Need advice or Tips!!! official Exam - 11/25/08

[jrughani]

Friends

My official GMAT is on 11/25/08 and I am looking for score around 600 to 620 !!! . If you see my below cores on MGMAT my verbal is pretty much in range of V - 27-32 and Q - 40-45.

MGMAT 1 - 600 ( Q-42 , V-32) - 10/27/08
MGMAT 2 - 620 ( Q-40 , V-34) - 11/3/08
MGMAT 3 - 500 ( Q-32 , V-27) - 11/6/08
MGMAT 4 - 580 ( Q-43 , V-27) - 11/11/08
MGMAT 5- 550 ( Q-47 , V-20) - 11/17/08
MGMAT 6 - 530 ( Q-35, V-28) - 11/20/08

KAPLAN FREE ONLINE - 580 ( Q-78% ( 8-WRONG) , V- 46% (21-WRONG)) - 11/15/08

GMATPREP - 530 ( Q-44 , V-20) - 11/21/08 - RC - 7 CR- 7 , SC - 8 ( Wrong's)

Verbal Questions wrong are - 5, 6, 7 , 11 , 12, 14 , 15, 17 , 18, 19 , 21, 24, 28 , 30 , 34 , 35 , 39 , 40 [ 19- Wrong ]
Quant Questions wrong are - 5 , 8, 9, 10 , 13, 14, 19 , 22 , 24 , 26 , 28, 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 35, 37 [ 17 - Wrong ]


Looks like my score is decreasing rather than increasing!!! I read in a forum that MGMAT's are tougher than GMATPREP but I see decline in my scores from MGMAT to GMATPREP.

I did OG Twice and gone through complete details of each and every line. I am not sure what need to be done at this point of time....

Atleast 5 careless mistakes in Quant and 4-5 in Verbal. Everytime I make my mind not to repeat and I end up in doing so....Need some quick tips, if possible...

Based on MGMAT Score , I thought atleast I will touch 600 GMATPREP , but it came out to be worst that MGMAT. In fact , I saw some Questions in GMATPREP which are from OG and I knew the answer,but spend on avg 2 mins on it, just to make sure as if its a new question for me.

Any idea or strategy at this point of time will be a great help for me.
:( :(

Thanks
JR.

[DK]

It's important to realize that if you aren't satisfied with your official score you can take the test again.

That being said, with a few days left, you should focus on studying a small sample of problems which you've already done. Focus more on the concepts - not only why the right answer is right, but why the wrong answers are wrong. Don't be discouraged by a shaky practice round, remember it's the exam day that counts not your practice scores. If you can zero in on a particular weakness you may want to watch the class lecture which covers that weakness - assuming you have access to the lecture section online, or ask a friend who can help...Alternatively you can post a question to one of the targeted sub-groups in the forum.

Good luck.

[StaceyKoprince]

It would be useful if we can figure out why your scores are declining. One thing I notice is that you took a whole lot of tests in a very short period of time. I don't recommend taking a test more than once a week, and that's only when you're about to take an official test (otherwise, it should be more like 3 weeks between tests).

Each test is a mental marathon. If you take another practice test the next day, you're not going to do as well. In the last few days, you took tests on 15, 17, 20, and 21 Nov. Way too many in a row.

I also don't recommend taking a practice test within 5 days of the real thing. You already took one on the 21st - that should be your last one. I know that you probably aren't happy going into the test with the 11/21 test as your last test experience, but taking another one at this point will only increase the chances that you won't be able to perform well on the official test. Don't do that.

How has your timing been? I notie that on your GMATPrep test, you got 6 of the last 8 questions wrong in quant. Were you rushing at that point? You also had a string or mostly wrong answers on the verbal - from 11 to 21, you only got three right. Strings of wrong answers in a row can absolutely kill your score. It's really important to try to minimize the chances of that happening, which means you need to be able to move steadily through the entire test. The more your timing fluctuates, the more chances you'l have to make strings of careless mistakes or to have to make guesses at the end.

And, in fact, you mention making a lot of careless mistakes. There are two things to focus on for the next few days:
(1) sticking to your timing plan - you must let problems go when you just aren't getting them (and you will get plenty of problems wrong, no matter how good you get - that's just how the test works)
(2) figuring out why you make the various careless mistakes you've made recently and what you could have done differently to avoid making that mistake (right stuff down more thoroughly / clearly? review some formulas or rules? read the problem more carefully to make sure you didn't miss any important info? etc.)

