dejected..

[vikram4689]

i need some words of motivation. i gave mgmat cat today and got meagre 710 (36 V). i don't know how to tackle this, what to improve. time is certainly one thing that i need to improve. can experts share how should i use immense assessments reports generated by mgmat cat to improve myself.

i say "dejected" because i have been getting >90% accuracy in verbal and when i tried most of incorrect question, i was able to solve them. so what do i have to improve actually, when i try to revise my notes i feel i already know these.

[StaceyKoprince]

Did you type that correctly - you got a 710? I would never call any score starting with a 7 a "meagre" number. :)

If you typed that incorrectly, please let me know what your scoring level really was and what your goal score is.

If you typed that correctly, please let me know why you feel that you need an even higher score! Also, here are your first words of motivations: 710 is a great score!!

Also, 36 on the verbal is the 79th percentile. As a general rule, even the very top schools look for only about 80th percentile or higher (and 79th = 80th for all intents and purposes). So that's still a very good score.

But you're hoping for more. When you say you've been getting ">90% accuracy" in verbal - where? how? Not on practice tests - no one answers that many questions correctly unless they're scoring 99th percentile. So is that from... OG? Other practice problem sets? Are these problem sets adaptive? (probably not) Are you doing them under timed conditions? (hopefully) Are you doing mixed sets of questions - some CR, RC, and SC all rolled up?

All of these things can affect your performance. It's easier to do 10 SCs in a row than to do 10 SCs interspersed with other question types. It's easier to do only a mix of 10 to 20 questions than a mix of 41. And it's easier to do a mix of 41 verbal questions when you haven't already written an essay, and completed the IR and quant sections.

In other words: don't expect to match "practice accuracy" when under real testing conditions.

Next, you mention that when you try most of your incorrect questions, you can solve them. Is that only for practice questions or also for any questions that you miss on practice tests? If the former, then possibly you aren't doing a hard enough mix of questions - the practice tests are adaptive. Either way, this does indicate some level of making careless mistakes.

What careless mistakes do you make? WHY do you make them? What do you miss the first time around that you catch the second time and what steps could you have taken the first time around in order not to miss whatever you missed? The key here is really digging into the data / details and figuring out how to change bad habits or build good habits that will minimize whatever specific careless mistakes you're making. That all starts from understanding WHY you made a particular kind of error in the first place. So go back to the questions and dig in!

[vikram4689]

yes i got 710 :) but since i am indian male 710 is meagre. 720 average is for all the countries but typically all schools have high averages for indian applicants. my target is 770.

i agree on the >90 accuracy part and this statistic was when i was doing these question in isolation but interestingly i have also given knewton cats and gmat prep (version 1) and on all of them # of incorrect on verbal were around 7-8 and i got 40+ on verbal. however, on mgmat cat i got 14 wrong (7 rc, 2 sc, 3 cr) including the 3-4 question that i marked in hurry because of less time. so, 1 aspect i certainly need to improve is timing how do i improve myself in comprehending quickly, i noticed that sometimes i re-read argument on CR

when i tried wrong questions (which i didn't mark in hurry) on mgmat cat, i was able to solve them and am unable to think why i marked them incorrectly. is this concentration issue.. how should i improve this. i am certainly struggling with answering these 2 questions - WHAT and WHY do i make careless mistakes ?

i contemplated whole day on why i got so many wrong and i realized one thing that while doing the cat i am under so much pressure that i don't actually apply the strategies that i have made for each section. for e.g. my strategy for CR in the notes is identify question type -> identify evidence and conclusion -> simplify argument -> find assumption from simplified argument -> pre-phrase answer -> evaluate answer choices but somehow i don't follow the exact same path when i am doing cat. similar is the case with my RC, my strategy is to read for Main point, Attitude, Purpose, Structure but while doing cat i just read the passage and start solving the questions. so i think another area i need to work on is to force myself to use the strategies on the cats

[StaceyKoprince]

Okay, you're starting to answer your own questions re: why you're making the mistakes you're making.

