Need help with Exam taking Strategies

[ShatakshiS598]

Hi Stacy,

I have finished Manhattan's SC,RC and CR concept books, OG13 and GMAC's verbal review.
I am a non native speaker. I am facing trouble with Verbal, my target score is 720.

I have taken 5 out of 6 MGMAT's and 1 GMAT prep test and have scored the foll:
CAT 1: 540 ( Before any prep) 28 V and 37 Q
GMAT Prep 1: ( After half OG13) 28 V and 47Q : Speed issues, guessed mostly in last 7 questions verbal questions
CAT 2: 620 ( after OG13) 32 V and 43Q : Improvement in SC and made sure that had sufficient time for last 10 questions, by speeding up a little.
CAT 3: 560 ( After half GMAC verbal review) 28 V and 42Q : Over sped in verbal exam, leading to lack of focus
CAT 4: 540 ( After full GMAC's verbal review) 26 V and 41 Q : 5/ first 20 correct, 5 out of last 20 correct.
CAT 5: 590 ( After more SC prep) : 28 V and 44 Q : Improvement in SC while drastic dip in CR and SC

I have been facing 2 problems majorly:
If I try to focus on one section, other sections take a hit, I mean I have been fantastic with CR and RC ( while solving atleast) previously.
Timing problem, if I try to devote time to first 10 then last 5/7 questions are consecutively wrong due to time issues.

I have already gone through the blogs of importance of business skills in the test and how to get over the school attitude, both of themhave been very helpful.

My Official GMAT is in 18 days. I have 2 more tests left. Any sort of advice will be appreciated.

[StaceyKoprince]

I have already gone through the blogs of importance of business skills in the test and how to get over the school attitude, both of themhave been very helpful.

I'm glad that they have been helpful but the sentence quoted below indicates that you unfortunately aren't doing what you need to do with that information:

Timing problem, if I try to devote time to first 10 then last 5/7 questions are consecutively wrong due to time issues.

We need to talk about the big picture before we can get into what you should be doing on a day-by-day basis.

First, don't devote more time to the first 10. The first 10 aren't worth any more than any other 10 anywhere on the test.

Next, don't fix timing by speeding up on many questions; that's an "old school" mindset. Fix timing by making better decisions about what NOT do at all.

This is what that executive mindset is all about: you don't spread your time and money equally across every possible investment opportunity that crosses your desk. You pick and choose based on which ones seem most promising.

My guess is that this is also why you see a dip in one area whenever you focus on another: you are spending all of your time and mental energy trying to learn how to get everything right in that area, and that's leaving no time and mental energy for you to balance your performance across all areas.

So really what you need to do is to take a step back. You "know" intellectually what this business mindset thing is, but you haven't really internalized it and changed your fundamental approach to the test accordingly.

First, stop doing tons and tons of questions in an effort to learn how to do everything. That's not your goal. The goal is to learn how to distinguish good opportunities from bad ones.

For some small number of questions per section (perhaps 4 to 7), you should know how to tell almost immediately that you don't want to try this question at all. Here are some triggers that might tell you to guess immediately and move on:
- It's a question type (eg, CR boldface) or content area (eg, quant combinatorics) that you hate and that is not very commonly tested.
- On SC, you've read the sentence and have no idea what it's even trying to say. On CR or RC, you've read the question and have no idea what it's asking.
- You know that you are behind by 3+ minutes and the new question that just popped up looks pretty hard or is a weakness of yours.

For some additional number of questions per section (perhaps 8 to 10), you'll decide partway through that this question isn't working out after all. You may see whether you can make an educated guess or you may make a random guess. Either way, you'll move on.

This second one is the one that most people don't do well enough. People think that either they're going to bail immediately or they have to do this problem. Nope. Think of this as recovering from a bad investment. Your company has just put $1m into R&D for a new product line...and it looked like a great idea when you started! It turns out, though, that the product doesn't work*. Are you going to toss another $1m at it while you waffle about dumping the new product line? No! Cut it off and move on to better opportunities. (You might see whether another company is willing to pay you $200k for the results of your research - recoup some of your investment if you can. That's the equivalent of taking a little time to make an educated guess. But then you move on without a second thought!)

*Remember that you need it to work RIGHT NOW. Not: "if I just spent some more time, maybe I could get it to work." It's not working RIGHT NOW. Dump it.

On a separate, broad picture note: you are also facing issues on the quant, because to hit a 720 on the GMAT, you have to do extremely well on at least one of the two sections. Quant is your stronger area, so you need quant to be at 48 at the least - and really more like 50 (A 50Q / V38 is approximately 720).

Given that you need to improve both sections by such a significant amount, I think you will likely need more than 18 days. I know that's probably not what you want to hear, but it's better to face that right now. It's certainly possible to raise your score somewhat in 18 days (especially if you can really start to use the business mindset in a way that you aren't right now), but it's unlikely to get up to 720 in that timeframe.

If you have to choose, would you rather postpone your test and still go for the 720? Or would you rather lower your goal score? (Or perhaps some combination of the two?)

Next, have you read this? And have you been doing this when you study?
http://tinyurl.com/2ndlevelofgmat

Finally, one thing that I think would really help you to avoid the "I only studied SC for a week, and now my CR and RC have dropped" problem:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2015/07/ ... s-say-what

(And have you read this one too?)
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... -the-gmat/