Repeated question after reset of Tests

[ali.gmat01]

Hi Stacey,

I have reset the Tests as a part my prep & i wanted to know what % of questions are repeated considering i have taken all the 6 tests. I had intended to go through all the question I faced in the previous set of 6 tests to prepare my self better.

But, I took the first test(1A) after just re-analysing Test 6 and found atleast 6-8 question repeating.

Could you suggest how should I go about the same.

Regards,
Ali.

[StaceyKoprince]

There isn't a specific percentage - the questions chosen will depend upon your scoring level. If you are scoring much better than you were for most of the first 6, then you won't see that much overlap. If your scores are mostly in the same range, then you will see more overlap.

If you do want to keep retaking the tests, then it's not a good idea to review the first set of 6 exhaustively right now, because then you will simply remember the questions if you get them again on the second test. Look for other things to review exhaustively, such as problems from the books or question banks, OG problems, and so on.

This article describes the kind of review and analysis you should be doing:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/10/09 ... ce-problem

Also, if your scores are mostly in the same range, then you aren't doing enough between tests and/or you need to stop taking tests so frequently. You don't learn a lot just by taking practice tests - it's that analysis described in the above article, after you've finished trying a problem, that really allows you to kick your score up.

If you do see repeats on tests, follow a few guidelines to minimize the chance of artificially inflating your score via question repeats. First, anytime you see a problem that you remember (and this means: I know the answer or I'm pretty sure I remember the answer, not just "hmm, this looks vaguely familiar..."), immediately look at the timer and make yourself sit there for the full length of time for that question type. This way, you don't artificially give yourself more time than you should have. Second, think about whether you got this problem right the last time. If you did, get it right again this time. If you didn't, get it wrong again. If you *completely honestly* think that you would get it right this time around if it were a new question (even though you got it wrong last time) because you've studied that area and improved, then get it right this time.

[ali.gmat01]

Hi Stacey thanks for ur reply...

I have just resumed by prep .. was busy with work.. I'll go through the Article that you have mentioned and get back to u..

I scored almost the same as that i used to score when i tried the first time.. That means that i am not progressing..

Right now I am facing one major problem in my prep.. and that is in CR.. I have practiced CR from OG 11 & 12(only the newly added Q's)

One intresting thing I observed was that,
In OG 11 I had an accuracy of 79.03% and timed at an average of 95.93 sec. Here one thing to be noted was that I had previously seen these Q's but a very long time ago..

In OG 12 I had an accuracy of only 58% and timed at an average of 100sec. There are a total of 50 new in OG 12 for CR. Out of the first 27 Q's I got 5 incorrect and in the last 23 I got 16 incorrect. Now, if i am to go by the reviews of all the forums then all the Q's are increasing order of difficulty and that means that I am still not comfortable with high difficulty level Q's.

How should I go about preparing and making myself more comfortable with increasing difficulty Q;s in CR?

I am also not very good at quant when the difficulty increases.. Where can i find more/relevant paractice Q's resembling the difficulty of Q's on actual GMAT. I have Kaplan 800, Kaplan Premier program and PR 1000 questions. Can these come in handy? I am not sure how to make the most of these resources... Can you help me with this too..

Your comments really help. :)

Thanks,
Ali

[StaceyKoprince]

I scored almost the same as that i used to score when i tried the first time.. That means that i am not progressing..

Yes, which means you need to fix that first before you keep taking practice tests or even doing sets of practice problems. We need to talk about learning to get better at practice problems. First, you learn how to get better. Then, you test yourself on practice problems. Then you learn some more. Then you test yourself again. The learning comes while analyzing problems, not while doing them in the first place.

As an example, read this article; it talks about how to analyze a CR problem:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/CR-assumption.cfm

You may also find this helpful in general:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/C ... n-type.cfm

And here are a couple of others on CR:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/d ... ion-CR.cfm
http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/GMAT-prep-CR.cfm

The key point here is that you need to study / analyze these problems - that's how you get better. You don't get a lot better just by doing a bunch of problems. I spend anywhere from 2x to 5x as long analyzing a problem as I spent doing it in the first place - because that's when I'm actually learning how to get better.

[ali.gmat01]

I am also not very good at quant when the difficulty increases.. Where can i find more/relevant paractice Q's resembling the difficulty of Q's on actual GMAT. I have Kaplan 800, Kaplan Premier program and PR 1000 questions. Can these come in handy? I am not sure how to make the most of these resources... Can you help me with this too..

Your comments really help. :)

Thanks,
Ali

Could you help me with this dilema too ..

[StaceyKoprince]

In general, there are two things to learn in order to get better at more difficult questions:
1) the more difficult content that the question tests
2) the process of working through that content / type of question (which you can often learn best from lower-level questions of the same type)

I call #2 "decoding" or "translating" math. Here's an article that describes how this works:

http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/09/ ... t-problems

Notice that I can use what I learn on the much-easier problem to deal with part of the harder problem more quickly, which then gives me time to deal with the other more complicated parts of the harder problem.

I don't need to "decode" on the easier problem in order to answer that one, but I do need to on the harder one. And it's FAR easier to figure out how to decode what I need on the easier problem and then just apply that to the harder one.

These other articles may be of help to you:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/01/ ... g-question
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/03/ ... y-question

And there are other problems in the MGMAT archives on that site - take a look here:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/manhattan-gmat

Finally, in terms of source material, I have not looked through Kaplan's books, so I can't advice you on those. Is "PR" The Princeton Review? I haven't looked through their materials either. I can only advise you in detail on how best to use MGMAT's material because that's really the material that I know. You may want to talk to one of the other companies if you want advice on how best to use their material.

What you need, basically, is something that's going to teach you both the actual content, in an easily accessible way, and how to apply that material (including decoding) to actual questions. If the materials that you have do those things, that's great. If not, then you may want to look for something different.