your own words makes you think more about the meaning of that concept. And the more you have to think about what you are learning, the better your learning will be.

On the other hand, simply reading math formulas or watching videos on grammar rules is too passive an activity for most students to reliably and completely absorb the information. So, when you read a lesson or watch a video, engage your brain by taking meaningful notes on the key information presented. You can even color-code your notes by, for example, writing a particular formula in red, showing an example in blue, and note any special cautions or issues in green. Make the notes your own.

In addition to helping you retain more knowledge, taking notes will give you something to review at a later date, creating the opportunity for repetition of learning, another important strategy that we’ll discuss shortly.

For now, let’s discuss another important aspect of note-taking: creating flashcards.

Studying Strategically with Flashcards

Creating and strategically studying flashcards on important or difficult concepts is a great way to maximize the efficiency of your GMAT study plan. Pulling key concepts from your notes in order to create flashcards gives you yet another opportunity to think about the material you’ve learned and put the information in your own words, two actions that we know help in knowledge retention.

Furthermore, you can study your flashcards just about anywhere, anytime. If you commute to and from work on public transportation, you can use that time to review your flashcards. If you’re standing in line at the supermarket, whip out your flashcards and give yourself a 2-minute quiz. You’ll probably find that there are many opportunities to fit in “quick-hit” study sessions with flashcards throughout your day, and trust me, they add up! Five minutes here, 10 minutes there — before you know it, you’ve added an extra 20 minutes to your daily study time. Over the course of a week, that would amount to 2 hours and 20 minutes of “extra” GMAT studying. Not bad, huh?

Some students use “old-fashioned” paper flashcards, while others prefer the digital version. Whichever format you choose, just be sure to flip through your flashcards as often as you can. To create an added challenge for yourself, shuffle the deck before each use. By reordering the cards each time you review them, your brain will have to work a bit harder to recall the material, and your retention will increase.

As you progress through more GMAT lessons, the number of flash cards you’re using will grow substantially. So, to help keep your flashcard study efficient, separate your cards into two piles: one pile for concepts you’ve mastered and another pile for concepts you haven’t mastered. Clearly, you’ll want to flip through the “not mastered” pile more frequently than the “mastered” pile. However, as we’ll discuss next, you won’t want to leave previously learned topics behind completely.

Revisiting What You’ve Learned

As you progress through the learning phase of your GMAT study plan, it is essential that you regularly and systematically revisit GMAT topics that you’ve already learned. As we’ve already discussed, you don’t want to move so far beyond a topic that you begin to forget the material. Since there is just so much material to learn for the GMAT, if you don’t periodically review past topics, you run the risk of losing some of that knowledge as you learn new things.

Think about learning a foreign language: even if you become fluent, if you don’t regularly hear that language spoken and speak the language yourself, it doesn’t take very long to start forgetting words. The same concept can be applied to the GMAT. So, just as you wouldn’t want to study for the GMAT, and then wait 6 months to actually take the exam, it doesn’t make sense to study a topic just once and expect to remember everything about it during an exam weeks or months later.

So, in addition to fitting in flashcard review whenever you can to refresh and solidify key concepts, you should incorporate periodic quizzing and review of questions on previously learned topics into your GMAT study plan. By doing so, you can determine whether you have forgotten any vital information or developed any weaknesses as you’ve moved on to new topics.

For example, in the TTP course, when a student moves on to their next Quant or Verbal chapter, before they even see that chapter, they start with a review quiz featuring 10 questions related to many of the previous chapters they covered. These quizzes give students a small but important opportunity to refresh the concepts they’ve learned so far on a regular basis. Thus, those concepts are less likely to get lost as new knowledge is acquired. Furthermore, those concepts are then “at the top of their brains” as they’re learning more advanced concepts that build on their prior knowledge.

Periodic review quizzes also give students the opportunity to regularly test their ability to apply what they’ve learned in mixed problem sets like those they will encounter on the actual GMAT. However, these sets are formed strategically, not randomly — a key point. TTP students never waste time on mixed problem sets that involve concepts they haven’t yet studied, and they also never go too long without seeing a past topic again.

For example, if a student completes the Number Properties chapter on day 15 of her prep, she’s not going to wait until day 75 to encounter a Number Properties question again. That sort of gap in her learning would probably result in a fair amount of knowledge loss. Instead, she may encounter Number Properties again on day 20, day 24, day 35, and so on.

Furthermore, students don’t actually move on to the next Quant or Verbal chapter unless they hit a certain percentage of accuracy on their review quiz, so they can be sure that they’ve truly mastered each topic before they attempt to learn more advanced material. And as they progress through the course and become more skilled at answering GMAT questions, they complete these review quizzes under increasingly challenging time constraints. That way, they methodically work up to answering questions at the pace required by the exam, rather than prematurely focusing on speed before they’ve honed their accuracy.

