MGMAT CAT #2 Analysis Feedback and Proposed Next Steps

[AnthonyS83]

Hi All, Stacey,

I took my 2nd MGMAT CAT recently under official testing conditions, with AWA and IR, and scored a 640 (Q40, V37). I am currently enrolled in the Online Course with Session 7 up next. I scored a 530 on my 1st MGMAT CAT before the course began, so this improvement has motivated me even more to meet my goal of breaking into the 700 club.

I have analyzed my test results and would appreciate feedback and advice on my proposed next steps. First, my high level CAT 2 results:



Observations:
1) I struggle the greatest on Problem Solving, specifically within Number Properties and FDPs (I don't give myself enough time on Number Properties and I am too slow/inefficient with FDPs)

2) Overall, I would argue balanced timing is not the biggest concern for me (I don't have a problem making an educated guess when necessary and I use the "yellow-pad" timing techniques religiously). I will admit, however, that the time pressure in the Quant section causes the most stress for me and I tend to either make careless mistakes or lose confidence because I don't know the content well enough to work within the 2 minute constraint

3) For Quant (see below), I performed the best during the first third of the section. I reviewed all missed questions and noted which content areas that I don't know well, but the main trend I noticed that most severely hurt me was the 7 questions missed in a row. Going back, I can attribute much of that to lost confidence through that stretch of the test. I obviously need to spend more time with the FDPs and Number Properties, but what else in this data can I take away to improve on Quant?



4) For Verbal (see below), thankfully this is a better story. I believe my greatest weakness currently is Critical Reasoning (specifically, Weaken the Argument) followed by Reading Comprehension (specifically, Inference). When studying verbal, I think it would be best to focus more on these specific question types.



Questions:

1) What trends in my 2nd CAT data are most concerning to you?

2) If I can improve my Verbal ability level to 90th percentile or above, what is the approximate ability level I need in the Quant section to crack a 700? If I had managed to keep my Quant ability level around the 65th percentile, do you know what my approximate score would have been?

2) Other than completing the Online Course over the next 3 weeks and completing all the homework, my plan for the Quant section is to spend more time drilling myself on OG problems and continuing to learn content that I am not well-versed with (i.e., FDPs and Number Properties). Would you recommend a different approach?

3) My test date is scheduled for 10/17. That gives me approximately 3 weeks to drill and take more practice CATs after my Online Course finishes. In your experience and given my recent CAT results, is this enough time to push my ability to the 700+ level or should I postpone my test date? I plan on taking the exam twice, but I wouldn't be opposed to knocking it out the first time
-- For the rest of my CATs, I'm planning to take #3 9/26, before Session 9 of the Online Course. That leaves 4, 5, and 6 to be done the weeks of 9/27 and 10/4, and the 2 GMATPrep CATs to be done the week of 10/11

4) I believe my biggest hurdle is maintaining confidence in the Quant section and I know this is a key factor in breaking that 700. Any other feedback/advice you may have on preparation and next steps would be greatly appreciated. Also, I'm open to receiving advice from any and all on these forums. Just knowing that there are other test takers that started out in the 500s, in similar positions, that progressed to score 700+ by using the MGMAT curriculum is motivating and would be helpful.

Thank you for taking the time, and I look forward to the discussion.

Additional Quant & Verbal Data:

[StaceyKoprince]

Nice job! Most people don't see that kind of improvement from test 1 to test 2.

Quant
My first observation is that you're spending extra time on DS, but you're also answering harder DS questions correctly, on average. What's going on there? Did you just happen to get a harder mix of DS questions, which naturally took some extra time? Or is there a trend of needing more time on DS on average no matter what?

NP: Mostly I don't care, because you don't hit that till week 9 of the course. But you said you rushed on these; could you have gotten some of these right in normal time?
FDP: how are you approaching answering these, in general? Are you using "textbook" math approaches? If so, you may need to spend more time practicing "GMAT strategy" approaches (smart numbers, testing cases, and so on). Have you checked your FDP skills in Foundations of Math? If not, test yourself via some of the end-of-chapter problem sets to make sure foundational issues aren't pulling you down. Are your issues more on the "pure math" side, more on the "story translation" side, or a mix of both?

I will admit, however, that the time pressure in the Quant section causes the most stress for me and I tend to either make careless mistakes or lose confidence because I don't know the content well enough to work within the 2 minute constraint

Well then timing is an issue. Stress tires your brain out and causes mistakes not just right then but later on as the test goes on (because you get more mentally fatigued).

Also, this part concerns me: "lose confidence because I don't know the content well enough to work within the 2 minute constraint"

You shouldn't know all of the content well enough to work within the 2 minute constraint. Nobody does. Some things are going to take you 2.5 minutes, for example. Other things are things you should just be bailing on, with no regrets and no loss of confidence.

