Score stagnating - Please help

[SergeyK302]

I have been studying from October 2018. I started with OG 2019, but then realized it is not enough to just solve problems. So, I purchased nine ManhattanPREP books in mid November and religiously studied all of them (have last two chapters left in SC book).

I took my first GMAT Prep exam around Christmas and scored 570 Q44 V25, then I took MGMAT CAT1 on 01/13/2019 and scored 560 Q37 V30, and finally took MGMAT CAT2 on 02/02/2019 and scored 550 Q40 V25. The results of my third trial test made speechless. Before taking CAT1 I read RC book and about half of CR book. CAT1 I re-confirmed that I need to focus more on Verbal, and I did cover all books in very detail. I finished all practice questions at the end of each chapter, always did extra OG questions at the end of each chapter. However, CAT2 shows that all my efforts were pretty much useless... I did quick analysis of the verbal section - I did more or less well in the first 20 questions, but then my timing got very bad and I ended up guessing last 8-10 questions. The very first RC screwed my timing. This is quite strange, because I usually spend approximately 2 min on a RC question (including reading time) when I do practice drills (more about my practice routine below).

I am very, like VERY, like EXTREMELY frustrated with where I am... It is especially disappointing to see no improvement in the scores - they pretty much stagnate around the same level. My target score is 700+. I aim for a top school because otherwise I don't see the reason obtaining an MBA. One of the reasons is that I have a MSc degree in engineering from a reputable school in the industry where I work. My subjective view is that in my situation there is no big sense in obtaining an MBA from a mid-tier school just for the sake of having an MBA.

Study routine
Starting from December, I changed my schedule and started waking up at 5.30 am to be able to study 60-90 minutes before leaving for work. While eating breakfast, I would spend 15-20 min reading articles of various subjects (I try to pick the ones I "dislike) on The Economist app. After breakfast, I would do a timed drill consisting of 12-18 Quant questions from OG, take 1-2 min break and do around 10-15 Verbal questions. Usually, I would do 5-6 RC, 7-8 SC, and 1-2 CR paragraphs. I randomly select questions for my drills from the Manhattan Problem Sets pdf, and I usually pick questions in the following order medium-hard-easy.

After work, I would spend another 90-120 minutes analyzing my drills. I would normally cover all questions (even those that I answered correctly) to find out if I could do it quicker and apply a shortcut. Manhattan's Navigator is very useful in that respect - it has quite many hints. Occasionally, I would also refer to gmatclub.com forum and check how other people solve a particular problem.

Also, I downloaded Magoosh SC app to do few problems while I am at lunch or waiting for a colleague. Same applies to extra reading - I would use The Economist app whenever I have 5 minutes of free time.

During the weekends, I would usually do a similar (maybe 20%-25% longer) timed test drill, and analyze my answers afterwards. I would also read or re-read the Manhattan books sometimes during the analysis stage. While going through the analysis, I would make a flash card with a formula, chart, key words or examples of a problem that I found hard or tricky. I think I made around 50 flash cards so far...

I did attend one free in-person ManhattanPrep class after my CAT1. However, I found it quite basic just because I covered the foundation and 95% of information was not new to me. After the class ended, I spent few minutes chatting with an instructor and he also suggested that an in-person course might not really work for me because I already covered foundation and have no problems motivating myself to study regularly.

Final remarks
As you can see, I did invest in my study and preparation. However, hard work does not yet pay off... And, frankly, I am quite tired mentally. Since I am not observing any improvement in my CAT scores, I find myself tired and anxious almost every other day... I spent all Christmas break with the books, and even booked few Fridays to take PTO - but I question whether there is sense in taking days off to study, my strategy and approach do not seem to work.

I consider hiring a tutor, but honestly this is quite a big investment and I wonder if a tutor will really be able to help...

Last, I have the official exam scheduled on February 19th but I seriously think about pushing it back by at least a month or two. I feel like I need to take a few weeks off from preparation, and then do something differently. I read many Manhattan blog posts, including the ones about how to manage anxiety and how to detect if you burned out, and I really do not know what to do next to improve.

I would really appreciate your advice on how to improve and not to get mentally ill.

[SergeyK302]

Also, I question the bucket analysis approach (link below) as the good means of test analysis. I will talk about it below as applied to Quant.

The reason of my concern is very simple - I doubt that there is enough population in each category of questions (e.g. Inequalities, Rates, Decimals and so on) to make a fair judgement. For instance, I had 2 quadratic equations questions in my CAT and answered only one correctly. The average timing was bad - around 3 minutes. However, I know that quadratic equations is actually my strength. And this is supported by data in Navigator where I have 10/12 questions answered correctly. I don't use Navigator to time myself, but I do time myself while practicing and simply know that I do well in this section. So, it really seems that I screwed the quadratic equations questions because of either stress or something else... Also, after test I usually have now problem in solving at least 50%-75% of Quant questions that I answered wrongly in the test.

So, I am not exactly sure how to properly analyze my tests... I spent 3-4 hours today reading your "4-step to analyze GMAT practice test" blogs, and don't think I am able to extract any useful information except for 1 thing - my timing needs to be improved. I already apply "let's bail" tactics. Even if I improve on bailing even more, I somehow need to solve other questions better. And I simply run out of ideas how to start solving better in the test...

Maybe I am not smart enough? But how come my GPA is 3.90 and I finished Bachelors with honors? Btw, Bachelors included around ten advanced math classes such as Linear Algebra, Complex Equations, Mathematical Analysis, and so forth. So, I doubt I have issues with foundation...

One note - I was never particularly fast in solving problems. My best performance was reached when I could take a bit more time to brainstorm and try out few methods. I never performed very well in standardized tests (I got 88 in TOEFL in 2012). Perhaps, GMAT is not my thing?

https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... ts-part-4/

[StaceyKoprince]

I'm sorry that you're having such a frustrating time with this test. You are not alone. It does sound like you are burned out, and when you're feeling burned out, it's very hard for your brain to process and learn well. So I agree with you that it's a good idea to give yourself a couple of weeks off.

What I'd like to do is get you ready with a plan—let's figure out what's not working and how to make it better. Then you can take your break knowing that you've got a good plan to follow once your break is over.

I'm going to address your very last thing first: Different things work for different people. If something doesn't work for you, that doesn't mean you are not smart enough! It just means that you haven't yet found what works for you.

It may be the case that your brain works in a way that isn't optimized for standardized tests—that is true for a lot of people. These kinds of tests are mostly about a certain way of thinking / doing things but that's certainly not the only good way in the real world. But I find it interesting that you have taken tons of advanced math; I hear this a lot (that people who've done a bunch of advanced math struggle on GMAT quant). The issue is usually that, because you were so good at school math, you naturally try to use those same kinds of approaches on GMAT math...but GMAT math is different enough that those school-based approaches actually make it *harder* for you to work at a high level on the GMAT.

