1 week til I sit for the GMAT...HELP!

[katew30]

I take the GMAT Thursday 3/25 and I am very frustrated as I watch my score decline! At one point I had a 640 (toward end of my 9 week class in dec) and then took a few weeks off traveling over the holidays. I then picked back up to finish all OG problems and then on to tackle the advanced material - which took forever. This last month has been targeting weaknesses on pratice tests and reviewing Strat guides and OG problems in those areas. The only problem is my score went from 640 to 620 to 610 to 600 as I finished up my Manhatten Practice tests. I moved on to the MBA.com practice tests and scored 620, I have one more left to take tonight and then the week count down starts. Any words of wisdom? I feel like I keep getting different things wrong in the diffeerent sections, math i score well and then verbal I score well but not on math and cant figure out what is going on with me. I feel like I've exhausted the materials that I ahve. There may not be a solution to this time frame, but any advise would help on how to deal with the next 7 days and what to do after test day if my scores turn out like they ahev been. I am aiming for a top school and I know I'm capable of better than a 640. Thanks!

Kate

[StaceyKoprince]

I'm sorry the exam is causing so much frustration for you!

First, overall, you may want to decide to postpone your test. If you really don't feel confident and you're feeling burned out (which it sounds like you are), then you may want to wait until you can get yourself into a more positive mindset. That's hard to do in just a few days (though I think you can do it given more time!).

Second, we need to figure out what's going on with your scores. Let's start here:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/09/23/evaluating-your-practice-tests

This article will help you diagnose your strengths and weaknesses more carefully. You might want to do this for your last couple of tests to try to figure out what's going on with the variability in performance that you're describing.

You may also want to try the below article. This article is targeted at people who've seen a 70+ point drop, but there may still be things in here that can help you with the variability issue again:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/10/26/my-score-dropped-figuring-out-what-went-wrong

Do the analysis described in the articles, then come back and post here. With the data, we can figure out how best to move forward.

I will reiterate what I said at the top - a week before, your mindset should be "My last practice test score was what I want to score on the real test. I feel prepared. I feel mentally alert. I'm ready to go!" If this isn't your mindset, then the test could be a pretty rough experience, and then you'll have to deal with that as you get ready to take the test again, which makes the whole thing harder.

Unfortunately, we're within 7 days, which means you would have to forfeit the whole $250 test fee - but it's just money. It's okay to say, "Nope! I can see that I need a little more time. I'm going to wait."

[katew30]

Thank you for the words of wisdom! At this point I'm going to try and soldier on because something tells me it could be just stress and I could take more steps to calm myself by Thursday, but maybe sharing this data will change my mind. I think I wil reasses when I hear back.

As for my last 3 tests...
Latest test- 600- 43 quant, 31 verbal
1.My 1st prob took me 10 mins, awful I know, but got it right, no streams of 4+ in a row wrong
2.7 of last 10 problems were under 30 sec and 5 of them wrong
3.My "way too slow" quant were 5 wrong, 5 right usually 2-4 min time range with the wrong answers in a variety of areas, no trends accept for most of them PS not DS. My "way to fast" 5 wrong, 6 right mostly 600-700 range again across the board topic wise for the wrong ones
The "way too slow" verbal was 3 incorrect problems one RC, 2 CR. The "way to fast" verbal was 5 incorrect all RC, 12 correct
4.The 5 Buckets 1)DS 53%, SC 73%, CR 57% 2)NA 3) NA 4)PS 50%(3 min avg) 5)RC 25%

My 2nd to last test- 610 Quant-44 Verbal-31
1. 1st prob took 5:30 but got it correct, 1 stream of 4 wrong- no timing issues
2.only the last 2 problems were rushed
3.My "way too slow" for Quant 4 were incorrect PS and across the board topic wise, 0 correct. My "way too fast" quant 1 incorrect, 5 correct. My "way too slow" verbal was 3 incorrect but RC, i correct SC. My "way to fast" verbal was 4 wrong SC and 3 correct.
4. Buckets 1)PS 59%, CR 50%, RC 58% 2)DS 47%, SC 40% 3)NA 4)NA 5)NA


My 3rd to last test was 620 Quant-39 Verbal-35
1.1st prob correct in 1:39, 1 stream of 4 in a row wrong w/ 3rd and 4th taking 4 mins
2. 5 of the last 10 problems were done under 1 min, only 2 were correct
3."way too slow" quant were 4 incorrect (avg 4.5 mins) across the board, 3 correct only trend is exponents taking too long. "way too fast" quant 5 wrong across the board, 5 correct across the board subject wise. "way too slow" verbal were 4 wrong mostly RC, 1 correct RC prob. "way to fast" verbal was 2 wrong and 8 right mix of SC CR and RC.
4. Buckets 1)DS 67%, SC 60%, CR 50%, RC 67% 2)NA 3)NA 4) PS 41% 5) NA

So sorry for the mouth full, but I'm not really seeing many trends accept if I perform the 5 bucket analysis on types of quant problems consistently bucket 1) is WT, Geom 2) blank 3)NP 4)FDPs 5) Algebra

Any analysis or observations you can provide, I am all ears. I can not target exactly what my problem areas are or what exactly to do. I'm seeing my slowness on problem solving and specific quant areas. I notice that my timing is getting worse and can't tell if this is due to stress as I approach the test. Also is it possible for you to view my ManahttenGMAT practice tests on my student profile? Let me know if I need to clarify anything here. I tried to stick to the format of the 1st article. I didn't feel as though the 2nd article spoke to my situation.
Thanks again for all of your help!