Read this right now:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2015/08/ ... r-the-gmat

See what I mean about the "no loss of confidence" bit? Losing confidence because you can't do everything on the test is like saying that you're losing confidence at work because you have the opportunity to invest in six different new product lines but you don't have enough money to invest in every single one. No...you pick and choose the best ones and ignore the ones that you decide aren't good enough. You don't feel badly because you decide not to invest in some of them.

Start practicing that business mindset.

Okay, for that stretch of wrong answers - did you try the problems again after? How many were careless mistakes (if any)? How many could you have gotten right if you'd tried a different approach (or could you learn to get right confidently using a different approach)? How many were ones you probably would've gotten wrong no matter what?

In general, of all of the ones that you missed, how many can you attribute to careless mistakes or mental fatigue and how many just should have been wrong?

I'd also like to know what you think your buckets are. Read this to learn how to analyze to "fill" your buckets:
http://tinyurl.com/analyzeyourcats

Verbal
I notice that you missed the first question on 3 of the 4 passages. Just want to check something. I see this pattern sometimes with people who feel that they need to hurry the read-through / are worried about how much time they're spending not actively answering questions. So then they rush answering the first question and tend to make mistakes. Just check to make sure this isn't happening to you.

Agree V is strong overall.

For both sections, I also notice that you started both sections strongly but then your score dropped by the end. Again, I'd like you to figure out which ones of the wrong ones were ones you might've gotten right (vs. which ones were legitimately wrong) and why - that can help us to figure out how to keep your score higher along the way.

If you can hit 40 (91st percentile) on V, then you'd need to hit approx 45 (62nd percentile) on Q to hit 700.

Re: continuing with quant, I agree that drilling OG is a good plan, but note that most of what you learn comes after you're done trying the problems. Read this:
http://tinyurl.com/2ndlevelofgmat

If you're not analyzing in that way, then you're not learning a whole lot about how to get better - just remember that your goal is to learn how to think your way through new problems, not simply to plow through masses of practice problems. (I'm not saying that you were suggesting you'd do this - I'm just cautioning you because lots of people do this!)

If you're planning your first test for 3 weeks after the course and are willing to keep going and take it a second time, then yes, go for that timeframe. You could get there on the first test, but you may need the second. You don't need to decide for sure right now, though - see how test 3 goes.

For the rest of my CATs, I'm planning to take #3 9/26, before Session 9 of the Online Course. That leaves 4, 5, and 6 to be done the weeks of 9/27 and 10/4, and the 2 GMATPrep CATs to be done the week of 10/11

No. Too much. Taking CATs that frequently isn't actually useful.
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... many-cats/

Don't take test 3 until after you've really studied NP (so if you need to wait until after class 9, do so). And then 1 or MAYBE 2 more before your first test date. Save the others for a re-take, if needed.

For your last question, I'm going to send you back to my "business mindset" article at the beginning of this post. Get the right mindset and you won't lose confidence, because you'll know that you are actually supposed to be identifying the "bad business opportunities" and blowing them off quickly. And I'll also point out that you are making great progress! You should feel very good about how things are going!

[AnthonyS83]

Hey Stacey, thank you for your thorough response. Thoughts/analysis/questions below:

Okay, for that stretch of wrong answers - did you try the problems again after? How many were careless mistakes (if any)? How many could you have gotten right if you'd tried a different approach (or could you learn to get right confidently using a different approach)? How many were ones you probably would've gotten wrong no matter what?

In general, of all of the ones that you missed, how many can you attribute to careless mistakes or mental fatigue and how many just should have been wrong?

I'd also like to know what you think your buckets are. Read this to learn how to analyze to "fill" your buckets:
http://tinyurl.com/analyzeyourcats

Regarding Quant, of the 20 I answered incorrectly, 6 were careless mistakes, 9 I did not know how to do, 4 were lucky guesses, and 2 could have been correct w/ more time.

I've included a review key of the problems below ("WRONG" indicates that I did not know how to solve the problem and could only hazard a guess):



I found it difficult to identify clear strengths and differentiations in my buckets (even after reviewing the fourth set of assessment reports), and I think much of that is due to the limited amount of data I'm analyzing (only CAT 2). My data suggests I'm not a master with any quant subject...
Below is what I have found:

Analyzing Buckets (Quant)

Bucket 1:
Overlapping Sets
Linear Equations

Bucket 2:
Formulas
Odds & Evens
Coordinate Plane
Rates & Work
Lines & Angles
Quadratics (learn to recognize quadratic properties)
Ratios
Percents, then Fractions, then Decimals
Statistics

Bucket 3:
Positives & Negatives
Divisibility & Primes

Are you in agreement with the above or do you notice something else? Do you have a recommended approach on how to best address Bucket 2? I don't think I'll have a truly reliable first or third bucket until after CAT 3.

