Hi All,
I completed the Equtations, Inequalities, VICs book. I actually went through it twice ... and felt I had a real good grasp of all the concepts and strategies described. Also, I didnt have too many issues when takling the problem sets at the end of each chapter.
However, when I attempted to answer the 25 questions from the Question bank ... I struggled. Only managed to get 10 out of the 25 correct !
Its also worth noting, that I attempted to answer these questions under timed conditions, whereas when I completed the problem sets from the book, I didnt time myself. So I feel a lot of it had to do with the added pressure under timed conditions. My timing was awful ... wasnt able to answer the majority of the questions within 2 minutes.
See below a summary of my thoughts and analysis of my question bank performance:
- 10 correct
- 15 incorrect : of which 7 I felt were careless errors or areas where it all made sense when I looked at the solution !
- my timing was awful ! Need to practice answering questions under timed conditions !
- even though I thoroughly went through the content in the book and successfully completed the problem sets at the end of each chapter ... i struggled throughout the question bank ... felt the questions were quite hard !
Would be grateful to get your feedback ... thoughts ... general comments on this.
Thanks.
GMAT Forum
4 postsPage 1 of 1
- RonPurewal
- Students
- Posts: 19744
- Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2007 8:23 am
a few thoughts on this situation.
(1) you actually answered you own question, to a large extent, when you admitted that you'd answered the questions in the strategy guide without timing yourself (which is normal, btw).
many students underestimate the degree to which timing issues make problems more difficult! once you have accumulated a reasonably strong mastery of basic content, then timing issues will undoubtedly be the primary issue with which you must contend. just as a football team must run completely different plays in a 2-minute drill than in regular play, you must employ, at times, COMPLETELY different strategies under timed conditions than under untimed conditions.
you will need a fair amount of time to get up to speed with combining content and time management. don't lose confidence; just take lessons from any time-management failures you may have had, and bring the experience to the table next time.
(2) the question bank contains many difficult problems. in particular, our question-bank problems tend to involve more algebra than many real gmat problems, so, if you aren't all that fast at algebraic manipulation, you may find yourself really struggling with the time issue.
(3) perhaps most importantly: you performance on the strategy guide's in-action problems is going to be inflated! for the most part, you did those problems right after seeing the relevant content on a chapter-by-chapter basis, so of course you're going to get large numbers of them right. on problem banks (and on the official tests), by contrast, you will most definitely not see pertinent content review before seeing the problems, so you'll naturally be much less well prepared.
(4) if you saw 'careless errors' or other opportunities for improvement, then write down the relevant tricks & traps in your notebook, so that you know them next time. don't just cuss yourself out if you make careless errors; actually archive the errors (in your head and in a notebook), so that you know those are the errors that YOU make, and then keep your eyes peeled for them the next time you take the test.
good luck.
(1) you actually answered you own question, to a large extent, when you admitted that you'd answered the questions in the strategy guide without timing yourself (which is normal, btw).
many students underestimate the degree to which timing issues make problems more difficult! once you have accumulated a reasonably strong mastery of basic content, then timing issues will undoubtedly be the primary issue with which you must contend. just as a football team must run completely different plays in a 2-minute drill than in regular play, you must employ, at times, COMPLETELY different strategies under timed conditions than under untimed conditions.
you will need a fair amount of time to get up to speed with combining content and time management. don't lose confidence; just take lessons from any time-management failures you may have had, and bring the experience to the table next time.
(2) the question bank contains many difficult problems. in particular, our question-bank problems tend to involve more algebra than many real gmat problems, so, if you aren't all that fast at algebraic manipulation, you may find yourself really struggling with the time issue.
(3) perhaps most importantly: you performance on the strategy guide's in-action problems is going to be inflated! for the most part, you did those problems right after seeing the relevant content on a chapter-by-chapter basis, so of course you're going to get large numbers of them right. on problem banks (and on the official tests), by contrast, you will most definitely not see pertinent content review before seeing the problems, so you'll naturally be much less well prepared.
(4) if you saw 'careless errors' or other opportunities for improvement, then write down the relevant tricks & traps in your notebook, so that you know them next time. don't just cuss yourself out if you make careless errors; actually archive the errors (in your head and in a notebook), so that you know those are the errors that YOU make, and then keep your eyes peeled for them the next time you take the test.
good luck.
- sarahmailings
- Course Students
- Posts: 7
- Joined: Fri Jul 30, 2010 5:35 am
Re: MGMAT Equations, Inequalities, VICs
Just out of curiosity, what level would you say the EIV question bank questions are? I've been doing alright on most EIV's practicing under timed conditions, but it feels like a lot of these are 700-800 level questions. I started doing this particular question bank under timed conditions, but really wasn't getting much accomplished so I switched to untimed. Even without a timer I'm struggling.
Can you confirm this is the case, or is it just revealing a huge gap in my knowledge that I didn't know existed before.
(I was relieved to see that someone else on the forum had run into the same problem).
Can you confirm this is the case, or is it just revealing a huge gap in my knowledge that I didn't know existed before.
(I was relieved to see that someone else on the forum had run into the same problem).
- mschwrtz
- ManhattanGMAT Staff
- Posts: 498
- Joined: Tue Dec 14, 2004 1:03 pm
Re: MGMAT Equations, Inequalities, VICs
Yes, there is a disproportionate number of very hard questions in the EIV bank.
4 posts Page 1 of 1