Most people will end up having to guess and move on for 4 to 7 questions per section. (Note: I am NOT including situations where you confidently narrow down to 2 or even 3 answers. The odds are so much better at that point, that it's no longer really a guess. :)
I don't think it's extreme at all to get professional help for the anxiety / stress issues - many people do (and lots of people should even though they don't!)
You're going to start by focusing on two main things:
(1) timing
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... to-win-it/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... nt-part-1/
(2) HOW to learn from individual problems
how to study section of this article:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -the-gmat/
In terms of specific content to use, analyze your most recent 1-2 MGMAT practice CATs using this article
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... ice-tests/
Start with the weaker major areas (eg, if you're weak at equations or exponents, that's a lot more important than a combinatorics weakness). If you're not sure what's considered major / most important, feel free to come back here and ask.
GMAT Forum
- StaceyKoprince
- ManhattanGMAT Staff
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- Location: Montreal
Re: 2 years, and still stuck
Stacey Koprince
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ManhattanPrep
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Re: 2 years, and still stuck
awesome thanks Stacey. I will focus on all of those things now as priority # 1 and work on my test anxiety issues with my psychologist. after all, how can I fire on all cylinders during the exam when the fuel is polluted by anxiety (bad analogy i know)...
so, should I start doing practice questions again (keeping in mind and really nailing the timing/ & letting go stuff), by focusing on the areas I've identified as weaknesses say for 60% of my time, and 40% of my time working on other question areas? I'm not sure how i should divide my studying time in the most optimal way.
also I have another question: I've seen people mentioning to study CR and RC when tired at the end of the day (say 10pm, after working and studying etc.) to build up stamina and endurance. However, for me, that kind of tired at the end of the day is different from the kind of tired where you are really mentally fatigued from operating at 100% brainpower and high stress for 2 hours! Is it worth studying CR/RC at the end of the day then?
about 2 weeks ago, I properly analysed my practice exams from November/December using that article by aggregating 3-4 exams together and analysing the results. However I didn't go into the analysis tasks for each question individually as I can't remember why i got certain ones wrong etc. as it was a while ago now. But yes, i used it to ID my strenghts and weaknesses. and it became quite apparent from analysing them that timing indeed was a major issue.
coordinate geo, probability and combinatorics are weaknesses as I never really studied them properly, and I also forgot a lot of the memorisation of rules reqiured for Geo (e.g. the fact that a right-triangle inscribed within a circle will have the hypoteneuse = diameter of circle). So I need to study coord. geo properly and revisit my Geo flashcards until I know that stuff cold.
DS positive/negative and DS inequality questions are also a weakness. in PS, absolute value and inequalities. Algebraic translations and rates/work are also tricky as I always stumble on those and run out of time if they are wordy.
Anyways, thanks for the help to kick off the prep again.
i came across the GMATCLUB practice tests a while back but haven't done any yet; many people have sworn doing as many of those tests as possible raised their quant from 44-45 up to 50-ish.
Is it a good idea for me to do these in real exam conditions, as many as realistically possible (allowing for in-depth review after each one), in order to
a) become totally comfortable with timing and letting go when stuck
b) help to diminish test anxiety (as by the time I do the exam, I would have done - and analysed properly - these GMATClub exams many times over, thus exposing myself to the quant section heaps and desensitising myself to getting anxious about it)
c) make sure I've refreshed myself on as many topics and question types as possible before the exam ?
on a positive note, I know I'm really close now and I should be able to walk into the exam again next time and confidently get 680+ or even 700+, after fixing all these issues.
the final deadline for 2 of my target schools (Oxford and Cambridge in the UK) is on March 8 so if I can get 680+ by then I'll be happy enough. do you think 5 weeks is realistic to fix my biggest GMAT issues as described on this thread, and break 680/690?
thanks again!
so, should I start doing practice questions again (keeping in mind and really nailing the timing/ & letting go stuff), by focusing on the areas I've identified as weaknesses say for 60% of my time, and 40% of my time working on other question areas? I'm not sure how i should divide my studying time in the most optimal way.
also I have another question: I've seen people mentioning to study CR and RC when tired at the end of the day (say 10pm, after working and studying etc.) to build up stamina and endurance. However, for me, that kind of tired at the end of the day is different from the kind of tired where you are really mentally fatigued from operating at 100% brainpower and high stress for 2 hours! Is it worth studying CR/RC at the end of the day then?
about 2 weeks ago, I properly analysed my practice exams from November/December using that article by aggregating 3-4 exams together and analysing the results. However I didn't go into the analysis tasks for each question individually as I can't remember why i got certain ones wrong etc. as it was a while ago now. But yes, i used it to ID my strenghts and weaknesses. and it became quite apparent from analysing them that timing indeed was a major issue.
coordinate geo, probability and combinatorics are weaknesses as I never really studied them properly, and I also forgot a lot of the memorisation of rules reqiured for Geo (e.g. the fact that a right-triangle inscribed within a circle will have the hypoteneuse = diameter of circle). So I need to study coord. geo properly and revisit my Geo flashcards until I know that stuff cold.
DS positive/negative and DS inequality questions are also a weakness. in PS, absolute value and inequalities. Algebraic translations and rates/work are also tricky as I always stumble on those and run out of time if they are wordy.
Anyways, thanks for the help to kick off the prep again.
i came across the GMATCLUB practice tests a while back but haven't done any yet; many people have sworn doing as many of those tests as possible raised their quant from 44-45 up to 50-ish.
Is it a good idea for me to do these in real exam conditions, as many as realistically possible (allowing for in-depth review after each one), in order to
a) become totally comfortable with timing and letting go when stuck
b) help to diminish test anxiety (as by the time I do the exam, I would have done - and analysed properly - these GMATClub exams many times over, thus exposing myself to the quant section heaps and desensitising myself to getting anxious about it)
c) make sure I've refreshed myself on as many topics and question types as possible before the exam ?
on a positive note, I know I'm really close now and I should be able to walk into the exam again next time and confidently get 680+ or even 700+, after fixing all these issues.
the final deadline for 2 of my target schools (Oxford and Cambridge in the UK) is on March 8 so if I can get 680+ by then I'll be happy enough. do you think 5 weeks is realistic to fix my biggest GMAT issues as described on this thread, and break 680/690?
thanks again!
- StaceyKoprince
- ManhattanGMAT Staff
- Posts: 9361
- Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2005 9:05 am
- Location: Montreal
Re: 2 years, and still stuck
In terms of where to start / what to do - it always starts with our weaknesses. :)
You will have recently taken a CAT or done practice sets or something like that (and, if you haven't, then that's where you start). That gives you a list of things to tackle and you tackle them using the articles that I gave you last time - how to learn from individual problems. You might spend 30 minutes on a single problem, because you might realize, "Hmm, I don't know my exponents and roots rules well enough" and so you'll go off to that chapter in the book and start making yourself some flashcards, and then doing some drills (just to test the math skills) and so on.
Basically, the analysis of one problem becomes a launching point to go do / learn / study various things based upon how things went with that particular problem. When you exhaust that, you move on to the next poblem and repeat.
Periodically, you're then going to quiz yourself using smaller sets of problems. Those should be mixed sets - 5, 10, 15 questions - comprised mostly of weakness topics (50 to 70%) but also random questions tossed in from who knows where (30 to 50%). You'll be testing yourself on your weaknesses and also giving yourself a chance to review other topics that you haven't been studying recently - and that will once again feed into all kinds of study activities as you realize you fell short or struggled on something.
