2 weeks left!! Debrief thus far, need advice, Q42V29/31

[erinbethke]

I am two weeks away from my exam and wanted to know if the MGMAT offers any services to get advice/strategy for my last two weeks based on my performance thus far. I did a post assessment around Dec 2011 but didn't begin studying again until Feb 2012. Below is debrief of my recent performance with some questions. My goal is a 650-680. Please let me know if someone would be available to advise. Thanks!

I hit quant hard and revisited the MGMAT guide books. In the last week and a half I took 2 MGMAT CAT Exam. My score for the first exam was 630(Q44;V32) and just finished a second exam over the weekend 580(Q42;V29) (for the first CAT exam, I took the quant and verbal in separate sittings; the second exam I took a full length test including AWA). I am happy that my quant has improved substantial since the first exam but it is apparent that I still need to work on Verbal (I dont feel like its an understanding of content but more so timing).
A debrief of my last CAT exam:

Quant:
I am pretty good with quickly identifying questions that I don't know and need to guess on and move on. I finished the exam with 16 minutes left and scored a 42. This is pretty good news because after reviewing the exam in depth I found that I was making two types of mistakes- about 7 were simple mistakes that can be corrected I think by better allocating my time to quickly recheck. The other 8 were on 600-700/700-800 level questions and were a lack of missing the final computation step to get to the right answer. Please let me know if you have a better suggestion on how not to make stupid mistakes or how to better allocate my time. Regarding the second type of mistakes I was making, I think this can be corrected by continuing to work difficult problem sets.

Verbal:
Timing is still an issue and I think I identified a root cause but still need advice. In reviewing my test in depth, it is clear that unlike Quant where I am able to quickly identify the problems that I should just guess to save time, I am not able to do this quickly with Verbal. For instance, my accuracy for CR 500-600 level questions is 1:45 and 75% correct, but when it comes to the 600-700/700-800 level questions, I am spending sometimes around 2:00-3.00 minutes on them and am only getting 50% correct. The average time spending on wrong questions in this quesetion range is1:50-2:00! If I can quickly identify when to just guess and move on, I can save significant time on these harder questions. My accuracy is also less mainly for the minor question types- Is this something worth focusing on?
Regarding the SC questions, I think I need to revisit verbs/parallelism/comparisons. I also found that I am narrowing the answer choices down to two and picking the wrong one and usually the correct answer at the higher levels depends on minor things like idioms/comparisons etc. I am not that great with idioms but feel like spending time on trying to memorize them is not an effective use of my time. Do you have any suggestions?

Regarding RC, I think I can still improve my speed. Overall, performace for this area is not that bad, but I am terrible with specific detail question types. I think I need to not focus on the actual details but why that detail was placed in the passage to get these right. Is that correct?

For these last two weeks, I wanted to take at least 2-3 more full lenght practice exams, structure my sessions similar to the test doing sets of 37 and 41, and memorize any quant key concepts/formulas & SC rules. Is it time now to cut my losses and practice on questions where my strength lie? Thank you very much in advance.

Kind Regards,
Erin

[StaceyKoprince]

Hi, as you've probably already realized, the forums are not the place to go for a quick response - it typically takes anywhere from 3 to 10 days to get a response, depending on volume of traffic.

For future (or for anyone else reading this), please contact the office directly if you need a quick response (800.576.GMAT or studentservices@manhattangmat.com)

For the situation you describe, we offer free advice here on the forums (but with a wait) and we also offer private tutoring - right away but for a price. :)

Re: your situation. You have to assume that the 580 is closer to your true scoring level, not the 630, because you allowed yourself artificial advantages on that test (artificial = you can't do the same thing on the real test).

Your goal is a 650 - 680, so you are currently 70 to 100 points below your goal. Most people would need considerably longer than 2 weeks to bridge that gap.

You're right that you need to learn better time management - make sure you're using all the time given! Your primary focus needs to be on the "careless error" mistakes right now - you have a high number and those are the easier errors to fix. (Not easy, but easier than learning new, harder stuff.)

This article can help with that (see the section on careless mistakes):
http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/error-log.cfm

Also, this article can help with time management on both quant and verbal:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... anagement/

In terms of recognizing when to let go and move on, the article above does address that, but the general rule is this:

for 2m questions (quant, CR, specific RC): if you don't know what you're doing around the 1 min (half-way) mark, make an educated guess, then move on.

for faster questions (SC, general RC): if you don't know what you're doing around the 1 min (much more than half-way) mark, guess immediately and move on.

The article talks more about this.

I also found that I am narrowing the answer choices down to two and picking the wrong one and usually the correct answer at the higher levels depends on minor things like idioms/comparisons etc.

You are sometimes picking the right answer - you're just not noticing those because we tend to focus only on the ones we got wrong. :)

At that level, you need to do this kind of analysis:
- Why is the wrong answer tempting? How would someone justify picking it? Why did I pick it? (Now I know that all of that reasoning is a BAD way to pick an answer)
- Why is it tempting to eliminate the right answer? How ould someone justify eliminating it? Why did I eliminate it? (Now I know that this reasoning is a BAD way to eliminate an answer)

In terms of what to study:
- CR minor types are not worth your time if you are still struggling with any of the major types; go for the major types first
- for everything else, I recommend that you use the below article to analyze your most recent MGMAT CAT:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... ice-tests/

Then come back here and share the analysis (not just the raw data - your analysis!) with us and we'll help you figure out more specifically what to do.

For RC, here are some resources:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... p-passage/
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/11/ ... il-problem
http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/a ... estion.cfm

And some for SC (though I'd like to hear the results of your analysis first, because you told me only that you "think" you need to revisit certain things - but you were totally certain about your RC weakness):
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/06/ ... on-problem

http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/03/ ... sc-problem
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/03/ ... -problem-2

In terms of overall advise, I'm going to go back to what I said at the beginning: if your goal is still 650-680, you should be thinking longer-term than 2 weeks, so I don't want to give you "here's what to do in 2 weeks" advice.

If, on the other hand, you want to lower your goal score and still take it in 2 weeks, then let me know.