My first observation is that you're spending extra time on DS, but you're also answering harder DS questions correctly, on average. What's going on there? Did you just happen to get a harder mix of DS questions, which naturally took some extra time? Or is there a trend of needing more time on DS on average no matter what?

I have noticed a trend of needing more time to complete DS problems on average. I thought the 500-600 level questions were straightforward, but I still took my time with them. For 3 of the 700-800 level, I correctly answered with lucky guesses for 2 and an educated guess for 1.

FDP: Are your issues more on the "pure math" side, more on the "story translation" side, or a mix of both?

My issues relate more to story translation. I understand the textbook math (could work on being faster), but most of my issues relate to story translation. I do need to practice more of the strategies (specifically smart #s).

NP: Mostly I don't care, because you don't hit that till week 9 of the course. But you said you rushed on these; could you have gotten some of these right in normal time?

Number Properties are definitely a weakness. I did not understand the divisibility or positive/negative rules well enough for these problems.



Analyzing Buckets (Verbal)

Bucket 1:
CR – Find the Assumption
SC – Pronouns
SC – Idioms

Bucket 2:
CR – Assumption Fam: Weaken the Argument
CR – Assumption Fam: Evaluate the Argument
RC – Inference
SC – Parallelism

Bucket 3:
N/A

I'm not as concerned about Verbal; no question type concerns me enough to warrant placing in Bucket 3.
That said, the initial piece of advice that one of my online class instructors gave me, after briefly reviewing my CAT 2 results, was to make a hard push in Verbal to help boost me to the 700+ mark. Why specifically Verbal? Is it because many more test takers score higher in the Quant section on average? When all is said I done, I do think it would be easier for me to increase my Verbal subscore when compared to my Quant subscore.

I notice that you missed the first question on 3 of the 4 passages. Just want to check something. I see this pattern sometimes with people who feel that they need to hurry the read-through / are worried about how much time they're spending not actively answering questions. So then they rush answering the first question and tend to make mistakes.

Thanks for pointing this out; this was definitely a factor for all but one of the RC passages. The last RC passage I had was the longest I had seen, and that didn't help the case, either haha. Assuming the best advice here is to remind myself not to rush the 1st question in an RC series.

And I'll also point out that you are making great progress! You should feel very good about how things are going!

Thanks! After investing 6-7 hours analyzing this CAT, your feedback is extremely helpful and appreciated. My biggest worry is that I'll hit a plateau (makes me anxious to take more CATs). After reviewing CAT 2 again, I'm confident that my increase in score for the Quant section from CAT 1 was not a fluke and that I should expect to do just as well, if not better, on the 3rd CAT. I'm confident that, with more work, I can score above the 90th percentile in Verbal (fatigue will be my biggest worry here).

[StaceyKoprince]

Starting at the end: you may hit a plateau at some point. In fact, you're probably going to - life is like that. But you'll get past the plateau with some perseverance.

Okay, 6 careless mistakes in quant is too many. You're aiming to make no more than like 2 per section, ideally. (Well, I mean... 0 ideally. But we are still human.) Here's how to learn how to minimize these:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... -the-gmat/

Big picture: verbal is weighted a bit more heavily than quant in the overall score, so it pulls more weight in terms of getting you to the 700. At the same time, though, you can't have quant be too low - you basically want to get it to be good enough and then, since verbal's your strength and it's weighted more heavily, let that side carry more of the load.

If you're looking for a 700+, then I'm going to guess you'll be applying to some top-10 schools. If that's the case, you want to try to get quant to 45+. But then the more you push verbal, the more the overall goes up!

Data: once you get down to individual categories (for filling your buckets), you may want to re-run the reports using CATs 1 and 2 to get more data. Also, take into account the topics that haven't been covered yet. NP and Geo don't matter so much because you didn't study them before CAT 2. I'm more concerned that you have FDPs on your bucket 2 list, because those concepts can show up in both "pure" FDP problems and in other, more "advanced" problems that also happen to incorporate a percent or fraction or ratio.

It looks like 3 of your careless mistakes were on story problems (I'm guessing based on the titles of the problems), so let's talk about that. In addition to making sure you learn / practice / feel comfortable with "test-taking" strategies (smart numbers, etc), try what's described in these two articles:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... them-real/
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... ms-part-1/

Re: DS, you may just need to do more of these to feel comfortable with the overall process and with knowing when it's okay to cut yourself off (vs. when you may be making a mistake by cutting yourself off too early). Play around with older DS problems that you've already done. How far do you really need to go - and no farther? How would you know? How often are you going several steps beyond what's necessary to answer? (It's okay to go one step beyond what's necessary. But if you're consistently going 2-3+ steps beyond what's necessary, then you're going to have timing issues.)

[AnthonyS83]

Hi Stacey, wanted to give you an update on my GMAT journey.

