Stuck at 680. Need guidance on 720+. One Month to go.

[shreyas413]

Hi,

I have been rigorously preparing for GMAT from past 6 weeks. Before I began my preparation, I gave GMATPrep-I (latest version) and scored a 630 (Q50 V26). This provided me a baseline and suggested that Verbal was my weak area.

from 6 until 2 Weeks Ago
From past 6 weeks, I have been focusing exclusively on Verbal with 20% time on quant practice. I covered Manhttan's SC and CR books and learnt the strategies. Practiced OG 13th Edition and was confident that this would improve my score.

2 Weeks ago
Thus, I tried one of the older versions (released in 2008) of GMATPrep-I and scored 680 (Q50 V31) with no repeat questions. I had made some progress in SC and this seemed to have improved my score, but not enough as I am targeting 720+. I analyzed my mistakes in this exam and my performance was SC: 12/17, CR: 8/11, RC: 7/13. Clearly, RC was weakest amongst all. I tried with Manhttan RC strategies and practiced around 50-60 RCs over the past 2 weeks.

Yesterday
With all takeways from my studies in RC in particular, I tried GMATPrep-II (released in 2008 older version) yesterday with no repeat questions and again scored same 680 (Q50 V31). This time, my breakup was SC: 12/17, CR: 9/11, RC: 6/13. As you can see, my RC performance further deteriorated.

I am a non-native english speaker and quant is my strong area. Therefore, I can see that I am consistently scoring 50 in quant with about 5-10 minutes remaining everytime. But verbal is killing my overall score. RC is my weakest of all.

Please help me with any tips you can offer in RCs, as I continue to practice with SC and CR. My exam is a month away.

Thanks

[StaceyKoprince]

If you tried an older version of GMATPrep, that means that you didn't do IR. Your score, then, may be artificially inflated, because the IR section is pretty mentally draining.

Also... it's not great that you got the most Qs wrong in RC, but that doesn't automatically mean that RC is your weakest area. Those could have been harder questions. I'll give you help on RC, of course, but really take a look at everything overall here. :)

"Big picture" RC (how to read, etc)
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... p-passage/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... c-passage/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -passages/

Specific question types:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/a ... estion.cfm
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/09/ ... prehension
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/11/ ... il-problem

I also recommend using the forums - and don't just ask "what's the right answer?" or "why is C wrong?" Explain your own reasoning as thoroughly as you can, so that others can help you to see where you might be going wrong!

Finally, please make sure to take future practice tests with IR. Your score may not drop, but it might - and, if that happens, I don't want you to be shocked / surprised a couple of weeks before you plan to take the real test... or even worse, on the real test itself.

[shreyas413]

Thanks a ton Stacey. Your inputs were really helpful. I have started referring to the links you mentioned.

As you suggested, I tried GMATPrep-I in latest version this weekend (with AWA and IR) and suprisingly, my score increased. I scored 710 (Q50 V36) & IR-8.

IR was okay for me, as I got 11 out of 12 questions correct. Is this section adaptive?

Quant has been the same old with consistent 50. In each test, I have been making couple of silly mistakes that I can easily avoid. Not sure how I can improve here to take this score to 51.

In verbal, I got 3 back-to-back RCs in verbal section (from Q#15 to Q#24) and that had adverse effect on my concentration. I got all 3 questions wrong in the 3rd RC, as by that time, fatigue got on to me.

One clear difference between this and prior attempts was that I spent more time on RCs and guessed a couple of CRs in between to compensate time. Is this approach viable in a real-test scenario?

Thanks
Shreyas

[StaceyKoprince]

Great! IR is not adaptive, no - everyone sees a pre-determined mix of questions ranging from easier to harder. (We don't all have the same exact mix of questions, but we do all have roughly the same difficulty ranges in our mix.)

How to minimize careless errors:

http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -the-gmat/

Ugh - 3 RC passages in a row! That's possible but the likelihood is low, so let's hope that never happens again (and hopefully not on the real test).

