2 weeks left and scoring in the low 600s practice tests

[Scott.Wachs]

Hi everyone,
I'm at the point that I feel I know the material pretty well. My verbal scores are low to mid 30's and my math scores range from high 30's to low 40's. I was scoring this well prior to my first Gmat experience and completely bombed the verbal part. I scored lower than I ever did even on a practice test but my math was average. It was in the low 40s. At this point I'm taking a practice test every other day so timing isn't an issue and in between studying topics that I need to brush up on. A few questions.....

1) I notice that my reading comprehension is the part that is lowest on my verbal score. I hardly ever get the level 700 correctly. What are some good strategies to practice reading comprehension?

Here are my breakdowns of reading comprehension by strategy (Based on 2 Tests, 36 33)
Inference 50%
Specific Detail 38%
Main Idea 40%
Passage Structure 100%
Tone 50%

Level 500-600 60%
Level 600-700 58%
Level 700-800% 14%

2) With two weeks left to go what should I be doing in general to study math? Am I going over concepts or doing problems? Or some combination of both?

Here are the concepts that I am scoring below 50% on (Based on 3 tests 38, 40, 41)
Overlapping Sets 25%
VIC 25%
Polygons 25%
Triangles and Diagonals 33%
Lines and Angles 0%
Odds and Evens 33%
Consecutive Integers 0%
Exponents and Roots 17%
Percents 43%

I understand that Geometry is a big issue with the math. Where else should I focus my attention? Thanks!

[StaceyKoprince]

You don't mention your goal score. First, are you taking your practice tests under full official conditions, including essays? (If not, your practice scores might be inflated). Second, assuming your practice tests are under official conditions, are your scores in the range of what you want to score on the official test? If not, then you may want to postpone the test.

I'm taking a practice test every other day

Please, please, please don't do this. CAT exams are really good for (a) figuring out where you're scoring right now, (b) practicing stamina, and (c) analyzing your strengths and weaknesses. The actual act of just taking the exam is NOT so useful for improving. It's what you do with the test results / between tests that helps you to improve.

Every time you study a problem, there are a number of things to analyze; take a look at this article:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/10/09/how-to-analyze-a-practice-problem

There are a bunch of additional links to articles about how to study specific types of practice problems in this article:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/03/22/the-best-of-beat-the-gmat-mgmat-how-to-study-list

For RC, how have you been studying so far? Can you give me data on your timing? How long do you tend to spend on the first question for a passage (which includes time for your initial readthrough)? How long do you tend to spend on the later questions?

I will say that RC is probably the hardest area to improve in a short period of time, unfortunately.

On quant, again, can you give me any data on timing? I want to make sure that you didn't, for example, get a certain category of things wrong because those questions happened to be towards the end and you were running out of time and rushing or something like that. In general, the most frequently tested areas on your list are Number Properties, then Percents and VIC, then geometry, then sets.

You may want to take a look at this article in order to dig a little bit deeper into your test analysis (including timing):
http://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/09/23/evaluating-your-practice-tests

I guess my primary questions right now are: Did you take your practice tests under official conditions (essays, no use of pause button, regulation-length breaks, no question repeats, etc)? If so, does your goal score match what you've been doing lately on those practice tests?

[Scott.Wachs]

Hi Stacey,
Thanks so much for the speedy response. Ok I am looking at a score of 660+ anything else is gravy. I have taken all of my exams under exam circumstances. The only slight difference is my exam is schedule for noon and I have taken my exams between noon and 1pm. I've taken 8 minutes breaks between the 2 essays and the math section as well as an 8 minute break between the math and the verbal section.

For the reading comprehension I spend an average of 2-3 minutes for the first question. Timing with the verbal section has never been an issue. I tend to end with roughly 8-10 minutes remaining every time.

For the math section there is a small issue with timing which is why I decided to take multiple tests to improve my timing. So far it has helped a lot but my overall score is staying around the same. For example I scored a 40 on the 2nd test but I bombed the last 7 questions. I missed the first 6th and didn't even get an answer in on the last question. This is what I want to avoid on test day.

Is it realistic to jump 40 points on test day? I have taken the exam once before and like I said scored a low 40 on test day in math but completed bombed the verbal. I felt that the issue was stamina not knowledge because my scores were all in the low to mid 600s. I plan on retaking the exam 6 weeks after this exam on april 10th if things don't go my way. Thanks for all your help!

[StaceyKoprince]

Okay, it's great that you were doing tests under official conditions. That will definitely have helped you with the stamina thing.

Probably the primary reason your quant score isn't improving is the timing problem - you got 6 questions in a row wrong plus you left the last one blank. The penalty for a blank question is about 3 percentile points, and the penalty for 4+ questions in a row wrong, typically works out to about 2 to 2.5 percentile points per question. So it's not (necessarily) that you haven't gotten better at answering the questions - but you're bringing your score down at the end by messing up the timing.

Think of this as a tennis match, not a test. You're going to win some points and the other guy is going to win some points; you're not going to win them all, right? Your goal is to put yourself into position to win the LAST point. Translated, that means you have to put yourself in position to answer the last question - you have to have time to address it. Otherwise, you've lost the last point, and by extension the match. When the other guy hits a winner, don't go running after it so fast that you hit the fence and injure yourself, thereby hurting your chances on the later points. (Translation: don't go way over when the problem is too hard.)

