Please advise preparation strategy for my 4th attempt.

[Guest]

It was my third attempt at the GMAT, and got 500 (V-20, Q-40). First attempt 540 (V-21, Q-43) and second attempt 430 (V-18, Q-35). My story is all about my verbal scores. My first attempt was in December 2006 when i got 540. I had taken Princeton Review course before my first attempt. I was so rusted in Quant, and PR helped a lot in polishing my Quant.

After my first attempt i studied off and on over the next year of 2007 and went for my second attempt in December 2007. For this second attempt i prepared from OG-11, Official Verbal and Quant Review books, old PDF tests by GMACWall-Street-Crash , Manhattan SC, CR Bible by PowerScore (fantastic book for CR), SC Bible and notes/feedbacks available on net (the flash cards by beathegmat are excellent and reinforced my understanding of the topics). I also made notes for both verbal and Quant from all the best books available in the market on GMAT (PR, Kaplan all books, Barrens, Arco and NOVA). After going through all that material, I took GMAT Prep and got 36, 35 and 36 in verbal. I was satisfied that i had improved because when i first time took GMATPrep (a year back) my verbal scores were 28, 30, 33. I went for the actual GMAT in December 2007 for my second attempt and got 18 in verbal . I was shocked that after going through such an extensive material my verbal score went down from 21 to 18. I thought there must be something seriously wrong with me and i am not retaining what i go through. But the thing was that i never got 18 in verbal even when i took GMATPrep first time in December 2006 before my first attempt. As I mentioned above, at that time my practice verbal scores were 28, 30, 33.

Anyway, I thought definitely something seriously wrong with my understanding of the verbal topics. I decided to go for the 3rd attempt and prepared from some more material and repeated OG-10 (remember i had gone through the OG-11 and Review books twice before). I studied Manhattan CR and RC books and got some more tips from it. I did 50 GRE passages as well as 100 CR questions from LSAT. My average correction rate on them was 60% with GMAT time. Above all I was in the "above average" and "excellent" categories in the OG-11 diagnostic test.

With all the above preparation, I went for my 3rd attempt on March 8, 2008 (2 months after my 2nd attempt). My score is 500 (V-20, Q-40). Again verbal 20. How come? I believe now I can do SC even blindfolded with the brail system. How on the earth I am not going beyond 20 in my actual GMAT while my GMATPrep results are all around 35/36 and never got less than 28 in it even when I was a GMAT baby and saw the GMATPrep first time.

I can definitely ascribe lack of time management, and resultant panic, as the root cause of my low Quant score. But what exactly happens with Verbal in actual exams? Is that bad habit of spending extra time on difficult questions mar my Verbal also? But if this is the case then how come i did better in Practice exams? That's the mystery. During the actual exam i was moving smoothly in the Verbal. I did not panic in verbal until when 2-3 are left with 1 minute reaming. For both Verbal and Quants, i think i randomly guessed 2-3 questions in the end.

Anyhow, I have few questions:-

1. Does that random guessing of last 2-3 questions disturb the scores?
2. Should i quit looking at the GMAT questions for sometime, say for 2 months, and then start all over again? Or should i keep in touch with GMAT with slow pace, say solving 5 questions of each type daily or 4-5 times a week, and then take the GMAT after 2-3 months?

Plz also add your suggestions on how to dig out the weaknesses because after preparing for the GMAT since long i am unable to find/point out any further weaknesses except a slow pace in solving GMAT questions (this is what I feel sometimes not all the times but still I am able to do 34 in Quant and 38/39 in Verbal within time. I hope you got my point i.e. almost all the times in my practice and in real GMAT, I had to randomly guess the last 2-3 questions in both the parts.

I believe if you stop looking at the GMAT stuff, you lose not only the rhythm but also the knack to solve such GMAT questions.

(My AWA result has just arrived and got 4.5 in it).

Regards

Nauman

[Grumppee]

Hey Nauman,

I have difficulty with the verbal as well and I know I'm not an idiot with some of the verbal concepts. How are you usally feeling during the verbal section? I know that my BIGGEST problem is stamina.....I can feel myself go off into space because I'm so mentally exhausted from the essay, and quant section. I noticed it really affects me right in the middle of the verbal section. Some of the practice exams I've taken through MGMAT, I noticed that I was entering the 700-800 level questions right away but it all goes down hill after question 17.....consistently 5 wrong in a row and so forth. I am really trying to work on that point during the exam which I feel is so crucial. Sometimes I dread seeing that last RC passage at the end with minutes to spare and I know I've casually just random guessed because I just didn't want to 'deal' with it. Let me know what you think. I know it's a tedious process but you're not alone. I've taken the real GMAT 3 times so far.

Best,

Oscar

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply Oscar.

I in fact never felt exhausted or tired or got irritated during the exam. My last (3rd) attempt was smoothest. And i was feeling quite confident after the verbal. However, I was never able to complete the test i.e. I had to randomly guess the last 2-3 questions.

Nauman

[StaceyKoprince]

Having to randomly guess on the last 2-3 questions will bring your score down, but it shouldn't bring the score down as much as yours appears to be dropping - if you guessed on 3 and got all three wrong, it would bring your score down by about 6 to 7.5 percentile points. (Which is not small - but we're not talking 30-40 percentile points.)

