Stuck in mid 600s

[ajafari]

Here's a brief history on my cat exams.

Cat 1 9/19 (before class started and with 3-4 weeks of self study) 640 Q42 V35
Cat 2 10/12 (after 4 weeks of class) 630 Q38 V37
Cat 3 10/24 (after 6 weeks of class) 630 Q43 V33
GMATPrep1 11/7 640 Q43 V34

I have thoroughly reviewed Math in the OG 12th 11th as well as the supplemental. I have went through every problem and every answer for the ones I missed and look for the takeaways. On verbal I go through the answers for all problems regardless of whether I got them right or not.

I've never had an issue with timing on either portion of the test. I typically finish verbal with 10 minutes left and quant with 2 minutes left.

I'm doing the exams following the official rules (breaks, etc), and completed the AWA in all but my first practice exam.

I also feel like I have a "much much better" grasp on quant than I did early on and a "better" grasp on verbal. I just did the MGMAT 750+ Quant and was scoring 50-60% correctly on 700-800 level problems. In the last few weeks I have really focused on Quant and feel I have a great understanding so I'm not sure why it's not converting on practice tests.

I have listed all this information here because I have read through numerous posts by you and Ron, but have never really seen a case such as mine where scores have stagnated over several tests.

I was supposed to take the exam 2 weeks from today, but have postponed it for another month since I am shooting for 700.

Do you have any suggestions as I'm not able to "diagnose" my case based on other posts I've seen. Any other strategies you can provide is deeply appreciated.

[StaceyKoprince]

One thing to note: it's not unusual to have stagnating scores through about 6 or 7 weeks of the class - a lot of people face this situation. You're learning a lot, but you haven't yet learned how to put everything together in the best way in a full practice test setting. So don't panic yet. :)

You do mention that you were originally scheduled to take the test right after the class ended, but that you've postponed it. That's a good idea. Most of my students feel that they need 3 to 4 weeks after the end of the course to review and put everything together before they take the real test.

Okay, on to some detailed analysis / questions.

You are finishing the quant sections on time - that's a good start. What about the time you're spending on individual questions - is that balanced correctly? Take a look at this article (link below) and do the analyses described in it. Sometimes, people finish the section on time, but still mismanage their time between questions in the section.

http://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/09/23/evaluating-your-practice-tests

You're finishing verbal 10 minutes early - that's too much. You're leaving points on the table through working too quickly. Why are you finishing early? Are you much too fast on just certain kinds of questions? Are you a little too fast across all of the questions? Where's the 10 minutes in savings coming from?

Do you have any careless mistakes on verbal? If you're so confident that you can finish 10 minutes early, then you shouldn't have any careless mistakes! But I'm guessing you probably do, right? (We all do.) So, every time you make a careless mistake, ask yourself WHY? And what could I do next time to prevent making that same kind of mistake? Should I have written more down? Should I have read the answers more slowly and carefully? Whatever you can do, it's probably going to take a little more time - but that's okay, because you actually have more time.

What about on the quant - are you making too many careless mistakes there? It's okay to make a couple, but more than that, and you start to have problems. Why are you making those careless mistakes? If there's an element of time / speed involved as well, then you've got a harder task on quant. The extra time you spend to avoid the careless mistake is going to have to come from some other problem. So you're going to have to figure out the optimal way to balance your time between problems.

It's likely the case that you are spending too long on some problems simply because you're struggling to do them. You already know that you don't really know how to do the problem correctly in 2 minutes, but you hang on because you think "oh, well maybe I can do it correctly in 3 minutes!" But that's not the right way to react. Spending more than about 30 seconds extra just indicates that you don't really know how to do that problem, so the extra time spent is likely wasted... plus, you're probably also costing yourself another question elsewhere because you're using up some of the time that you should have been spending on that other question. Double-whammy. Take a look and see if that has been going on in your practice tests.

Also, make sure that you request the end-of-course test review from your instructor; he'll take a look at your practice tests and tell you what he thinks you should do between then and the real test. He should talk about this during class 9, but you can also ask him about it at class 8, just to make sure you know what you need to do to get the review.

And, obviously, take a look at what I posted above and reply again after you've looked through your tests and done the self-analysis!

[ajafari]

I reviewed all 3 mgmat tests to look for patterns where I got 4 consecutive questions wrong. I saw some of the effect you mentioned of rushing through the last couple questions in order to compensate for the extra time I spent on the earlier harder questions.

In reviewing the last 10 problems of each section, I found I'm rushing slightly through quant (rushing to make sure I get to every problem) and spending slightly more time on verbal (due to the extra time).

I then reviewed the individual problems as suggested in your write-up, looking for problems I spent more time than I was supposed to. In general, it's mostly on the problem solving front in quant. On the quant side, I looked at how many were incorrect versus correct, I came up with 46% correct, surprisingly higher than I expected.

Then, I reviewed the problems that I rushed through. I didn't have that many incorrect quant questions under 1 min. But I did notice a lot of reading comprehension that were incorrect under 1 minute.

In my assessment reviews, I noticed I am rushing through verbal, specifically reading comp and critical reasoning. I'm completing them on average 20-30 seconds faster than I should be. On quant, I'm going too quickly through geometry and number properties.

In conclusion on the timing side, I think on quant my timing std deviation is too wide since I'm able to complete the section in about 70-75 minutes, but have many too slow problems as well as too fast problems. On verbal, I need to spend more time on RC and CR.

