suggestions on exam taking strategy for my 3rd attempt

[above]

Dear Stacey and fellow forum peers,

After thoroughly reviewing Stacey’s recent post, "Studying for - and struggling with - the GMAT," as well as corresponding links in that article, I am certain that timing is my biggest obstacle - specifically, my timing on the quantitative section. I hope you I can ask everyone for some further advice and clarification.

1. The importance of the first ten questions. Is it really just a myth that the first ten questions are "more" important? I think I have answered my own question after reviewing my score on a GMAT Prep CAT - the first 10 questions are NOT more important. However, I would greatly appreciate your insight.

- In practice CATs, I often end up anywhere between 2 to 5mins behind (negative time) after the first 10 questions because I was under the impression that scoring poorly (in the first ten questions) will significantly impact your section score. And of course, by the end of the 75 mins, I find myself blind guessing the final 5 to 6 questions. Clearly, not an efficient way to tackle the quantitative section.
- In verbal, my timing is not as bad. That sad, sometimes I get bogged down long sentence correction and long critical reasoning questions.

2. Practice on improving my timing: beyond what are outlined in the articles related to timing (In it to win it, Time Management Part I and II), do you have any other specific suggestions on how to develop and practice a timing strategy?

- I definitely fall into the pool of GMAT test takers who are hesitant to give up the classic exam taking mentality - I know I NEED to correct this. I find it difficult to give up on a question, and in the end, not only do I get the question wrong but I also waste valuable minutes. So, how can I practice eliminating answers (in order to maximize my chances) and taking an educated guess before moving on?
- It seems that I have fallen into a bad mentality in my approach to a question. Rather than combining my ability to solve and eliminate answers at the same time, I think I approach a question either to solve or to eliminate, but not together. Perhaps I need to further develop my content knowledge so that I can approach all question in the following manner: 1) "quickly" setup the question and eliminate answers before solving 2) continue to solve for the answer if I can solve it, if not, guess and move on. It seems obvious this is a good strategy, however, am I correct?

3. Minimizing careless mistakes, especially on easy question. Other than slowing down and mastering topic fundamentals, do you have any other suggestions?

- I have read from multiple posts on the forum that getting an easy question wrong significantly lowers your scores. I plan to review my content knowledge to make sure I have a solid grasp of the fundamentals. However, is there something else I can do? Given limited time, should I try to master easy questions (on a certain topic) or should I practice harder questions and my ability to address easy question will naturally follow?

4. Materials: I have gone through the official guide (12th edition) and parts of the Verbal and Quantitative (2nd edition). I also have access to the Manhattan books and Manhattan CATs online. In preparation for my next exam, should I go through the Official Guides again or could I focus on other materials, do you have any recommendations? I only ask because for certain OG questions, I seem to "remember" solutions from my previous practice, so instead of actually figuring out the answer on my own, I recall the solutions from before.

Thanks in advance for everyone’s help and ongoing contributions on the forums. Finally, I want to wish everyone a happy new years eve and all the best in 2012!
Cheers,
Michael


For your information, here are some additional details on my background:
- Non-native English speaker but consider myself fluent (English Undergrad, major biological sciences)
- First GMAT attempt: Oct - 580 (Q-39-50%, V-29-53%)- AWA 5.5
- Second attempt: Dec - 590 - (Q-37-46%, V-34-69%) - AWA 5.5

After my first attempt, I knew I had it in me to improve my score as I felt off on that first test day. In preparation for my second attempt, I worked through OG12 in detail, made sure I understood the concepts/fundamentals on both quant & verbal. In quant, I made sure I was able to solve most questions with various approaches. Altogether, after about 8 more weeks of prep, I felt I had a stronger grasp in both sections. In particular, I felt very strong in spotting patterns in SC and tracking opinions in RC passages. In quant, I developed a greater understanding of the fundamentals behind each topic. In practice I was able to tackle most problems under 2mins, if not 3mins for some of the more calculation intensive questions. I was scoring around 580-690 on MBA.com CATs (Yes, classical timing issue as you have outlined in your article). By the time the second test day came around, I felt prepared and confident I can bring up my score.