If you don't get the score you want and need to take the test again, think about this: you say you've done OG twice. Could you *explain* any problem in there, thoroughly, to another student? Could you tell me the right ways to do it, the wrong ways to do it, how I should recognize what to do with it, how to pick the best way for me from among the right ways, how to spot and avoid the traps, how to make an educated guess, and so on? Until you can do this, you aren't done studying those problems!

[jrughani]

It would be useful if we can figure out why your scores are declining. One thing I notice is that you took a whole lot of tests in a very short period of time. I don't recommend taking a test more than once a week, and that's only when you're about to take an official test (otherwise, it should be more like 3 weeks between tests).

Each test is a mental marathon. If you take another practice test the next day, you're not going to do as well. In the last few days, you took tests on 15, 17, 20, and 21 Nov. Way too many in a row.

I also don't recommend taking a practice test within 5 days of the real thing. You already took one on the 21st - that should be your last one. I know that you probably aren't happy going into the test with the 11/21 test as your last test experience, but taking another one at this point will only increase the chances that you won't be able to perform well on the official test. Don't do that.

How has your timing been? I notie that on your GMATPrep test, you got 6 of the last 8 questions wrong in quant. Were you rushing at that point? You also had a string or mostly wrong answers on the verbal - from 11 to 21, you only got three right. Strings of wrong answers in a row can absolutely kill your score. It's really important to try to minimize the chances of that happening, which means you need to be able to move steadily through the entire test. The more your timing fluctuates, the more chances you'l have to make strings of careless mistakes or to have to make guesses at the end.

And, in fact, you mention making a lot of careless mistakes. There are two things to focus on for the next few days:
(1) sticking to your timing plan - you must let problems go when you just aren't getting them (and you will get plenty of problems wrong, no matter how good you get - that's just how the test works)
(2) figuring out why you make the various careless mistakes you've made recently and what you could have done differently to avoid making that mistake (right stuff down more thoroughly / clearly? review some formulas or rules? read the problem more carefully to make sure you didn't miss any important info? etc.)

If you don't get the score you want and need to take the test again, think about this: you say you've done OG twice. Could you *explain* any problem in there, thoroughly, to another student? Could you tell me the right ways to do it, the wrong ways to do it, how I should recognize what to do with it, how to pick the best way for me from among the right ways, how to spot and avoid the traps, how to make an educated guess, and so on? Until you can do this, you aren't done studying those problems!

Thanks Stacey!!!! You are very true. I will definately consider your advices and will work on that.

I don't know but one thing is sure , that while writing GMATPREP , I was kind of more cautious considering that what ever score I get on this test can reflect to my official test. I try to spend more time on first 10 question say 25 mins , and finally I see 10 questions remaining and 10 mins left , so I rush into it. This makes series wrong in Qunat.
In Verbal RC takes more time , even though I understand the RC Completely but in Inference or Suggest question I try to go to passage and spend some time. By the way when I reach to last RC , which is normally 33-35 or 35-37 , I just skim the passage and try to give the answer. I have improved myself in CR , I tend to get atleast 8-9 correct and wrong ones are due to my careless mistake or out of two choice I made the wrong choice. SC - Sometime I score good and sometime I make a lot of mistakes...

Regarding my careless mistakes in QC - Sometime I make wrong calculation or sometime while solving , I miss some given info( like If n is poisitve ) ... I forget that even though I write that Given - n is +ve...looks like this is due to Time Pressure...
Once the test is over and I go through the question and try to solve it which I did wrong, 90% I will get correct.

Anyway lets see on 11/25 and will take some more advice from you.


Thanks
JR

[StaceyKoprince]

Good luck - let us know how it goes!

[jrughani]

Good luck - let us know how it goes!