In one 2-hour study session, maybe you'd do a set of 10 problems and then you'd spend ALL of that remaining time reviewing those problems. Note: when I say "reviewing," I do NOT simply mean "look at the solution, review this problem all by itself." *Everything* you do, which might involve going to different books and resources and really studying something, is ultimately driven by your review of that problem - so that's what it really means to review a problem.
No, I don't think it's a good idea to study CR and RC at the end of the day / when today. When you're studying, you're trying to learn - to create new memories. This is more mentally taxing than simply retrieving memories (which is what you're doing during the test). You never *want* to be tired on purpose when you're trying to build new memories. That's not building endurance / stamina - it's just making it harder to create the new memories.
Then do the problems again and figure out now why you're struggling with them. Or do new problems and analyze them immediately. If you're not analyzing after the fact, you're wasting the most valuable portion of your study time! If you don't know WHY you got something wrong or WHY you're slow with it - then you're not going to know what to do to get better.
No. :) Practice CATs 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. Once again, back to analysis - that's how you actually get better.
For many people, the text anxiety mostly has to do with (a) knowing that the real test is the real test, and (b) being in the testing center / environment. So taking a bunch of practice tests doesn't actually help diminish test anxiety (typically).
One thing that has worked for several of my students: go onto the mba.com website and find the video they've posted of what the test center is like, what will happen when you arrive, how you have to check in, etc. Watch that a bunch of times.
There's not a lot you can do about the "knowing the real test is real" issue - you'll always know that the practice tests aren't real. The more you can prepare properly, though, the less stressful it'll be to know you're taking the real test. (Though it'll always be stressful, obviously.) If, for example, you can fix the timing issues, then that will decrease your stress a great deal - because you'll know you're doing what you need to do to perform well.
Finally, I can't really tell anyone whether a certain amount of time will be enough to get a certain score. :) There are just too many variables involved. In this case, it's especially true because I don't even know what your current scoring level is - you haven't posted any practice data from the past few weeks, so I don't have any sense at all of what kind of progress you might have made.
But you are working against a deadline, right? So I'm going to suggest that you take a bit of a fatalistic view: you have a certain amount of time and you're going to do your absolute best during that timeframe and hope for the best. That's all anyone can do!
You will have recently taken a CAT or done practice sets or something like that (and, if you haven't, then that's where you start). That gives you a list of things to tackle and you tackle them using the articles that I gave you last time - how to learn from individual problems. You might spend 30 minutes on a single problem, because you might realize, "Hmm, I don't know my exponents and roots rules well enough" and so you'll go off to that chapter in the book and start making yourself some flashcards, and then doing some drills (just to test the math skills) and so on.
Basically, the analysis of one problem becomes a launching point to go do / learn / study various things based upon how things went with that particular problem. When you exhaust that, you move on to the next poblem and repeat.
Periodically, you're then going to quiz yourself using smaller sets of problems. Those should be mixed sets - 5, 10, 15 questions - comprised mostly of weakness topics (50 to 70%) but also random questions tossed in from who knows where (30 to 50%). You'll be testing yourself on your weaknesses and also giving yourself a chance to review other topics that you haven't been studying recently - and that will once again feed into all kinds of study activities as you realize you fell short or struggled on something.
In one 2-hour study session, maybe you'd do a set of 10 problems and then you'd spend ALL of that remaining time reviewing those problems. Note: when I say "reviewing," I do NOT simply mean "look at the solution, review this problem all by itself." *Everything* you do, which might involve going to different books and resources and really studying something, is ultimately driven by your review of that problem - so that's what it really means to review a problem.
No, I don't think it's a good idea to study CR and RC at the end of the day / when today. When you're studying, you're trying to learn - to create new memories. This is more mentally taxing than simply retrieving memories (which is what you're doing during the test). You never *want* to be tired on purpose when you're trying to build new memories. That's not building endurance / stamina - it's just making it harder to create the new memories.
However I didn't go into the analysis tasks for each question individually as I can't remember why i got certain ones wrong etc. as it was a while ago now.
Then do the problems again and figure out now why you're struggling with them. Or do new problems and analyze them immediately. If you're not analyzing after the fact, you're wasting the most valuable portion of your study time! If you don't know WHY you got something wrong or WHY you're slow with it - then you're not going to know what to do to get better.
(referring to practice exams)as many as realistically possible
No. :) Practice CATs 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. Once again, back to analysis - that's how you actually get better.
help to diminish test anxiety
For many people, the text anxiety mostly has to do with (a) knowing that the real test is the real test, and (b) being in the testing center / environment. So taking a bunch of practice tests doesn't actually help diminish test anxiety (typically).
One thing that has worked for several of my students: go onto the mba.com website and find the video they've posted of what the test center is like, what will happen when you arrive, how you have to check in, etc. Watch that a bunch of times.
There's not a lot you can do about the "knowing the real test is real" issue - you'll always know that the practice tests aren't real. The more you can prepare properly, though, the less stressful it'll be to know you're taking the real test. (Though it'll always be stressful, obviously.) If, for example, you can fix the timing issues, then that will decrease your stress a great deal - because you'll know you're doing what you need to do to perform well.
Finally, I can't really tell anyone whether a certain amount of time will be enough to get a certain score. :) There are just too many variables involved. In this case, it's especially true because I don't even know what your current scoring level is - you haven't posted any practice data from the past few weeks, so I don't have any sense at all of what kind of progress you might have made.
But you are working against a deadline, right? So I'm going to suggest that you take a bit of a fatalistic view: you have a certain amount of time and you're going to do your absolute best during that timeframe and hope for the best. That's all anyone can do!
Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep
- rkafc81
- Course Students
- Posts: 90
- Joined: Tue Jun 15, 2010 2:39 am
Re: 2 years, and still stuck
thanks Stacey!
i have started studying using this approach and am already noticing the benefits. for example, I did a practice CAT over the weekend and when reviewing the "abominable AB's" question, I realised my knowledge and pracitce of testing tricky DS cases was a bit shaky, so I got out the MGMAT Advanced Quant book, looked up the DS chapter, and did the drills and exercises at the end of that chapter. By the end of that, my testing cases knowledge was way better! I also made flashcards along the way...
not far to go now!
Work has let me have 3-4 weeks off unpaid, so I should be ok now for the exam. I realised the other day during the CAT exactly what I had done wrong in my last test where I cancelled the score... I was following the timing strategy of checking every 5 questions where I was time-wise. I was checking the time at the beginning of question 5, and was looking to be around the 10 minute mark... Turns out I should have looked at the END of question 5! So, when I got to question 25 or so, I was around 2mins*5 questions = 10 minutes behind... so that explains it. Such a silly, stupid, annoying and very costly mistake...
anyways, I did a GMATPrep quant section just to see how I was going (Idid IR and the essay first), and I got Q48! But, 2 hours after, I wanted to see if that was just a fluke.. I redid an MGMAT exam and I got Q41 :( Not sure why i had such a big fluctuation ?
thanks again
i have started studying using this approach and am already noticing the benefits. for example, I did a practice CAT over the weekend and when reviewing the "abominable AB's" question, I realised my knowledge and pracitce of testing tricky DS cases was a bit shaky, so I got out the MGMAT Advanced Quant book, looked up the DS chapter, and did the drills and exercises at the end of that chapter. By the end of that, my testing cases knowledge was way better! I also made flashcards along the way...
not far to go now!
