Target Score 550 - still below 500 - 1 week left

[Na_S]

Dear all,

I started studying for the GMAT on 15th February 2013 until now. I completed all the strategy guides (5th Edition Manhattan) except Integrated Reasoning, Reading, AWA. The basis for my plan was the "60-day GMAT study guide" by "beatthegmat.com" including theory and practise with the Original Guide 13th Edition.
I studied 4-5 days/week for ca. 3 hours after a full-time working day and at the weekends for 5-8 hours.

Actually, I do not know, why I did not improve more and I am kind of disappointed.

There is no possibility to reschedule the exam, because of the deadline of the university.

Scores:

- 1st GMAT attempt: 300 (7.01.2013)
- 1 CAT: 510 (31.03.2013)
- 2 CAT: 450 (21.04.2013)
- 3 CAT: 490 (28.04.2013: quant 30 - verbal 26)

- Should I concentrate on strategy, content and core topics this week or do the 4 CATs left?
- Which are the most frequent quant topics which can appear?
- Does timing influence the GMAT score? Does my score get lower, if I spend on some tasks more than 2 minutes and on some task less than 2 minutes?
- Which strategy whould you advice to handle the reading comprehension questions? (my greatest weakness)

I would be very grateful for some advice, what would be the best strategy for my last week that I took off work.

Thank you in advance!

[StaceyKoprince]

You've got a tough choice. As a general rule, whatever you're scoring right now is about what you should expect to score in 1 week. If you have a hard deadline, then you may have to just go for it and hope - but be prepared to have to postpone for a year if you don't get the score that you need.

At this point, I don't want you learning new strategies - there's not enough time and you'll likely just mess yourself up right before you take the test.

I'm going to guess that you're having at least some timing problems (because *everyone* does) and that at least some of those problems involve spending too much time on a subset of the questions.

So here's your last-ditch effort to try to get that score up by 50 points (note to others reading - this will NOT work for someone trying to go from 650 to 700!):

You're going to guess, completely randomly, on approximately every 5th question. Do this on the hardest questions for you, as you identify them throughout the section. Pretend you're playing tennis: these points are the "aces." The opponent just aced you and there's nothing you can do.

I'm basing this strategy on the bet that, right now, you're losing a bunch of time on questions that are too hard for you, and that's causing you to make mistakes on other questions that you might actually be able to answer correctly if you weren't rushing and making careless errors. The solution to this: get those "too hard" questions wrong faster and give yourself time to address the questions that you really do know how to answer.

For RC, can you handle the main idea questions? There's usually one main idea question per passage, so do enough work to answer those and just guess on the others. Spend that time doing SC and CR instead.

I'm going to repeat for others reading this: this is a last-ditch strategy that might work (with some luck) at a lower scoring level but will NOT work at higher levels. Don't try this unless you're also in this exact same situation!

For this last week, do practice what I just described above but do NOT take a practice test within 3 days of the real test (and ideally not within 5 days, really). Also do a general review of the most frequently tested topics:

Algebra
fractions, percents
odds and evens, pos and neg
stats (especially average), ratios, rates

SC: modifiers, parallelism, meaning
CR: find the assump, strengthen, weaken, inference
(I'm skipping RC since that's your weakness)

Do not do more than 1 hour of study the day before - it would actually be better for you to go to work (if work is not too stressful or mental-energy-sapping) or to plan some other activity for the day to keep your mind off of the test. Rest the day before; don't tire yourself out mentally.

Two days before, don't do more than 2-3 hours of study. There's not much you can do at that point to lift your score - just make sure that you don't burn yourself out.

Good luck - let us know how it goes!