Retaking

[Dillonfriedman]

I posted a little while back asking for some help in getting my quant score a bit higher before the week before I took the exam. Unfortunately, my request was to broad and, while I could have narrowed it a bit, it would have taken too long to get a response. My fault entirely. As I anticipated, I didn't do as well on my first attempt as I would have liked. I got a 670 (Q44/V38), which isn't bad but considering that was below my other GMAT Prep exams (700, Q44/V41, and 690, Q42/V42) I wasn't impressed. I know what I did wrong on the exam as I am usually a 40+ scorer on verbal. Just went through WAY too fast (had 20 minutes left over in that section). The trouble I am having is that I seem to have hit a ceiling in math. I get roughly a 42 or 44 EVERY time on EVERY exam I take. It's really getting frustrating. Good news is that I am nailing 300-600 level questions consistently. Every instructor I spoke said I need to nail those down first and so I did every easy problem I could find (Horacio - you were a huge help in that regard). No change in score BUT I did notice that I was getting much harder questions than I was before, which was good. As I am preparing for my "second swing," so to speak, I need some help on how to study for these harder questions and really ratchet up my math. Algebra and geometry are my two lowest scoring topics, though with geometry I think it's because every question I have gotten on my MGMAT CATs has been 700-800. FDP's I make careless errors on so I think I just need to focus a bit more there. Number properties is also an area where I could use some help.

Any guidance I can receive on improving my math score a few points in the next month or so (I take it on April 23, I believe) would be much appreciated. Also, I now have a bit more time to provide details as needed. Thanks in advance.

[StaceyKoprince]

Good, I'm glad to hear that you have found a way to perform consistently on the sub-600 questions. The 600+ questions will depend upon several things in order to build difficulty:

1) testing harder or more obscure concepts (you can find these in your red strategy guides)
2) hiding / disguising what the question is actually about or what the question is telling me
3) both of the above

Take a look at this article, which discusses disguising and decoding quant problems:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/09/ ... t-problems

(When you're done) See how they did that? That's how they take easier questions / concepts and make them harder.

Here's another on rephrasing DS questions:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/06/ ... -questions

Your job when studying is to figure out what they're really saying, and then figure out how to remember that and recognize it when you see it again. Then, the "figuring out" is done - you just recognize it when you see it again, even if the form is somewhat different.

And, of course, there's additional content to master. As I mentioned, you can find that material in your red strategy guides, particularly in the advanced sections.

For both of the above, you really need to dig into problems after you've finished them; these articles explain how to analyze quant problems:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/a ... roblem.cfm
http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/a ... roblem.cfm
http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/a ... roblem.cfm

It might also be the case that you have some timing problems - I often see people who hit a plateau because they have timing problems. Use this article to analyze your most recent practice test to see whether timing might be an issue for you:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/02/ ... sts-part-1

(Note: this article is an update of one I originally wrote a couple of years ago. There's some additional detail in the new one.)

If you then discover that you do have timing problems, come back here to describe what you found and we'll figure out what to do.

Re: careless errors, those can really add up. This is another area that requires actual study to overcome - this article can help you do that:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/error-log.cfm