What that means, basically, is that the issue may not be that you "just aren't good" at standardized tests, but that you need to adjust the way in which you think about / approach these tests overall. You mention that you have done better in the past when you can brainstorm a few approaches and find the best one for you—this is actually exactly what you want to do on the GMAT, too, but you have to make certain adjustments for the time management issue.

It goes something like this:
(1) Before the test / while I'm practicing & learning, I try a problem every way that I can think of doing it. I might do the same problem 3, 4, 5 different ways. I then look back over my work to decide which way is the best way given both the structure of this particular problem and the way that my brain works.

(2) I do #1 with lots of problems and look at the connections between them to figure out what broad characteristics should lead me to choose one solution path over another. When an algebra problem does ABC, then I'll do straight up algebra, but when an algebra problem does XYZ, then I'm going to choose a smart number.

(3) I use #2 to articulate detailed takeaways* in the Know the Code form: When I see algebra + ABC, then I'll think/do DEF. When I see algebra + XYZ, then I'll think/do TUV. Those go on a flash card, with "When I see..." on the first side and "I'll think / do..." on the other. (Note: Don't put an entire problem on the flash card. You will never see that problem on the test. You need to extract the "universal" / GMAT code / heart of the issue that could show up on multiple different problems in future.

*And some of my takeaways are in the form: "When I see a rate/work problem that uses variables, not real numbers, I will check whether I can easily use smart numbers. If I can't, I will immediately guess and move on." In other words, I know how to make the decision to bail, based on my own personal strengths and weaknesses. I'm fine if I can think about rate/work using real numbers, but as soon as these go abstract, I'm going to have issues. So I'd rather just get out fast and spend that time and mental energy somewhere else. (And, yes, I do this personally—even at the 99th percentile. Everyone has to do this on the GMAT!)

What I'm doing with the above is learning how to streamline my brainstorming / thinking process—literally, learning how to think my way through the test. I do that brainstorming in advance and then learn from it so that I can make faster decisions during the test itself, when my time is a lot more limited. I still start each problem by brainstorming, but now I can make that decision about what to do within the first ~1 minute and I'm pretty confident that I'm making the right decision for me, because I've already tried different scenarios ahead of time and decided HOW to make that decision.

Even with that, I'm still never going to have time to ALL of the problems because this is an adaptive test. And that ~1 minute thing is what's going to tell me when I should bail. If I'm ~1 minute in and I realize I *don't* have an idea of what to do or I have multiple ideas but really don't know which one is best...then I shouldn't do this question at all. I just need to guess and move on.

That whole mindset is really different from how we were trained to do math in school. In school, it was more like "if you see this setup, then here's the solution path"—there wasn't really as much flexibility / decision-making involved, and it was never expected that we would just bail and move on. If it was on the test, we were supposed to know how to do it. But that's not true for the GMAT.

Next, let's talk about your practice test results. Verbal first. You went 25 ---> 30 ---> 25. The jump from 25 to 30 was excellent, obviously. The drop back down to 25 is really frustrating. Your post actually indicates what the problem was—you messed up the timing and had to guess on the last 8-10 questions. So the analysis to do here is to figure out where you should have cut yourself off on the earlier problems such that you would have had enough time to finish the test properly. Do two things here:

(1) Go back and identify the 3-4-5-6? questions where you spent WAY too much time (even if you got them right—doesn't matter) and figure out at what point you should have known to just guess and move on. Make this really explicit so that, next time, you'll know HOW to make good, efficient decisions in the moment.

Also, remind yourself of this: You will ALWAYS have to guess on SOME questions. Your only choice is when / where. If you don't make a choice earlier in the section, then you'll be forced to guess at the end of the section, and the GMAT is a Where You End Is What You Get test. So you could have made lots of progress on the content, but your score won't show it because...where you end is literally what you get. If your score drops a lot at the end...that's your score.

(2) Go try those last 8-10 questions again. Give yourself the normal length of time you should have had. How do you do on these when you have normal time? Use that to help inform your overall test analysis / buckets. (When you have to guess on that many, the aggregate data in the reports isn't going to be as useful, unfortunately. Basically, you've got a lot of noise in the data. So you have to go look at the individual problems more to see what you may need to work on.)

Quant

Your Q score went from 44 down to 37 back up to 40. Were you having timing issues on those sections as well? What do you think lead to that drop from 44 to 37? You were able to get back up to 40 on the 3rd test—what was better about the 3rd one compared to the 2nd?

For instance, I had 2 quadratic equations questions in my CAT and answered only one correctly. The average timing was bad - around 3 minutes. However, I know that quadratic equations is actually my strength.

This is where you need to dive down into those specific questions. This area is normally a strength, but it wasn't on this test (6m to get 1 right). Why?

Did they both happen to be very hard quadratics? If so, then perhaps the lesson is that, even on your strengths, they can sometimes give you very hard problems, and so you sometimes need to be willing to bail even on your strengths. At what point could / should you have bailed? Was there any significant difference between the one you got right and the one you got wrong—something you could have noticed WHILE doing them, something that would have allowed you to bail faster on the one you got wrong? If you could have done that, then maybe you would have spent only 4m total—gotten 1 right and saved 2m to spend elsewhere in the section.

Or maybe you solved a problem two ways—the first way (path A) didn't work, but then you realized you could do it a different way, and then that second way (path B) worked...but overall it took 3+ minutes to do both paths. Then, the lesson to learn is "The next time I see something similar, how can I recognize faster that I want to go straight to path B? What are the clues that I need to see to tell me that path B is better?" Also "I did try path A first, so there was something in my brain that made me think that would be the better choice. Why? What kinds of problem details would I need to see to tell me that I really do want to use path A?"

Those are only two examples of what you might find when you analyze the problems—but something is going on and coule be made better in future, because you spent 6m to get 1 question right. (Maybe you solved the "textbook" way but there was actually a quicker / dirtier way—something that wouldn't have worked in a school math class but that would be enough to narrow to one of 5 answer choices? The GMAT doesn't care whether you found the actual / real / math answer. It cares only that you pick the right letter, ABCDE. That's sometimes a much easier question to answer.)

So, it really seems that I screwed the quadratic equations questions because of either stress or something else... Also, after test I usually have now problem in solving at least 50%-75% of Quant questions that I answered wrongly in the test.

(The word "now" was supposed to be "no"—right? usually have NO problem solving?)

Yes! It could also be that you were tired out / stressed from the test and so you made careless mistakes that you don't make when you're not taking a test. Mindfulness training can help with this.

Or you are rushing on a problem (because you spent 3+m on another problem earlier in the section), and so you forgot about something or made some other mistake just because you were rushing. This is also where the decision-making during your test is so important—knowing when and how to cut yourself off during the test. You said that you do bail already, but your decision-making on when and how to bail isn't yet as good as it be—because you ran out of time with 8-10 questions to go on verbal. This is where you analyze your overall decision-making in the section (as I mentioned earlier) so that you can figure out how to make better-ROI decisions across the entire section.

Have you seen this?
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... -the-gmat/

Let me know what you think of all of the above. Overall, yes, I think you're going to want to postpone your exam. Plan to take a couple of weeks off. We're going to figure out what's going on, but you're not actually going to study right now—we're just going to get you set up for when you do start studying again.

