How To Use Total GMAT Math

So you've bought yourself a copy of Total GMAT Math, and you're ready to boost your GMAT Quant score. That's great, but where do you start?

This is one of the most common questions I receive from students. It's understandable. Many textbooks and study plans are difficult to understand due to their complexity. It's reasonable to assume that Total GMAT Math is the same.

The answer, however, is simple. The book is arranged in chronological order. If you start at the beginning and work through it page by page, you will dramatically boost your GMAT Quant skills. Nothing complicated about that. Several practice questions accompany each section. When you get to the practice questions, do them! Check your answers, and if you've done well, move on. If you're still having problems, review the material from that chapter.

There are two reasons you might want to take an approach other than simply going page-by-page through the book.

First, if you are already doing well on GMAT Quant and you just need that extra edge, then much of the material in Total GMAT Math will be familiar to you. Still, I recommend giving each chapter a quick read for tips and tactics you may not be familiar with. But working through all the practice questions in, say, the Circles chapter may not be a good use of your time.

Second, if you don't have very much time before you take the exam, it may be simply impossible to work through the entire book. Total GMAT Math has dozens of chapters and several hundred practice questions--until some books on the market, you can't breeze through it in a weekend! In that case, try to identify (from previous tests, or other practice you've done) some areas where you really need to improve. The book is organized in chapters by content area, so it is easy to find Coordinate Geometry, Probability, Rates, or any other topic that troubles you.

Most of all, my book allows you to keep things simple. No need to waste your time trying to figure out how to study--you can focus 100% on the task at hand: improving your GMAT Quant score as much as possible.