In addition to completing short review quizzes before each new chapter, as students get further into the course, they begin to take longer review tests that cover topics from the preceding few chapters. The great thing about those tests is that they are the same length as the section they correspond to on the GMAT. So, every Quant review test, for example, features 31 questions, just like the Quant section of the actual GMAT exam. And again, depending on how far along the student is the course, different per-question time constraints are recommended. Thus, students get both strategic review of previously learned topics and ample, realistic training for test day.

The human brain is not designed to remember everything. In fact, it’s not designed to remember most things. Imagine how overwhelming and exhausting it would be to remember everything we saw, heard, tasted, smelled, and felt each day. The things we remember most easily are the things our brain thinks we’ll need. So, if we use certain information repeatedly, we train our brains to recognize that we need it, and thus we’re more likely to remember it.

There is another critical aspect of periodic review of past topics that should be part of any comprehensive GMAT study plan: reviewing your error log. Let’s talk about that next.

Reviewing Your Error Log

As part of a comprehensive GMAT study plan, you should be tracking the GMAT practice questions you answer incorrectly and the specific reasons why you answered those questions incorrectly. However, simply tracking your errors and looking over them randomly is not an effective way to prevent yourself from making the same mistakes again in the future.

Instead, I generally recommend to my students that they spend some time going through their error log once a week. Additionally, I advise that students not only re-read the solutions to the questions they answered incorrectly, but also go back to their study materials or notes to review the lessons covering any concepts that tripped them up.

Weekly review of your error log ensures that you correct mistakes and close knowledge gaps in a timely fashion, so that you can feel confident in your mastery of a topic before you move on to a new one — and so bad habits don’t become ingrained.

Furthermore, a weekly “check-in” with your error log also ensures that you’re never faced with an unwieldy list of questions and concepts to revisit at any one time. Imagine if you were to go through 3 months of GMAT learning and practice before you reviewed your error log; you’d have quite a task ahead of you. In fact, as you continue to complete more and more practice questions, and your error log continues to grow (a major reason why I don’t recommend manually tracking errors), the task might start to seem overwhelming, like something you shouldn’t even bother with …

The point is, as important as it is to test yourself on what you’ve learned, you limit the benefit of practice sessions if you don’t regularly work on correcting your mistakes. So, make sure your GMAT study plan leaves time for error review on a weekly basis.

So, you learned each GMAT topic fully, practiced each topic individually, reviewed past topics in mixed sets and regularly reviewed and corrected your errors. The learning phase of your GMAT prep is complete, and it’s time to start the second (and final) phase of a solid GMAT study plan: taking full-length practice tests.

Taking Full-Length Practice Tests

In the final phase of your GMAT prep, you should take the remaining 5 full-length, official GMAT practice tests available at mba.com. I say 5 remaining because, as I mentioned earlier, before you even begin your GMAT prep, you should sit for a “diagnostic test” in order to determine your baseline GMAT score. For that initial test, you should use the first of the 6 official practice tests on mba.com.

You will use these 5 remaining exams to get accustomed to the test-taking experience, build your stamina, put the finishing touches on your pacing and other test-taking strategies, see whether you are able to hiit your score goal, and uncover any lingering weak areas. This last point is key: your GMAT study plan should leave time between each practice test for you to thoroughly review all of your incorrect answers and return to your study materials or notes to brush up on any concepts you missed.

So, you don’t want to put yourself in a situation in which you’re doing all 5 practice tests in the same week. Ideally, you would be able to space out your practice tests so that you can take 1 per week, and complete them all by the week before your GMAT. That way, you’ll have time between each practice test to review and correct your mistakes, plus a couple of days to take it easy before your next test. In the week leading up to your GMAT, instead of risking burnout by taking full-length tests right before your actual exam, you’ll stick to light review and practice, and do some relaxing, non-GMAT-related activities, so your mind is fresh on test day.

Of course, if you find that you’re not hitting your score goal on your full-length practice tests, you may need to consider whether you need more time to study for the GMAT. Every student learns and develops skills at a different pace, so there is no “standard” amount of time in which you can expect to complete your GMAT prep. Obviously, the farther your baseline score is from your score goal, the more time you’re likely to need to properly prepare for the GMAT.

If you’re wondering how long your test prep may take, this article on determining your ideal GMAT preparation time can help. Looking for tips on how to earn an impressive GMAT score? Check out this guide to scoring 700+.