[SergeyK302]

Hi Stacey,

Hope you are doing well. Your initial help was very encouraging. I would appreciate if you could reply to the remaining replies that I submitted. Perhaps, they were marked as spam (I wrote quite a lot and included few links with the screenshots of my test analysis).

Btw, I am taking my 1st GMAT in late April.

Thank you!

[StaceyKoprince]

Hi, I'm sorry, but I don't see any other posts from you. Usually, when a post is blocked and marked as possible spam, I will still see it and be able to approve or delete it—but I don't see anything in that queue from you (or anyone else).

It is the case that very long posts and posts with links or images are more likely to be kicked out as spam and I may not even see those—so, yes, that may be what happened. I would suggest breaking the text into several shorter posts and don't include the links to screenshots. (We have a general policy not to click on links anyway—both to minimize security issues and because we're offering free advice to anyone...which means that we have to work efficiently and there's usually too much data in screen shots for us to work efficiently. Typically, that level of data analysis is reserved for tutoring.)

So break it down, perhaps into one V and one Q? And let's see if that gets through. If not, contact our student services team (gmat@manhattanprep.com) for help to troubleshoot / figure out what's going on.

[SergeyK302]

Hi Stacey, thanks for your reply. It seems that my posts did not go through... I had some links to my google drive in the posts (I attached my CAT analyses). Do you think I can recover the posts by asking the support team?

Otherwise, I would like to inform you that I took my first GMAT yesterday and scored 610 Q43 V31. While there is a bit of improvement in Verbal, my Quant did not improve despite all the effort. I posted a long debrief at one of the very famous GMAT forums, but I am not sure how to provide the link to you. Perhaps, I can just copy-paste my debrief to this thread?

I am again burnt out and very exhausted. Will be taking this week off, but hoping to find a good plan that will help me stay optimistic that I can get where I want to get. I am thinking to hire a tutor.

Will appreciate your reply and guidance!

[SergeyK302]

Finally, GMAC published my ESR report.

Verbal

Your Verbal score of 31 is higher than 61% of GMAT Exam scores recorded in the past three years. The mean score for this section is 27.04.
Your performance on Critical Reasoning questions was equivalent to a score of 33, which is better than 63% of GMAT Exam scores recorded in the past three years. The mean score for this sub-section is 27.59.
Your performance of 50% on Analysis/Critique questions is considered Weak.
Your performance of 50% on Construction/Plan questions is considered Weak.
Your performance on Reading Comprehension questions was equivalent to a score of 20, which is better than 26% of GMAT Exam scores recorded in the past three years. The mean score for this sub-section is 27.29.
Your performance of 60% on Identify Inferred Idea questions is considered Average.
Your performance of 20% on Identify Stated Idea questions is considered Very Weak.
Your performance on Sentence Correction questions was equivalent to a score of 38, which is better than 81% of GMAT Exam scores recorded in the past three years. The mean score for this sub-section is 27.19.
Your performance of 83% on Grammar questions is considered Strong.
Your performance of 50% on Communication questions is considered Weak.
You completed 36 questions in the Verbal section.
You responded correctly to 88% of the first set of questions, 57% of the second set of questions, 43% of the third set of questions and 25% of the final set of questions.
The average difficulty of questions presented to you in the first set of questions was Medium, the average for the second set of questions was Medium High , the average for the third set of questions was Medium and was Medium for the final set of questions.
The average time it took you to respond to the first set of questions presented was 2:20, the average time for the second set of questions was 2:41, the average time for the third set of questions was 1:50 and 0:32 for the final set of questions.
Please Note: If you sat for the GMAT exam prior to April 16, 2018 this section contained 41 questions, on or after April 16, 2018 the section consists of 36 questions.

Quant

Your Quantitative score of 43 is higher than 47% of GMAT Exam scores recorded in the past three years. The mean score for this section is 39.93.
Your performance on Problem Solving questions was equivalent to a score of 40. Your score is better than 39% of all sub-section scores recorded in the past three years. The mean for all test takers is 39.91.
Your performance on Data Sufficiency questions was equivalent to a score of 47. Your score is better than 57% of all sub-section scores recorded in the past three years. The mean for all test takers is 39.94.
Your performance on Arithmetic questions was equivalent to a score of 39. Your score is better than 34% of all sub-section scores recorded in the past three years. The mean for all test takers is 40.02.
Your performance on Algebra/Geometry questions was equivalent to a score of 45. Your score is better than 54% of all sub-section scores recorded in the past three years. The mean for all test takers is 39.88.
Your performance of 50% on Geometry questions is considered Weak.
Your performance of 75% on Rates/Ratio/Percent questions is considered Above Average.
Your performance of 54% on Value/Order/Factors questions is considered Average.
Your performance of 33% on Equal./Inequal./Alg. questions is considered Weak.
Your performance of 60% on Counting/Sets/Series questions is considered Average.
You completed 31 questions in the Quantitative section.
You responded correctly to 71% of the first set of questions, 57% of the second set of questions, 71% of the third set of questions and 14% of the final set of questions..
The average difficulty of questions presented to you in the first set of questions was Medium High, the average for the second set of questions was Medium High, the average for the third set of questions was Medium High and was Medium High for the final set of questions.
The average time it took you to respond to the first set of questions presented was 2:09, the average time for the second set of questions was 2:27, the average time for the third set of questions was 2:12 and 0:54 for the final set of questions.
Please Note: If you sat for the GMAT exam prior to April 16, 2018 this section contained 37 questions, on or after April 16, 2018 the section consists of 31 questions.


My initial analysis is below.

Quant
1. The difficulty level of questions in all sections was Medium High, which I assume is close to Q45-48. I did reasonably well in the first 3/4 of the exam and run out of time in the last quarter that destroyed my overall score.
2. It is hard to rely on percentile statistics because I ended up guessing at least 6 questions in the end, hence, some of the categories are not representative. For instance, I reckon that my Algebra skills are better than 33%. However, I got few really tough inequalities questions and maybe this is why the score is very low.

Main observation: I can probably add another 2-3 points to my score by fixing the timing, so, realistically I should be able to get Q45-46. The question is, though, how to improve timing without sacrificing the accuracy? Would I perform equally better in the first 3 quarters if I spent less time on the problems? This is a question to which I have no answer...

Verbal
1. I totally screwed RC. It is surprising because I answered at least 50% of the RC questions correctly in both of the mocks that I took the week before the exam. It is worth to mention that I totally guessed on the last 4th passage because I was running out of time, and my 1st passage was also very long and I had hard time scrolling down to finish reading the text. The problem with the mouse probably made me distracted and, hence, I missed the passage in its entirety... I am speculating, but it is what it is.
2. I did OK in CR. I think I have to keep practicing it and my score will probably go up a bit.
3. In did well in SC, and I consider SC my strongest area.