No matter how good you get, the test will ALWAYS give you stuff that's too hard, and you will ALWAYS have to guess on something like 5 to 7 questions in each section.  You don't want to be forced into making those guesses in a row at the end of the section, so choose the 5-7 hardest questions AS YOU SEE THEM throughout the section.  Remind yourself that you CANNOT get to the point where you can answer everything given to you in 2 min - that's just not how the test works.  You have to let those go. Remember the tennis analogy. :)

Here are the general timing benchmarks for quant:
Q10: 55 min left
Q20: 35 min left
Q30: 15 min left

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. DO NOT WAIT until the end of the test. (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!)

Now, if you can somehow internalize this very, very quickly, then yeah, 40 points might be possible, given the serious penalty that resulted from what you described on test 2. I would say it's not super likely - it typically takes longer than a couple of weeks to fix these kinds of timing problems - but anything's possible.

Try to learn about how long one minute is without looking at a watch or stopwatch. 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.

Also? SLOW DOWN on verbal! If you finish more than 5 minutes before the section is over and you're NOT scoring in the 99th percentile, then it is probable that you're leaving some points on the table just due to speed. Identify where you tend to make the most careless mistakes on verbal, and slow down on those types of questions. Double-check your thinking. Be able to put your finger on the proof that a choice is right or wrong. That sort of thing.

[Scott.Wachs]

Hi Stacey,
Thanks so much for your response. Specifically what to do when you are behind by 2 minutes or more. I will try to use that strategy if I have any issues on my timing during any of the sections. I took one more practice exam since your post and I posted a 660. 43 Math 37 Verbal. The verbal score was actually the highest I have ever scored so that really gave me confidence. My math score again went up in comparison to my past 3 scores. Few things that I noticed on my math score. This is based on the level of difficulty per each question.

43
PS DS
300-500 2/5 300-500 3/3 5/8
500-600 4/5 500-600 4/4 8/9
600-700 4/12 600-700 3/6 7/18
700-800 0/2 700-800 0/0 0/2

41
300-500 2/3 300-500 3/3 5/6
500-600 5/7 500-600 2/2 7/9
600-700 3/7 600-700 2/7 5/14
700-800 2/5 700-800 0/1 2/6

40
300-500 0/1 300-500 1/1 1/2
500-600 1/3 500-600 2/3 3/6
600-700 4/9 600-700 7/8 11/17
700-800 2/9 700-800 0/3 2/12

This is the first time that I have ever not even gotten up to the 700-800 level questions in the data sufficiency questions. However, I got the highest quant score out of my last 3 exams. Is that normal? Another thing I noticed is my weakness is word problems. I'm up to Chapter 7 in book 4 for the second time going through the book. Should I focus on the advanced chapters of the remaining books? What do you suggest I study for the remaining 7 days on Quant.

On verbal I slowed down a lot. I spent a lot more time on the Reading Comprehension passages. I took an extra two minutes on each passage. This time I finished the verbal section with seconds to spare. I had about 2 minutes to finish the last problem which was sentence correction.

My breakdown's for each verbal section by difficulty is as follows
Critical Reasoning
300-500 100%
500-600 80%
600-700 73%
700-800 40%

The only category that I score lower than 63% correct is mimic the argument. Out of 5 questions I got the 2 600-700 correct and 3 700-800 wrong

Reading Comprehension
500-600 67%
600-700 50%
700-800 31%

Out of the the 5 categories Inference is 45, and main idea is 43% the other 3 are all 50%

Sentence Correction
500-600 100%
600-700 82%
700-800 43%

Idioms I scored 0% out of 6 questions which were all 700-800 difficulty
Verbs I scored 40% out 5 questions which were a mix of 600-700 and 700-800.

What do you suggest I study in the verbal section for my final 7 days? At this point I read and take notes on 1 chapter a day and do 14 questions in sentence correction and critical reasoning. I haven't gotten to the advanced sentence correction chapters yet.

I know this is a really long post but your feedback has been excellent so far so i wanted to give you as much detail as I could possibly provide. Thanks in advance.

[StaceyKoprince]

For a quant score in the low 40s, yes, it's the case that you might not have many 700+ questions. Before, you were likely spending some extra time to get some of those right, then you'd get harder ones, then you'd lose time, then you'd run out of time... and you saw what would happen to your score. It's actually better to have steady performance across, letting go of the harder questions (and, therefore, not getting even harder ones), so that you don't lose out on the ones that you really can do.

The thing that's concerning me a lot more is that you're leaving points on the table on the sub-500 level problems. Given the harder problems that you're getting right, you should be at or close to 100% on the 300-500s, but you got 3 of those wrong on your last test.

Why? Careless mistakes? Something you just didn't know? Missing a 700+ question isn't going to prevent you from hitting your goal score, but missing a sub-500 problem might (if you miss enough of them, anyway!).

At this point, everything should be about review of what you already know. If you have already studied some advanced chapters, then review those chapters, but don't start new chapters 7 days before. You've got a LOT of material to review and you need to make sure that you know how to deal with everything that you already know. Use your results on recent work to drive your review. (eg, you noticed a weakness with word problems, so you're reviewing those.)

On verbal, CR is great; just keep up your skills. Sounds like RC main idea and inference could use some review and practice. Re: grammar, I'm more concerned about the sub-700 level questions. Idiom 700+ questions are nice if you get them but don't worry too much about missing them. Again, use your specific errors here to drive what you review. WHY did you get that verb 600-700 question wrong? Go back to the relevant part of the relevant chapter, learn the material, do some more practice with it, etc.