Work has let me have 3-4 weeks off unpaid, so I should be ok now for the exam. I realised the other day during the CAT exactly what I had done wrong in my last test where I cancelled the score... I was following the timing strategy of checking every 5 questions where I was time-wise. I was checking the time at the beginning of question 5, and was looking to be around the 10 minute mark... Turns out I should have looked at the END of question 5! So, when I got to question 25 or so, I was around 2mins*5 questions = 10 minutes behind... so that explains it. Such a silly, stupid, annoying and very costly mistake...
anyways, I did a GMATPrep quant section just to see how I was going (Idid IR and the essay first), and I got Q48! But, 2 hours after, I wanted to see if that was just a fluke.. I redid an MGMAT exam and I got Q41 :( Not sure why i had such a big fluctuation ?
thanks again
- StaceyKoprince
- ManhattanGMAT Staff
- Posts: 9361
- Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2005 9:05 am
- Location: Montreal
Re: 2 years, and still stuck
good, I'm glad you're making progress! That's too bad about the timing error. :(
Re: the fluctuation, I don't know - you'll have to dive into the data to see! Did you have timing issues? Did you have a string of wrong answers somewhere? Maybe you were starting to get tired out by the second test. (Had you been studying all day in between, too?) Check out the data and let me know what you think.
Re: the fluctuation, I don't know - you'll have to dive into the data to see! Did you have timing issues? Did you have a string of wrong answers somewhere? Maybe you were starting to get tired out by the second test. (Had you been studying all day in between, too?) Check out the data and let me know what you think.
Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep
- rkafc81
- Course Students
- Posts: 90
- Joined: Tue Jun 15, 2010 2:39 am
Re: 2 years, and still stuck
Hi Stacey,
I cant remember now what questions i got wrong etc in that test sorry... But the other day i did an mgmat cat and i did get a string of answers incorrectwhich really hurt my score... Is it just bad luck when this happens, or is there something else going on?
I have been working on my quant timing a lot btw, its really helped.
I did a gmat prep 2 weeks ago and got 690 - q47 v38... Then did another one a week later just to make sureit wasnt a fluke, and got 690 again -q48 v37. So here is the funny thing, my quant now seems at a score i am happy with (i only saw 2 repeated questions dfrom previous gmat prep exams - i havent been reviewing the gmt prep exams as i want to keep them as a real test of ability, as i tend to forget the questions pretty quickly if i dont revie wthem), but my verbal score has fallen down a fair bit from the 41-43 scores i was getting last year. The only thing i did last year to get that score was do just do lots of problems in verbal and review them on my train to and from work.
Anyway i am scared i will get lower than 690 in my real exam due to exam day nerves or anything else that could go wrong, so i am not sure if i should risk taking it (it is booked in for two weeks crom today), as it will be my second exam and i will only have one more left in the pot before schools go "whoa, he's already done the exam 3 times". As a case in point, the other day i did an mgmat exam and got 670 q45v36. I can't afford to get a score like that.
I really need to get a 700 or above to meet the average of my target schools here in europe and the uk.
A really curious thing happened to me in that mgmat exam - and this has happened on other tests too by the way - as soon as i went to review it, i retried all the questions i got wrong before looking at the explanations, and i just had this weird clarity of insight going on. On about 80% of those i was able to solve them smoothly and quickly and knew exactly what i needed to do and what steps i needed to take etc. It is as if as soon as there is a clock ticking in a pressured situation, all my recall, intuition and learning goes out the window!. If i could be as calm and collected in my real exam as when i review a practice one, i know i would ace quant. I clearly know the content now, but something i just can't out my finger on is holding me back... Have you seen this happening with your students before?
Another major issue for me which i a know is contributing to my verbal problems is "glazed eye syndrome"... About halfway through verbal my scores plummet. I am riding at 700-800 in the mgmat cat verbal level on all my questions, then suddenly something happens and the difficulty level the exam is serving me ends up dropping a fair bit. What happens is that by that stage of th exam i can't focus or concentrate on what's going on in anRC passage or wordy CR question. Then i end up wasting time. I have tried rons approach to rc questions as outlined in his thursdays with ron videos, but it doesnt seem to really work for me and i just cant do the note taking approach either...i find if i take notes i dont end up absorbing the passage at all compared to just reqding through it carefully. i find when i am clear in my head i can do any rc question with ease, but after 3+ hours of hard work on the other sections i just cant focus and the words start swimming in front of my eyes...
also, Should myguessing strategy for verbal be the same as for quant?
So, i only have 2 weeks left until gmat retake day... What can i do in this time to improve my verbal as much as possible? Just do lots of official problems? Even a 2 point increase in my verbal score would be enough to get me to 700 i think.
Thanks again. I hope that this conversation is not far off closing down forever! Not far to go for me now... Btw sorry for some of the grammar and spelling errors, im typing from my ipad. You were probably thinking "if he cant write sentences properly he is in for a shock with sc"!
I cant remember now what questions i got wrong etc in that test sorry... But the other day i did an mgmat cat and i did get a string of answers incorrectwhich really hurt my score... Is it just bad luck when this happens, or is there something else going on?
I have been working on my quant timing a lot btw, its really helped.
I did a gmat prep 2 weeks ago and got 690 - q47 v38... Then did another one a week later just to make sureit wasnt a fluke, and got 690 again -q48 v37. So here is the funny thing, my quant now seems at a score i am happy with (i only saw 2 repeated questions dfrom previous gmat prep exams - i havent been reviewing the gmt prep exams as i want to keep them as a real test of ability, as i tend to forget the questions pretty quickly if i dont revie wthem), but my verbal score has fallen down a fair bit from the 41-43 scores i was getting last year. The only thing i did last year to get that score was do just do lots of problems in verbal and review them on my train to and from work.
Anyway i am scared i will get lower than 690 in my real exam due to exam day nerves or anything else that could go wrong, so i am not sure if i should risk taking it (it is booked in for two weeks crom today), as it will be my second exam and i will only have one more left in the pot before schools go "whoa, he's already done the exam 3 times". As a case in point, the other day i did an mgmat exam and got 670 q45v36. I can't afford to get a score like that.
I really need to get a 700 or above to meet the average of my target schools here in europe and the uk.
A really curious thing happened to me in that mgmat exam - and this has happened on other tests too by the way - as soon as i went to review it, i retried all the questions i got wrong before looking at the explanations, and i just had this weird clarity of insight going on. On about 80% of those i was able to solve them smoothly and quickly and knew exactly what i needed to do and what steps i needed to take etc. It is as if as soon as there is a clock ticking in a pressured situation, all my recall, intuition and learning goes out the window!. If i could be as calm and collected in my real exam as when i review a practice one, i know i would ace quant. I clearly know the content now, but something i just can't out my finger on is holding me back... Have you seen this happening with your students before?
Another major issue for me which i a know is contributing to my verbal problems is "glazed eye syndrome"... About halfway through verbal my scores plummet. I am riding at 700-800 in the mgmat cat verbal level on all my questions, then suddenly something happens and the difficulty level the exam is serving me ends up dropping a fair bit. What happens is that by that stage of th exam i can't focus or concentrate on what's going on in anRC passage or wordy CR question. Then i end up wasting time. I have tried rons approach to rc questions as outlined in his thursdays with ron videos, but it doesnt seem to really work for me and i just cant do the note taking approach either...i find if i take notes i dont end up absorbing the passage at all compared to just reqding through it carefully. i find when i am clear in my head i can do any rc question with ease, but after 3+ hours of hard work on the other sections i just cant focus and the words start swimming in front of my eyes...
also, Should myguessing strategy for verbal be the same as for quant?