What I will do on my next test is to keep an error log on careless mistakes. In the past tests I've averaged about 1 or 2 on quant. I need to look into the verbal side more since it's a little harder to determine careless mistakes on verbal.

Can you provide the quant and verbal timing guidelines? I think I remember the quant guidelines from one of the online labs, but I'm not sure on the verbal.
Quant 60-Q8 45-Q16 30-Q24 45-Q32

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Also, in addition to timing, I think I need a better grasp of takeaways from problems. I have started to use the MGMAT flash card method (from class 2) for all problems I missed on my 4 tests. I was planning to go through them every couple days to keep fresh of the concepts and the takeaways. Any other tips on making or reviewing flash cards?

[StaceyKoprince]

I didn't have that many incorrect quant questions under 1 min.

But you had some, right? The only time you want to do something in under 1m and get it wrong is if you knew you couldn't do it and you just gave up. If you actually thought you knew how to do it (and that probably means it wasn't a super-hard problem), then you just sacrificed that question, plus it was probably on the lower side, not the higher side, so you just brought your score down. DO NOT leave those points on the table - you could've taken the extra time and didn't, so don't make a mistake for that reason. (If you spend the full 2m and make a mistake - oh, well, you're going to make mistakes sometimes. But don't compound the chances by rushing!)

In conclusion on the timing side, I think on quant my timing std deviation is too wide since I'm able to complete the section in about 70-75 minutes, but have many too slow problems as well as too fast problems. On verbal, I need to spend more time on RC and CR.

Good conclusion. How are you going to train yourself so that you don't continue to make these timing mistakes?

I think you would also benefit from a timing exercise: learning about how long one minute is without looking at a watch or stopwatch. If you don't have one already, buy yourself a stopwatch with lap timing capability. When you go to do a set of problems, start the stopwatch but turn it over so you can't see the time. Every time you think one minute has gone by, push the lap button. When you're done, see how good you were - and whether you tend to over or underestimate. Get yourself to the point where you're within 15 seconds either way on a regular basis (that is, you can generally predict between 45 sec and 1min 15 sec).

Now, how do you use that when doing problems? If you're not on track by one minute*, make an educated guess and move on. (The general idea is that if you're not on track by the halfway mark, you're unlikely to figure out what's holding you back AND have time to do the whole problem in the 1 min you have left.)

* For SC, 1min is well beyond the half-way mark (we're supposed to average about 1m15s here), but you can almost always eliminate at least some choices on SC in that timeframe. Once you've got that "I'm around the 1min mark and I'm struggling" feeling, go through any remaining choices ONCE more. Pick one. Move on.

Any other tips on making or reviewing flash cards?

Yes, don't just concentrate on the ones you get wrong. You need several categories:
1) problems I got wrong but timing was okay: take-aways focused on knowing what to do and how to do it
2) problems I got wrong and timing was too slow: take-aways focused on how to make an educated guess, and possibly (not definitely) knowing how to recognize what to do and how to do it in a more timely manner
3) problems I got right and timing was too slow: take-aways focused on how to recognize what to do, how to work more efficiently through problem
4) problems I got right and timing was okay: take-aways focused on recognizing what to do on similar future problems, and also using what you know on this one to do a similar but harder problem (what would it look like, how would I recognize it, how would they make it more obscure / harder to recognize, what else would I have to know / do to solve?)

Timing guidelines:
You can do this a few different ways. You can base it on 15 min blocks (60m left, 45m left, etc). You can base it on blocks of 10 questions. Or you can periodic do a calculation - you don't have to memorize anything, but you do have to do a little math to figure out where you are.

15 min blocks:
Quant 60m left-Q8 45m-Q16 30m-Q24 15m-Q32
Verbal* 60m left -Q9 45m-Q17 30m-Q25 15m-Q33
* assumption: three or four passages will all have started (ie, you'll have to spend time reading) by Q25. (This isn't necessarily the case, of course - but we have to make some assumption to start.) IF, say, you get to 30m left and you've only had 2 passages so far, you should be on a higher Q, around 27/28, because you're going to need that time once you do get your next passage (or two).

10 question blocks:
Quant Q10- 55m left Q20- 35m Q30- 15m
Verbal* Q10- 57m left Q20- 38m Q30- 20m
* ditto above - this time, assumption is that all passages will have started by Q30. If not, then you should have a bit MORE time left at that mark because you'll need it when you get to the passage.

Calculation:
Periodically, after finishing a problem but BEFORE advancing to the next one, glance at the clock / number of Q you're on
For quant: take the # of the Q and multiply by 2. Subtract from 75. This is what the clock should say. If it's more than 2m off, react accordingly (depending on whether you're ahead or behind). For example: I'm on Q8. 8*2 =16. 75-16 = 59. Does the clock say 59? If it says 54, I'm too slow and I need to save time somewhere. If it says 63, I'm too fast and I need too slow down.
For verbal: take the # of the Q and multiply by 2. Subtract 10% (rounded to nearest whole number). Then subtract from 75. For example: I'm on Q8. 8*2 = 16. 16-2 = 14. 75-14 = 61. Now I'm on Q25. 25*2 = 50. 50-5 = 45. 75-45 = 30.

All methods work - it's just a matter of what you find the easiest to use. Verbal is always a bit more annoying than math, because of the variability of the passages.