4th try at 700...any advice greatly appreciated

[lowszeyuan]

Hi

I've been a student of the 9-week online class which ended in July. Since then, I've taken 3 tests with scores of 490,590 and 570. I've had almost 10 2-hr sessions with the MGMAT tutors since my first attempt. They have all been great and have covered ALL the topics of the exam in great detail. I started by trying to achieve mastery over the 500+ level questions which I followed with the 600+ level ones.

Before my 2nd test, I was focusing solely on the Quant aspect which led to a score of 590. After that, I focused only on Verbal(well, and a little Quant +4 800score practice tests) and I found that - on my 3rd attempt - while my verbal rose by 5% in terms of percentile, my quant had dropped by 15%. This was very shocking as I did some revision in the final week on key quant concepts and thought the real thing had tougher questions.

I'm planning to retake the test one more time in a mth's time and would appreciate ANY input on my predicament given that I'm shooting for 700 ultimately. I've done ALL the questions in all the MGMAT guide +OG+Purple/Green books 2-3 times by now! And yes, I've strived to drill down each question with a view to 'mastery' as opposed to just skimming through the solutions.

Any comments will be greatly appreciated as I don't feel I would need further tutoring sessions and would prefer to sort this one out alone.

Thanks!
SY

[StaceyKoprince]

Hi - couple of things:

- have you done a Post-Exam Assessment? This is a free, post-real-GMAT phone call you can have to debrief after the test and figure out what to do for the next one. (Obviously, for others reading, this is free only for people who've taken our class or done private tutoring :) If you haven't done this yet, email studentservices@manhattangmat.com and request the Post-Exam Assessment. They'll get you started on the process to schedule the call.

- for your next exam, please be aware that if you don't study certain things, then your peformance in those areas will drop. In other words, it isn't surprising that your math score dropped after you focused almost entirely on verbal for your third exam. The things we have to know for this test are not things we use on a daily basis, so the skills atrophy pretty quickly, unfortunately. Make sure to use a more balanced approach in your study.

Finally, can you give us a bit more information about your strengths and weaknesses (particularly the latter) and also your timing? Are you pacing properly (~ 2 min per question on average, a little less time on SC) throughout the entire test, or are you running out of time towards the end and having to increase your speed or even make random guesses? That sort of thing.

[lowsyeyuan]

Hi Stacey

Thanks for your reply. Yes I have undergone the Post Exam Assessment with Tate which I found to be EXTREMELY helpful. With that feedback, I worked with my first private tutor with whom I focused ONLY on the Quant areas. Now, here's the funny thing, when I went into the exam 2 months after that, my Quant - naturally - improved to a 61%(from 40%) while my verbal ALSO improved,albeit to a lesser extent, 10% over the first exam.

I understand what you meant about skills atrophy. Given that Quant is my weaker section, it was not suprising to find it dip this time around, without prep. During the exam, I tried to focus on doing the questions(both Q and V) without watching the time as I felt I was on track. It's sorta like an internal clock that I have because during practice, I almost never run out of time for both Q & V. This could be a result of seeing the same questions for the 4560th time which enabled to solve the question much quicker. In any case, after about the 13th question on the test, I start to realise that I'm behind time...so I start to work a little quicker. Unfortunately at about the 22th question, I was left with approx 25min so I decided to guess alternate questions. I only guessed a total of 4 in each section though. At the 34th question mark, I managed to speed through the final 3 questions in 4 minutes. I did feel that the questions were harder mid-way through the sections AND continued that way. Hence, I was surprised to see my Q score dip. I'm sure that the exam jitters got to me but - to be honest - I wasn't nervous to the extent of experiencing blankouts during the exam.

I've been reading the strategies that high-scorers have utilised in their prep. But I'm unsure if I should follow their strats given that most advocate spending a topic a WHOLE week. I feel like I should split my study time in shorter sessions, say 2-3 hrs a day and split that between Q and V. I'm just not sure how many questions to do per sessions or if I should just follow the OG tracker and start from Day 1? I know where my weak areas are but I'm sure if I have enought time to get through all the questions in the strat guide plus the official books before end Jan when I'll retake the test.

Thanks for your advice.