Main observation: I should heavily focus on RC and make sure I consistently get at least 50% of the questions right, and also keep practicing CR because it should help with RC. In addition, I should spend no more than 20% of the time on SC to maintain my skills. Last, I believe that better time management and RC could have added at least 3-4 points to my Verbal score. The question, though, is how do I maintain accuracy and improve timing?


P.S. The problem with timing might be buried much deeper than it looks. For instance, I probably use bad techniques and it might take a significant amount of time to fix how I approach problems...

[StaceyKoprince]

Ah, okay. I'm not sure the system allows you to include attachments. That might have been why. I don't know whether the tech team can recover the post, but it can't hurt to ask! Send an email to gmat@manhattanprep.com.

I'm writing your score here to help me remember it: 610, Q43, V31. Also, I just finished writing my entire post and I'm coming back up here to say: You can do this! It's going to take some time and effort—but you're not as far from your goal as it probably feels to you right now.

We don't look at posts on other forums—if there is anything that you want to share with me from your other post, feel free to copy-paste it here.

ESR first:
SC was strong. CR was a little better than your overall score. The problem was RC and in particular questions that required you to use information directly from the passage (this could be main idea or detail, but details for which you weren't trying to infer).

On quant, the issues were PS and arithmetic. This often means that you're having issues with computation / doing math on paper. (That wouldn't affect you on DS, since you don't have to do many of the calculations for DS—and, indeed, your DS was quite a bit stronger.)

You had significant time management issues on both sections (more so on V) and that brought your score down in both sections. Since the GMAT is a "where you end is what you get" test, where you dropped to at the end was your score. I would guess you were at least at 35 halfway through Verbal. On quant, you might have been at 45 or 46. A Q45 / V35 pairing is about a 650.

So the first task is to learn to make better decisions as you go so that your score doesn't drop at the end of each section.
Start here:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog/2013/07/22/the-second-level-of-learning-to-take-the-gmat/

I linked this in an earlier post, but I'm going to link it again:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog/2016/05/26/develop-a-business-mindset-to-maximize-your-roi-on-the-gmat/

If you read or watched it before, when I first linked it, do so again.

And then go here:
blog/2016/08/19/everything-you-need-to-know-about-gmat-time-management-part-1-of-3/

You'll need to follow the stages in that last post until you build up the necessary skills—it typically takes people a solid 4-6 weeks to address these kinds of timing issues.

Now:
If we can keep SC where it is (maybe pick up a point or two) and improve RC and CR, then you may be able to get your V score into the higher 30s. And ditto if we can keep DS where it is (maybe pick up a point or two) and improve PS to that level, then you can get your Q score into the higher 40s. And that combination will get you to your target of 700.

Okay, now I'm reading your analysis.

The question is, though, how to improve timing without sacrificing the accuracy? Would I perform equally better in the first 3 quarters if I spent less time on the problems? This is a question to which I have no answer...

What was the average time spent on INcorrect questions in the first three quadrants? I'm guessing they were not all fast-and-wrong. The key (as you'll see in the above resources I linked) is to figure out which ones you're going to get wrong anyway and get them wrong faster. I would be willing to bet money that you spent 2.5+ minutes on at least 3 questions that you really had no chance to get right anyway. If you can identify what you're very unlikely to get right and guess within 30 seconds, that's 2 minutes per problem you're going to save—that extra (at least) 6 minutes was probably what you needed to be able to finish the section.

Let me put it this way: You are going to have to guess on something. That's just how the test works. Your only choice is when you guess. (And if you don't make those choices as you go, then you will have to guess at the end of the section. Guaranteed.) So take charge: Choose to guess on the hardest problems throughout the exam.

What problem did you have with your mouse?

So it sounds like the first RC passage could have been all wrong, and of course the last one likely was. Usually, one of the four passages is experimental, so if that was the second or third passage, then you would have missed 2/3 of the counted RC questions and that would explain your RC score.

To your last comment (that it might be hard to fix the timing): Possibly. But start with identifying "bail" categories (as described in the time management article) and fixing your mindset. You want to bail immediately on at least 3-4 questions in the section—and not at the end of the section just because you're running out of time.

The other thing you'll want to do, of course, is examine timing data from practice questions or problem sets to see where you're losing time. Then ask yourself:
(1) Did I get it right (legitimately, not lucky guess)? If so, what was the most annoying part of my solution process / what took the longest? Is there any way to do that one part faster / easier? If this shaves enough time to make the overall time reasonable, great. If it doesn't, then maybe this is something I want to guess immediately on next time. Or maybe it's the case that I can narrow it to 2 answers (mostly verbal) in a reasonable amount of time, and then I'm not going to get sucked into agonizing back and forth for another minute or two. I'll be happy to get to 50/50 and move on.
(2) If I didn't get it right (and, remember, I also spent too much time), then this goes into my bail category until further notice. I might loop back around later to learn how to do these...but not right now, since there's lots of other, lower-hanging fruit I can work on first. (Careless mistakes; stuff I got right too slowly; stuff I got wrong but at least didn't take extra time to get wrong.)

[SergeyK302]

Hi Stacey, thanks much for your reply.

I will first copy-paste my de-brief from the forum, and then reply to your message. One key point is that I did two mock exams during the week before the official GMAT and I did not have any issue with timing on Quant, i.e. I applied "bail" technique quite effectively. I did run into timing issue on Verbal on one of the tests though, but the issues was not as significant as on the real exam (I had to guess last RC passage in its entirety to allow time to solve remaining 4 questions which I actually solved and eventually got V33).

I will elaborate more on the time management, but after the two mocks I was confident that I am handling time well. Apparently, I was wrong...

P.S. Note that the de-brief was written before I got ESR (GMAC had issues so the report came 3 days later), so I did not have any insight into my performance.


DEBRIEF

Today I took my first official GMAT and scored mere 610 (Q43 V31 IR3).

In short, the test appeared to be much harder than I anticipated. I run out of time in both Quant and Verbal sections, and had to guess last 5-7 questions in each section.

IR was kind of hard - I got at least 6 questions with tables which had 3 tabs, and A LOT OF DATA. I tried my best but could not figure out what is going on, so I randomly picked answers to at least 6 questions on IR. On top of that, I got late to the IR section because there was a line to check-in after the break and the proctor was not necessarily fast. So, as you can see I lost my focus and could not do well on IR. AWA was pretty easy, but one does not get the score right away anyways.

I have a question for those who managed to conquer the GMAT. How did you guys improve? At the moment, I am exhausted, frustrated, and BURNT OUT (the worst feeling out of three). I will explain my journey below.

