Looking for sincere guidance. !!

[priyankur.saha]

I have posted my test experiences and overall performance several times before and, indeed, every time I was guided by MGMAT professionals, Stacey and Ron. Thank you to both of duo for your wonderful support towards all GMAT warriors.

After almost several months of preparation with several study materials and tests, I am still far away from my target score. Probably, still I do not understand the test or I am not focusing too much to the content of the tests. I am unable to find out any particular loopholes in my process and, therefore, I am seeking your kind guidance.

I, after several months of preparation, took my GMAT in month of September past year and scored mere 580(Q44, V25). I took complete 3 months gap and then I have started my prep again since January 2009. I have gone through MGMAT SC book and then CR and RC guides to learn the basics. Thereafter, I did time based practice every day with several question sets from 1000 series. Simultaneously, I also took MGMAT CAT test every weekend (most of them I took including essays and 10mins break). Through all my approaches I tried to evaluate my true efficacy under proper test condition.

All my past CAT scores:
02/08/2009 - MGMAT CAT1 - 530 (v37,Q27)
02/15/2009 - MGMAT CAT2 - 630(v34,q42)
03/01/2009 - MGMAT CAT3 - 640(v36,q42) (including AWA)
03/28/2009 - MGMAT CAT4 - 670(v34,q47) (including AWA)
04/12/2009 - MGMAT CAT5 - 680(v36,q47) (including AWA)

Apart from these I took GMATPrep tests too.
Scores are:
04/05/2009 - GMATPrep I - 630 (v27,q49) (including AWA)
04/19/2009 - GMATPrepII - 680(v31,q50) (including AWA) - few questions were known in both the sections

Extrapolating from above test scores, I can easily perceive that my actual GMAT score could lie between 640 and 660. I scheduled my test date by next week but I am not sure how I could come up with my verbal score at this time. In my last GMATPrepII test, I committed 5 mistakes in RC, 4 in CR and 4 in SC. After the test I have found that I did mistakes in RC questions that were little skeptic to me. I chose the wrong one between last two choices. I failed to identify the scope shift in CR and glossed over the last word in answer choices that changed the essence of meaning.

I do not know how to handle these kinds of mistakes. Do I need to take more and more exams or am I forgetting all the concepts?

I am deliberately considering reschedule of my GMAT appointment at least by 1 month but not sure whether that would be any help for me.

[StaceyKoprince]

Very nice improvement on your quant.

You don't mention what score you would like to get. Generally speaking, you should assume that your score will be in the same general range as your most recent practice test or two (and GMATPrep is generally the closest indicator). So if that is what you hope to score on the real test, then you may want to take it. If you are hoping for a higher score, then you should probably reschedule.

Your task at this point is NOT to do a lot more new practice questions or practice tests. Your task is to analyze and thoroughly understand the structure and reasoning behind the problems you have already done. You mentioned various mistakes made in your last practice test - your task now is to (a) articulate very clearly why you made those mistakes, and (b) develop new habits that minimize the chances of making those same mistakes.

For instance, you narrow it down to two, one right and one wrong. Sometimes, you get these right (and then most people never notice, because most people don't review their right answers - but you should!), and sometimes you get these wrong.

When you're reviewing, review everything. Identify ALL of the questions on which you narrowed to two and guessed, even when you guessed right. And answer these questions:
- why was the wrong answer so tempting? why did it look like it might be right? (be as explicit as possible)
- why was it actually wrong? what specific words indicate that it is wrong and how did I overlook those clues the first time?
- why did the right answer seem wrong? what made it so tempting to cross off the right answer? why were those things actually okay - what was my error in thinking that they were wrong?
- why was it actually right?

The idea is that you actually need to analyze the reasoning behind the questions. You're never going to see this exact question on the real test, but you are going to see questions that attempt to use the same reasoning. That reasoning is what you're trying to learn here - not just how to do the question itself. (You'll never see, on the actual test, any question that you study in advance!)

Also, how was your timing in the verbal section? Did you generally move steadily through the test, giving appropriate time and attention to each question? (1 to 1.5m for SC, 2m for CR, 2-4m to read a passage, 1m for general RC questions, 1.5 to 2m for specific RC questions) Or did you have to rush at times and possibly make random guesses? If you did have to rush and/or make random guesses, on how many questions would you say you did that? Did you do it on a lot of questions in a row or were the guesses scattered? Alternatively, did you move too quickly and finish with a lot of time (>3min) left over?

[StaceyKoprince]

Oops, hit post before I was done.

Then, once you figure out "why" for everything, figure out how to develop habits and practices that minimize the chances of making the same kinds of errors and falling into the same kinds of traps.

Eg, on CR, you mention glossing over a word that makes all the difference. When you're first reading through the answers, you should be working on the "exclusion" policy: what is definitely wrong that I can cross off right now?

Then, (hopefully) you'll only have 2 or 3 choices left, and you can start to pay much more careful attention to the full wording of the choice - which includes consciously reading EVERY single word sitting there. When you think D is the right answer, do a last read-through in which you ask whether you can justify every single word in the choice. If even one doesn't work, toss the answer.

Go through this same process for anything else - what am I going to do to develop a new process (and build that into a habit) to minimize the chances of falling into these traps in the future?

[priyankur.saha]

Thank you very much for quick response.

You don't mention what score you would like to get.

I am aiming at 720+ score. So I decided to reschedule it.

For instance, you narrow it down to two, one right and one wrong. Sometimes, you get these right (and then most people never notice, because most people don't review their right answers - but you should!), and sometimes you get these wrong.

Agree with you. I hardly review my right answers because after test I feel too much disappointed for low score and do not check my right answers. From now on I need to mark all intriguing questions because now I cannot remember on which I had quandary.

Also, how was your timing in the verbal section?

At present I do not see any issue with pacing. I have observed that I generally find 2-1 minutes for the last question. But I cannot ascertain that I do not hurry up sometimes because when I take too much time in previous question I scurry to save the time lag in next question.

[StaceyKoprince]

Yes, you have to go look through your results on the individual questions on your MGMAT tests. The question list shows you exactly how much time you spent on each question. Some people think they don't have a timing problem because they don't run out of time, but that's because they just speed up during the test to "make up" for problems. But if you have to spend 30sec less than you're supposed to spend on a bunch of problems, what do you think that's going to do to your accuracy? :)