planning to re-take GMAT ----Need advice ---- My analysis

[sushilmore]

Hi,

I took a GMAT yesterday. I was devastated to see the score. I scored 530 (Q47, V13). This is most surprising result I have ever seen and the verbal score is the lowest of all the practice test.

On MGMAT tests my verbal was always between 30 - 38. So I was confident I would do well

My Gprep scores were 710 and 600

My experience about GMAT -

I found Quant little difficult than Gprep and OG. The problems were lenghty and required time to solve. There were many problems I might have take about 2:30 mins which resulted in guessing in last 2 questions. But I was pretty ok with however I had performed.

Nest was Verbal to attack. I think I did pretty well in the start about 10 questions and 22 mins. My 11th question was a bold faced CR which boosted my confidence. I took some time to answer that question may be around 3 mins and my speed slowed down between 12 to 20 questions which had one long RC. I was on 25th question when I had less than 20 minutes left. I was well under my strategic time decided. I started pacing my verbal session. In the process I think I started guessing most of my CR and SC i used give some time it, being my strength.

The pacing in the last 15 - 16 questions costed me for the score I got. This is my analysis.

Verbal, according to me -
SC - strength
CR - I can get a question right with difficulty of 600 - 650 in little over 2 mins and tougher questions can go upto 3 mins
RC - Weakest area, especially specific details question and Except question. Overall takes 2:30 to 3 mins per question.

I was struggling with RC even in practice test but Gprep RCs were really simple as compared to real GMAT. In real GMAT I had trouble reading and keeping the concentration while reading which probably took more than my actual speed.

I need some sincere advice to improve. I want to apply for round 2 and plan to take GMAT on 29 Nov or 2 Dec.

Please advice.

[sushilmore]

I need advice for the following -

1. I an using MGMAT SC guide. Should I buy the new one?
2. For CR, How should I practice the thinking process for attacking the questions? I think this should help me gain 30 secs in each questions?
3. For CR, Do I need to buy more practice material? I already have Kaplan 2008 CD, Mgmat guides, OG 10, OG 11 and OG VR. I have also readu CR bible. But need some help in application of the strategy?
4. I am using 2007 MGMAT RC guide. It is very helpful guide. I know it is difficult to improve on RC. But Any tips will be helpful for specific details and Inference?
I am already creating the Map for RC as suggested by MgMAT. But may be that is taking too long for me and need some improvements
5. Is it a good idea to re-take so early?

[StaceyKoprince]

I may have the timing wrong here, but I might have some bad news for you. On 11 Nov you said you took the test "yesterday," so that would be 10 Nov. You then said you want to take it again around 29 Nov or 2 Dec.

We are required to wait 31 days before we can take the test again. If you took it on 10 Nov, then you aren't eligible to take it again until 11 Dec. Perhaps that will still be in time for your round 2 deadlines - I hope so.

The mismanagement of time really hurt you. You have to fix the timing issue. If you don't, then your score won't improve much.

You are going to be given questions that you cannot answer in the available time. Everybody does - that's just how the test works. When you see these questions, your goal is to recognize, "this one's too hard for me," and get it wrong fast. Seriously. Get the questions wrong faster.

Think of this test not as a traditional paper test, in which the goal is to get every question right, but as a tennis match, in which you are going to lose some points. It's okay to lose points as long as you win the match.

You're expected to get about 60% of the questions right, regardless of your scoring level (this does skew at very high and low scores). That's right, someone scoring a 700 can do so by getting just 60% of the questions right! It's not only okay to get questions wrong, it's absolutely expected.

So, since you're going to get questions wrong, you now have to think about which ones you want to get wrong. Do you want to get a bunch of questions wrong, in a row towards the end, that you don't even have time to read and some of which you could probably answer correctly (given time)? Or do you want to give yourself a choice about which ones to get wrong? Choice is better. Which ones do you choose to get wrong? The ones that you know are too hard for you anyway. (And be honest with yourself - most of the time, we know when we hit one of those questions that's just too hard.)

Again, if you don't change your mindset here, you should expect the same thing to happen the next time you take the test. Most people have to just outright guess on 5-7 questions per section. The last thing you want is for that to be the last X number of questions in a row because the penalty grows as you have more wrong answers in a row. You've got to spread those out. Further, if you're forced to make random guesses on problems in a row - well, you could actually do some of those problems, if you had the time. So now you're getting things wrong that you could have gotten right.

In the meantime, you spent way too much time on earlier questions in the section that you then got wrong anyway! If you go more than about 30 sec over the expected time on a problem, then the more time you spend, the more likely you are to get it wrong. Really - they've done studies to show this.