I started studying in October 2018 when I purchased OG 2018 and two supplements (Verbal and Quant). I went through the supplements first and realized that I need a more systematic approach to my study. So, I purchased all Manhattanprep Strategy Guides. After covering most of the Quant books I took an mba.com mock around Christmas break and scored 570 (Q44 V25), not an impressive result. I got behind on time, did not know how to solve at least 40% - 50% of the questions, and struggled to solve even some very easy questions (btw, I confidently solve 95% of them now). It is worth to mention that at this point I had no idea about how to approach SC and CR - I simply followed "common sense" and my grammar knowledge. Also, I started timing my practice sometime in early December as recommended by the books. To keep myself engaged and highly motivated, I scheduled my GMAT for late February 2019. Sometime in early January I tried an in-person Manhattanprep course (1 trial lesson), but found it very basic - I knew most of the content from the books, and the 1st lesson did not seem to offer anything new. So, I did not proceed with the course. Later, I tried the online courses by three other companies - they felt somewhat similar (or not as good) to the one that I took with Manhattanprep. In my shy opinion, the GMAT is more about self-study than what you can learn in class.

Of course, I was not impressed with my mock result and decided to continue my study. I covered more questions from OG 2018, covered some of the Manhattanprep Quant books again, and was in the middle of the Verbal books. I took the 1st Manhattan CAT in early January and scored 560 (Q37 V30). There was some improvement in Verbal, but no change in Quant (it even got worse!). In other words, I studied full-time over the Christmas break and got no improvement at all... After consulting the gmatclub.com forums I figured that Manhattan CATs are in general a bit harder in Quant, so I realized that I should probably continue my journey and be patient. Fast forward to mid February, I had taken CAT2 (Q40 V26) and scored 560. I became very frustrated and this is the time when my first burn out happened. I decided to take a break in February, and rescheduled my exam for late April. Meanwhile, I started meditation (I even bought and started reading a book about mindfulness which was recommended on Manhattanprep forums), and started feeling better and more optimistic. Also, during the break I asked for the advice on Manhattanprep portal and had a good conversation with one of their instructors. I digested all the advice that I received, made a plan, and decided to move on.

Some people highly recommended Magoosh. I purchased the subscription and started following the intense 1-month course. The portal worked nicely and it was convenient to use, but questions felt a bit on the easier side (especially SC). Also, maybe this is my subjective opinion, but Verbal questions in Magoosh are not GMAT-like. Only later I figured that there are other resources (LSAT for CR, Veritas for SC and CR, etc.) that offer questions comparable to those from GMAC. So, after following Magoosh very thoroughly for about 3 weeks I decided to take my 3rd Manhattanprep CAT and scored 550 (Q39 V28). It was end of March and I realized that there is almost no chance for me to realistically get 700 in one month. So, I rescheduled my test for June 24, 2019. Overall, my journey was filled with frustration. I decided to get an advice from people who took the test successfully, so I spoke with someone who got 690 from the first shot.

To this persons' credit, he gave me some good advice. For example, I wrote down all Quant and Verbal topics and gave a qualitative score to each so that I could see where I need to focus, do more practice, or even re-learn. Also, I started the error log. To be honest, I am not sure how useful it is because I ended up not using it super actively. I would occasionally go back and review the questions. Perhaps, I did not do it frequently enough or I keep the log in a wrong way... One of the problems that I see with keeping the error log is that after a while, when I come back and try to solve questions, I fail to crack at least 50% of the questions in any particular topic. Usually, these are 600-700 or 700+ questions. So, I found that it is not super helpful from the mental stand point to log only questions that I get wrong. The document became some sort of a "hell" - you know that most of the problems in the log are very hard and you improve VERY slowly at solving them. Moreover, my error log grew pretty quickly. I recorded more than 250 quant problems in about 45 days. So, it is not easy to go back to all the problems once the list grows. I am open to advice how to better and more efficiently use the error log. Perhaps, I am missing some key to the Pandora box here...

In May-June, I studied very thoroughly & spent at least 20 hours per week (2-3 hours per day and at least 10 hours during the weekend). My study routine comprised thorough review of some of the Quant areas using materials from a popular GMAT forum, and I would also review the Manhattanprep books occasionally. I solved at least 30-40 questions in each commonly tested area (Percents, Exponents, Inequalities, Decimals, Remainders, Rates, Sets, Weighted Averages, and so on): I would start with easy questions and after solving about 10 of them correctly, I would increase the difficulty to 600-700, and then to 700+. In parallel, I was paying quite a lot of attention to CR and SC. I decided not to study heavily for RC mainly because of the two reasons. First, I feel that once you understand the concept and how to attack problems - you are good. Second, you just need to understand the passage from the first, thorough read. Once you have these two covered, you simply apply CR techniques (Main Point, Assumption, Inference, Detail questions, etc.). To improve my text comprehension, I read around 3-5 The Economist articles per day.

Also, I went through Manhattanprep SC book again and covered most of the PowerScore CR Bible. After covering a specific chapter (say, Modifiers in SC or Assumptions in CR), I would do about 10 questions of 500-600 lvl. If I did them right, I would move on to the next difficulty level. Overall, SC is my strongest area in Verbal. I usually get 90-95% , 75%-90% and about 50% of 500, 600, and 700 lvl questions right, respectively. The situation is a bit worse with CR, but I could see some progress and I also started getting more and more harder problems right lately. To supplement my study, I watched some SC and CR videos by Ron P. and other Manhattanprep instructors.

In my last week of preparation, I took The Princeton Review and VeritasPrep mock tests and scored 620 (Q44 V32) and 620 (V43 V33), respectively. In fact, I got quite many 700+ lvl questions right in Verbal in the Veritas mock, so I was hoping that I am on a steady improvement line! Importantly, I did not have lots of timing issues on neither of the two mocks - this was a good sign! Also, the VeritasPrep felt quite doable and I was hopeful that I can score around 650 on the real GMAT. However, my hopes did not materialize... I am again frustrated and burnt out. I almost lost any hope that I can achieve the level that I have targeted. The data tells me that essentially I did not improve in Quant from December (although I feel more confident and definitely can solve many more problems), and my Verbal, despite having some slight bump, is far from where it should be.

At this point, I simply do not know what to change and how to study. I tried several approaches (I probably did a poor job explaining them above), the progress is so tiny that one needs an atomic microscope to see it! Perhaps it could be worth to hire a tutor, but it is not easy to find a credible one.

[SergeyK302]

Hi Stacey, this is part 2 of my reply. I addressed your questions and
provided more background.





Timing management and guessing



I actually read the time management / executive decision making articles
that you sent many times. As I indicated in my previous post, I did two
mock tests during the final week of my preparation and did not have any
issue with timing in Quant (though my scores were still Q44 and Q43). So, I
was not very concerned with quant pacing, and I was sure that I will bail
when necessary. I guess this is what happened during the official GMAT: I
was having problems with most of the problems and focused too much on
trying to solve everything and forgot to apply bail strategy aggressively
in the 2 and 3 quarters of the test.



I did have to skip 1 RC passage in one of the mock tests to catch-up on
timing, but surprisingly I got V33 in that test (the RC passage had 3
questions and I guessed one of them).





RC & CR

Speaking about my performance in the 1st RC, I believe I solved most of it
correctly despite the problems with the mouse, because my accuracy in the
1st quarter of the Verbal section was 88%. So, maybe I missed 1 or 2
questions MAX. But then my accuracy dropped significantly and I believe
that I missed most of the RC questions in passages #2 and #3, and we know
that I randomly guessed all questions from passage #4.



