Ready or not? Your hints plz...

[nadontheway]

Hi all,

I have a few questions. Thanks in advance for your hints.

1. Target Score: 650+ Shall I take the test in a few days or wait? I would like to apply for Fall 09. Deadlines for Round I are scheduled beginning October 08.

pls see above my practice tests score:

1st attempt GMAT (Feb 0 470 (Q32, V23) -never done a full practice test and not aware of the excellent MGMAT books. But I took Kaplan courses (seem not to be helpful)

Then, after reading the books:
Free MGMAT Cat: 520 (Q31, V31)
MGMAT 1: 640 (Q40, V37) (but stopped the timing when hit hard questions in Verbal)
MGMAT 2: 570 (Q38, V30)
MGMAT 3: 530 (Q33, V31)
MGMAT 4: 600 (Q43, V30)
MGMAT 5: 560 (Q39, V29)
MGMAT 6: 510 (Q35, V25)

Gmat prep 2: 640 (Q44, V34) (but see about 4-5 repeats in CR)
Gmat prer 1: 610 (Q44, V30)
Gmatprep 1 repeat: 690 (Q43, V40) (too many repeats in Verbal)

Powerprep: 610 (Q40, V34)

It seems that MGMAT boosts my score in Quant. But I am still stuggling with Verbal. I always run out of time and I have to guess the last 5 questions in Quant and Verbal. I am trying to improve my timing strategy and "let go" some questions.

Do I need to wait to score higher than 650 to expect 650+?

2. How to improve my verbal?
(This question has been asked a hundred times.)

I have exhausted the main books (OG, MGMAT) and cats.
Shall I take a private tutor to boost my verbal? Unfortunately, MGMAT is not in Paris (Pls confirm). What about veritas tutors?

Many questions. Hope to get your insights. I have not prepared my apps and did not take the gmat. But still want to apply for Round 1. Is it realistic with respects to my target score?

Very much appreciated!

[nadontheway]

After checking other posts, I had my answer. I should wait until I score above my target score.

I have another question: How do you find my weaknesses?

For that, I used the MGMAT online cat reports. But, I can't decide I am weak in a specific are only if I got repeated wrong answers in the same type of question. How will I answer this type of question in a lower level range? As you know, the accuracy to answer is correlated to the difficulty level. For instance, I can receive 80% accuracy on geometry-lines and angles but only because the pool sent me 300-500 level over only 3 questions of this type. Hence, I decide it is not a weakness and move on. But if I received a 700-800 level for the same type, i could have struggled.

thanks for your insights.

[nadontheway]

I should have said:" how do I find my weaknesses?" :wink:

[StaceyKoprince]

Yes, as you found, you shouldn't expect to score much higher than your recent practice tests, so it's best to take the real test when your practice tests are in the range you want.

Finding weaknesses is a little bit of an art form - you do have to pay attention to difficulty level, as you noted, and you also have to pay attention to timing. For example, if you score 75% correct in some category but you average 2m45s per question, that's a weakness. And, then, you have to figure out how to combat the specific weakness - the way you get better at something for which you have low accuracy can be quite different than the way you get better at something for which you have high accuracy but a slow time.

Your best bet is to analyze that data in the assessment reports and look for:
- percentages below 40% in general, or percentages below 60% + average difficulty levels more than 50 points below what you want to score
- average timing higher than 2.5 min (or 2m for SC), or more than a 40sec discrepancy (in either direction) between average timing for right answers and average timing for wrong answers within one category
- for ones you get right OR wrong: timing higher than 3 min on any individual question except for SC (there: timing higher than 2 min) and the first question of an RC passage (there: timing should be between 3 and 5 minutes, depending upon the length of the passage and the complexity of that first question)
- timing lower than 45sec on any individual question for which you also got that question wrong; if you knew you couldn't do it and just pulled the plug early, that's fine, but it you were either rushing due to time pressure or just thought you had it but made a careless mistake, you need to notice that

Note also that if you are running out of time, this will skew the data a bit, because you'll have some number of "very fast" questions that aren't really fast - you just had to guess because you were running out of time. So you'll have to take that into account.

