Need a review for my 4 month study plan (Day 0 score : 340)

[chetan.kinger45]

I am in the preliminary stages of my GMAT preparation. I am planning to take the GMAT by 15th June, 2014. I have come up with a 4 month self-study plan to attain a target score of 700+. I understand completely that this is not going to be a walk in the park. I would really appreciate it if anyone with a score >=700 or anyone from MGMAT itself can review my study plan.

I took the GMATPrep practice test with zero preparation and got a score of 340. I could not finish any of the sections completely. I managed to answer only 23 questions (time expired) in quant and answered 9 questions correctly. I managed to answer only 24 questions (time expired again) in verbal and answered 13 correctly. The reading comprehension and critical reasoning questions were pretty difficult. I found that I knew the concepts that the quant section was testing but I couldn't recall the concepts completely.

The plan:

Books I have purchased :
1. Manhattan strategy guides (except the road-map guide).
2. Official Guide 13
3. Official Guide Verbal Review, 2nd edition
4. Official Guide Math Review, 2nd edition

I have spent a lot of time researching about what books to purchase and I have chosen MGMAT mainly because the books focus on quality rather than quantity.

My weekly study plan :
1. Finish one MGMAT strategy guide (Including practice questions at the end of each chapter) in 5 weekdays @ 1.5-2 hours/per weekday.
2. Solve the OG 13 questions corresponding to the MGMAT Strategy Guide on Saturday and review the questions and answers. Also review everything that I have studied till date.
3. Solve the questions from the OG Review book corresponding to the MGMAT Strategy Guide on Sunday and review the questions and answers. Also review everything that I have studied till date.
4. Repeat the above steps until all MGMAT books have been exhausted.
5. After a month/month and a half, take practice tests every weekend to see whether my plan has worked or not.

I am going to use the weekends for solving the questions from the OG and the OG review books. I am also going to use the weekends for reviewing whatever I have studied till date. I am leaving the review process for the weekend since this will take more and more time as I am going to cover more material as the weeks go by.

I have 9 books from the MGMAT series. If I stick to the above plan diligently, I will finish reading the MGMAT books + Finish with all the OG questions + Finish with all the OG review questions + Take some CAT's along the way in 3 months. I will have one month of buffer time to work on my weak areas, cover advanced material from Manhattan and take full length CAT's.

I am confused about whether to complete all the math/quant section related books first and then move on to the verbal section books or whether to alternate between math and verbal books each week. The advantage of completing all the books for one section of the GMAT in one stretch is that I can take a CAT for only that section in the end and see how my plan is working for me. I will also know that the score, whether good or bad, is a direct result of my efforts. The disadvantage of this approach is that I might get bored or lose interest. Alternately, the advantage of alternating between math and verbal every week is that I will not get bored of studying the same section and I will also be covering the breadth of the syllabus and not just the depth. The disadvantage of alternating between math and verbal every week is that when I start taking CAT's at the end of the first month of studying, I will have to take the full length CAT even though I have only studied partially for each section.

I am also not sure whether I should time my self while solving the problems from the OG for a particular topic each weekend or should I focus on accuracy rather than speed? The last thing that I am confused about is whether it would make more sense to read the MGMAT books in their natural order or read them in any order that suits me.

It would be great if anyone who has attained a score of 700+ or anyone working with MGMAT directly can review my study plan and let me know what you think of it. Do you see any obvious flaws in the plan? Am I missing something in the plan? Will this be a good plan to follow if I am targeting a score of 700+?

Looking forward to the help
- CK

[StaceyKoprince]

First, read this:
https://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/inde ... lly-tests/

Then, start a reply and explain to me why your approach to your first practice test resulted in such a low score (even though you're already capable of doing better). Also explain to me how what you just read is going to impact how you study.

Next, your plan mostly looks good, with some exceptions. A few comments:
- Some books will take longer and some you'll get through more quickly, depending on your strengths and weaknesses. Don't be afraid to prioritize and spend time accordingly.