So, i only have 2 weeks left until gmat retake day... What can i do in this time to improve my verbal as much as possible? Just do lots of official problems? Even a 2 point increase in my verbal score would be enough to get me to 700 i think.
Thanks again. I hope that this conversation is not far off closing down forever! Not far to go for me now... Btw sorry for some of the grammar and spelling errors, im typing from my ipad. You were probably thinking "if he cant write sentences properly he is in for a shock with sc"!
- StaceyKoprince
- ManhattanGMAT Staff
- Posts: 9361
- Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2005 9:05 am
- Location: Montreal
Re: 2 years, and still stuck
a string of answers incorrectwhich really hurt my score... Is it just bad luck when this happens, or is there something else going on?
It could be lots of things. :) How was your timing throughout those questions? What about beforehand? Were you rushing at any point? Sometimes, people will get a couple of hard ones in a row and take too much time (and get those wrong because they're hard). Then they'll speed up to make up time... and get even more wrong due to mistakes. Could something like this have happened?
Did you make careless mistakes on any of them, regardless of timing? How many? Have to work to minimize those kinds of mistakes.
So what's going on with verbal - why do you think your score has dropped? Analyze the data - what's going well and what's not going so well? Are you finishing roughly at the same level, or is your score dropping over the last 10 questions or so? (If that's happening, it could be timing or mental fatigue or both.)
Re: your experience of being able to solve after, yes, this is common. Sometimes that has to do with not being able to think as well when the pressure is on. For some, though, your brain was "working" on them in the background and suddenly the path is there when you look again. (This happens to me all the time with crossword puzzles. I put it down for 2 days, pick it up again, and immediately I know the answer to a few clues that I didn't know 2 days ago.)
The good news is that, either way, you have now learned how to do those. So now you need to ask yourself WHY couldn't I do this before - what didn't I know or what was holding me back? Maybe you didn't recognize that the problem was asking about XYZ. Then ask yourself now: what are the clues that should have led me to think about XYZ. Maybe you didn't realize that the best solution path would be ABC. Now, ask yourself, what are the clues that should have led me to think about / try solution ABC? Whatever it is, figure out why / how you made the right connection the second time - make yourself figure it out explicitly, and then you'll be likely to make that connection the first time when you see something similar in future.
I just saw your comment about verbal dropping towards the end. All right, so fatigue is an issue. First, on the break between Q and V, drink glucose (coconut water, fresh fruit juice, or an energy drink that contains glucose and does NOT contain high-fructose corn syrup). Next, exercise on that break - jog up and down the hall, do jumping jacks, stretch. And eat a little bit of something.
In the room, every 10 minutes or so, stretch your legs out under the desk, roll your ankles around, flex the muscles in your legs and thighs. Roll your neck around (without looking like you're looking around the room). Roll your shoulders. Bounce a little in your chair. Get the energy flowing physically!
You're still going to be fatigued towards the end of the test - it is 3.5 hours longer, after all. But we're going to minimize that fatigue as much as possible!
If you need to skip a question entirely so that you can spend 60 to 90 seconds with your eyes closed, playing your favorite song in your head or meditating or picturing your favorite place in the world, do it. Practice this - because you CANNOT think about the test during this. You've got to just empty your mind.
also, Should myguessing strategy for verbal be the same as for quant?
In what sense? In a broad sense, yes - you're going to guess on something like 4 to 7 questions in the section (unless you're going for a REALLY high score). You should try to eliminate some answers before you guess. But obviously the individual strategies for how to do that will differ.
No worries on typos / grammar issues. I know the rules, but I don't even adhere to them 100% myself when I'm writing. I'd sound too stuffy! :)
Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep
- rkafc81
- Course Students
- Posts: 90
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Re: 2 years, and still stuck
thanks Stacey!
i think i rushed that string of wrong ones, yes. i had a few tough verbal ones in a row and spent too much time on them. I really need to learn to guess and watch my pacing with verbal, the same as i had to learn to guess and watch my pacing with quant.
how does one know when to guess on verbal? is it when the passage in Cr seems really complex and tricky, and you just can't "get" it? and the same with RC? SC is ok on the guessing side of things for me.
i had the exam scheduled for next tuesday but as i only have 2 tries left max (i have done 1 already and cancelled 1 score), and wasn't 100% confident with verbal (even though it's my strong suit, I just need a few weeks to get back up to strength with it asap and practice my verbal timing during some practice examms), I decided to reschedule it for 3.5 weeks from today. that will be THE final exam I reckon, I feel more or less confident I will get a v40+ if i do and analyse verbal questions and work on my timing. coupled with a q47 and I should be set. it was a hard decision to make as I just want to get tihs over with, but i believe it was the right decision. i will just make sure to avoid burnout in the next few weeks, as this will kill my score on exam day. being fresh and awake and not stressed out will be very good for me on that day...
I also haven't prepared for IR at all... but i got a 5 on the first time i did an IR practice test in GMATprep. that could have just been a fluke though. will make a start on that each day now, will do a couple of questions only. i saw the MGMAT video on IR that outlined doing IR speedily, which was really useful.
i did a verbal section without being fatigued and got v40. so i know (mostly) how to do verbal, it's just that the fatigue is killing me. little nitpicky SC rules on the harder SC questions still get me, as do the harder CR passages, but i think there's also a bit of anxiety - if i am tired i get all panicky that i can't focus on the question at hand... i think "there's so much text, I can't focus!!" and it gets worse, and i end up re-reading sentences etc. over and over... i will talk with my psych. about this. he's also been really helpful for the exam stress stuff too.
do you know btw how i can keep my quant sharp in the next 3 weeks? i don't want to focus on it too much as it's already not bad at around q47-48 on the gmatprep (consistently, i took it 3 times in 4 months and deliberately didn't review the questions as i wanted it to remain a diagnostic test only for me). I remember Ron mentioning the "opener drill" on one of his posts somewhere, but i was wondering how you recommend to do that drill for your students in the last couple of weeks of their exam?
also, what practice tests can i use now? i've exhausted the MGMAT ones (I was also using them as a diagnostic but i am getting a lot of repeated questions now... i didn't review any of the questions on a few of those exams). apparently the quant on 800 score isn't too realistic. i just need some tests to work on my timing and practicing when to give up. i also need some positive feedback from those tests that it is ok to guess etc. so that i don't "freeze" on the real exam and forget or not have the confidence to guess properly. do you recommend that i master all the questions in the MGMAT exams for quant, and just do those sections over and over again to build confidence?
it really feels like the final push now for me!!
thanks!
i think i rushed that string of wrong ones, yes. i had a few tough verbal ones in a row and spent too much time on them. I really need to learn to guess and watch my pacing with verbal, the same as i had to learn to guess and watch my pacing with quant.
how does one know when to guess on verbal? is it when the passage in Cr seems really complex and tricky, and you just can't "get" it? and the same with RC? SC is ok on the guessing side of things for me.
i had the exam scheduled for next tuesday but as i only have 2 tries left max (i have done 1 already and cancelled 1 score), and wasn't 100% confident with verbal (even though it's my strong suit, I just need a few weeks to get back up to strength with it asap and practice my verbal timing during some practice examms), I decided to reschedule it for 3.5 weeks from today. that will be THE final exam I reckon, I feel more or less confident I will get a v40+ if i do and analyse verbal questions and work on my timing. coupled with a q47 and I should be set. it was a hard decision to make as I just want to get tihs over with, but i believe it was the right decision. i will just make sure to avoid burnout in the next few weeks, as this will kill my score on exam day. being fresh and awake and not stressed out will be very good for me on that day...