While studying, I thoroughly went through the Manhattan RC strategy guide
at least 3 times. So, there is not much to study. I will probably skim
through the guide once again to refresh on the main points. Disclaimer - I
did not practice RC in the last 2 months. I only studied SC and CR, and
hoped that CR will help with RC. Seems that my RC skills got rusty... I
believe I need to regularly (twice a week) practice the OG RC passages and
refresh / build up my pace, which is usually 2:00 per question including
the reading, i.e. I normally spend about 3-3.5 min on reading the passage
and then take about 30-90 seconds on each question. Again, I don’t really
know what happened during the GMAT and why I missed so many RC questions…
My accuracy was never worse than 40% in any of the tests that I took
before, and usually it is between 45% - 60%… The only thing I can say with
good certainty - two of the four RC passages were VERY long. Perhaps, I
took way too much time to read them… ESR says that my overall timing on RC
was 1:42 per question. Assuming that I guessed 3-4 questions in the last
4th passage, i.e. spent no more than 5 seconds per question, I am still
within 2:10 min per RC question… So, seems that I spent way too much time
on CR questions.



Specifically, I spent 2:23 per CR question on average. And I indeed guessed
at least 2-3 of CR questions in the end. So, my CR pacing was closer to
2:35 - 2:40 per question and this is my “normal” timing on CR. I know this
is slow and I have to improve, and maybe CR is the culprit that screwed my
overall timing in Verbal.



To summarize verbal analysis, seems that I have to continue practicing both
RC and CR, and solve only OG questions. I figured that LSAT CR questions
are good (I tried maybe 50 of them and they appear to be similar to those
from OG) and they indeed feel OG-like (maybe a bit harder), so I will
continue using LSAT questions to supplement my CR practice. I am not sure
how to increase the pacing on CR… I found that quite often I have
difficulty building a logical map on Medium / Hard questions, that is, I
understand what is being said in the sentences, but cannot really build an
overarching picture of the passage, even though I can ID premises and
conclusions (if it is a non-inference question).



With all due respect, I found that PowerScore CR Bible is much better than
Manhattanprep CR guide. I do take notes while doing CR & CR, and maybe I
take too many of them (though it is usually 1-2 lines of abbreviations).
So, perhaps, I need to streamline my note taking and spend more time on
reading a passage and building the logical map in my head… Do you have any
advice? I was never a big fan of reading, and now I am punished by the
GMAT. I am trying to read at least a few The Economist articles a day, but
it will of course will take time to become better at comprehending…



So, what would be your advice for RC and CR study? As far as SC, I will
continue practicing 5-8 questions a day to maintain my skills.





Mouse problems

The PC was quite old, so was the mouse. I am a Mac user and used to very
smooth scrolling. The mouse in the computer was very strange, I could not
scroll down or up reliably - the RC text in every long passage would jump
back and forth so that I would loose track of where I am reading. I did
send a complaint to GMAC about the slow check-in process because of which I
was 2 minutes late to the IR section, but I did not mention the issue with
the mouse. Depending on what they reply, I will also comment on the mouse.



Btw, I hired a tutor for Quant, because I have not improved my Quant since
December (score-wise) and I think I need some extra help. Let’s see how
that goes.



Verbal feels manageable, and I am somewhat confident I can get to V35-36.
If I get Q46-48 and V35-36 in Verbal, I am good to go. It feels as a big
challenge because I only gained 40 points (570 to 610) since December. I
need to get at least 60 points in a month or two. I hope this is realistic.

[StaceyKoprince]

Thanks for the detail.

Re: CR, there's actually a really easy way to get your average time down. Bail immediately on the 3 hardest / most annoying CRs as you see them throughout the test.

I put a smiley, but I'm totally serious. The real thing usually has 9-10 CRs. Let's say it takes you 30 seconds to decide to bail. If you bail on 3, that's 1.5m. And then you spend 2.5m on the other 6 (or 7), which is another 15m (or 17.5m). Total, you've spent 16.5m (or 19m) for 9 (or 10) questions. That average is a bit under 2m per question.

And here's the bonus: If you follow the above, then you won't be stuck bailing on the last 3 CRs, whatever they happen to be (some of which you might be able to do!). You decide what you hate most about CR and you bail specifically on those 3 problems. Certain question type? Certain type of argument? Whatever you know gives you the most trouble.

Re: RC, yes, not doing RC for 2 months is going to impact your performance. I think there may be another issue going on for both Q and V. When you describe your studies, it seems as though you are "clustering" your question types and content areas—you do a bunch of quant in one area, or you do a bunch of SCs.

The real test makes you jump around among both question types and content areas and it never tells you what's coming next. That's a lot harder than knowing that you're doing 10 algebra problems right now. It's also harder to have to do an SC, then a CR, then an RC passage, then another CR, then another SC. If you aren't mimicking those kinds of conditions, then you are underpreparing yourself. The real task is going to make your brain work harder than that.

I agree that LSAT CR questions are similar to—and often a bit harder than—GMAT CR questions. (And I'm not offended that you like the PowerScore material better! Use whatever works for you.) I have a question: If you follow my recommended strategy to bail on the 3 hardest-for-you CRs, are you then good on CR? You don't have to get 100% right (of the ones you do), but do you think you would mostly be okay on the rest if you gave yourself permission not to care about the few hardest ones?

And then maybe the CR timing + not having done RC for so long was what really messed up your RC on that test. For RC, it's not as necessary to build a logical map—you do have to (and want to) go back to re-read the passage for the details. You just want to understand the basic story line and to know what kind of information is in each paragraph so that it doesn't take very long to find the details you need when you get a specific question.

You might find it useful to look through my older RC-focused articles on our blog. I'll typically pick a GMATPrep passage and then work my way through the whole thing in a series—first, how to read the passage, then how to answer each question. It's the same overall process that's discussed in the strategy guides, but seeing it implemented all the way through a full GMATPrep passage might be useful.

I'm glad to see that you were working on mindfulness—are you still doing that? You mentioned not having timing issues on your two practice tests right before the real thing, but then (obviously) having lots of timing issues on the real thing—and that tells me that there's more you could do with mindfulness practice. Basically, you got too nervous, and when we get too nervous, we tend to revert back to "old habits," even when they are the things that we don't want to be doing now. And "old habits" are school habits—spending a lot of time on something because, in school, you had the time. So if you aren't still doing mindfulness practice, you might want to revive that.

Finally, you mentioned feeling burned out. You might need to give yourself a week off. I know you're feeling pressed for time to get to your goal score, but if you're really burned out right now, then trying to push through for 2 more months might just make you even more mentally fatigued. Giving yourself permission to take a week completely off could very well help you to come back with more mental energy and drive.

[SergeyK302]

Hi Stacey,

Thank you very much for your reply.

Your suggestion totally makes sense. I have couple of questions, though.