1) Your timing isn't good enough yet, causing you to rush at times, and that causes careless mistakes. Fix the timing, that eliminate the rushing. That won't eliminate ALL careless mistakes, but it'll eliminate the ones that are due to rushing. :)

Read these and start doing what they describe:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... to-win-it/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... nt-part-1/

2) Under pressure, you lose your process. There are a few reasons this may be happening. The timing pressure may cause you to feel that you need to abandon your normal process and speed up. You may also be feeling mental fatigue and simply stop being as systematic as you know you need to be - particularly for verbal, as it's the last section. You may also be fine applying the process for 5 or 10 questions but then lose that on the 15th or 20th as your timing starts to "go off" and you start getting mentally fatigued.

So one thing you might want to do is examine your strategies to see whether you can streamline them at all. Keep all necessary steps, but if you can combine two or drop unnecessary steps, then do so.

The next thing is to use written, visual cues to help you make sure that you're being systematic on every problem. I suspect that the timing pressure plays into this as well and, once you fix that, you won't feel the need to rush and drop steps of your process. Once you start dropping steps / being less systematic, it's hard to make yourself start again.

For example, you mention CR. For CR, the first thing I write down is a one or two letter abbreviation for the question type - ALWAYS, every single time. This makes me figure out what the question type is, because I can't write it down till I know, right? So I can't skip the step, because I can feel that something's wrong already if the first thing I write down is NOT that one or two letter abbreviation.

My next step is to take light notes on the argument and, if it's a type that has a conclusion, to note the conclusion. Again, I've got to write that down. My third step is to remind myself what I'm solving for / trying to do on this type of question. For that, I go back and underline my question-type abbreviation (again, a visual cue / reminder) and then I underline anything important in the argument based on that Q type. (eg, if it's one of the assumption family questions and I jotted down an assumption that I brainstormed, I underline that assumption. I also underline the conclusion, because all assumption family questions rely on the conclusion somehow.)

And, finally, when I'm going through my answers, I have ABCDE and I know that I need a symbol next to each one of those letters. (Symbols can mean: this one's wrong, maybe this is it, I don't understand this answer, and this is the one I want to pick.) Again, if I don't have a symbol next to each answer, something's wrong - I'm not being systematic.

Now, you don't need to do things exactly the way I do, but you do need to have your own consistent process that you follow. Every. Single. Time. Did you discover that you just didn't do it on two of the questions in that 10-question set you just did. Make yourself go back and write everything out exactly the way you should have. That's your "punishment." Do that enough times and you'll start remembering to do it the first time around so that you don't have to go through the tedious work of writing it out later. :)

For 40+ verbal, getting around 80% of the questions right on GMATPrep sounds about right, yes (though it could be fewer as well). 40 is the 90th percentile.

[vikram4689]

thanks stacey. i did read those articles and noticed that i have come across them earlier as well. in fact i adopted this strategy of checking time after every 5 question to see whether i am on track from those articles only.

i found that one thing that makes me lose on timing is "comprehending slowly" i.e. on RC and CR i take almost 1.5 times the recommended time to understand the passage/argument. when i don't do so i end up getting more wrong and when i do so i lose on timing. any suggestion on how can i "comprehend fastly".

[StaceyKoprince]

Reading and comprehension speed can be improved, but it's going to take some time - likely months. This area is one of the slowest areas to improve.

You can find some ideas here:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... rehension/

The big thing is basically reading, every day. Read novels. Read the newspaper (New York Times, Financial Times - more "highbrow" newspapers). Read non-fiction.

Also remember, though, that there should be times on the GMAT when you say to yourself: this is too hard, I'm making a guess - and you do that quickly so that you're saving time on those questions. If you save time on a few questions, that allows you to spend a little more time on others.

Next, are you sure that all that time is lost specifically to reading? For CR and RC, I find that one of the biggest "time sucks" is actually debating between the last 2 answers. People will spend way too long going back and forth between the last two, when really, you have your best shot at knowing what's going on after the very first time that you compare the last 2 answers. Once you're down to those 2, compare once more, but then pick and move on. You either know or you don't and, if you don't, 30 to 60 more seconds of agonizing back and forth isn't going to change much.