- Here's how to study / review the OG problems you'll be doing:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -the-gmat/

- when you're first doing OG problems, go ahead and do them chapter by chapter or guide by guide, but do NOT do all OG problems this way. Save a significant percentage for use in MIXED sets of questions to be done later in your study. The real test will never give you sets of topics together, nor will it tell you what you're about to get. Half the battle is figuring out what each new question is about, so don't give yourself the artificial advantage of already knowing when you start working on a new problem or batch of problems!

- Don't wait 4 to 6 weeks and then start taking practice tests every week-end. Take one test now (not GMATPrep - one of ours) and analyze it thoroughly to help you with your study priorities. Here's how to analyze our tests:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... ice-tests/

(That analysis should take you a *minimum* of one hour.) Your analysis will tell you what to do for the next 2, 3, or even 4 weeks before you take another practice test. Don't bother to take another test until you feel you've made substantial progress since the last one. At first, this will be several weeks. Only once you get close to the end of your study will you start to take tests closer to every week to 10 days.

Whenever you analyze a test, feel free to come here to share the analysis with us (not just the data! tell us what you think it means!). We'll be happy to discuss / advise you from there.

Read this:
https://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/inde ... many-cats/

Finally, on Monday (in two days), our blog will have a new article that I just wrote about developing a study plan. Go and read it and start doing what it says!

Re: quant vs. verbal, do some of each every week. If you leave one overall topic for 1+ weeks, then you will start to forget stuff. In one study session, do only quant or verbal. It's okay to have a few study sessions in a row that are just quant or verbal. But at least once every few days, switch to the other.

The disadvantage of alternating between math and verbal every week is that when I start taking CAT's at the end of the first month of studying, I will have to take the full length CAT even though I have only studied partially for each section.

Actually, that is not a disadvantage in the slightest. :) NEVER take partial CATs. Always do the full test, including essay and IR. The test results will show you what your strengths AND weaknesses are - and that's the real point. You want to know your weaknesses so that you know how to spend your time / prioritize when you come to those sections. It doesn't matter that you haven't studied everything yet.

I am also not sure whether I should time my self while solving the problems from the OG for a particular topic each weekend or should I focus on accuracy rather than speed?

After you've read the articles I linked above, especially the one about "what the gmat really tests," come back here and answer your own question for me.

Re: the order in which to do things, this is the order we use for class: FDP, Algebra, WP, Geometry, Number Properties. We like to put FDPs first because they tend to form a good underlying basis for a lot of the more advanced math. You can also adjust based on your own strengths and weaknesses, though, doing your weaknesses sooner.

[chetan.kinger45]

Stacey,

Apologies for the late reply. I finally got around finding some time today to read the posts that you linked me to.

Then, start a reply and explain to me why your approach to your first practice test resulted in such a low score

I get it now. I get why I performed poorly on the test and it makes complete sense. Before I started with the diagnostic test, I told myself not to guess any of the questions as I thought guessing would be unfair and give me a misleading score. I was very stubborn about not skipping a question and spent a lot of time on each question. (I remember spending 5 - 10 minutes on many questions). If I use this approach on d-day , I am probably going to score the same regardless of how much I study. You really hit the nail on the head with those blog posts and they have transformed the way I am going to prepare for the GMAT. Guessing on the practice CAT's all the way up to the d-day is going to be top priority for me for any questions that I spend more than 2 minutes on. I can't thank you enough for this priceless advice. That being said, I feel that guessing too much on the first diagnostic test (day 0, zero-preparation test) can result in a misleading diagnosis. What's your take on this?