Test-2 experience:
- AWA - no problem.
- Quant: felt fairly neutral throughout the section. I got stuck on a few number conversion problems (I now realize they were due to careless mistakes) and wasted valuable time and ran out of time on the section. However, I felt decent, and confident, that I was scoring around the 70% range. I did find the questions on the actual test to be very different from the questions on the OG.
- Verbal: Ran a bit short on time towards the end. I found the RC my strongest - the passages were relatively easy to track the opinions and key words. I also felt decent through SC. However, I know I lost a couple points on a few CR, in particular long CR questions.

[StaceyKoprince]

1. Yes, the first 10 questions thing is a complete myth. :)

2. You need to develop the 1min time sense described in the time management article. Also, buy yourself a can of tennis balls. Write "Nice shot!" on one with a marker. Keep it handy while you're studying.

When you're at the 1min mark and asking yourself "Do I know what I'm doing right now?" - if the answer is anything other than "100% yes!" then pick up a tennis ball, say Nice shot! out loud (and mean it!), figure out how to pick an answer, and move on.

When studying, make sure you take time to learn how to eliminate wrong answers on all kinds of different questions. Then, when you're in the "Nice shot!" position above, you'll have an idea about how to guess on this particular problem, because you'll already have studied how to find wrong answers.

The Time Management article has links to two more articles on Educated Guessing - make sure to use those too.

On quant, you are first trying to solve and then, if that isn't working (roughly around 1 min), then you try to eliminate and move on.

On verbal, you're doing the opposite - you're trying to get rid of all of the wrong answers until you only have one left.

Careless mistakes:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... to-win-it/

You don't necessarily need to do the whole error log - up to you - but any time you make a careless mistake, figure out *exactly* why you made it, then figure out you could have set things up or wrote things down or whatever differently to avoid that mistake. Then make yourself re-do the work or writing or whatever it was in the error-minimizing way.

Careless errors = things you did know how to do but you made a "silly" mistake. Holes in your foundation = lower level things that you just don't know. Those are two separate things. If you have holes in your foundation, you have to go back to study whatever those things are. If you are making careless errors, that tends to be more about process, not what you know, and so you have to find ways to make your process very systematic. (eg, I never do math in my head - I write everything down - because I make fewer careless mistakes that way. I never try to speed up and save a bunch of time on something I already know how to do, because then I'm just introducing a way to make a careless mistake on something I know how to do. Now, I may answer that question more quickly than the average person, because it is something I can do, but I'm not going to push myself to go faster than whatever my own natural pace is for that or skip steps I really should be doing - or I might mess it up. People are tempted to do that because they think they need to save time for the really hard ones elsewhere... but I know that I'll just be saying "Nice shot! Your point!" on those, anyway. :)

for certain OG questions, I seem to "remember" solutions from my previous practice, so instead of actually figuring out the answer on my own, I recall the solutions from before.

Are you at your desired scoring level yet? (Obviously not, or you wouldn't still be studying!) So that means you're not necessarily done studying those questions. I don't care whether you remember the answer. I care whether you know how to recognize a similar question in future even if it uses somewhat different language. I care that you know how to make an educated guess. I care that you've found the most efficient solution, even if that's not the official solution shown in the book. And so on.

Take a look at this:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/a ... roblem.cfm

These are the kinds of things to think about when reviewing problems (which is where most of your learning happens).

You showed very nice improvement on verbal on your 2nd official test - plus you said you did have timing issues there, so there's room for more improvement if you can fix those timing problems.

Quant, obviously, went down - and I'm guessing timing was a significant part of that. You definitely need to fix that before getting in there again - as you discovered, significant enough timing problems can kill your score.