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- GraceN541
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- Posts: 1
- Joined: Tue Mar 10, 2026 6:39 pm
Best way to prepare - 1 week of upcoming annual leave
Hi, I'm about to start the GMAT Live Online Course with Kaplan/Manhattan Prep (9 sessions). The week following the first session I will be taking 7 days of annual leave from work. Please could you advise how I should spend that week so I have some structure? Practice tests, watching videos, reading book materials?
- PaulFisher
- ManhattanGMAT Staff
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Wed Mar 11, 2015 5:27 am
- Location: Detroit, MI
Re: Best way to prepare - 1 week of upcoming annual leave
Hi, Grace!
It's nice to hear you'll be joining one of our Live Courses. We have a wealth of resources for you, and I am confident you'll get a lot out of it.
To answer your question, I want to first encourage you to reach out to your course instructor as well. They may have some really great ideas, and they might have some personalized recommendations for you after having you in class for Session 1.
In terms of "structure" for the homework, I think that what you'll find when you start clicking around in your student center is that all of the study tasks are organized pretty effectively around the live class sessions. So, the very first recommendation is to make sure you've worked through all of the assignments that are assigned prior to Session 1, and then once Session 1 is over, begin working through the assignments that are assinged between Session 1 and Session 2.
If you finish all of that and you have extra time on your hands, this would be a good time to work through the Foundations of Math material, especially if you think some of your math skills might be a little rusty. It is often the case that students need a refresher on the math concepts that they don't use pretty regularly in their current work. If you click on the Study Tools menu, under Practice Center, you'll see an item called "Diagnose Foundational Math Skills" (this is also assigned on the calendar). Take that Diagnostic to see where you're at. Take your time going through the Foundations of Math ebook (part of your Manhattan prep bookset on Vitalsource).
Another thing you could do is spend a little more time reviewing your first practice test. We don't assign a very thorough review for the first practice test because there are higher priorities (assigned in the homework) as you begin your prep. But if you have the time, you could go through the test and start trying to get a sense of where your good and bad habits are. Were there any questions you got wrong because you made an avoidable, careless mistake? Were there any questions you could have gotten right if you'd had more time at the end of the section? Were there any questions you spent too long on and still got wrong anyway?
In fact, you could combine those two suggestions above and review the Quant section of the practice test with the Foundations of Math ebook open in another window. Any time you get to a Quant problem that you struggled with because you didn't remember the content, look up that content in the ebook and see if you can use that to help you figure out the problem.
There are videos of the lessons from the course that you could watch as well. They are marked as "Optional" because they generally cover the same learning objectives that are covered in the Live Course. However, those recordings don't have the time constraint that we have in class, so they tend to be longer. If there are any of the lessons from Session 1 that you think you might want to take another look at, you could watch those videos.
I also think that you should take some time for yourself to relax and maybe catch up on some non-work, non-GMAT things that you've been struggling to get to, like seeing friends and family, etc. You have to be careful not to do so much GMAT work that you burn yourself out or begin to resent the test.
Let me know if this is helpful or if you'd like some more suggestions/you have more questions.
Best,
Paul (Manhattan Prep GMAT teacher)
It's nice to hear you'll be joining one of our Live Courses. We have a wealth of resources for you, and I am confident you'll get a lot out of it.
To answer your question, I want to first encourage you to reach out to your course instructor as well. They may have some really great ideas, and they might have some personalized recommendations for you after having you in class for Session 1.
In terms of "structure" for the homework, I think that what you'll find when you start clicking around in your student center is that all of the study tasks are organized pretty effectively around the live class sessions. So, the very first recommendation is to make sure you've worked through all of the assignments that are assigned prior to Session 1, and then once Session 1 is over, begin working through the assignments that are assinged between Session 1 and Session 2.
If you finish all of that and you have extra time on your hands, this would be a good time to work through the Foundations of Math material, especially if you think some of your math skills might be a little rusty. It is often the case that students need a refresher on the math concepts that they don't use pretty regularly in their current work. If you click on the Study Tools menu, under Practice Center, you'll see an item called "Diagnose Foundational Math Skills" (this is also assigned on the calendar). Take that Diagnostic to see where you're at. Take your time going through the Foundations of Math ebook (part of your Manhattan prep bookset on Vitalsource).
Another thing you could do is spend a little more time reviewing your first practice test. We don't assign a very thorough review for the first practice test because there are higher priorities (assigned in the homework) as you begin your prep. But if you have the time, you could go through the test and start trying to get a sense of where your good and bad habits are. Were there any questions you got wrong because you made an avoidable, careless mistake? Were there any questions you could have gotten right if you'd had more time at the end of the section? Were there any questions you spent too long on and still got wrong anyway?
In fact, you could combine those two suggestions above and review the Quant section of the practice test with the Foundations of Math ebook open in another window. Any time you get to a Quant problem that you struggled with because you didn't remember the content, look up that content in the ebook and see if you can use that to help you figure out the problem.
There are videos of the lessons from the course that you could watch as well. They are marked as "Optional" because they generally cover the same learning objectives that are covered in the Live Course. However, those recordings don't have the time constraint that we have in class, so they tend to be longer. If there are any of the lessons from Session 1 that you think you might want to take another look at, you could watch those videos.
I also think that you should take some time for yourself to relax and maybe catch up on some non-work, non-GMAT things that you've been struggling to get to, like seeing friends and family, etc. You have to be careful not to do so much GMAT work that you burn yourself out or begin to resent the test.
Let me know if this is helpful or if you'd like some more suggestions/you have more questions.
Best,
Paul (Manhattan Prep GMAT teacher)
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