I also haven't prepared for IR at all... but i got a 5 on the first time i did an IR practice test in GMATprep. that could have just been a fluke though. will make a start on that each day now, will do a couple of questions only. i saw the MGMAT video on IR that outlined doing IR speedily, which was really useful.
i did a verbal section without being fatigued and got v40. so i know (mostly) how to do verbal, it's just that the fatigue is killing me. little nitpicky SC rules on the harder SC questions still get me, as do the harder CR passages, but i think there's also a bit of anxiety - if i am tired i get all panicky that i can't focus on the question at hand... i think "there's so much text, I can't focus!!" and it gets worse, and i end up re-reading sentences etc. over and over... i will talk with my psych. about this. he's also been really helpful for the exam stress stuff too.
do you know btw how i can keep my quant sharp in the next 3 weeks? i don't want to focus on it too much as it's already not bad at around q47-48 on the gmatprep (consistently, i took it 3 times in 4 months and deliberately didn't review the questions as i wanted it to remain a diagnostic test only for me). I remember Ron mentioning the "opener drill" on one of his posts somewhere, but i was wondering how you recommend to do that drill for your students in the last couple of weeks of their exam?
also, what practice tests can i use now? i've exhausted the MGMAT ones (I was also using them as a diagnostic but i am getting a lot of repeated questions now... i didn't review any of the questions on a few of those exams). apparently the quant on 800 score isn't too realistic. i just need some tests to work on my timing and practicing when to give up. i also need some positive feedback from those tests that it is ok to guess etc. so that i don't "freeze" on the real exam and forget or not have the confidence to guess properly. do you recommend that i master all the questions in the MGMAT exams for quant, and just do those sections over and over again to build confidence?
it really feels like the final push now for me!!
thanks!
- Big4Advisory
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Re: 2 years, and still stuck
Good luck on your exam RFC. You are an inspiration. I will be rooting for you.
- rkafc81
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Re: 2 years, and still stuck
thanks for the words of encouragement, appreciated!
- StaceyKoprince
- ManhattanGMAT Staff
- Posts: 9361
- Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2005 9:05 am
- Location: Montreal
Re: 2 years, and still stuck
Good question on how to know when to guess.
Use your 1-minute time sense here, too. For a faster Q type (SC, main idea RC), if you get the 1 minute feeling and aren't really close, guess immediately and randomly - don't even think about it.
If it's a slower Q type (CR, detail RC), then start guessing more aggressively. Eliminate anything on RC that has an extreme word solely because it has an extreme word. (This doesn't automatically mean it's wrong, but the odds are lower that it's right.) If you know the answer should be in paragraph 2 and an answer refers to something that actually appears in paragraph 1, cross it off - even if you don't understand the question at all.
For CR, if it's a find the assumption or inference Q type, cross off anything that talks about things that aren't mentioned in the argument.
Do NOT do this, though for strengthen, weaken, or explain the discrepancy. Those ones actually should have new info in the correct answer.
In other words, know how they set traps for you and know what kinds of characteristics the right answers should have depending on the question type and sub-type. Use that to guess aggressively, then move on.
Okay, next. You'll be a little stressed out on exam day - we all are. :) Just don't get upset with yourself for being nervous - that makes it worse. It's entirely normal to feel nervous. Take deep breaths, roll your neck and shoulders around, and tell yourself "this is only one question."
Yes, do start familiarizing yourself with IR. A lot of people this past year have made the mistake of ignoring it and then spending WAY too much time / mental energy / focus on it during the real test - which then kills quant and verbal. Know the strategies for each IR Q type, know which ones you find easier vs. harder, know how to guess. You can guess completely randomly and immediately on 2 to 3 of those (since you don't need a great IR score). Just save all that time on whichever ones look really impossible when they pop up and use that extra time to reduce the stress on the rest of the section.
Just got to your bit at the end about stressing yourself out. If you need to, take 15 seconds, close your eyes, flex and stretch all of your muscles everywhere. Then look at the screen again and try to do that problem. If you start fixating on the idea that "I can't focus" don't tell yourself not to think that. It's impossible to tell yourself NOT to think about something. :)
Instead, tell yourself, "I can think about that all I want in just one minute - as soon as I pick an answer for this one, I can think about whatever else I want." Distract yourself from the distracting thoughts!
Also, on the break between quant and verbal, drink some kind of liquid that is high in glucose and has ZERO high-fructose corn syrup. Coconut water, fresh fruit juice, whatever sounds good to you. This will give you a short term mental boost that can help to combat some of the fatigue at that point on the test. (The reason I'm not suggesting that you do this before or on the first break: glucose is always combined with at least some fructose, so there's a "crash" factor eventually. I don't want you repeatedly peaking and crashing throughout the test.)
I love Ron's opener drill - it's basically just looking at a bunch of questions and asking yourself, "What's this about and how would I do it?" without actually doing it. You can use this with new questions or ones you've already done, as long as you don't outright remember them already.
If you haven't done them before, then go ahead and do them to see whether you were right about your planned approach. You can also try doing the "mini-quant" sections at www.gmatfocus.com - there's a fee but these are real past test questions and they do give you timing and other data. Note that they don't give you a time limit, so set a timer for yourself (48 minutes because there are 24 questions).
Have you done GMATPrep yet? There are 2 and you can probably repeat them once without seeing a crazy number of repeats. That should be plenty - you shouldn't be taking more than one exam a week anyway. I haven't tried 800Score in a while, but those and Kaplan seem to be the next best (after ours :)
Good luck with everything!
Use your 1-minute time sense here, too. For a faster Q type (SC, main idea RC), if you get the 1 minute feeling and aren't really close, guess immediately and randomly - don't even think about it.
If it's a slower Q type (CR, detail RC), then start guessing more aggressively. Eliminate anything on RC that has an extreme word solely because it has an extreme word. (This doesn't automatically mean it's wrong, but the odds are lower that it's right.) If you know the answer should be in paragraph 2 and an answer refers to something that actually appears in paragraph 1, cross it off - even if you don't understand the question at all.
For CR, if it's a find the assumption or inference Q type, cross off anything that talks about things that aren't mentioned in the argument.
Do NOT do this, though for strengthen, weaken, or explain the discrepancy. Those ones actually should have new info in the correct answer.
In other words, know how they set traps for you and know what kinds of characteristics the right answers should have depending on the question type and sub-type. Use that to guess aggressively, then move on.
Okay, next. You'll be a little stressed out on exam day - we all are. :) Just don't get upset with yourself for being nervous - that makes it worse. It's entirely normal to feel nervous. Take deep breaths, roll your neck and shoulders around, and tell yourself "this is only one question."
Yes, do start familiarizing yourself with IR. A lot of people this past year have made the mistake of ignoring it and then spending WAY too much time / mental energy / focus on it during the real test - which then kills quant and verbal. Know the strategies for each IR Q type, know which ones you find easier vs. harder, know how to guess. You can guess completely randomly and immediately on 2 to 3 of those (since you don't need a great IR score). Just save all that time on whichever ones look really impossible when they pop up and use that extra time to reduce the stress on the rest of the section.