First, you mentioned that I will save 2.5 min by bailing on 3 CR question. However, assuming I can bail on a question within 30 seconds, I will save around 90 seconds per question resulting in 270 seconds of saved time, which is 4.5 minutes. Just trying to understand your logics.

Second, I do not really have topics or questions that I really dislike. Sometimes I find it hard to ID the question type. For instance, sometimes the question itself is very wordy but after staring at it for extra 10-15 seconds you suddenly realize that this is an Inference or Assumption question, and the prompt itself proves to be on the easier side. So, how do you suggest to pick the “bad boys”? I am a bit concerned to bail on questions, what if I bail on those that I am actually able to solve…. Of course, it is better to bail on a question in the middle of the test and then solve the next one correctly, rather than bail on 3-4 questions in a row at the end of the test. However...

Interestingly, I read a research article published by GMAC in which authors studied the impact of guessing / omitting last N questions in Quant and Verbal (you can find the article on mba.com). The article concludes that unless one is at a very high difficulty level in Verbal (above V40), it appears that Verbal score will not drop significantly if one doesn’t answer last 4-5 questions in the section at all (i.e. he / she runs out of time). So, I am assuming that blind guessing on the last 4-5 questions should be equal or better than not answering them at all, because one has a chance by randomly guessing. If that is the case, one can assume that it is okay to be 6-8 minutes behind… Hence, I may not need to bother with guessing strategies on CR during the unless I am more than 10 minutes behind OR unless I am at a very high difficulty level. What do you think about the above?

You are right, I have not practiced RC in my last two months of prep and this could have damaged my ability to perform well in RC. However, my RC performance in both mocks, which I took just before the real test, was at my regular level (50% - 60% accurate)… So, I am quite lost in my analysis. Maybe I was just unlucky on the GMAT… Thank you for your advice, I have already practiced all RCs in the strategy Guide, and will check out your blog.

Also, you mentioned that it is not a good idea to “cluster” while studying. I agree that it is best to mix topics, but then I have an argument about how to work out areas where one has a weakness. For example, in my last month of preparation I focused heavily on CR because I was way too inconsistent and it was clearly my weakness. Also, I was practicing SC because I knew it is my strength and I can do even better. So, I deliberately clustered myself. Perhaps, in the best possible scenario one should cluster in the beginning & middle of the study, and start doing mixed sets before the real test. I did not have enough time to practice question mixes, and I did not want to reschedule my GMAT again.

So, I would like your advice about the next steps. I felt that I needed a break, so I took 6 days off after my test. I was only reading The Economist articles and posting to this forum during these days. So, I rested a bit.

I hired a very strong tutor and restarted my study on Sunday. I have a week off from work due to July 4th holidays, and I am dedicated to study full time. I am going through all Quant topics with the tutor, and planning to take the official mba.com mock around July 15th. If I score more than 640 in the mock, I am planning to schedule the exam for July 29th or July 30th.

The reason I want to attempt the test at the end of the month is because I will travel in August and will unlikely have a chance to study for at least or two one weeks. So, it may not be good to take a pause if I am going to commit to study in July. I may not be able to take the GMAT in August-early September at all (because my schedule is totally unknown), and this is why I am trying to do it ASAP.

Maybe I am pushing myself too much and risking to cram everything, waste the effort, and get too frustrated… Perhaps, I should stop studying at all, forget about R1 applications, go travel, come back to study in September, take the test in late October - November, and focus on R2… But for some reason I feel that I have a chance to improve in a month, and it will be a shame not to try. I honestly do not know. What would be your advice?

P.S. I found that mindfulness practice was not very effective. I had a few sessions with a psychologist who recommended some other routines that help me stay focused and be positive. They actually do work and I feel they work better than mindfulness. Also, I did not feel my heart beat during the test. Some people warned me that you will be scared and anxious like crazy once the test starts, but this was not the case. I think I was relatively relaxed during the text, but I agree that I reverted back to “school” habits of spending way too much time on some problems. I definitely got angry about the slow proctor before IR, but this has nothing to do with Verbal and Quant.

[StaceyKoprince]

I am a bit concerned to bail on questions, what if I bail on those that I am actually able to solve….

This is your single biggest issue right now. Until you internalize the mindset that you must bail on this test—Everyone must bail on something on this test! It's just how the test is built!—you will not get to your 700 goal.

The test is NOT an academic test. The goal is NOT to get everything right. When they put a problem in front of you, the issue is NEVER just "can I solve this?" It's always a business decision: "Does this problem have an acceptable ROI?" Your investment = your time and your mental energy. And it is always the case that some questions have a terrible ROI. The trick is to figure out which ones are the bad-ROI ones for you and your particular strengths and weaknesses.

I will address the other things you wrote, but really, the above is the single most important thing that you need to address. Copy what I wrote above and paste it somewhere and read it every single day, and then ask yourself what you're going to do today to truly convince yourself that this is how the test works and how you have to approach it to get to your goal score. And ask yourself what you're going to do today to learn how to identify bad-ROI questions in the first 30 seconds so that you can get out.

assuming I can bail on a question within 30 seconds, I will save around 90 seconds per question

You are spending 2.5m per CR question. So if you bail within 30 seconds, you will save a full 2m per CR. (And possibly longer—because the point here is to choose to bail on the ones that are the hardest for you, and those are the ones that are more likely to run longer than 2.5m.)

I think I know the article you are talking about—I remember reading it.

it appears that Verbal score will not drop significantly if one doesn’t answer last 4-5 questions in the section at all (i.e. he / she runs out of time)

First, this is not what I remember from the article, nor does this correspond to the voluminous amount of data I have seen presented at the many GMAC conferences that I have attended. Here is what I know: If you run out of time and don't answer the final 4-5 questions, the amount that you drop does depend upon the level at which you are scoring—the higher your score was, the more you will drop. So it is true that your score will drop very significantly if you were at a very high level, but it does *not* mean that your score will not drop if you are at a lower level...unless you are at quite a low level, much lower than the level that you are trying to score.

It is also the case that you will drop more if you don't answer those questions at all than if you guess randomly, yes. That's true both because guessing randomly gives you the opportunity to get lucky and because there is actually an additional penalty imposed for not answering a question at all.

Several times, I have seen GMAC present the following data: Someone scoring at the 70th percentile doesn't answer the final 5 questions. The score will drop to approximately the 55th percentile. If someone is at the 70th percentile and guesses randomly on the final 5, the score will depend on how lucky that person gets, but if you assume a standard 1 right / 4 wrong ratio, then the score will drop to approximately the 64th percentile.

Those numbers were confirmed as the real numbers for those scoring levels—but if you are scoring higher, the drop will be steeper and if you are scoring lower, the drop will be shallower. They did not disclose how much steeper or how much shallower.

Is that drop "significant"? I mean...it's "only" 6 percentile points...but if I'm capable of scoring 70th percentile, then I want to get 70th percentile, not 64th! That's an extra 2-3 points.

Re: clustering, it's fine to do a deep dive on something when you're first learning it or when you think you need a refresher—you don't have to do mixed review all the time. You just want to make sure you're doing a significant proportion of mixed review (and more as you get closer to the real thing). Most people aren't doing this enough.

