Taking test at the end of March...sort of freaking out

[sudeep.paul6]

Hi,

So these have been my practice test scores so far in the order that I have taken them:

GMAT Prep: 730 (breakdowns were erased but I remember scoring higher on the verbal section)
MGMAT CAT 1: 620 (M: 40, V: 35)
MGMAT CAT 3: 620 (M: 45, V: 31)

I'm taking the Guided Self-Study GMAT Prep Plus course from MGMAT and I think at this point I really don't know how best to study and acquire the knowledge from all the books. I feel overwhelmed by the breadth of material provided and so while I'm trying to follow the one-page syllabus, I don't think that I am actually retaining what I read or see during the class presentations.

My goal is to get at least a 760, which seemed doable a month ago, but not so much anymore. During the week, I typically have about 10 hours I can devote to studying and on the weekends I have about 16 hours between Saturday and Sunday. What is the best way to utilize this time in order to drastically improve?

I'm happy to answer any additional questions you may have in order to get a better assessment of where I stand.

Thank you in advance!


Sudeep

[StaceyKoprince]

A 760 is the 99th percentile, so by definition, only 1% of all test-takers score that well. As such, it's rare to get such a high score. That doesn't mean you shouldn't go for it - but I do want to make sure you're aware of what you're up against. The scoring system is like a forced curve. It doesn't matter how much everybody studies; only 1% of testers will score in the 99th percentile.

Is there a particular reason why you need that type of score? Or is that just a personal goal that you set for yourself? If the latter, what kind of score do you think you need for the schools to which you plan to apply?

There is a LOT of material to study - it's not unusual to feel overwhelmed by it all! How long have you been studying? What have you gotten through so far? What were the dates of the three practice tests?

Your quant subscore showed improvement but your verbal subscore went down. You also said you remember scoring better on verbal on the GMATPrep test. Have you been spending more of your time on quant because it started out as your weaker area?

When you took the practice tests, did you also take the essays? Did you spend as much time and mental energy on the practice essays as you did on the real essays?

How was your timing in the verbal section? Did you generally move steadily through the test, giving appropriate time and attention to each question? (1 to 1.5m for SC, 2m for CR, 2-4m to read a passage, 1m for general RC questions, 1.5 to 2m for specific RC questions) Or did you have to rush at times and possibly make random guesses? If you did have to rush and/or make random guesses, on how many questions would you say you did that? Did you do it on a lot of questions in a row or were the guesses scattered?

How was your stamina? How did you feel toward the middle and end of the verbal section? Did you have something to eat and drink on the breaks? Did you get up, walk around, and stretch?

In terms of content and technique, what specifically is giving you the most trouble? (eg, in SC, modifiers and verbs; or in CR, find an assumption; or in RC, inference)

[sudeep.paul6]

Well realistically, I feel that I need to offset my GPA (3.76) as much as possible so that I have a decent chance at the top schools that offer both MBAs and JDs, and so it's both a personal goal and also a score that I feel is necessary to have in order to be as competitive as possible.

I've been studying for about a month now. I've gotten through Number Properties, Equations, Inequalities, and VICs, most of Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning, and almost half of the Sentence Correction book. I'm up to session 5 within the class recordings.

I took the GMATPrep Exam 1 on January 24th, CAT1 on February 1st, and CAT2 over two days this past weekend. For all three of these exams, I skipped the essays. I took a Kaplan course over a year ago where I learned the nature of the essays, which is why I decided not to concentrate on them until a little later on in my studying.

I have been more thorough in my quant I guess because I ran out of time on my first practice exam and guessed on the last four or five. As for the verbal section, I find that I can usually finish it within 60 minutes easily. For the third exam, I tried to slow myself down a lot more and still finished with about 8 minutes left.

I remember for the last verbal section that reading through the reading passages was much more difficult than before and I did have to stop twice during that section in order to get a drink of water.

Specifically, in SC, I've done the worst on Parallelism and Comparisons. I'm only slightly better on Concision, Pronouns, Idioms, and Modifiers. Overall, I've only gotten 14 out of 30 right in SC through two tests. For RC, I'm having trouble with Passage Structure (0 for 1) and Tone (1 for 2). Overall, I've gotten 17 out of 24 questions correct between the two tests. For CR, I've only gotten 13 out of 28 questions right. My weakest areas have been Analyze Argument Structure, Find the Assumption, Explain a Situation, and Restate the Conclusion.