Stacey

I had my Official Test on 11/25/08 and got a pathetic score or 460 ( Q-37,V-17). I am clueless. I don't know what went wrong with the verbal. In Quant as usual , I rushed last 7 questions and in between I was kind of feeling pressure.
In verbal I got 2 long RC with 4 Question and 2 Short RC with 3 Question each. So overall 14 Question on RC. I guessed I have messed up in RC. SC and RC was straight forward. I was hit by a BOLD CR. I read in forums, if you are doing well on Verbal , you see a BOLD FACE CR...I don't know whether its true or not.
If you see my test score , only in 1 test I did bad in Verbal i.e 20, rest of all is 24-34. I was not expecting 30's but atleast 25-28. In quant at least 40 -45. Can you throw some ideas , where I might have done mistakes and how to improve it.

I am not going to accept this score and want to give one more shot. I am looking for around 620-650 and wanted to do the part time programme. Got 14 yrs of IT experience and background is B.S. I can spend atleast 3 -4 hrs daily and 8 hrs on weekend.

Can you give me some guidance on plan. I took Kaplan classes last year around in oct-07 and spend around $1300 and it was not worth.

I used following material for Quant and Verbal Practice.

1. OG-10 , OG-11
2. CR-PowerScore , 1000 -CR , beatthegmat, manhattan forums, TestMagic
3. 1000 RC
4. 1000 PS-DS, I did 21-30 Sets.( Paper Based)

I am looking for some game plan and checks for the next round. So I really appreciate if you can give some feedback.

[StaceyKoprince]

So you were suffering from some time pressure on quant - you had to rush on the final 7 questions and that can definitely bring your score down from the low to mid 40s to 37.

On verbal, your score dropped much more, obviously. Often, a big drop compared to prior performance is due to timing problems, stamina problems, nerves, or some compbination of the three. Did you take your practice exams under full official conditions? (30m each for two essays, 10m break, 75m quant, 10m break, 75m verbal) Did you take the breaks during the official test, walk around, have something to eat and drink? How did you feel during the verbal section - did you have the same mental sharpness and energy as you had during the quant?

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, 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 through the test and finish with a lot of time left?

What other differences can you think of between your practice test experiences and your real test experiences? Anything, no matter how small, and no matter whether you think it wouldn't have made a difference to your score. Any differences at all?

[Guest]

So you were suffering from some time pressure on quant - you had to rush on the final 7 questions and that can definitely bring your score down from the low to mid 40s to 37.

On verbal, your score dropped much more, obviously. Often, a big drop compared to prior performance is due to timing problems, stamina problems, nerves, or some compbination of the three. Did you take your practice exams under full official conditions? (30m each for two essays, 10m break, 75m quant, 10m break, 75m verbal) Did you take the breaks during the official test, walk around, have something to eat and drink? How did you feel during the verbal section - did you have the same mental sharpness and energy as you had during the quant?

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, 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 through the test and finish with a lot of time left?

What other differences can you think of between your practice test experiences and your real test experiences? Anything, no matter how small, and no matter whether you think it wouldn't have made a difference to your score. Any differences at all?

Hi Stacey,
Thanks for the reply.Here's the lenghthy detail.....

1.To answer you question regarding the Practice Exam I never 30m of two essays, I always go
straight to Quant for 75 Mins and 10 Mins Break walk around go to restroom and drink water and 75 Mins Verbal.
In real exam after 2 essays , 10 Min break walk around,go to restroom ,have some water and same thing in break between Quant and Verbal.

2.In Verbal my Strategy was
----------------------------
In first 25 mins - 10 Question [ 50-52 Mins Remaining ]
next 10 mins - 5 Question [ 40 Mins Remaining ]
next 10 Mins - 5 Question [ 30 Mins Remaining ]
next 10 Mins - 6 Question [ 20 Mins Remaining ]
next 10 Mins - 6 Question [ 10 Mins Remaining ]
next 10 Mins - Remaining 9 Question

Real test:-
When saw the time it was 52 Mins remaining and I was on 11 Question
(In RC i felt i was going back to passage and spending time and I was
continously reading the Question and Answer and not aware what to chose
in EXCEPT Question and INFERENCE Question)

When I saw time next time I was on 21 Question and time remaining was 30 Mins
I knew I rushed on the last RC which came at 32-34. I spend like 3 Mins and clicked
the answer.I knew if I spend time I won't be able to attend the other question.
Finally from 39-41, I clicked randomly.