Re: tutoring, we do offer tutoring over our web conferencing platform, the same thing we use for our live online classes. You don't get to see the tutor, but you can talk, type, and use slides to post problems and work out the solutions. You can also tape the sessions to review again later, if you choose.

[nadontheway]

Thanks so much Stacey!

When I got a question wrong, should I copy the question in a notebook to revise it later? or should I just extract the fundamental or concept behind? Copying the whole question is time-consuming but extracting the fundamental is not easy. So I always end up by copying...what do you suggest to study efficiently?

[StaceyKoprince]

So, yes, copying the whole problem down is a lot easier than extracting the fundamental concept... but extracting the fundamental concept is going to be a whole lot more useful to you. You're not going to see that problem on the test, so just memorizing the problem, essentially, isn't going to help you. You need to understand how to think about whatever's being tested in that problem so that you can answer a new and different problem that tests that same issue. And to do that - you need to "get" the fundamental concept.

It takes time and brain effort... but that's how you actually get better. I'd far rather see you get through fewer questions but REALLY know what's going on than do a ton of questions but not really know how to apply the lessons to other "different but similar" questions.

[nadontheway]

Stacey: your posts are great!

Because my strategy was not optimal, I missed R1.

Although I studied your guides, i still find some difficulties to extract the fundamentals. Some fundamentals appearing in OG are not in your guides, aren't you?

I think I will need some help to work out that. I don't have enough time to attend the full 9-week courses. And I can't afford to spend time. What do you suggest me? Will a private tutor be more useful for me?

Meanwhile I decided to apply the following new strategy:

1. Redo OG + reviews using the back of Mgmat guides OGstopwatch. I should get a structured approach of OG because I can work onquestions by topic and sub-topic. I will paste my answers in a tracker to follow my weaknesses.

2. On my weaknesses: extracting the fundamentals whenever I can...that won't be easy

3. Work on Gmatfocus and paper tests.

4. revise my notes from mgmat cats.

Best,

[StaceyKoprince]

Those look like good things to do. It is, of course, challenging to study your weaknesses because they are, by definition, weaknesses! In order to prioritize your time well, you should cross-reference your weaknesses with the things that are most commonly tested. (Number properties in general, basic and quadratic equations, rates, averages, ratios, triangles, circles, percents, fractions)

On your OG review, do a mix of problems from the strategy guide problem sets (so that you know the categorization to help you get better at problems of that type) and a mix of random problems (so that you learn how to identify the categorization of a problem - since they won't tell you on the real test - and then you can look up the categorization afterwards to see whether you were right and also to help you analyze the problem).

Our guides do cover the vast majority of things that may appear on the test and we make a special point of covering all of the things that are tested commonly on the GMAT. We may label things with different names than the OG uses, though, and we also assume in the main strategy guides that people remember some of the more foundational stuff, such as adding fractions, that sort of thing. We do have two Foundation workshops in case someone has forgotten that stuff.

If you don't have much time and if you can afford it, private tutoring could be very useful for you. It's very expensive, of course, but it's the biggest shortcut you can get: an expert to look at your work and help you identify exactly what you need to know and do on the areas that are giving you trouble.

If you work with a tutor, I would expect the following things:
- you should have access to a bio or other information that will let you know the tutor's experience before you officially agree to the tutoring (in other words, you should be able to check the person out and decline to work with that tutor if you don't want to for any reason).
- you should have an email or phone conversation with the tutor before you officially meet for a paid tutoring session, and the tutor should give you some kind of work to do before the first meeting (I personally ask my new students to take an MGMAT practice test with 2 weeks of our first session; they then have to email me after they've taken it so I can go in and look at their results before we meet).
- your tutor should ask you enough questions to know your situation to a certain extent: how long have you been studying? what have you done so far? what do you think your strengths and weaknesses are? what is your goal score? when do you want to take the test? do you have any deadlines you have to meet? (these questions might come before the first session or at the first session - the point is, the tutor should be developing a strategy for your specific situation, not just applying a one-size-fits-all approach.)
- you and your tutor should set up a general game plan at the first meeting: what your goals are and the general plan for how to accomplish that, including what you'll do on your own, how often you'll meet, etc. this game plan then gets adjusted over time based on where you are and aren't improving.