It sounds like RC might be the thing costing you the most time, with CR right behind. In both of those cases, it may be valuable to get the new guides, as we have stripped down some of the diagramming stuff and we also discuss things like how to spot wrong answers - both can be very valuable in picking up speed. Take a look at the new techniques in those and let me know if you have any questions.

For SC, if that's already a strength, then you may not need the new guide. It sounds like you need to concentrate more on CR and RC.

For verbal in general, continue using OG (even if that means going back over questions you've already done). Do this analysis:
why is each wrong answer wrong? (as specifically as possible)
which wrong answer is the most tempting and why?
why is that tempting wrong answer still wrong anyway?
why would someone be tempted to eliminate the wright answer?

[Guest]

Thanks Stacey.

I have started my preparation for CR. I think I would not be able to make it for R2 because I am working. so improving GMAT, prep appl and work will be difficult to manage.

I am planning to take GMAT in Jan or Feb. This will give myself more time and also will be able to prep well.

Thanks.

[StaceyKoprince]

Good luck - let us know how it goes!

[A4Fever]

Thanks Stacey - I just did my exam on Monday and just like Sushilmore, I'm rewriting the exam in December - already negotiated with the school the review of my application pending approval once my GMAT score is in. I put together a plan that I hope will help increase my score to around 620 or 630. I'm currently at 530 on the official exams but did score 590on the MGMATPrep test with a Q44 V29. Quant was always my weakness and it's for the first time showing better results than verbal - but still not good enough on the official exam.

My biggest timing issue on the exam is for the first 10 or 15 questions, my timing is ok at around 2 min/Q on the Q. section at least. But I end up taking far too much time on harder level questions which is killing my performance. Interesting to see your comment about the 60% avg. accuracy rate. Verbal timing varies but on Monday I had to guess randomly way too many times and guessed the last 3 questions at least (last Q with 3 seconds to go on the clock)...

That being said, I was hopping you can take a quick look at this plan I put together for the next 30 days and would love your feedback. I was inspired by a few people on other GMAT forums so hopefully this will do the trick. Didn't see an attachment button so I used the image uploader to post parts of the doc. By the way, if anyone likes this, I'd be glad to send the word doc via e-mail.

Thanks
A4Fever

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[StaceyKoprince]

Love your plan for post-test day. :)

Some thoughts, in no particular order:

- when doing sets of one type, make sure they are random (from all different content areas); one of our major tasks is to identify what the problem is testing / asking us to do

- you may also want to do more of a mix of difficulty levels, because that's what the real test will be like. So do easy + med earlier on and then move up to med + diff.

- for verbal questions, make sure you study why the wrong answers are wrong - not just why the right ones are right (you have this on one, but you should do this for all of verbal)

- for all, add "how to make an educated guess" to your list of things to study. Educated guessing = crossing off wrong answers, so for each question type and content area, think about how you can identify wrong answers, not just right ones

Finally, go do some analysis on your previous couple of tests. You know you're spending that extra time, but are you actually looking at the results? What are you getting out of that extra time? If you're spending extra time, you should be getting better than 60% right - only that might be worth the trade-off of spending extra time. Are you getting a greater percentage right? (Probably not.) I want you to do the math b/c I want you to see that it's not helping you there, and then it's also hurting you elsewhere b/c you have to make guesses due to lack of time. Double whammy!

[Guest]

Thanks Stacey, I'll make sure to take picture and poor on some extra gasoline for the bon fire!!

Question however is regards to difficulty levels within the Official Guides. Do you have a sense of the number ranges for low, mid and difficult questions? GMAC says that the numbers are in order of difficulty but not sure when we start seeing a switch from one level to another. Did anyone at MGMAT look into this? Any guidelines would help!

Thanks again,
A4Fever

[StaceyKoprince]

They don't tell us, so we just have to make our best guess. Unfortunately, I'm traveling this week and don't have access to my OGs, so I can't go look right now. But from memory, #1-50 in quant tend to be sub-600 level and the highest 40-50 tend to be 700+ level. On CR, the last 20-30 tend to be 700+. I don't remember how many problems there are for SC. And RC is not in order of difficulty - those are organized by passage, so the difficulty levels are all mixed up.

Re: your bonfire, just remember not to pour gas on after it's lit! I watched a neighbor do that when I was a kid. (He got enveloped by a ball of fire, but he dropped and rolled, and luckily the gas can didn't explode.)

[Guest]

Well that's a good start - at least gives some sense of progression and consistency in the questions being asked. Appreciate the quick responses.

I'll let you know how things go.

Thanks!

[StaceyKoprince]

you're welcome!