In SC i was spending 1-1.5 Mins
CR I was spending 2-2.5 Mins
RC reading 4 Mins and to answer the question its kind of 1.5-2 Mins for Inference/Suggest
or EXCEPT or DETAILS.

To answer the question regarding random Guesses, I did in all 4 RC'S for inference/details
Question. RC-1 2 guess , RC-2 1 Guesses , RC-3 1 Guess , RC-4 3 Guess
In CR may be 2 guesses. [ in 4 cr i face kind of pick best out of 2 ]
In SC no guessess [ in 3 sc i faced kind of pick best out of 2]

3. Quant
-----
In the first question itself 1 spend 5 mins that was percentage question.I was kind of nervous that I spend 5 mins in 1st question.
But latter I covered up for the first 10 questions as per my strategy.

Math strategy

10 in 25 Mins
13 in 25 Mins
14 in 25 Mins

I was going OK till the 23 questions but in last phase of 14 questions , I lost some time
due to few silly mistakes.

1. There was an age related problem , I did solve and came with a
answer which was not there in choice. So again I read the question
and try to resolve it and i found i wrote wrong equation , but second
time i didn't got the correct answer and its almost more than 3 mins.
Than I randomly guess the answer and let it go, even though the question
was easy.
2. In one of the division I was dividing with 2 instead of 7 and that spoil
the calculation and I did again.
3. So random guesses might be 1-30 (4 guesses) and 31-37 [ 3 solved and rest of 4 guesses
in 5 mins ]
4. Experience
----------
Practice Test(MGMAT) :- While writing a practice test , I am kind of relax, no sign of nervousness, well prepared for MGMAT QUANT - its going to be tough and not to
spend much time on the question if it doesn't come at first shot.But there also
I rush at the end from 31-37.
For Verbal , I feel that CR are quite easy of MGMAT and SC too and some of the RC's
are quiet lengthy but not that hard to understand.

Practice Test(GMATPREP) :- I was kind of bit cautious and little bit tense thinking
that I want to do the perform the best in this test , becoz the score is going to resemble
to my REAL TEST SCORE. But in QUANT i faced the few tough question and when I see simple
algebra question , I feel that I did the previous one wrong.
Same story repeats for 31-37 Question and 5-8 mins remaining and I rush to last 7 questions.

Verbal :- Lot of CR comes from the OG which I already know the answer or many CR's I
attempted in forum, but still I spend 2-2.5 mins on it.RC out of 13 I get 6-7 right.
and SC atleast I am OK with that and get 5-6 wrong.

REAL TEST :-
----------
I was not nervous but sometime in Quant I felt like pressure and in Verbal I felt pressure
on RC's.
In CR and SC , I don't feel the pressure becoz I nail down the answer , but sometime not
sure whether the CR and SC which I ticked is always correct.
But yes PRESSURE did built in REAL TEST and kind of NERVOUSNESS which makes me go fast.
But STAMINA wise I am OK , I don't feel tired during the real test.

Looks like I wrote long details, I won't to give second try and I need your help and support to sketch the attacking plan to Conquer the GMAT. I knew i can do it, but
I need to over come my weakness of IMPATIENCE and HANDLE PRESSURE during TIME CRUNCH.

I hope , I did answer all of your questions. Please let me know if you need specific and
I will reply to the point.

I really appreciate your time and feedback and your suggestion are really valuable to me.

Thanks once again and waiting for your feedback

JR

[StaceyKoprince]

1. Do the essays on practice tests from now on. I know you think your stamina is fine, but you only prepared yourself for 2/3 of the (mental) marathon. You've got to be able to perform at the top level in verbal even when you've had to spend an hour writing essays first, and you didn't prepare adequately for that task.

2. Your timing plan is skewed. You should not plan in advance to spend only 10 minutes on the last 9 questions in verbal. Every question on the test is worth the same amount. The earlier ones are not worth more than the later ones. The worst thing you can do to your score is have a string on wrong answers in a row - and you're setting yourself up for exactly that situation by planning to do 9 Qs in 10 minutes.

Note: whatever your bad habits are, they will be magnified on the official test. So if you're actively planning to have inadequate time on the last quarter of the test, you're going to end up with even less time than you'd planned. I'd be willing to be money that this is why your verbal score dropped so much: you had a string of wrong answers in a row at the end. If you have more than about 4 wrong answers in a row, the penalty is roughly 2 to 2.5 percentile points per question (depending upon various circumstances). You get 5 in a row wrong, you're looking at a 10 to 12.5 percentile point drop right there!

