Game plan after 3rd CAT exam

[connieyip11]

Hi Stacey.

I just took my 3rd CAT and I wanted to share my analysis with you to get your thoughts on my assessment. I had previously shared with you the assessment and study plans after my 2nd CAT, and I found your insight to be very helpful.

Overall, I felt much more comfortable this time around and was able to bump my score from 590 to 640. I did have significant time management issues this time around, which I'll detail in the sections below.

Quant
The average difficulties for right answers for PS and DS were 700 and 710, respectively. The average difficulties for wrong PS and DS were 740 and 730, respectively. I was able to manage to stay within the range, but I had HUGE timing issues with PS problems. Even though the average times for right and difficult problems were 2:16 and 2:30, there were several instances where i went spent over 3 minutes on a problem. There were several problems where I had a good idea of how to approach the problem, but I got stuck while trying to figure out the problem, resulting in me spending way too much time on the question. This all snowballed, and I was left with 6-7 questions at the end with approximately 5 minutes to go. A lot of the content areas that I did poorly in were aligned with the questions that I rushed at the end. Do you have any suggestions on how to fix the timing issue here? I know that I should be able to recognize problems that I won't solve right away, but I got stuck with the questions that I had a good idea of how to solve the problem, but got lost in the process of solving the question.

One thing I noticed is that the Pick Smart Numbers method takes a long time. I recognized that I use up a lot of time when I have to plug in numbers to each of the answer choices. Do you have any recommendations on how to speed this process up? I know that sometimes it's suggested to start with C, but I don't find that this method is always applicable.

I did better on DS questions. I got 67% of them correct and was able to stay within the appropriate 2 minute time slot for most of the questions.

I still feel like some additional practice will help me solidify how to approach content areas and certain strategies, so I definitely plan on doing several practice problems to get this nailed down.

Verbal
Critical Reasoning was my downfall again in the Verbal section. The average times for right and wrong answers were 1:40 and 2:38. The average difficulties for right and wrong answers were 530 and 690. I think I need to work on my timing on CR questions still. I feel like I spend a lot of time trying to understand the argument and re-assessing what the question is asking for. There were many instances where I was unable to identify the gap to come up with some ideas of possible assumptions. Any additional advice here aside from the link that you sent me last time? Is this just a matter of more practice to get the timing down?

MY SC was fine, but the range was lower this time. I got 80% of the questions correct and stayed within 1:30 minutes for most questions, but the majority of the questions I received were in the 600-700 range. I figure this is because of how I performed on the RC/CR questions that precede these SC questions, but I think I'm still doing OK in this area.

Lastly, RC was all right. I feel like I just need more practice with RC questions since I haven't practiced RC questions in a while. My average difficulties for right and wrong questions were 650 and 700. When I went through the RC questions, I just felt like there were certain details that I missed due to being tired, or just reading too fast.

IR
I wanted your input on an average score I should aim for in IR. I haven't spent much time here since I've been focusing on Quant and Verbal, as recommended by Manhattan. However, the scores I'm coming up with are very low. I scored a 3 during this test, and a 1 during the previous test. Even though the schools don't know exactly how to interpret these results yet, I want to have something that's at least presentable. Do you have any suggestions on how to improve here without having to spend too much time here given the significance of the quant and verbal sections?

Next steps
I'm in the process of wrapping up the last session and then plan to start practicing the remaining OG problems as well as the OG Verbal and Quant books. I'm hoping that the additional practice will help me get my time management in better shape. I usually do the HW problems with the OG archer so I usually stay within the time since the clock resets during each questions. Do you have any other suggestions on how to work on my time management?

I plan to do more practice problems for RC and SC to continue to improve. I'm stuck on how to improve my performance on CR. Would this be an area where I could spend 30 minutes with an instructor? If I did use a private office hour, how would that time be used to help me improve on CR?

During my last post, Stacey recommended that I consider pushing out my test date a few weeks to give myself enough time to review. Now that I have finished my 3rd CAT test and have one more session with 3 weeks to go, I realize that I do need additional time to practice and review. What is the recommended amount of time to review and work towards improving your score? I had read a Manhattan article that you want to be within your desired score range within 10-14 days of your score. Is the goal to get through all of the problems in all OG books and all of the CATs? If I finish the last session and all of the hw this week, I was thinking that maybe I need 5 weeks to practice and review. Any advice you have here will be helpful so I know when to reschedule my exam.

Thank you in advance for everything. I look forward to your input on my thoughts above. :)

[StaceyKoprince]

I answered in your other post already :)