Just got to your bit at the end about stressing yourself out. If you need to, take 15 seconds, close your eyes, flex and stretch all of your muscles everywhere. Then look at the screen again and try to do that problem. If you start fixating on the idea that "I can't focus" don't tell yourself not to think that. It's impossible to tell yourself NOT to think about something. :)
Instead, tell yourself, "I can think about that all I want in just one minute - as soon as I pick an answer for this one, I can think about whatever else I want." Distract yourself from the distracting thoughts!
Also, on the break between quant and verbal, drink some kind of liquid that is high in glucose and has ZERO high-fructose corn syrup. Coconut water, fresh fruit juice, whatever sounds good to you. This will give you a short term mental boost that can help to combat some of the fatigue at that point on the test. (The reason I'm not suggesting that you do this before or on the first break: glucose is always combined with at least some fructose, so there's a "crash" factor eventually. I don't want you repeatedly peaking and crashing throughout the test.)
I love Ron's opener drill - it's basically just looking at a bunch of questions and asking yourself, "What's this about and how would I do it?" without actually doing it. You can use this with new questions or ones you've already done, as long as you don't outright remember them already.
If you haven't done them before, then go ahead and do them to see whether you were right about your planned approach. You can also try doing the "mini-quant" sections at www.gmatfocus.com - there's a fee but these are real past test questions and they do give you timing and other data. Note that they don't give you a time limit, so set a timer for yourself (48 minutes because there are 24 questions).
Have you done GMATPrep yet? There are 2 and you can probably repeat them once without seeing a crazy number of repeats. That should be plenty - you shouldn't be taking more than one exam a week anyway. I haven't tried 800Score in a while, but those and Kaplan seem to be the next best (after ours :)
Good luck with everything!
Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep
- rkafc81
- Course Students
- Posts: 90
- Joined: Tue Jun 15, 2010 2:39 am
Re: 2 years, and still stuck
hi Stacey, thanks again for your in-depth reply!
I'll practice those guessing strategies for verbal. I'm really hoping that effective guessing will help my score to shoot up like it did when I started guessing effectively in Quant. I think I'm getting a feel now for what constitutes a hard verbal question for me - i.e. one where my head is swimming and i just can't get to grips with the stupidly complex logic in the question... and where I find myself re-reading sentences or passages over and over and getting nowhere. I'm going to do a practice MGMAT test this weekend just to get comfortable with verbal guessing and see the effect it has on my score.
I'm also hoping that, coupled with some regular and consistent stress-management practice in the next 3 weeks before my test, good guessing techniques + being more relaxed = a rise in my verbal score . Being tired and stressed out means I can't concentrate during verbal, and my score suffers. When I'm "on the ball" i.e. awake and focused, I always seem to get v40+.
I was drinking glucose and sugary sweets after IR and before quant in all my practice tests... in hindsight, I didn't need it. I'll save it for just before verbal only. I have half a snickers bar before quant and half a snickers bar before verbal (nuts etc. for sustained energy)... is that a good idea?
Yep I did 3 GMATPrep tests over the last 4 months. I got 690 (q48,v36), 690 (q47, v38) and 700 (q47, v39). That was before I started focusing on verbal again, I'd let it slip after focusing 100% on quant for so long. Do you think I'm more or less ready to take the test in 3 weeks then? I'm quite worried that I'll bomb it again for some unknown reason and get a 580, like I did when I bombed it the first time... I suppose if I keep my head together on the day and stay relaxed and reasonably calm, and guess properly when needed, I should be ok. I guess it could go both ways, with a range of +/- 30... I've been keeping my quant warm too as well as focusing on verbal.
I'll do the opener drills for sure now, and then any questions that I don't know how to do, I will focus on. I won't bother in the next few weeks to do questions and question types that I'm already comfortable with. I tried the drill on the weekend and it was really good. I'll do it a few more times too before the exam.
yeah I did the GMATfocus tests some time ago, they can't be reset unfortuntately. but this week I've redone every single GMATfocus question, timed, that I did a long time ago and reviewed them thoroughly.
What would be your advice as to what to do in the next 3 weeks? Should I just practice my execution etc. so that I'm completely "over it" and confident with the exam by the time I walk into the test centre?
Well, I hope that in 3 weeks I will be doing a jubilant debrief in this thread :), with many thanks to you of course !
I'll practice those guessing strategies for verbal. I'm really hoping that effective guessing will help my score to shoot up like it did when I started guessing effectively in Quant. I think I'm getting a feel now for what constitutes a hard verbal question for me - i.e. one where my head is swimming and i just can't get to grips with the stupidly complex logic in the question... and where I find myself re-reading sentences or passages over and over and getting nowhere. I'm going to do a practice MGMAT test this weekend just to get comfortable with verbal guessing and see the effect it has on my score.
I'm also hoping that, coupled with some regular and consistent stress-management practice in the next 3 weeks before my test, good guessing techniques + being more relaxed = a rise in my verbal score . Being tired and stressed out means I can't concentrate during verbal, and my score suffers. When I'm "on the ball" i.e. awake and focused, I always seem to get v40+.
I was drinking glucose and sugary sweets after IR and before quant in all my practice tests... in hindsight, I didn't need it. I'll save it for just before verbal only. I have half a snickers bar before quant and half a snickers bar before verbal (nuts etc. for sustained energy)... is that a good idea?
Yep I did 3 GMATPrep tests over the last 4 months. I got 690 (q48,v36), 690 (q47, v38) and 700 (q47, v39). That was before I started focusing on verbal again, I'd let it slip after focusing 100% on quant for so long. Do you think I'm more or less ready to take the test in 3 weeks then? I'm quite worried that I'll bomb it again for some unknown reason and get a 580, like I did when I bombed it the first time... I suppose if I keep my head together on the day and stay relaxed and reasonably calm, and guess properly when needed, I should be ok. I guess it could go both ways, with a range of +/- 30... I've been keeping my quant warm too as well as focusing on verbal.
I'll do the opener drills for sure now, and then any questions that I don't know how to do, I will focus on. I won't bother in the next few weeks to do questions and question types that I'm already comfortable with. I tried the drill on the weekend and it was really good. I'll do it a few more times too before the exam.
yeah I did the GMATfocus tests some time ago, they can't be reset unfortuntately. but this week I've redone every single GMATfocus question, timed, that I did a long time ago and reviewed them thoroughly.
What would be your advice as to what to do in the next 3 weeks? Should I just practice my execution etc. so that I'm completely "over it" and confident with the exam by the time I walk into the test centre?
Well, I hope that in 3 weeks I will be doing a jubilant debrief in this thread :), with many thanks to you of course !
- StaceyKoprince
- ManhattanGMAT Staff
- Posts: 9361
- Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2005 9:05 am
- Location: Montreal
Re: 2 years, and still stuck
If those practice test scores were achieved under official conditions (with essay and IR, with normal timing and breaks, etc), then those aren't flukes - you can score at that level.
The things that can lead to a big score drop on test day:
- timing
- anxiety
- fatigue
So those are the things that you need to make sure you know how to manage leading into the big day.
Some of the anxiety and timing stuff will be alleviated by remembering how this test works. You're not expecting to get everything right, you're expecting to have to guess, etc. People mess us the timing and ratchet up their anxiety when they freak out about not knowing how to do something or getting something wrong - but we're all going to get stuff wrong.