It's absolutely fine to guess immediately on a few questions throughout in order to use that time elsewhere - we're not trying to get absolutely everything right anyway. Just spread those guesses out, not all in a row (unless you really just don't know how to answer a few questions in a row).

Do, though, notice when you're feeling mentally fatigued. That's a really good time to guess (because your chances of getting this one right just went way down anyway), and use 15 to 30 seconds of that time to close your eyes, stare at the ceiling, rotate your head and shoulders, stretch out your fingers and toes, loosen up - basically get that concentration back. :)

[shreyas413]

Stacey,

I have booked my exam for Jan 31st. So far, I have given multiple GMATPrep exams which have ranged from older to newer versions. From the time we last interacted, I tried 3 exams and below were my scores in simulated exam conditions.

- GMATPrep-II Latest with IR 710 Q50 V36 [01/06/2013]
- GMATPrep (TM) 2006 730 Q51 V37 [01/13/2013]
- GMATPrep-II Latest with IR 660 Q49 V31 [01/21/2013]

In all exams, I have seen very few repeated questions, so they should be close to true measures. As you can see, my last test has been a disaster of epic proportions. With 10 days to go, this score really does not help my cause.

31 in verbal is really giving me panic attacks. I made a lot of mistakes in series such as from Q3 to Q6 (3 were wrong in sequence) and from Q36 to Q40 (5 were wrong in sequence). I am losing focus on time management and this seemed to have killed my score.

SC - 15/17, RC - 8/13, CR - 3/11. I used to think that CR was my strength, but this test proved otherwise. It was a disastrous performance and a strong wake-up call.

With 10 days to go, please suggest me some tips on why you think I lost my track. I have achieved 700+ before and why I could not do it today?

Thanks in advance...

[StaceyKoprince]

Hi, I'm sorry I'm just getting to this now. I was traveling all last week.

One of the reasons that the GMAT has a standard deviation is simply that we have better days and worse ones. The key is to figure out what contributes to the worse days so that we can try to minimize the chances of having that same experience on real test day.

Why did you make the mistakes that you made? Were you making careless mistakes? Was there an element of mental fatigue (more than usual)? Did you mess up the timing badly enough that you had to rush in certain places, causing an uptick in errors? Did you hit a "bad" patch of questions where you truly didn't know how to do them?

If you can figure out the "why," then you can do something about it. At this point, you only have 2 days to go, though - so there's not much time left. Do you think you have figured this out in the past week? If so, have you been dealing with whatever it was? Or are you still not sure - and so you might have the same thing happen on real test day? If the former, great; if the latter, then you may want to give yourself another couple of weeks to figure out what happened and do something about it.

[shreyas413]

Hi Stacey,

Thanks a ton for your reply. Yes, I was partly able to figure out the problem with that test. I used to target 15-16 minutes for last 10 questions assuming that at least 5 of them must be SC and I can sail through them. However in that exam, I got almost all CR in last 10. The reason behind this flurry of CR was that I had got very few CR in the beginning.

Therefore, I have decided to do this. Please let me know if this makes sense. I am going to keep an eye on types of questions in the test and manage my time accordingly. For example, I have usually seen 11 CR, 17 SC and 13 RC questions. These numbers change by a bit but not significantly. So, if I see that a frequency of certain type of question is lower during initial part of the test, it is highly likely that I will get most of them later and thus, time management needs to be tweaked accordingly. It takes me at least 2-2.5 minutes to solve a CR question whereas 1-1.5 minutes for a SC. So my policy of keeping 15 minutes for last 10 questions was flawed and would not work everytime.

I reset GMATPrep and tried another one yesterday and got back to 710 Q50 V36. I got 2 repeat RCs and 3-4 repeat SCs, but I marked them as per my previous attempt to not give an undue advantage. This time, I also kept track of question types and was fairly comfortable of distribution of these Q types for last 10 questions. For example, I had got 3 RCs by question 30, so I was sure that I still had a pending RC to answer in last 10.