Kate

[StaceyKoprince]

Okay, let's see:

My 1st prob took me 10 mins, awful I know, but got it right

There's no good news here, so don't even have the mindset "but I got it right." It wasn't worth it, because look what it cost you in the end.

Trends:
1) You tend to get sucked into PS, at the expense of end-of-test questions. You may want to look at the individual problems to see what they might have in common that doesn't correspond to the category labels. Were there a lot of long, wordy problems? Maybe the problems were testing more obscure rules or concepts that you didn't know as well? Maybe they tended to be "pure theory" problems? And so on. If you can identify any common characteristics, then you'll know to be on guard when you see similar problems in future. Also, you really need to fix the timing problem - that basically means your capability is higher than your score, but your score will not reflect that unless / until you fix the timing problem. More on that later.

2) Similar issues on verbal with sometimes spending too much time - and look at the numbers. You almost always get them wrong when you go way over, so stop doing that right now. Might as well get them wrong faster! You had a lot of too-fast+incorrect RCs on the last test and ditto SCs on the test before. Make yourself find the proof in the passage for RC and make yourself be able to point to what's wrong with every wrong answer choice for SC and RC. You should literally be able to lift up your finger, touch a word on the screen, and think, "This is what makes this one wrong." You're often getting away with working pretty quickly on the verbal (eg 12 correct "way too fast" Qs on the last test), but not always - it's not worth it if you're getting that many wrong just due to speed.

The timing issues are definitely costing you points - you could score higher if you fix these. If this doesn't get fixed, then getting better at specific content doesn't matter as much at this point - this is affecting you across the board.

Unfortunately, because we can't have a per-question stopwatch during the test, it typically takes some time to "train your brain" to know when to cut a problem off - usually at least a few weeks. If you're going to take it as planned, you should still do your best to cut yourself off. (And don't think about whether you might get it right! That one 10-min right answer cost you many questions later in the test and that hurt your score far more than getting that one wrong would have.)

Here's how to train yourself (though, again, this typically takes a few weeks):

If you don't have one already, buy yourself a stopwatch with lap timing capability. When you go to do a set of problems, start the stopwatch but turn it over so you can't see the time. Every time you think one minute has gone by, push the lap button. When you're done, see how good you were - and whether you tend to over or underestimate. Get yourself to the point where you're within 15 seconds either way on a regular basis (that is, you can generally predict between 45 sec and 1min 15 sec). Note: at the same time that you are using the stopwatch to time this "1-minute" thing, also use the OG Stopwatch (in your student center) to track the total time spent on each question.

Now, how do you use that when doing problems? If you're not on track by one minute*, make an educated guess and move on. (The general idea is that if you're not on track by the halfway mark, you're unlikely to figure out what's holding you back AND have time to do the whole problem in the 1 min you have left.)

* For SC, 1min is well beyond the half-way mark (we're supposed to average about 1m15s here), but you can almost always eliminate at least some choices on SC in that timeframe. Once you've got that "I'm around the 1min mark and I'm struggling" feeling, go through any remaining choices ONCE more. Pick one. Move on.

Next, here are the general timing benchmarks for each section:

Quant:
Q10: 55 min left
Q20: 35 min left
Q30: 15 min left
Verbal:
This is trickier because it partially depends upon where the 3 or 4 RC passages begin. The below assumes that one new passage starts within each quarter of the test (Q1-10, Q11-20, Q21-30, Q31-41).
Q10: 56 min left
Q20: 37 min left
Q30: 19 min left

You may have to adjust the above if the passages don't start in the way described above. For instance, if by the time you get to Q10, you've actually had 2 passages start, not just one, then you should expect to have fewer minutes left - maybe 53 instead of 56. If, on the other hand, you get to Q10 and you've had no passages start, then you should expect to have more - maybe 59 left. Every time a new passage starts, I keep track with a tick mark on the first page of my scrap paper. If you're worried about losing that or having to flip back to find the tick marks, then keep track on your hand - maybe with dots, so that you don't have as much skin to scrub later. :)

Next, what do you do if you discover that you're behind? Here's the basic rule: as soon as I discover that I'm more than 2m behind (or ahead), I do something about it immediately. (Less than 2m ahead or behind isn't a huge problem.) If I'm behind, the next time I see a question that seems extra hard within the first 15-20 seconds, I pick a random answer immediately and move on. If I'm still behind, I do that again the next time I see something extra hard (even if it's the very next one).

(Note: that's because, the first time you do it, you're probably going to get that question wrong, in which case there's a good chance you'll be able to do the next one. If you happen to get very lucky and get it right, then maybe you won't be able to do the next one - after all, the first one was already extra hard - so it doesn't hurt to skip the second one because you got lucky on the first one!)

Once you fix this, you could then worry about what other content areas you want to improve - but, right now, you can't even entirely tell what to improve in terms of content because you're underperforming due to the timing.

You don't mention what you'd like to score on the real test. Given this data, and a test date less than a week away, I think you should expect to score about what you've been scoring on practice tests. There's also the danger that you'll mess up the timing even more on the real test (stress has a way of causing that to happen) and your score could be even lower. If you really want a score that's higher than these practice test scores, then I would counsel you to postpone.