I can say that my studying habits for Verbal aren't exactly in that I try to read the SC chapters twice and then work on some problems. Still, I haven't been able to automatically tell what is correct or incorrect in the sentence and I tend to rely on the sound of the sentence more than anything despite the fact that I try really hard not to. For CR, I've tried incorporating the T grid for notes but I find myself still going back to the paragraph and dissecting it before submitting an answer.

[StaceyKoprince]

Re: essays, I know most people don't care about those scores much, but they are important to do because you also have to practice your mental stamina. It's okay early on to skip the essays, but from now on, take them.

Also from now on, take the full practice tests under the exact testing conditions and at the same time of day. It's important to mimic the real test conditions as much as possible. If you want a drink in the middle of the real test, you have to leave the room while the clock keeps ticking... which pretty much means that you're not going to leave the room, right? So pretend it's the real thing - that's part of your prep, too.

On the verbal, it sounds like you're going way too fast, which can be just as much of a problem as moving too slowly. You're probably leaving points on the table because you're movign so quickly through some problems that you're missing key points. When you're studying, make yourself articulate why each and every wrong answer is wrong - not just that it's wrong, but WHY it's wrong.

Are you really fast on all verbal questions or just certain types? (Look at your MGMAT CAT assessment reports to tell.)

You mention that you're only about halfway through the SC book - so does that mean that you have done the parallelism chapter but you haven't done the comparisons chapter yet? If so, don't worry as much about comparisons right now. For parallelism, are you able to figure out why you're getting those wrong? (Once you go back and review a problem?) Are you missing that it's about parallelism in the first place or are you mis-applying the rules or...?

If you're struggling with recognition, a useful study exercise is to take a file or notebook and make two columns. On the left-hand side, write down the name of a particular grammar error (eg, subj-verb agreement). On the right-hand side, write down what the splits tend to look like for that type of error (eg, for subj-verb agreement: nouns that sometimes include "s" and sometimes don't; verbs that sometimes include "s" and sometimes don't). For parallelism, you might include things like the word "and" or the set-up "comma and." You'll also want to include the common idioms listed in chapter 4 of the SC guide. But don't stop there - also lift clues from the specific questions you miss in either OG or on our tests. What you're doing is literally making a "trigger" list: "if I see this word or set of words or differences in words in the answers, then I should think X grammar rule."

For RC, it's tough to call Passage Structure and Tone weaknesses because there just weren't very many of those questions. Go back and try to understand why you got those (and any others) wrong. What caused you to eliminate the right answer? What caused you to think the wrong answer was right? Why was the wrong answer actually wrong? Can you put your finger on a sentence or two in the passage that supports the right answer? Literally - you should be able to point to the thing that supports the right answer.

For CR, on your list of weaker types, Assumption questions are the only common ones. Explain a Situation questions are also somewhat common. I'd worry most about the four most common types listed in your book, as well as the first two listed in the minor types chapter. If you're only up to class 5 on the tapes, then you've only seen one of the major question type lessons - so keep going with those lessons. Also keep practicing with the T diagram. The goal of that diagram is not actually to take notes, but to read in a critical way and really understand the different moving parts of the argument by the time you're done reading it. This prevents you from having to re-read the argument multiple times. The more times you re-read, generally, the more likely you are to get all turned around and fall into a trap.

When you're studying, go back into the problem when you're reviewing and articulate:
- specifically why each wrong answer is wrong
- which wrong answer is the most tempting and why
- how to recognize that the tempting wrong answer is still wrong anyway so you can eliminate it
- why someone might be tempted to eliminate the right answer (or why you did, if you did!)

A final note: it sounds like your total study time is about 2 months (you've studied for a month and you've got about another month to go). That may not be enough time. It may be, but you may also need to be flexible. Most people study for between 2 and 4 months - and most people aren't going for a 99th percentile score on top of that! It's tough to rush this.

Good luck - let us know how it goes!