Yes, I have test in two days and I believe, I have studied hard. Whatever score I get, I am at least satisfied that I was able to remain focused in last 3 months with demanding job and multiple other family commitments. Snow in Boston does not help either !! :)

Please give me any tips you would like to offer or suggestions on my analysis above.

Thanks
Shreyas

[StaceyKoprince]

Ah, ok - so there was a timing problem. Yes, you do have to be prepared for the placement of questions to change a bit (and you therefore might need more time towards the beginning or towards the end, depending on how things play out).

Yes, I agree that you need to keep an eye on the mix. Were you aware that you were getting fewer CR at the beginning than normal? Or did you only notice that afterwards? You could keep track with little dots at the top of each page of your scrap paper - it's okay if you miss one or two, but it'll give you an idea of the mix at a glance, which is all you care about. You should be expecting to see more SC dots than anything else, but still a decent number of CR... so if the mix is skewed too much towards SC, then you know you need to expect to be ahead of your usual timing benchmarks.

Good then - you figured out what happened and have a plan to deal with it and you even tested out your plan. Start resting your brain - remember, you're an athlete getting ready for the big match. :) Some light review today and tomorrow, but that's it. Rent a movie tomorrow night or something to take your mind off of the test.

Good luck - let us know how it goes!

[shreyas413]

I gave gmat yesterday and got 680 q49 v32. I had a 1 PM appointment. There were many things that started happening from morning and indicated that it might not be my day today. I am a rhythm person and if something does not go my way, I tend to lose focus. To begin with, weather was very stormy and we had power outage in morning. I drove through the storm 40 miles. Once I reached the location, I was unable to find parking space. Once I found the parking farther away from center, I couldn't locate the exam center off my GPS. This all increased my nervousness. I somehow reached the center, calmed myself down and became ready.

AWA and IR
AWA helped me in cooling down my nerves. Topic was to my liking. It was about change in policy required in the software industry. I had standard template and used that. I think, AWA went fine and I hope to see >=5. IR was okay too, as I was able to answer 9 Qs out of 12. Even if I achieve 60-70% accuracy, I hope to see IR score of >=5. I never bothered about IR, as it is not a game changer for my target schools.

Quant Section -
I am a non-native English speaker and have very strong math background. Yesterday, I found quant way tougher than GMATPrep exams. I have always scored 50-51 in GMATPrep.
Yesterday, I got many visual interpretation questions & I was caught unaware with some of them. Some PS questions were very long and took time to understand. Quant started with 2 inequality DS Qs and they were deceiving. It followed with a rather tough probabilty Q and then a visual interpretation one. It took me 15 minutes to solve first 4 as I was not willing to let go any of them. After that, I somehow managed to rush through mid-Qs and compensated time. I had respectable 26 minutes left for last 13 questions. But then, my urine system stabbed me. I badly needed to use rest-room. I knew, I shouldn't take this break as time would run away, so had to hold onto it. But, this clearly hampered my concentration. In the end, I was rather surprised to see a Q49 on the screen, as I was expecting much lower than that. All in all, GMAC seems to have increased quant standards & some questions also involved tricky calculations.

Verbal Section
I had to use my break. I went to the rest-room which I badly needed to and later pumped myself up with energy bar. I got ready for verbal. It started with easy SC and I quickly answered it. I got 1st RC in 9th question that was long & 4 questions. I thought, I was doing very well until I reached Q #21. At this point, I got another long RC and was really tough to understand. It was about social history in mexico. I think, I messed my verbal from here. I lost valuable time and wasn't sure of answers either. I had only 24 minutes for last 16 questions with 1 RC still to go. I tried to pick up on speed, but the questions apparently needed more time to grasp. I was still relatively confident about SC, but some CR Qs needed more time to understand. With 13 minutes to go, I had to answer 8 questions. And here came the last RC. It was relatively easier and I was able to run through this. 7 minutes for last 5 Qs and it had 3 CR questions - very less time. Clearly, I messed my verbal in range Q21-Q25 and Q37-Q41. I was still hoping to see around 35 which would have helped me cross 700 barrier, but I clearly didn't deserve that. I saw q49 v32 on screen and I knew my GMAT wasn't done as yet.