Some books will take longer and some you'll get through more quickly

You are right again. I thought I could finish the Fractions, Digits and Decimals book in one weekend but I just finished with this book today and it took me 8 hours on the weekend + 4 hours on the weekdays to do this. I have a question regarding this book. I realized that the book (and the problem sets in the book) does not cover all the variations of the weighted average problems that can be seen on the GMAT. Is this going to be covered in some other book such as the Word Translations book?

when you're first doing OG problems, go ahead and do them chapter by chapter or guide by guide, but do NOT do all OG problems this way. Save a significant percentage for use in MIXED sets of questions to be done later in your study

I have decided not to solve all the OG problems corresponding to a strategy guide in one go. Instead, I have randomly chosen 4-5 problems corresponding to the OG from each chapter in the strategy guide (FDP guide at the moment) and created a set of 37 problems that I am going to solve. I have sorted the problems in ascending order of the question number so that I get a mix of fractions, percents, ratio's, data sufficiency, etc instead of getting problems from one chapter in a sequence. This is what my first 5 problems look like :

Question 10
Question 20
Question 21
Question 23
Question 40
and so on...

You will notice that they are only numerically sorted but random when it comes to the chapters they test. I have chosen 37 questions because that is the number of questions in the quant section so I might as well start getting used to solving 37 questions in one stretch. I can create a few more sets of 37 problems each and mix them with sets from other books as and when I complete the books. I can also put a time constraint of 4 minutes per question to start with and reduce this to two minutes per question over time. What do you think of this approach?

Don't wait 4 to 6 weeks and then start taking practice tests every week-end

I am planning to finish one more strategy guide before I take my first MGMAT CAT as it will be more productive this way. I can judge whether my study plan is working for me and also be able to analyze the other areas that I need to focus on. What's your take on this?

Re: quant vs. verbal, do some of each every week

I am planning to do one verbal guide for every two quant guides that I finish. That roughly translates to two weeks of quant prep for two weeks of verbal prep. Would that be alright or I should reduce the gap between verbal and quant even more?

I have one last question in this post. I started solving the questions from Fractions, Decimal and Percents online question bank and was stumped by its difficulty so I quit after the 5th question itself. I feel its too early for me to solve such difficult questions. Am I right about the questions on the question bank being difficult or should I be able to cruise through these after completing the FDP book?

I will be reading the new blog posts that you have linked me to.

Thanks a lot Stacey. You have saved me a lot of time and energy and I appreciate all the help so far.

[StaceyKoprince]

Great! Glad you get it now. :) And you are very welcome!

That being said, I feel that guessing too much on the first diagnostic test (day 0, zero-preparation test) can result in a misleading diagnosis. What's your take on this?

Yes and no - depends how you're guessing.

The real issue is this: do you know how to do this question (any question!) in a reasonable amount of time? If so, go for it, knowing that sometimes you will make mistakes or get tangled up / turned around (that is, you won't get those ones 100% right). If not, figure out how to make a guess and let it go.

When you have zero prep, you should have more that you don't know how to do... so sure, try anything for a reasonable amount of time but then you've got to move on.

Note that "guess" doesn't mean "Within 5 seconds, I have determined that I probably can't do this, so I guess B and move on." It means "I spent 30 to 60 seconds reading this and trying to work my way into it, but it's not happening, so now I'm going to think about whether I can make an educated guess and (one way or the other) then I'm going to move on."

Every now and then, you will have that "5 second" problem pop up - and that will be because either (a) you've already messed up your time and you have to guess quickly to save time, or (b) you know immediately that this problem is way beyond you.

Weighted averages are also covered in the WP book, yes, but note something:

I realized that the book (and the problem sets in the book) does not cover all the variations of the weighted average problems that can be seen on the GMAT.

Danger!! Remember what you just read in my articles! Your goal is not to learn "all the variations of weighted average problems that can be seen on the GMAT." Not unless you're going for an 800. :) Your goal is to learn a reasonable amount and dismiss the rest.

I like that you're not going to do all of the OG problems book by book - that's good. I would NOT, however, do these in sets of 37 problems. There's a HUGE difference between learning and testing yourself. You are not in learning mode while taking a test - all of your brain energy is going towards trying to take the test, period. You're learning nothing.

When you are in learning mode, by contrast, you do not want to do so much that you're tiring your brain out such that you're not actually able to learn that much.

Also, you want to do what we call "iterate." You do a set of 5 or 10 or MAYBE 15 questions. You go over from them, you learn a bunch, then you do it again. You apply what you learn to the second set of 5 or 10 problems. Then you iterate again. You will learn way more this way than doing 37 questions in a row because you will not actually learn from any of those questions until after you are done with all 37 of them and you go back over to review them.