3. #2 is also true for quant. Your timing was not quite as skewed there, so it wasn't as much of a problem.

4. I want to return to something I said in a previous post, because I think it may be important for you. For those OG practice problems, the ones you say you know already because you've done them so much: "Could you *explain* any problem in there, thoroughly, to another student? Could you tell me the right ways to do it, the wrong ways to do it, how I should recognize what to do with it, how to pick the best way for me from among the right ways, how to spot and avoid the traps, how to make an educated guess, and so on? Until you can do this, you aren't done studying those problems!"

I noticed that you listed an enormous number of sources for study and I'm worried that you spent more time on quantity of study than quality of study. I'd far rather see you study fewer problems, but really analyze them. It's not enough just to know how to do this problem sitting in front of you right now, because you're never going to see that exact problem on the test. You will, however, see some similar problems, so you have to know (a) how to recognize a problem of a certain sub-sub-category, (b) how to remember what to do with problems of that sub-sub-category, and (c) all sorts of little things, such as: this is how they're going to try to get people to get this one wrong, this is an alternate method I could use to solve, this is what I could do to get rid of some wrong answers before making a guess, etc. If I showed you a list of 10 different problems that had some things in common with other problems on that list, could you pick out the similarities and explain to me where they are similar, and how you can use that knowledge to answer the second question more efficiently and effectively?

So what I'm talking about is a switch in your mindset in terms of how you study. In a 2-hour study period, I will do about 20 problems in 40 minutes (or maybe 30 SCs in 45 minutes), and then I'll spend the remaining two hours reviewing *everything* I can think of with respect to those problems. I spend more time analyzing than I spend doing problems. If you aren't doing that, then you're focusing too much on quantity.

[jrughani]

Stacey

Thanks for your input. You very well said that I am more focussing on the quantity rather than quality. I am ready to change my strategy and start the game all over again.

As you mentioned I will take the OG-11 and take the 20 Questions ( 2 mins per quest or 1.5 mins for SC) and try to evaluate it in different ways.

How should I measure that I am improving or not ? How should I put milestones ?

Any good techniques I follow for RC ?

Thanks
JR

[StaceyKoprince]

Take tests periodically (about once every 2-3 weeks until you get close to the official test date, then once a week for two weeks before the official test date) - this should be where you see the improvement (hopefully!). You should also generally feel more confident and be getting more right in your practice sets over time, but the tests are the major indicator.

I have a whole book full of suggestions for RC. :) Seriously, I really do like our new book (3rd edition, just published in October), but you should also ask around and see what others have used and thought was helpful.

[jitenderjain065]

Hey Stacey,
as you have said
1 to 1.5m for SC, 2m for CR, 2-4m to read a passage, 1m for general RC questions, 2m for specific RC questions
can you please specify the time we should give to infrence q in RC ?
and is the approach(i am following it from last 2 weeks, and i think its good, with 70% accuracy(a lot for me)), of reading RC,making brief notes in 4-5 minutes and then giving 1 minute to every type of question...........

i have gmat exam on 31st july
kindly advice

So you were suffering from some time pressure on quant - you had to rush on the final 7 questions and that can definitely bring your score down from the low to mid 40s to 37.

On verbal, your score dropped much more, obviously. Often, a big drop compared to prior performance is due to timing problems, stamina problems, nerves, or some compbination of the three. Did you take your practice exams under full official conditions? (30m each for two essays, 10m break, 75m quant, 10m break, 75m verbal) Did you take the breaks during the official test, walk around, have something to eat and drink? How did you feel during the verbal section - did you have the same mental sharpness and energy as you had during the quant?

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, 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 through the test and finish with a lot of time left?

What other differences can you think of between your practice test experiences and your real test experiences? Anything, no matter how small, and no matter whether you think it wouldn't have made a difference to your score. Any differences at all?

[StaceyKoprince]

inference questions are specific questions - so 2m.

If a method works for you, then keep doing it. There isn't a one-size-fits-all approach to everything. :)

Good luck - let us know how it goes!