Standard of questions in verbal was at par with GMATPrep.

I am targeting schools for Fall 2014 and I have a lot of time until then to improve my score. This time, I would like to go for professional coaching, preferrably MGMAT. Some of the things I did not attempt this time were -

1. I did not attempt a single MGMAT exam
2. I did not revise MGMAT SC before the real exam.
3. I did not take mechanical measures to improve CR, but rather relied on personal logic.

Stacey - Can you help me provide direction to my prep in coming months? Clearly, I have time management problems in verbal. With current preparation levels, my peak in verbal is at 36 and trough at 31. Yesterday, I was at my trough.

Thanks a ton...

[StaceyKoprince]

I know you're hoping for a higher score, but I do still want to congratulate you on achieving a 680 - this is a very good score (even though you want more). :)

Yes, you've got some timing issues - these need to be fixed or you won't hit 720.

Start with these two articles:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... to-win-it/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... nt-part-1/

And then this one:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -to-do-it/

Keep these articles handy, as you'll keep coming back to them.

I also want to point out that you don't have timing problems only in verbal:

It took me 15 minutes to solve first 4 as I was not willing to let go any of them.

You've GOT to lose this stubbornness or you're not going to hit 50-51 on quant. :) See the "in it to win it" article above.

It sounds like you struggled the most with CR, followed by RC. If you don't already have CR and RC materials, you should get some (by "materials" I mean books that will help you learn how to do these - not just practice problems).

I'll get you started with some articles on CR (I have you RC in an earlier post), but you'll need more than these:
CR overall process:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... g-problem/

CR 4 main question types:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... e-Problem/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -problems/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... n-problem/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... n-problem/

Also note: I just wrote a new article on what NOT to read for RC - I submitted it yesterday, so it'll probably go up on our blog sometime next week. Just keep checking our blog till you see it!

You mention wanting some profession coaching this time around. We do have tutors (though tutoring's very expensive - FYI) and we also have other options such as classes, self-study programs, and so on. I'd encourage you to take a look at all of the options on our website and then let us know if you have any questions. If you have questions about the different options, pricing, etc, then contact our student services team (800.576.GMAT or studentservices@manhattangmat.com). If you want to get advice from a teacher perspective about which option might be the best for you, then come back here and ask me.

Okay, next I'm going to guess that one significant area of need is HOW to study / learn from the practice problems that you do. Take a look at this article and pay particular attention to the how to study / learn section:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -the-gmat/

Take a look through those articles / materials and then come back here with any questions.

[shreyas413]

Hi Stacey,

I just wanted to update you that I scored 720 yesterday. I took break for about 5 months after my last attempt and studied for about 2 months. My break-up is Q50 V39. I am little surprised, as this distribution usually warrants a 730 or 740. But I am not complaining, I will take 720 any day.

This time, my preparation included revising SC concepts from Manhattan SC book (I took my own notes and I did revise this book at least 4-5 times. These revisions are a must !! Every time, I seemed to be learning new concepts), using methodical approach to solve CR (I only used Manhattan CR. Powerscore bible also appeared to be good, but it contains too lengthy explanations to my liking. Manhattan CR is crisp and to-the-point) and practicing 3 tough RCs everyday (from "RC 700 to 800 level.pdf" that contains about 40-45 passages). I did not spend any time on quant besides solving them on practice tests, as it has been my strength.

Thanks for all your valuable inputs. Your advice on time management really helped me in verbal. I will try to put my debrief soon, so it helps other applicants.

Regards..

[adi.saraogi2001]

congratulations! :)

Can you please tell us where to find the RC700 to 800.pdf file? Is it a free resource?

Thanks

[StaceyKoprince]

Congratulations! I'm really happy for you. Let us know how applications go!

Adi, I haven't heard of an RC 700-800 file... and I'm not quite sure what it would contain, as there are no passages that consist only of 700+ questions! Questions are written at a variety of levels for each passage.