Happy Holidays!
SY

[StaceyKoprince]

Okay, so you had to work at a faster pace than you would've liked for more than half of the test (starting with Q13). That's going to cause you to make more mistakes that you would otherwise make, and overall, your score will drop (especially since you had to do it for so much of the test). It's CRITICALLY important that you get the timing right for your next test - it is nearly impossible to hit a 700 if you don't pace yourself properly. (You can hit a 700 with bad pacing, maybe, if you're normally a 780 test taker. That's about it.) In other words, if you don't fix this timing issue, you're not going to hit a 700 - that's how important it is.

For pacing, first be aware that most people need to guess on 5-7 questions in each section no matter how good they get. The questions just keep getting harder so, sooner or later, everybody hits stuff they can't do.

You have two choices: you can spend too much time on stuff you can't do (and probably get it wrong anyway) and then be forced to guess on a bunch of questions at the end b/c you don't have enough time to finish properly. OR you can choose the 5-7 hardest questions for you as you see them throughout the test. This gives you two big bonuses: you selectively choose the hardest ones and you spread your guesses out, instead of being forced to make clumped-together guesses towards the end. (Even guessing every other is not great - you want your guesses to be at least 3-4 questions apart, when at all possible.)

When you see one that you simply cannot do in two minutes, acknowledge it, make an educated guess, and MOVE ON. Still use the whole 2 minutes (math) for this process, but DO NOT go beyond two minutes.

Take a look at your most recent practice test to make sure that your knowledge of your strengths and weaknesses matches with the actual data (most of the time, our gut feeling about our own weaknesses is right, but sometimes the data is surprising!). Match those weaknesses with the areas that are highly tested on the exam. (Eg: a number properties weakness is a big problem b/c NP is so prevalent on the exam. A combinatorics weakness is no big deal, as those are not very common.) Use those to set your priorities for study. (If you're not sure what's more common vs. less common, ask us here!)

When checking the test results, look at question type, content area, timing, accuracy, AND difficulty level - those are all important in determining your weaknesses.

Once you figure out what areas to prioritize in your study, set aside 2-3 hours a day. If you do 2 hours, concentrate on just one specific thing (say, data sufficiency, or geometry problems of both types). If you do 3 hours, then spend 1.5 hours each on two different things, one math and one verbal. At the end of every topic (eg, at the end of the 2 hour session, or at the end of each 1.5 hour session), write down at least 5 things that you learned that day - about the test, your own strengths and weaknesses, things you want to make sure you remember, whatever. This is your study session summary. At the beginning of each study session, look at your summaries from the previous three study sessions and use those to inform what you choose to study during that session. As you begin to master some things on older summaries, check them off. As you notice some things that still don't seem to be sinking in (and there will be things), rewrite them on the current day's study session summary.

Please also remember that quantity is not the holy grail here - quality is. In a 1.5 hour session, you may spend 30 minutes doing 15 problems, and then another 60 minutes going over those problems. I can easily spend 10-15 minutes studying a problem after I've spent the initial couple of minutes doing it. If you don't already have the ten questions written down from the strategy lesson at the end of class 2, go re-watch the tape, write those questions down, and tape them over your study table. Answer every one of those ten questions for each problem you do.

Given what you described with your math timing issue on your most recent test, your current capability is higher than what you scored on the test - the timing issue literally caused you to underperform relative to what you were capable of doing at the time you took the test. This was possibly a quite significant issue, given your description of the timing issues, though I can't know for certain, of course, since I can't see the test data. But having to start working more quickly than you're comfortable working at only the 13th question is a real problem.

You've shown some nice improvement already, and you have individually improved math and verbal (on your last two tests) - so you need to put that together on one test. Given that you're at the mid-to-high 500s right now, that should get you into the low 600s at least and possibly as high as 650, depending upon how severe your timing issues were. That still doesn't quite get you to a 700, but it's a good start.

[Oh - and the things that are natural strengths for you won't atrophy as quickly. That may be why your verbal improved a bit even without much focus on it (you don't say whether verbal is your natural strength - I'm just guessing).]

[lowszeyuan]

Hi Stacey

Yes, I hear what you are saying about quality vs quantity. And to be fair, I have been spending a lot of time reviewing problems in the last 3 months with my private tutors. I believe that the crux of the matter lies with my timing. I shall continue to focus on specific problem areas rather than skim through 3-4 areas a week. I thought that I had the timing issue nailed down by completing 10 practice tests(including the ones on 800score)...clearly not the case.

Will take up your advice and hope for the best in my next attempt!

Thanks for the advice.
SY

[StaceyKoprince]

Excellent - let us know if you have more questions or concerns!