I also would not start with 4m per Q to start and reduce over time. If you do that, you are still just training yourself to prioritize getting them right. That's not your main goal. Your main goal is to prioritize how to make decisions about where to spend your time and mental energy, knowing that you can't do it all.

It's a good idea to do the first few problems from a content area 1 at a time and let those go to 3 or 4 minutes - you're learning how to do that content area in general. Later, though, when you graduate to doing sets of questions, then your main goal is to practice your decision-making behavior, so hold yourself to the time limit for that set. Make decisions about which ones you'd want to cut / guess more quickly on.

Afterwards, go back over to see whether you made the right decisions or whether you realize you should have done some things differently. At that time, also give yourself time to try any problems on which you bailed / guessed. Learn from them.

Re: CATs, if I were you, I'd still take the first CAT now. You've done one book, so you can already use that one to judge. But you can do it the way you like, as well. :)

Re: Q and V, if you have plenty of time to study, then it's okay to do this initially, but note that later, you'll need several weeks (at least) where you are doing Q and V every day or every other day. You can't go two weeks without looking at something without losing some of it.

I would encourage you to mix it up a little more, though - your brain learns better with variety and repetition. It's really hard to learn ALL of the grammar in one week - it starts to blend together in your brain after about day 3 or 4. It's easier to learn one or two topics this week, and then mix in some CR and RC (and quant!), then learn a couple more grammar topics next week or the week after (while reviewing the earlier ones), and so on.

The Q bank questions are often on the more challenging side, and I would not go to those after the book. Do OG first.

Let me know how it goes!

[chetan.kinger45]

Once again, you have made complete sense. I am now starting to believe that guessing on the GMAT is inevitable. I need to make this a part of my practice CAT/OG drills so that I can get better at making a decision about which questions to let go and which questions to spend my time on.

I followed your advice about not solving 37 questions in one go. I solved 15 problem solving questions from the OG for the FDP book, checked my answers and reviewed all the answers (whether I got them right or wrong). All this took me around 3 hours since I wrote down all the steps I took to narrow down to an answer choice along with taking notes after reviewing my answers. You were right. Reviewing 37 questions would have been counterproductive in a way. :). Do you think 3 hours is a lot of time to invest in covering such a low number of questions or do you think it is a productive investment of time? Also, my accuracy is 79%. I got one question wrong because of a silly division mistake and the remaining questions were kind of tough.

I am contemplating on taking the CAT this weekend because I work 9 hours on weekdays excluding travel so taking CAT's on the way to work and back can be a bit challenging. Meanwhile, I am planning to take up one more math book since all the verbal books look pretty huge at the moment. So the plan is to cover the content from the second math book while travelling to work in the morning and to come back home and solve small sets [5 per day] of questions from the OG for FDP. I am planning to continue this till the weekend. On the weekend, I am going to take a CAT and analyze it. I should finish with the second quant book by this weekend and then switch to verbal next week.

I feel that I am not getting enough practice. I want to be able to test the content that I have learnt. The problem with the OG is that each question is very valuable to be wasting on casual practice. Is there any other book/resource other than the OG that I can use for casual practice to excercise all the concepts that I have learnt from a particular MGMAT guide?

[StaceyKoprince]

guessing on the GMAT is inevitable

Without a doubt. :)

3 hours is a good amount of time to do and analyze 15 problems. My general rule of thumb is that it should take you a *minimum* of twice as long to analyze as it took to do the problem, and that's only if everything went about as well as it could. Most of the time, you should be spending 10+ minutes reviewing per problem - reading / watching explanations, looking up additional information, finding traps, uncovering careless mistakes, finding more efficient solution methods, returning to lessons in your books, doing some drills to build up skills that were shaky, making flashcards to help you remember something, etc. I have spent 30+ minutes on a single problem before!