Re: your schedule, do you think that you can view it as "I'm going to give it my best this month and we'll see what happens—but I know I'm being really ambitious with my goal here, so it's okay if I don't make it this month?" If you feel comfortable that you can view it that way, I think it's great to go for it this month and then have R2 as your plan B, just in case. (Bonus: The distinction between R1 and R2 doesn't mean as much these days as it used to.) If you think, though, that you would get super demoralized if you went for it but didn't make it this month, then you'd just want to think about whether that's the best plan for you. You don't want to cause yourself problems longer term.

And good that you found some techniques that work for you to manage test anxiety. I suggest mindfulness just because I've found it helpful—but I don't care what people use as long as they find something that works for them!

[SergeyK302]

Hi Stacey,

Thank you for your reply, and happy belated Independence Day! And congratulations on the US Women’s gold medal in the soccer World Cup \

I totally understand your point about my “issue”. I logically understand your advice about “bailing on harder CR 2-3 questions throughout the test”. What makes me concerned is that my score will definitely be affected if I bail on the easy-medium questions. So, I somehow need to develop the skill to ID hard CR questions, so that I can be very tactical during the test and be able to quickly move on if I encounter a hard question. Do you have any advice how to better ID 700 lvl CR questions? I understand that 700 lvl question usually have complex structure and / or the answer choices are not straightforward, but it is “theory”. Are there any some patters that I can look for?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts about the article. Alright, I reckon both of us agree that (1) it is quite bad to guess on more than 3 questions in a row and (2) it is bad to run out of time. So, the goal is to find the strategy that will help me avoid running out of time.

So, I am arriving at the last and perhaps most important question. How do you think I should be practicing Verbal? So far, I have two options, namely, continue clustering for about 1-2 weeks and focus heavily on CR and RC with occasional refreshers on SC questions (~5 questions every other day) or stop clustering and attempt doing mixes of SC, CR, and RC questions in blocks of 9, 18, and 27. I read your article that discusses how both mixing questions and doing them in blocks benefit the test-taker, and I completely agree that this is a good approach for one who is quite prepared.

At the moment, I am somewhat split between the two methods listed above. One the one hand side, I believe I should practice CR questions of harder difficulty (600-700 lvl and 700 lvl) to learn how to ID patters of the questions that I like and dislike, and that should help me with “bail decision making”. On the other hand, the analysis of my ESR suggests that good time management alone can probably add 3-4 points to my V31, so I may want to focus on mixes.

As you know, I am working with a tutor on Quant, and I definitely get more comfortable & confident in topics that we cover. So, I decided that I will take a diagnostic test in about 10 days once we cover about 75% of quant material. The mock result will show whether or not I should be taking the real GMAT at the end of July. In parallel, I am practicing Verbal and I am wondering which study approach I should choose.

I will highly appreciate your advice!

P.S. (long) As per your suggestion, I read a couple of your blog posts where you took the official passage and dissected it. I found the articles very helpful and refreshing - good job! Also, I skimmed through Manhattanprep's RC Strategy Guide, and did all "extra problems" in the end of the book. I did only RC exclusively (aka clustering) and my accuracy varied between 50% to 75%. Also, within last couple of days I did about 10 medium lvl RC passages from OG2018 (as a part of mixed set Verbal practice) and figured that my accuracy is close to 60%. Not the greatest result, but not the worst one either. So, that tells me that I should probably continue with mixed sets, i.e. do one mixed set that has 18-27 questions every other day, and occasionally (1-2 times a week) cluster on CR.

On top of that, I will continue reading The Economist articles actively. I literally force myself to read articles the same way I read RC passages - pay attention to the high-level language because it is usually a harbinger of author's opinions or claims, proactively scan for style indicators (however, but, yet, nonetheless, and so on), try to skim parts with examples or pure facts, and after each paragraph I ask myself "what was the main idea?". Basically, the previous sentence is a short summary of your blog posts

[StaceyKoprince]

What makes me concerned is that my score will definitely be affected if I bail on the easy-medium questions. So, I somehow need to develop the skill to ID hard CR questions, so that I can be very tactical during the test and be able to quickly move on if I encounter a hard question. Do you have any advice how to better ID 700 lvl CR questions? I understand that 700 lvl question usually have complex structure and / or the answer choices are not straightforward, but it is “theory”.

What you need to learn to do is to identify the questions that *you* are not very likely to get right (regardless of how hard they are). So you literally need to study / analyze what makes a problem hard for you so that you can learn to recognize it and get out quickly. (Everyone needs to do this. A lot of people don't, though.)

Sometimes, it's an entire question sub-type—some people know that they're bad at Evaluate questions or boldface (Describe the Role). When it's this, you're lucky, because you can usually identify these almost immediately by looking at the words in the question stem. (You mentioned that you have been using PowerScore for CR, I think? Do they teach you how to ID the different question types quickly? I assume so. Use whatever their categorizations are.) It could also be that you just can't identify what the question type is—so that's a clue to bail.

Sometimes, it has to do with the type of content—some people struggle more if the CR is science- or math-based or on some topic that the person isn't familiar with. These take a little more time to identify, but you can usually do so within about 30 seconds.

It can be other things. Basically what you need to do is analyze a bunch of CRs that have been really hard for you to see what they have in common, so that you can ID similar ones quickly in future.

(1) it is quite bad to guess on more than 3 questions in a row and (2) it is bad to run out of time.

I definitely agree on #2. I don't necessarily agree on #1. Ideally, you wouldn't have to, yes—but remember that you have a 20% chance of guessing correctly. So it's entirely possible that you guess, get it right, and set yourself up for harder ones even though you're assuming you just got it wrong. Plus, an experimental could come up at any time that is really hard—or that is just flawed, but they don't know it yet because they haven't tested it yet.

The real thing here is just this: You guess when you have to, period. If you've guessed on the prior 3 and you get one that you have no idea how to do, you can't say, "Oh, I guessed on the last 3, so now I have to get this one." Nope. If you need to guess, you guess. Period. I don't even keep track of *when* I guess. It doesn't matter.

Re: verbal, you could basically weight CR/RC more heavily while still doing occasional mixed sets. So cluster today and tomorrow, then do a mixed set on the 3rd day (including SC). That kind of thing.

I believe I should practice CR questions of harder difficulty (600-700 lvl and 700 lvl) to learn how to ID patters of the questions that I like and dislike, and that should help me with “bail decision making”.

You don't need to practice new questions to figure this out—you don't actually learn how to do this in the moment while the clock is ticking. You learn this during your analysis of the problems, after you're done doing the set. So go back and learn this from the CRs you've done in the past 2-3 weeks.

I would top out mixed sets at 18 questions for Verbal. Yes, you want to mimic the real test, but you also want to iterate—do something, then analyze and figure out how to get better, then practice again. 18 questions is enough to mimic having to manage a big block of time and a lot of questions—but without using up a ton of questions before you've learned how to get even better.

Love your last paragraph.