This 640 ended up being an outlier for CAT 2, because I scored a 590 on CAT 3. Unfortunately, I took a break from the GMAT for a few months after my online class ended and took the exam cold in January, scoring a 560. I then enrolled in a Live Manhattan course and could not seem to score over a 640 by the time the class ended in April. I completed a few weeks of self study and took the exam mid-May.

I scored a 680 (Q42 V40 ; AWA 6 ; IR 5). I was beyond happy leaving the testing center. This score was 40 points higher than the practice test I had taken a week earlier and placed me in the middle 80 percentile of my target programs (albeit on the lower end for my target programs-- 640 begins the range for Duke Fuqua and 680 begins the range for UCLA Anderson).

I did not expect to score a 680 on this attempt and was originally planning to take again in June, however, this was my best subscore for both Q and V (I recognize that my Q on the lower end). Given that I have a quantitative business degree from a respected tier one public university with a GPA in the 85th percentile for my target programs and my work experience (consulting) is strong, I decided that I was finally finished with the GMAT and would focus the next four months solely on developing solid apps for R1. I believe I've hit the point of diminishing returns on the GMAT and think that focusing on my apps is the best strategy now.

Please let me know if you have any other thoughts. I think the only blemish to my profile is the low Q score-- to mitigate the low Q score, I will use the optional essay to point to my transcript and my recommenders will comment on my analytical ability. I'm also an URM and will be applying through the Consortium with my extracurriculars.

Although a 700 would look great, I'm proud of my 680 and am very motivated to work hard on my apps. The low Q score is giving me some anxiety, but I don't think it is worth dwelling on given my transcript.

[StaceyKoprince]

That's fantastic! Congratulations and great work. (And thanks for following up. We always like to hear how our students do. )

I'm not an admissions expert, but it sounds to me like you do have other data points to demonstrate a strong quant background / ability. You might also want to run that by an admissions consultant to see what they think; MBA Mission offers free 30 minute phone consults (if you haven't already taken advantage).

One thing: is the 680 your only real score? We've been hearing lately that, if your score is below a school's average, then they like to see that you have taken it more than once. Even if you don't improve, they want to know that you tried. I have spoken personally with students who took it once and who were directly told by top-20 schools that this played a factor in their rejection (including a couple of people who were waitlisted and didn't take it again during the waitlist period). And a colleague of mine had two students who did re-take - didn't improve their scores but did get in. One was directly told that the fact that he'd re-taken had actually made a difference, even though his score was actually lower.

In general, schools want to know that you're very invested and will do whatever it takes to try to get in - so you might consider re-taking it again with minimal additional prep, just to have another on your record. The material should still be pretty fresh in your mind and you never know - sometimes when the pressure is off (since you already have the 680), you can actually do a little bit better!

Just something to consider. Might want to ask an admissions consultant about that, too.

Congrats again! Let me know how applications go!

[AnthonyS83]

Thanks, Stacey. Yes, I took an official exam in January with a 560 (did not cancel). I'll see what MBAmission says, also.

[StaceyKoprince]

Great. Let me know what you hear - I'd be curious to know what they say for your case.

[AnthonyS83]

MBAmission's opinion is that I do not need to sit for the test again to prove my willingness to retake since I have taken the test twice already. They think that the two attempts on my score report are favorable given the large delta.

They did mention that if I thought I could increase my score ~20 points, I could try once more, but they think the time would be better spent focusing on apps for R1.

Good news on my end!
They also aren't too concerned about my score (given my GPA/score falls in the mid-80 % range) and say I'm a competitive candidate for both Anderson and Fuqua. The Quant subscore was concerning to them when I mentioned Haas. I'll be completing the optional essay to discuss the Quant subscore.

[StaceyKoprince]

Great, good news and thanks so much for letting me know. This helps me to be able to advise other students in future.

Let me know how apps go - I would love to hear!

[AnthonyS83]

Great, good news and thanks so much for letting me know. This helps me to be able to advise other students in future.

Let me know how apps go - I would love to hear!

Hey Stacey,

I hope you have been well!

Following up here-- I heard back from my R1 school, Duke, and was admitted and offered a full ride!

I know that everyone's situation is different, and I know that Duke doesn't put as much weight on the GMAT as other schools do, but, this goes to show that a relatively low quant score won't keep you out of one of your dream schools. Not to mention, my GMAT score is slightly under the average for Duke.

This was a fantastic early Christmas present for me. Stacey, I'll keep you updated, and I hope you have a happy holiday season with family and friends!

[StaceyKoprince]

Fantastic news! I'm really happy for you. And, yes, it's extra nice to get the news before the holidays so that you can just relax and enjoy yourself!

You're going to have a great time and learn a ton—Duke has a great program. Congratulations!! And Happy Holidays to you too!!