Creating an effective 6 wk study plan

[peter.lam620]

Hi - I finished my 9 week prep course this past weekend and my exam date is on the 3rd week of October. My target GMAT score is the magic 700, but I am truly aiming for anywhere between 680-720. If I were to take the test today, I "believe" I will score anywhere between 610-640. Therefore, I want to use the next 6-7 weeks to create an effective study plan so that I can acheive the target range of scores stated above.

Below are my cat exam stats (i've discarded the first one, which was taken back in may)
Cat Exam 2 (8/15/09) 660- QUANT - 45 (77%) VERBAL - 35 (77%)
Cat Exam 3 (8/29/09) 630- QUANT - 43 (70%) VERBAL - 33(69%)

Before the prep course - i thought my strength was QUANT and weakness was Verbal (b/c english is not my first language).

I am a bit shocked that my QUANT and VER scores on the cat exams are about even in terms of percentile. Even with those numbers i know my biggest weakness is still VER. I am weak across the board among SC, CR, and RC. Perhaps I might have gotten "lucky" on some of the Verb cat questions.

As for Quant - I feel i can do better and get it up to 85 percentile. I make a lot of "stupid" mistakes meaning i don't think critically on tough questions. This is something I need to work on.

Overall, I plan to devote 2-3 hrs a day 7 days a week for studying ( just the same way i've been doing for the last 9 weeks). I am thinking about allocating 70% of my time toward verbal and 30% of toward Quant. Is this a good strategy? Do you think my QUANT score might suffer as a result of this allocation? Also, someone suggested that i do a small mix of sc, cr, and rc every single day. Is this a good strategy? In the end, I guess I just don't know how to create a study plan for myself.

I know my questions are extremely general, but any feedback/thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Peter

[StaceyKoprince]

I like your thinking in general. First question: did you sign up for the end-of-course test review? If you took the three practice tests generally as indicated on the syllabus, then your instructor will look through the tests and advise you as to what to do with your remaining time. So if you haven't already requested this review, I strongly advise you to email your instructor today! Tell him/her what you told us below.

My guess is that you probably spent a bit more time studying verbal than quant because you knew it was a weakness coming in, and that's why your scores are now looking more equal.

It may also be the case that you're making too many careless mistakes on quant questions that you do know how to do. It's okay to make a few careless mistakes per section (in fact, you're pretty much guaranteed to make some careless mistakes over the length of an entire section), but if you make more than a few, your score is going to start dropping a lot.

At this point, you're still trying to learn and improve, not just review and maintain, so each day, I think you should concentrate on just one broad category (quant or verbal). In the last week or two before the test, your focus shifts more toward pure review, and that's when it's more appropriate to do a mix of question types each day.

You recently finished the course; did you also finish all of the curriculum assignments associated with the course? If not, start there. If so, now you want to start doing mixed sets of random problems (eg, put together a set of 10 DS and 10 PS problems chosen randomly from an Official Guide book; make sure to choose different problem number levels so that you're varying the difficulty level; give yourself 40 minutes to do the 20 problems all at once. Then spend another 80-120 minutes (2 to 3 times as long) analyzing both the problems and your thought processes / work. As needed, return to the strategy guides, labs, or tapes of past classes (but base this on specific problems you're having with the material - don't just re-do all of the strategy guides from end to end).

For both quant and verbal, start keeping error logs. Write down: the source of the problem (so you can find it again), the specific error (or errors!) you made, WHY you made the error(s), and what habits you need to create or break in order to minimize the chances of making that same error again in future.

On verbal, also include: why the wrong answers are tempting (that is, why you or someone would actually pick that answer) and why the right answers are not tempting (that is, why you or someone would actually cross off that answer). Then make sure you understand the specific error in reasoning that would lead someone to pick a wrong answer or to cross off a right answer.

Do the above on EVERY SINGLE problem you do. Those are some of the major differences between a 600-level tester and a 700-level. (Besides other more obvious things: clearly, if there's some formula or grammar rule that you don't know well enough, then you need to make sure you know that stuff backwards and forwards.)

Good luck - and don't forget to ask your instructor for input as well!

[peter.lam620]

Stacey - thanks for the detailed response. First - Yes, I did sign up for the end of course test review, but haven't received my assessment/feedback. I should get it soon. In the mean time, i wanted to get a second opinion in terms of creating study plans.

Thus far, I've devoted equal amount of time toward quant & verbal, but going forward I will focus on verbal a little more since it is my weak area. I plan to spend one day on Quant and the next on Verbal as my studying strategy. As for the curriculum assignments i've done most of them. So my next step will be completing the remaining OG problems and do all the 25 question banks online.

I ran the assessment on my own and found the following in regards to QUANT - my top 2 weaknesses are: geometry & word translation, which was what i expected. Also, I completed the 25 questions bank for Geo and got half of it wrong. What's an effective way to get better in Geo? Merely practice more problems and memorized the rules? My problem with Geo is that - if i don't 'see' the first time, then i wouldn't be able to solve it, no matter how much time i spent on the problem. (hope that makes sense)

As for word translation - on the 600-700 level questions (or really wordy problems), it usually takes me over 1m 30s to truly understand what the question is asking and begin translating words to math. In most cases, i find myself panicking when it hits the 2 m mark if i am still translating; so i end up guessing stragetically or randomly before it reaches over 3 mins. I know the way to get better is to practice doing the these problems. I was wondering if you have any effective studying tricks when it comes to preparing/studying to improve on this topic.

[StaceyKoprince]

On geom, it's good that you already know that, if you don't "see" it to start, then you're not going to get it. That will give you the confidence to just let go when you don't know what to do. There are maybe 4-6 geometry questions, on average, in the quant section, so if you have to let one or two hard ones go, that's not a big deal.

At the same time, though, there are a couple of things that you can do to improve. First, of course, if you are struggling with any specific knowledge - formulas, rules, whatever - then you do need to keep practicing until you absolutely know that info.

Second, part of what you need to study is how to recognize what a particular problem is testing. Go back to the past practice problems with which you have struggled and ask yourself: now that I know (from reading the explanation) that this problem is testing X and that I should do Y to solve, how will I recognize that next time on a similar problem? There's something about the wording or the set-up of the problem, so what is that? If necessary, make flash cards that show "if I see X, I should do..." and on the back, write what you should do.

By the way, that exercise works on ANY problem, not just geom (and not just quant), and it's something you should think about on every single problem you study.

Ditto on the WT: start learning how to recognize what's going on (which takes maybe 20-30 seconds) rather than having to figure everything out from scratch (which takes 1+ minutes, as you noted).

By the way: the next time you find yourself at the 2m mark and you're still trying to figure out what to do, immediately make a random guess and move on. You do NOT want to use extra time on that kind of problem! (You should only ever use extra time if you know EXACTLY what you're doing, but the problem just happens to be extra long.)