For the food / drink, before and during the first break, you really want complex carbs, protein, and fat - this is long-term energy food. A snickers bar will give you a bit of protein and fat, but not very efficiently. :)
For breakfast / lunch before, have eggs and whole grain toast or a sandwich on whole grain bread. Or have pasta (ideally whole wheat) with some kind of meat- or bean-based sauce. Hummus with whole grain pita. That kind of thing.
Have the same kind of stuff at the first break. Second break is the glucose in liquid form plus some food if you're hungry - more sandwich or a banana or something like that.
The final couple of weeks:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... an-part-1/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... ew-part-2/
Good luck - let us know how it goes!
The things that can lead to a big score drop on test day:
- timing
- anxiety
- fatigue
So those are the things that you need to make sure you know how to manage leading into the big day.
Some of the anxiety and timing stuff will be alleviated by remembering how this test works. You're not expecting to get everything right, you're expecting to have to guess, etc. People mess us the timing and ratchet up their anxiety when they freak out about not knowing how to do something or getting something wrong - but we're all going to get stuff wrong.
For the food / drink, before and during the first break, you really want complex carbs, protein, and fat - this is long-term energy food. A snickers bar will give you a bit of protein and fat, but not very efficiently. :)
For breakfast / lunch before, have eggs and whole grain toast or a sandwich on whole grain bread. Or have pasta (ideally whole wheat) with some kind of meat- or bean-based sauce. Hummus with whole grain pita. That kind of thing.
Have the same kind of stuff at the first break. Second break is the glucose in liquid form plus some food if you're hungry - more sandwich or a banana or something like that.
The final couple of weeks:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... an-part-1/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... ew-part-2/
Good luck - let us know how it goes!
Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep
- rkafc81
- Course Students
- Posts: 90
- Joined: Tue Jun 15, 2010 2:39 am
Re: 2 years, and still stuck
Hi Stacey,
Well, I took the GMAT again yesterday, and scored 660 (Q42, v40). It's a big improvment on my last one at least (580: q37 v35)!! I don't konw what happened with the quant... I was getting Q47-Q49 on practice tests and 690-710 total score... I'm going to apply for my target school anyway (oxford) and see what happens, but regardless of whether or not I get in, I'll need to do a retake (I'm targeting management consulting post-MBA: they ask for GMAT scores when you apply).
I saw some quant questions that I've never seen before and had no idea how to answer them. The good thing though, is that this morning I realised that a lot of questions were VERY similar to OG, GMATPrep etc. questions!
I also had problems with stress which caused me to:
(a) take a bit of extra time on each quant question to make sure I did it properly and didn't amke any careless errors, and double-check that I'd
answered it properly. This wasn't a good thing to do I don't think.
(b) forget stuff, esp. around the "execution" of answering quant questions, including ones I have seen and done many times before. I was not doing questions with a clear head like when I did them in my practice tests. This probably caused the quant score drop too. I'll make a note of doing Ron's opener drills regularly now, just to have an automatic strategy for every single type of question, within 10 seconds of reading it.
My testing centre was also very noisy which made it very hard to concentrate (there were lots of driving tests in that room, and I could hear one guy's headphones next to me...) . I won't be booking into that one again. Note everyone, DON'T book your exam at the Reading, UK testing centre!!
And, in verbal, I had problems with focus (again), in which I couldn't make heads or tails of some of the long CR's and I had FOUR RC's!! I just couldn't focus on them, and ended up guessing on a lot of them when I had the focus issue. This problem is very annoying for me, because if I was "fresh" I wouldn't have a problem with RC and CR at all. I don't know why the GMAT puts verbal last, it's ridiculous. I also had a very strong tea in the break before verbal which was a mistake, as that really clouded my thinking. That said, I found the SC to be much much easier than in practice tests - I really see what is meant by SC now testing meaning a lot more. I think I could have scored a lot higher than V40 if I hadn't had a foggy mind. The
good news is, though, that I REALLY thought I had messed up the verbal section, badly. It turned out that I hadn't.
I found the IR a LOT easier than the MGMAT IR's, and easier even than the GMATPrep IR's. I still ran out of time though :(. I haven't got my IR score yet.
Anyway, moving forward, I know I will need a retake regardless (as I want to move into management consulting post-MBA, and a 660 won't cut the mustard
when applying for those jobs), the next one will be my 4th attempt (but 3rd attempt really as far as schools are concenred, as I cancelled the score
during my 2nd one due to a critical timing error).
The problem is, I have used up all practice tests with GMATPrep and MGMAT. That said, I never revised any of the questions when I did those tests, I was only doing them to find out where I was scoring at and to practice my test execution. I don't know what to do now with practice tests, I may sign up for some of the Knewton ones or Kaplan or something, but I've heard they're not too accurate.
I know now with Quant though what I need to do: do lots of OG only, and really analyse them in depth, regularly. I wasn't really doing that in the last 4-5 weeks, I was only doing practice mostly, and flashcards. I will also make flashcards of missed OG questions once I've studied them, to keep them
fresh in my memory.
I will also go through all my recent MGMAT tests in aggregate and generate reports in order to ID my weak areas, then will put a lot of time into improving those areas (as well as doing mixed new sets of questions reasonably often).
And will keep my verbal fresh so I can hold the V40 score for my retake, by doing those at the end of each evening, when I'm tired and unmotivated (that should help me to increase stamina).
Does this sound like a good plan?
One last thing, how can I best recreate the pressure of the testing centre? That's a big one for me. I believe the practice tests reflect my true ability, but the testing centre gets to me a bit...
thanks!
Well, I took the GMAT again yesterday, and scored 660 (Q42, v40). It's a big improvment on my last one at least (580: q37 v35)!! I don't konw what happened with the quant... I was getting Q47-Q49 on practice tests and 690-710 total score... I'm going to apply for my target school anyway (oxford) and see what happens, but regardless of whether or not I get in, I'll need to do a retake (I'm targeting management consulting post-MBA: they ask for GMAT scores when you apply).
I saw some quant questions that I've never seen before and had no idea how to answer them. The good thing though, is that this morning I realised that a lot of questions were VERY similar to OG, GMATPrep etc. questions!
I also had problems with stress which caused me to:
(a) take a bit of extra time on each quant question to make sure I did it properly and didn't amke any careless errors, and double-check that I'd
answered it properly. This wasn't a good thing to do I don't think.
(b) forget stuff, esp. around the "execution" of answering quant questions, including ones I have seen and done many times before. I was not doing questions with a clear head like when I did them in my practice tests. This probably caused the quant score drop too. I'll make a note of doing Ron's opener drills regularly now, just to have an automatic strategy for every single type of question, within 10 seconds of reading it.
My testing centre was also very noisy which made it very hard to concentrate (there were lots of driving tests in that room, and I could hear one guy's headphones next to me...) . I won't be booking into that one again. Note everyone, DON'T book your exam at the Reading, UK testing centre!!
And, in verbal, I had problems with focus (again), in which I couldn't make heads or tails of some of the long CR's and I had FOUR RC's!! I just couldn't focus on them, and ended up guessing on a lot of them when I had the focus issue. This problem is very annoying for me, because if I was "fresh" I wouldn't have a problem with RC and CR at all. I don't know why the GMAT puts verbal last, it's ridiculous. I also had a very strong tea in the break before verbal which was a mistake, as that really clouded my thinking. That said, I found the SC to be much much easier than in practice tests - I really see what is meant by SC now testing meaning a lot more. I think I could have scored a lot higher than V40 if I hadn't had a foggy mind. The
good news is, though, that I REALLY thought I had messed up the verbal section, badly. It turned out that I hadn't.
