Increase my score

[agvictor]

Hello.

I have been studying for GMAT since 4 months, and took several practice tests (prep and manhattangmat) and my scores range between 540 and 580 (latest score was Q43 and V26). I am looking for a score higher than 700. I know I can do much better in quantitative. I am not english native, and know I have to enhance my verbal skills, I have studied grammar rules, but cannot always find the problem...

I also work in finance for long hours, and go back home tired. I force myself to study but don't feel am gaining much. It leaves me the week-end to study more, as well as when I take a short leave. Shall I resign and only focus on gmat preparation? It sounds weird, as I am doing very well at work, and in my field many of my colleagues were terminated. It is hard to be believed after by future employers and business schools...

I am confused, please help me :).

Best regards and thank you in advance.

[StaceyKoprince]

Generally speaking, no, people should not quit their jobs in order to focus on GMAT prep. While GMAT scores are important for b-school admissions, job experience and recommendations are MUCH more important.

How have you been studying so far? Are you taking a class, working with friends, studying on your own? What materials are you using? If you don't feel like you're making much progress, you may need extra help. Talk to your teacher, if you have one; if you don't, you may want to think about taking a class.

While the ideal is to sit down for 60 to 120 minutes at a stretch when you're well-rested and focused, that can't always happen. If you need to break things down into smaller stretches during the work week, that's fine.

Are you a morning person or a night person? If you're a morning person, can you study in the morning before work? Maybe half an hour in the morning, half an hour at lunch, half an hour in the evening? How do you commute to work - could you study while commuting?

Does your boss know that you're studying for the GMAT? Is it a positive or negative thing in your company for someone to get into a great b-school and leave the company? Some companies really want this to happen and may allow you to take a little time each day or a few times a week to study during the day. (Some companies even pay for a GMAT course and will arrange to hold the course at your office! We have lots of corporate clients.)

So, your overall score has mostly been staying the same. Have your subscores also mostly stayed the same? Or are they moving up and down? When did you take each practice test and what were your exact scores? Do you know what your strengths and weaknesses are - very precisely? Here's an article that can help you to figure that out:

http://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/09/23/evaluating-your-practice-tests

Are you studying in the right way? Here are the kinds of things you should be doing when reviewing a practice problem:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/10/09/how-to-analyze-a-practice-problem

Do you have a study plan? Here's an article about how to develop one:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/02/09/developing-a-study-plan

If you don't really feel like you have a plan, start with the last article first. Then move to the "Evaluating your tests" article.

If you want to discuss anything related to the above, come back here to update us on your situation and ask your questions!

[agvictor]

Thank you Stacey for your reply.

I did as you mentioned and took some classes. I have improved in Sentence corrections and Critical reasoning. But unfortunately am still bad in reading comprehension. Any hints to enhance this area???

Best regards,

[StaceyKoprince]

Good! I'm glad that SC and CR have gotten better - nice work!

What materials have you used so far for RC? What are your strengths and weaknesses in this area?

Here are some articles that may be of help:

http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/04/23/how-to-read-a-reading-comp-passage

http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/02/25/how-to-analyze-a-reading-comp-inference-question

[agvictor]

Dear Stacy,

I have improved my verbal from 20 to 31. I used Kaplan, official guide and the critical reasoning bible.Quantitative is stable and my score is stagnating since more than 3 months: between 580 and 620. I am loosing hope and don't know what to do more, nor how to study differently. I want to have a score higher than 660 before January...

I need help, please advise.

Thank you in advance.

[StaceyKoprince]

You've done a really great job so far - I know you want to get even better, but I just want to acknowledge how much progress you've already made!

I used Kaplan, official guide and the critical reasoning bible.

Okay, the CR bible gives you very specific advice and direction about how to get better at CR.

What have you been using that is the equivalent for SC and RC? Do your Kaplan materials specifically address these two areas? Do they tell you what to look for, what you need to know, and how to get better at these areas? (It's NOT enough just to study from practice problems and solutions and try to figure it all out for yourself. You need something that works in the same way as the CR bible, but for those other two areas.)

If you already have something, great - let me know what it is. If you don't, you need to identify something for SC and something for RC and then go get those resources.

Next, I need more data than you've given in order to figure out where you still have room for improvement. Have you taken an MGMAT practice test lately? If not, take one under full official test conditions, including the essays. Then, use this article to analyze your test; come back here to post your analysis. (Do NOT just give me the data from the test reports. :) Actually do the analysis described in the article. The ability to analyze your own work is an important skill.)

http://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/09/23 ... tice-tests

When we have that analysis, we can help you figure out what to do with it.

[agvictor]

Dear Stacey,

First of all I would like to thank you for your response and for your support.

I don't have any other tool for SC & RC, than Official guide, Kaplan & Princeton books. I also studied grammar gmat to be able to improve a bit in SC.

