Stuck in 500s

[KK]

Hello

I have my GMAT on September 2nd. However i am thinking seriously about postponing it. Please advise, how i shall proceed.

- CAT 1: 520
- CAT 2 - 600
- CAT 3: 530

I have infact lost score in the third CAT exam, when i thought the curve should go up as i prepare more every day. I am particularly doing bad in Quant. Timing is a problem in both the sections. Please advise how to bring up the score as i have finished doing all questions from OG. I am to disheartened at this point as i have been working too hard and its going all in vain. Kindly advise any strategic approach.

Thanks

[StaceyKoprince]

First, if you don't have the score you want, you haven't finished studying the OG. You haven't been studying in the right way.

How are you studying? Are you taking a class, or studying on your own, with a tutor, or with friends? What materials are you using? What are your strengths and weaknesses across the quant and verbal sections? Have you made some progress in some areas but not in others, or have you made no progress in any areas? How is your timing? Are you pacing yourself appropriately, or are you running out of time and having to rush? (It sounds like timing is a problem for you. On all questions of every type? On only some types of questions? On all quant content areas or only some types of content areas? etc.)

As you can see, you need to analyze a lot of information to figure out what's going on and try to get better.

You don't mention what score you want to get, but I assume you want something significantly higher than what you have already been scoring or you wouldn't be upset about your scores. Sep 2nd is a couple of weeks away, so chances are you won't be ready by then to get the score you want, although I'm just guessing. You'd need to tell me what you want to get in order for me to give a more definite opinion on that.

If you'd like to give us more detail, we'd be happy to help you figure out what to do!

[KK]

Thanks Stacey for extending your help. Here is some information as you asked for:

- I am finished with my 9 session virtual class with Manhattan GMAT
- I am finished with OG problems
- I already got a review from MGMT instructor and she told me to review my work more...i have been doing that too.

- Here are my scores for reference:

CAT 1:

Quantitative 35 44 %
Verbal 30 59 %
540

CAT 2:

Quantitative 36 48%
Verbal 25 38%
520

CAT 3:
Quantitative36 48%
Verbal 35 77%
600

CAT 4:
Quantitative37 52%
Verbal 27 46%
530

My Quant hasnt improved much over the time, even after solving all Quant questions. Verbal i belive i drastically improved on SC and CR but gone worst on RC. Timing is a problem across sections. I am aiming a score more than 650. Thats the goal, however being stuck on 500, however i went upto 600 in the CAT 3. But back in 500s on CAT 4. I would like to restate my weaknesses again:

- Timing of both sections
- Timing on RC(never did 4 RC in the test completely)
- Maths no improvedment, get caught in tricky questions. Leave about 10 questions in end(i mean random guessing as no time is left)
- When i do OGs i score more than 85% all the time and well in time.
- Thought, I have finished with OG, but if you twist and turn the questions too much, i can solve them but takes me more time than normal.Somehow the questions i come across in CATS seems at a much higher difficulty level and with every test i come across totally different types of questions never done before or not a part of OGs


I have postponed my test for now for another month. Please suggest how to work on my weaknesses.

Thanks in advance
Kuleen

[StaceyKoprince]

If you are struggling with timing (especially on the math - random guessing on 10 questions at the end!), that explains a large part of your score fluctuations on verbal and the fact that you're not improving on math. Essentially, if you mess up the timing, you're not going to score well. It sounds like you're consistently messing up the timing in a big way on the math, hence your score stagnating. On verbal, I'm guessing that you managed your timing really well on test 3 but didn't manage it so well on test 4, and that contributed a large amount to your score drop.

On math, if you're having to guess on 10 questions at the end, then you're almost certainly better at math than the score you're getting - your score drops by a huge amount if you get all or most of those questions wrong (as is likely to happen when you're randomly guessing). Go back over your tests and mark the ones on which you went over 3 min. Then do this math: how many did you get right, how many did you get wrong, and how much time total did you spend on those questions? Then also add up the number of math questions you got wrong when you spend less than 1 min on the question (most of the time, these result from careless errors due to rushing). If there were any questions you got wrong in less than 1 min because you knew you couldn't do them and so you just guessed and move on, don't add those questions to the count of "under 1 min wrong answers."

Then look at the final tally:
# right when you spent over 3 min
# wrong when you spent over 3 min + when you spent less than 1 min
total time spent on problems on which you went over 3 min (and compare to an expected average 2 min per question)

How do those numbers look? (They're not going to look good. The first step is just to convince yourself psychologically that going over on time is NOT helping you - and is, in fact, hurting you a great deal!)

Now go back and figure out what categories the problems on which you went over 3 min fall into. First, DS or PS? Then categorize according to book (one of the 5 strategy guides). And finally categorize by specific chapter / content area.

Now, know what your weaknesses are and, when you get hard questions of that type, make an educated guess and move on within the 1.5 to 2 min timeframe. (And if you get a really hard one, forget it - make a random guess and keep going.) You're still going to have to guess - pretty much everybody has to guess - but at least now you're choosing to guess on the hardest questions rather than being forced to guess on the last X number of questions in a row. (Some of which you should be able to do, given the way the test works, right? But you can't do them because you've already run out of time.)

You can do the above analysis with verbal as well, but this time count the number of times you go over 3 min on CR, 2 min on SC, 6 min on RC when it was the first question for the passage and 3 min on RC when it wasn't the first question for the passage. (And, again use the "under 1 min" standard for the second calculation.)

On both math and verbal, you need to study these things:
- why you make the errors you make (not just that you made an error) and how you can minimize the chances of making the same error in the future
- how to make an educated guess on a problem
- (verbal) why tempting wrong answers are tempting... but also why they are still wrong anyway
- how to recognize what to do on a problem, not just figure the whole problem out from scratch (you won't always be able to do this, but you want to be able to do it on maybe 25-35% of the questions on the test for a 650).

Also, you may have done OG once, but if you don't yet have the score you want, you're not done with it. Go back and start analyzing problems (including the above), not just doing problems. You may want to re-watch the strategy lession from class 2. It gives you 10 questions to think about / answer as you study any particular problem.

Also, generally, use practice tests and sets of practice problems to drive what you review - don't just go review everything in every red strategy guide. Rather, based on your results and what you determine as you go over problems, go back to review the relevant parts of the strategy guides, tapes of lessons, or labs as necessary.

[abhi_k_29]

Hi
all the time in practice tets i screwed up in verbal and now even losing confidence in it .In quant consistently i am scoring 50 on scale but in verbal not even able to score more than 30 even though i am scoring well in OG questions. Please can any one give some suggestions to improve in verbal section

Regards,
Abhijeet

[RonPurewal]

Hi
all the time in practice tets i screwed up in verbal and now even losing confidence in it .In quant consistently i am scoring 50 on scale but in verbal not even able to score more than 30 even though i am scoring well in OG questions. Please can any one give some suggestions to improve in verbal section

Regards,
Abhijeet

hi -

please post this question as a separate thread in this folder, and then we'll begin the discussion in that thread.
thank you.