I found the IR a LOT easier than the MGMAT IR's, and easier even than the GMATPrep IR's. I still ran out of time though :(. I haven't got my IR score yet.
Anyway, moving forward, I know I will need a retake regardless (as I want to move into management consulting post-MBA, and a 660 won't cut the mustard
when applying for those jobs), the next one will be my 4th attempt (but 3rd attempt really as far as schools are concenred, as I cancelled the score
during my 2nd one due to a critical timing error).
The problem is, I have used up all practice tests with GMATPrep and MGMAT. That said, I never revised any of the questions when I did those tests, I was only doing them to find out where I was scoring at and to practice my test execution. I don't know what to do now with practice tests, I may sign up for some of the Knewton ones or Kaplan or something, but I've heard they're not too accurate.
I know now with Quant though what I need to do: do lots of OG only, and really analyse them in depth, regularly. I wasn't really doing that in the last 4-5 weeks, I was only doing practice mostly, and flashcards. I will also make flashcards of missed OG questions once I've studied them, to keep them
fresh in my memory.
I will also go through all my recent MGMAT tests in aggregate and generate reports in order to ID my weak areas, then will put a lot of time into improving those areas (as well as doing mixed new sets of questions reasonably often).
And will keep my verbal fresh so I can hold the V40 score for my retake, by doing those at the end of each evening, when I'm tired and unmotivated (that should help me to increase stamina).
Does this sound like a good plan?
One last thing, how can I best recreate the pressure of the testing centre? That's a big one for me. I believe the practice tests reflect my true ability, but the testing centre gets to me a bit...
thanks!
- StaceyKoprince
- ManhattanGMAT Staff
- Posts: 9361
- Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2005 9:05 am
- Location: Montreal
Re: 2 years, and still stuck
Nice work! Solid improvement in both quant and verbal - congratulations. :)
When this happened, what did you do?
Good response: don't spend more than 30-60 seconds, guess, move on.
Bad response: spend too much time trying to figure them out, then have to rush on other questions that you DO know how to do in order to make up the time. That will bring your score down.
Yes, that would mess up your timing later in the test. When you rush, you make more careless mistakes. If you do that a lot, your score goes down.
To some extent, expect this to happen. The test is 3.5 hours long; you're going to forget some things that you really did know how to do.
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -to-do-it/
Given the other stuff you've said, I'm guessing you also hung on too long for those "but I should know how to do this" questions, which again would've messed up your timing and hurt your performance on the test.
Okay, so some themes around timing and also stress. I think the "opener" drills are a great idea.
On verbal, again, expect some mental fatigue to start kicking in - expect to have to rest your brain for 30 seconds and to make some guesses on hard questions. You mention that you had "FOUR RC's!!" - expect to have 4. That's the most common testing experience. :)
Before the test and on the first break, eat food that contains complex carbs, protein, and a little fat. Eggs, whole grain bread, a sandwich with turkey or tuna or peanut butter. Whole-grain pita with hummus. You get the idea. :)
Before verbal, drink liquid that has lots of glucose and NO high-fructose corn syrup. If you live someplace that has a specialty health-food store, look for specialized drinks and ideally find something that has glucose and very little or no fructose - but that's hard to find. Otherwise, go for coconut water or fresh OJ. (Those will both contain fructose as well as glucose, but they won't contain high-fructose corn syrup.)
For IR, plan to skip 2-3 questions. That will reduce the time pressure on the questions that you do answer.
Re: practice tests, if you haven't really reviewed those questions, then you can take those tests again - you won't remember most of the questions. (Especially because you should be studying for at least 2-3 weeks between tests!)
You can still take both GMATPrep and MGMAT CATs with repeats as long as you follow a few guidelines to minimize the chance of artificially inflating your score via question repeats. First, anytime you see a problem that you remember (and this means: I know the answer or I'm pretty sure I remember the answer, not just "hmm, this looks vaguely familiar..."), immediately look at the timer and make yourself sit there for the full length of time for that question type. This way, you don't artificially give yourself more time than you should have. Second, think about whether you got this problem right the last time. If you did, get it right again this time. If you didn't, get it wrong again. If you *completely honestly* think that you would get it right this time around if it were a new question (even though you got it wrong last time) because you've studied that area and improved, then get it right this time.
Yes, I think your plan sounds good. Just avoid doing much analysis on individual CAT questions so that you can re-use those tests!
I saw some quant questions that I've never seen before and had no idea how to answer them.
When this happened, what did you do?
Good response: don't spend more than 30-60 seconds, guess, move on.
Bad response: spend too much time trying to figure them out, then have to rush on other questions that you DO know how to do in order to make up the time. That will bring your score down.
take a bit of extra time on each quant question to make sure I did it properly and didn't amke any careless errors, and double-check that I'd answered it properly. This wasn't a good thing to do I don't think.
Yes, that would mess up your timing later in the test. When you rush, you make more careless mistakes. If you do that a lot, your score goes down.
forget stuff, esp. around the "execution" of answering quant questions, including ones I have seen and done many times before
To some extent, expect this to happen. The test is 3.5 hours long; you're going to forget some things that you really did know how to do.
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -to-do-it/
Given the other stuff you've said, I'm guessing you also hung on too long for those "but I should know how to do this" questions, which again would've messed up your timing and hurt your performance on the test.
Okay, so some themes around timing and also stress. I think the "opener" drills are a great idea.
On verbal, again, expect some mental fatigue to start kicking in - expect to have to rest your brain for 30 seconds and to make some guesses on hard questions. You mention that you had "FOUR RC's!!" - expect to have 4. That's the most common testing experience. :)
Before the test and on the first break, eat food that contains complex carbs, protein, and a little fat. Eggs, whole grain bread, a sandwich with turkey or tuna or peanut butter. Whole-grain pita with hummus. You get the idea. :)
Before verbal, drink liquid that has lots of glucose and NO high-fructose corn syrup. If you live someplace that has a specialty health-food store, look for specialized drinks and ideally find something that has glucose and very little or no fructose - but that's hard to find. Otherwise, go for coconut water or fresh OJ. (Those will both contain fructose as well as glucose, but they won't contain high-fructose corn syrup.)
For IR, plan to skip 2-3 questions. That will reduce the time pressure on the questions that you do answer.
Re: practice tests, if you haven't really reviewed those questions, then you can take those tests again - you won't remember most of the questions. (Especially because you should be studying for at least 2-3 weeks between tests!)
You can still take both GMATPrep and MGMAT CATs with repeats as long as you follow a few guidelines to minimize the chance of artificially inflating your score via question repeats. First, anytime you see a problem that you remember (and this means: I know the answer or I'm pretty sure I remember the answer, not just "hmm, this looks vaguely familiar..."), immediately look at the timer and make yourself sit there for the full length of time for that question type. This way, you don't artificially give yourself more time than you should have. Second, think about whether you got this problem right the last time. If you did, get it right again this time. If you didn't, get it wrong again. If you *completely honestly* think that you would get it right this time around if it were a new question (even though you got it wrong last time) because you've studied that area and improved, then get it right this time.
Yes, I think your plan sounds good. Just avoid doing much analysis on individual CAT questions so that you can re-use those tests!
Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep