Building Quant Discipline

[hoangh81]

I took my GMAT on February 18 and scored a 650. My score breakdown is 41 Verbal and 37 Quant. I scored a 5.0 on the AWA.

I notice a huge difference in the way I approached the verbal section vs. the quant section. I'm very disciplined when it comes to the verbal questions. I'll look at the question and I'll be able to identify what I'm being asked- and not just only in terms of RC vs. CR vs. SC. For example, if it's a CR question, I'm able to identify it as Find an Assumption, Draw a Conclusion, etc. If it's an RC question, I'll identify what kind of passage it is (long vs. short) and use the appropriate method to read and summarize the passage. Same with SC questions- I can almost tell immediately at least one subtopic I'm being tested on.

With quant questions, I feel as if I'm less skilled and disciplined in those respects. Unless it's very obvious, I have a hard time identifying what the question is truly asking me when it comes to Data Sufficiency- is it testing me on negative numbers? Odds and evens? And for Problem Solving, I'm usually not sure what to do next to solve the question. In this way, I feel as if I don't have strong quant "muscles" whereas I feel as if my verbal capacity and muscles are very strong.

However, I do understand that much of one's quant capacity is related to how much one practices. What's the best way for me to build my quant muscles? What's the best way to develop discipline around the quant questions? I plan to retake my GMAT in 8 weeks so advice on how to best use my study time will be much appreciated.

[StaceyKoprince]

Good questions - it's great that you've developed this "recognition" skill for verbal, and now you do need to do it for quant. It's very doable - you just need to know how to do it.

This article talks about how to decode quant problems (with one specific concept as an example):

http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/09/ ... t-problems

This article talks about the kinds of questions to ask yourself when reviewing a specific problem:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/a ... roblem.cfm

And here are two more articles that show examples of how to answer those questions with specific quant problems:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/a ... roblem.cfm
http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/a ... roblem.cfm

In general, ask yourself: How could I have known that? You read an explanation and it says "this one is about odds and evens" and then you go back and say, "Huh, I totally missed that. How COULD I have known that? How WILL I know that next time? What's the clue?"

The good news is that you already have this skill on the verbal, so you should be able to develop it on the quant as well - you just have to learn how to recognize the clues!

Use the forums, too - when you see something and you're not sure HOW to know / recognize what to do, post the problem (if it's from an allowed source) and ask: how should / could I recognize what to do on this one?