I have read the articles for analysing my Manhattan tests and I hope the following is the information you were expecting from me:

1) I have taken the essays.
2) I did not use the pause button
3) It happens that I have a stringe of 4 or more answers wrong. (two series in quantitative) and 3 series (of 3 answers wrong each) in verbal.
4) difficulty level varies, but it happens often for 700-800 and then 600-700, and in some cases lower.
5)Concerning the timing, i spend more time in verbal especially at the first question, then the second is much faster, and the third is much slower and so on...
6) I did not rush for the least 5 to 10 questions on both sections.
7) I was slow (around 40s more) for:
5 questions in Quant.
2 SC
1 RC
8)Total time per category:

Quant: 18.4mn, 4 answers were wrong from 5
(1DS inequalities, 1 DS overlapping sets ratios, 1 PS divisibility and primes, 1 PS variables in choices percents, 1PS fractions exponents and roots).

SC: 4.23mn, 1 answer wrong from 2, idiom parallellism
RC: 4.14mn, 1 wrong from 1, main idea.

9) for quick answers less than 1mn:

1 DS 0.34mn: inequalities
1 PS 0.53mn: positives and negatives exponents and roots
1 DS 0.37 mn: percent quadratic equations

1 SC 0.55mn: quantity expressions comparisons
1 SC 0.39mn: verbs
1 RC 0.5mn: main idea
1 SC 0.34mn: modifiers concision verb

10) PS (algebra): 50% right with av.right of 620 and av.wrong of 670, the difference in the average time between the wrong and the correct answers is 40s.

DS: 40% right with av.right of 610 and av.wrong of 720, the difference in the average time between wrong and correct answers is 25s

SC: 60% right with av.right of 560 and av.wrong 640, the difference in the average time between wrong and correct answers is 30s

CR: 36% right with av.right of 610 and av.wrong of 680, the difference in time is 30s

RC: 67% right with av.right of 620 and av.wrong of 580, the difference in time is 56s.

11) In PS i have 57% correct 500-600 and 67% from 600-700 and 17% correct from 700-800. What shall I do, as I am supposed to have a better percentage for easy questions. Following your article I can see that I should focus on:
-Algebra: quadratic equations, inequalities
-Geometry: polygons
-Number properties: divisibility and prime
-FDP: fractions

In RC, i have 40% correct 500-600 and 75% correct from 600-700. RC is my weak point, it happens that I was comfortable with the texts on this test...

with CR I need to focus on : find the assumption, analyise argument structure, and evaluate a conclusion.

RC: main idea questions

SC: verbs, concision and quantity expressions.

Now how can I find/get exercices by type/category as per the above, so I can review theory and then practice... I need to have results after studying...I have already improved by keeping aside all wrong questions i have made, and then reviewing them later. But I feel i reached the max on that way :).

I will also take 3 weeks off in September to focus only on studying...

I apologize for this long mail, and I hope I have mentioned the information you require.

Best regards,

Victor

[StaceyKoprince]

Okay, so some timing issues. That extra time you spent on the 5 quant problems totally didn't help, and then it cost you some additional quant problems as well. So just don't let yourself go that far in future!

On verbal, it sounds like you're what I call an "up and down" tester - you keep going back and forth between spending too much time and not enough time. We need to balance this out more. (And look at the data there too - I would be that, again, where you're spending more time, it's not necessarily improving your performance!)

Read this article:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2009/12/ ... management

You need something for SC and RC. There are lots of good resources out there (I like our books but, hey, I'm biased!), but you need something that specifically teaches you the grammar for SC and specific reading and question-answering techniques for RC. Go start researching that today!

Looks like you're having trouble letting go sometimes on PS in particular. CR is your biggest weakness on verbal according to this test, though you also report having trouble with RC in general (though not so much on this test).

In PS i have 57% correct 500-600 and 67% from 600-700 and 17% correct from 700-800. What shall I do, as I am supposed to have a better percentage for easy questions.

So, check that out - you're actually BELOW random guessing position on 700-800 (random guessing should get you 20% right). And I'd bet you spent more time on those in general, right? You've got to let those go. Reclaim that time and use it on the sub-700 level questions to make sure you get those mostly right!

Read this article:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/04/ ... our-errors

For verbal, try these:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/04/ ... mp-passage
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/07/ ... rc-passage
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/06/ ... on-problem
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/05/ ... -reasoning

(But you still need to get something for SC and RC - the above articles are only a start!)

And these:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/03/ ... c-question
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/01/ ... r-question
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/02/ ... e-question

Okay, that should give you some things to do!

[agvictor]

Hello Stacey,

Again thank you for your precious advice. I did follow your suggestion and purchased Manhattan gmat books. I took three weeks off, and am studying 9 hours a day. I have already finished 3 books. I am learning new techniques and enjoying studying with these materials.

I will take a practice test at the end, hoping to have improved...

Before that, I would like to ask you whether I have to follow a way to maximize my studies from these books. Are the problem sets at the end of each chapter enough? I am doing well on that, but don't know whether they are easier than those on the real test.

Thank you again and best regards,

[StaceyKoprince]

The problem sets at the ends of the chapters in quant and SC are designed to test you on the actual content, but many are not written to mimic GMAT questions - they're just to make sure you know the material. It's great that you're doing well on those, but it's also important to do questions from the Official Guide books to test yourself on application to real GMAT questions.

The CR and RC questions at the end of each chapter are closer to the real thing, but they were written by us, so they're still not the real thing. Again, it's important to test yourself on real questions!

Also, there's some recent research on how to study and make sure you're making good, easily retrievable memories when you study. You may want to read this New York Time article
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/healt ... 7mind.html