I have some other questions for you:
- you mentioned having to randomly guess for the last 2-3 questions. Did you have to randomly guess on any other questions elsewhere in the section? If so, on how many questions?
- also, did you have to rush on any questions - that is, you did spend some time but you spent significantly less time than you would've liked - say at least 30 seconds less than you would've wanted to? If so, on how many questions?
- when you took practice tests, did you mimic the conditions of the real test? That is, did you do both essays, then take just a 10-min break, then quant, then 10-min break, then verbal? No interruptions, etc?


You mentioned a "bad habit of spending extra time on difficult questions" - this is indeed a bad habit and can really hurt you. I asked whether you had to rush, above, because if you are wasting extra time on difficult problems, then you may be making lots of careless mistakes on the problems you CAN do, simply because you are not taking the time you need on them. You asked why this wouldn't also affect you on your practice tests and it would, to some extent, but our bad habits get magnified on the real test because now we know it counts. So if you waste a little time on problems you really can't do on practice tests, you are much more likely to waste a LOT of time on problems you really can't do on the real test. And you may not notice how much it's hurting you because you may also have the bad habit of spending, say, 15 seconds less than you really need on problems you can do, and so making some careless mistakes, on practice tests. This would also get exacerbated on the real test, where you might spend 30-45 seconds less than you really need and, all of a sudden, you're getting a lot more questions wrong.

Do you have a history of underperforming on standardized tests? When you've taken standardized tests in the past, did you score what you were expecting to score or not? Nerves may be a factor as well - even though you report things going smoothly, you may not be thinking as clearly due to nerves.

[Guest]

Thanks Stacey for your reply. You are amazing and always come up with some new dimensions. I have really learnt some good tips from your blogs here and on the beatthegmat.com.

Let me tell you what exactly happens and how I proceed in the actual exam (and I believe the same goes for the practice exams): If I find the first question difficult and am not able to solve it, I am likely to spend 5/6 mins on it. That’s exactly what happened in the Qaunt part in my 3rd attempt. And I am 100% sure I got that first question wrong. I think that spending of extra time also happened in the middle 2-3 questions. But still I was able to stop bleeding and managed 40 in the Quant. I believe now if I would not spend that 5/6 mins on the first question I would have been able to reach 45 in Quant.

My answers to your queries are as under in seriatim:-

1. As far as I remember about my last attempt, I had to randomly guess 2-3 questions in the middle also, but not more than that, mostly when I was not able to solve a question within average time.
2. Yes I had to rush on questions after the first 10. Then somewhere in the middle I caught up with average time left for each of the reaming questions, but then again I got slow and left with 5 minutes for the last 5 questions situation. And then I spent these last five minutes on 2-3 questions, and randomly guessed the last 2-3 in the last few seconds.
3. I only mimicked the test condition before my 1st attempt. At that time my minimum GMATPrep Verbal was 28. I feel I was a toddler in GMAT Verbal at that time, but am not able to improve my Verbal despite the fact that I’m quite a grown up now in GMAT.
4. I didn’t take any such standardized tests before my GMAT attempts except a very crude form of GMAT way back in 1996 -- that was a 2 hour test, containing both verbal and quant parts, for selection at the junior management level in the central bank where I am still working and have risen to the middle management level. I was among the top 100 out of the total of around 5000 who appeared in the test from all over the country. I never noticed that nerve was a factor in my GMAT tests.

[StaceyKoprince]

Okay, things are starting to make more sense. If you know you spend 5-6 minutes on one early question if it's really hard... you're probably doing that at least two or three other times throughout the test without realizing it. And here's where it gets really bad: you're most likely going to get a question wrong if you spend 5-6 minutes on it. That amount of time just indicates that you don't really know how to solve the problem (because you don't know how to solve it in 2 minutes). On top of that, you have now guaranteed yourself at least two other questions wrong elsewhere on the test every time you do this (because you've already used that time up!).

And to make matters even worse, it usually leaves you vulnerable to get more than two other questions wrong, because what happens is this: you realize at some point that you're behind on time, so you feel pressured to do some questions you think are "easy" in 1 min or so instead of the full 2 minutes. You do this 3 or 4 times to make up for the 3-4 minutes you're behind. And every time you do this, you're (a) more likely to do it on what you consider an easier question, AND (b) more likely to make a careless mistake and get it wrong even though you probably would've gotten it right if you'd spent normal time on it. Your score goes down more when you get lower level questions wrong than it does when you get higher level questions wrong (in fact, in some cases, your score doesn't actually go down if you get a very hard question wrong - it just doesn't go up).

Do that a few times, and it kills the entire section. So let me say this unequivocally: if you do not fix this timing problem, you won't get the score you're capable of getting on this test. You MUST hold yourself to that 2 min per question deadline. It's okay to go to 2m30s a few times, but that's it! If you see any question you think is so easy you can answer it in less than a minute, check your work. You may be right... but you may also be making a careless mistake.

You will have to guess on something like 5-7 questions on each section of the test. No matter how good you get, this will still be true. Your only strategic advantage is to decide which questions you want those to be. And, of course, you want them to be the hardest questions you see as you move through the test. Learn how to make educated guesses, pick something within 2 minutes, and move on - do NOT lose time here. The point is that you're probably going to get these ones wrong anyway, so get them wrong without losing any time so that it doesn't hurt you elsewhere!

So timing needs to be your big focus right now - if you can fix this problem, it will really help your score (and, in any event, you won't be able to get the score you could / should get if you don't fix this problem!).

[Guest]

Thanks again Stacey for your advice on the time management issue. It clarifies many subtleties.

Nauman

[StaceyKoprince]

You're welcome - good luck!