Your study + CAT plan for this week sounds good. Re: problem practice, first concentrate on the problems printed in our books (our problems, not the OG problem sets) to make sure that you know the content that's being tested. Then "graduate" to OG problems.

If you've got OG13 and the 2 supplements, you've got about 1,500 problems. If you need more, you can buy an additional 400 problems via GMATprep - but if you're really studying in the way that I've been describing (taking tons of time to analyze / review), then it would take many months just to get through 1,500.

Oh, and just because you've done a problem once doesn't mean that you're done with it. :) Try them again. Review them again. It doesn't matter that you might remember what the answer is - the review phase is where you learn 80% of what you're going to learn. After you've studied for a while, return to earlier problems and you'll discover that you have even more to learn from them that you simply weren't prepared to notice / figure out the first time around!

[chetan.kinger45]

Stacey,

Thank you for validating my approach. I was looking forward to know whether I am on the right track. I couldn't take the CAT this weekend as I fell ill on the weekend and ended up wasting 2 days recovering. I hope I can take it this weekend.

I am really enjoying the MGMAT guides. I am done with FDP and Algebra guides. I always solve all the problems in the MGMAT guides after each chapter and hardly get any of them wrong.

I am done with a set of 10 - 15 Data Sufficiency and a set of 10 - 15 Problem Solving questions from the OG for each of the books mentioned above. I used a stop watch to just track how much time I was spending on a question and my average time for all the sets I have done so far is close to 5 minutes. I understand I shouldn't be timing my self while I am in learning mode but the timer helps me realize that I can't take all the time in the world to solve a problem even if I am in learning mode and it also makes me more atrentive. I am a bit disappointed about my average time which is 3 minutes more than what I will have on the actual exam. Do you think it's alright to take 5 minutes on an average to solve a question when in learning mode?

I am planning to do a mixed set got FDP and Algebra as I have plenty of questions from these topics yet to be solved from the OG. Should I stick to the 15 question limit for mixed sets as well or do a full 37 question set with strict 2 minute deadline per question?

I understand that 1500 problems is going to take me months to review. What I am looking for is disposable questions that I can casually solve while traveling or when I have some free time at work. I feel that I need a lot more casual practice before I hit the OG so that the theoretical concepts find their way quickly into my working memory :)

[StaceyKoprince]

Mix up DS and PS in your sets. It's annoying to jump back and forth, right? So practice doing it.

Re: the timing stuff... actually, no, I don't think it's okay to take 5 minutes in learning mode. If you do that, then you're prioritizing learning "how to get it right" - but that's not your primary goal on the GMAT. Your primary goal is to figure out how to make the best decisions possible in the limited time that you have, and I want you practicing that on all OG problems.

Actually, while the clock is ticking, you are not in "learning" mode at all. You are in "doing" mode. Learning mode doesn't come till you're done with the problem.

So the first time you do an OG problem (or set of problems), you stick to the given timing. If you do 10 questions, you give yourself a block of 20 minutes and that's it - you must have an answer for all 10 by the end of that 20 minutes.

Afterwards, if you want to try any of the problems again, feel free to take as long as you want. The first time, though, you really are practicing under testing conditions - that will help you to remember your overall decision-making goals. How do you decide when something's too hard? When do you cut yourself off? Can you make an educated guess? How? Etc.

I have never once done a 37-question problem set (outside of a test). I don't recommend that you do that either. :) That's a really inefficient way to study, so I only do it when my goal is to mimic a full testing situation.

I also don't recommend ever holding yourself to a strict 2 minute per question deadline. You always have flexibility to spend extra time on some questions and take less time on others - you need to learn to manage those decisions. You also always have the danger of spending too much time - the real test is never going to cut you off after two minutes. So you have to learn to manage that for yourself as well. Don't give yourself an artificial crutch that cuts you off. Learn to do that yourself.

Re: the problems, I'd still stick with OG for the most part. You'll be coming back to these questions again and again - you don't just do them once and then move on. There are times that I won't figure out a great solution path until the 3rd or 4th time that I try a problem - usually after I've done something else similar and it makes me see the old problem in a new way.