Thoughts/Advice on Specific Study Plan

[JohnDoeNo24]

Hello,
I just completed the 9-week course in the guided self-study format and am hoping for specific feedback on a post-course study plan. Your review and advice would be greatly appreciated.

How the course went: I began in October 2009"”took the diagnostic CAT and got through two weeks, but then had a family emergency that put studying on hold for a few months. I started up in April from the very beginning and completed the 9-week course about a week ago (through week 7, I was averaging about one lesson every 1.2 weeks or so... then, the last couple of lessons took me about 4 weeks to complete as I was busy with work and on vacation). I followed the Study Organizer precisely and completed nearly 100% of the assigned coursework during the course. I also used the Official Guide Tracker religiously, both with respect to recording answer choices and to noting time per question. The result:

Quant: Completed about 300 questions"”79% correct (73% DS, 85% PS).
- DS worst categories: Word Translations, Number Properties, Geometry
- DS best categories: EIV, FDP
- PS worst categories: Geometry
- PS best categories: Number Properties, EIV
- Timing: a shade under 2 min. avg. on PS, a shade over on DS... somewhat concerned re: timing
Verbal: Completed about 300 questions"”87% correct (90% RC, 91% SC, 76% CR)
- Timing: not a huge concern for SC and RC, but too slow on CR (T-diagramming...)

CAT #1 (Diagnostic): 650
- Attribute the relatively high first score to lucky guessing and good fortune
CAT #2: 640 (Q42, V36)
- Too erratic on timing... spent WAY too much time on some individual questions
- Finished Quant just in time; way too slow on verbal... had to fly through final 5-6 questions in about 3 minutes
CAT #3: 660 (Q45, V35)
- Quant: After a very shaky start (nerves and jitters, mainly), felt I managed this section reasonably well - UNTIL I saw the results and time per question... spent over 6 MINUTES on an individual question TWICE. Couldn’t believe my eyes. Some careless mistakes.
- Verbal: Biggest problem is timing. Had a stretch where about 2/3 of the way through, I had maintained an estimated 99th percentile... then ran out of time and fell off a cliff. I’m having a hard time diagramming CR questions quickly enough and reading RC passages quickly enough.

Overall, for Quant, I don’t yet feel that I’ve hit the point where, for most new questions I face, I can immediately recognize the problem type and concept being tested, link in my mind back to questions I’ve already done, and apply the appropriate framework quickly and efficiently. I find myself doing that occasionally, but not often enough yet. For verbal, I am waffling on how best to apply the skeletal sketches/headline lists for RC and T-diagrams for CR - given my difficulty speeding up, I find myself wondering if I’d be better off cutting corners on these processes for certain CR question types (e.g. recognize role of two bolded statements) and RC passages.

I think, very broadly, that I need significant cumulative review of the subject matter, concepts, and specific strategies, in addition to lots of practice applying those specific strategies on questions. Tons of them (without sacrificing the quality of the review, MGMAT style of course).

I am thinking of trying to take the first real test in about 6 weeks and want to score, at very minimum, 700 (but preferably a fair bit higher). My preliminary thought for review is to do a handful of OG problems every night for each question type (DS,PS,RC,CR,SC - say, 20-25 questions total), and, also every night, do a cumulative review (reread detailed notes taken during course, review strategy guides, etc) for a particular subject. Every Saturday morning at 8am, I figure I’ll take a full length CAT (3 remaining MGMAT exams + 2 GMAC practice CATs = 5 weeks = number of Saturdays before real test if taken 6 weeks from now).

I can potentially wait a little longer than 6 weeks if necessary, but kind of think I need to pick a date and work towards it - especially given MGMAT’s guidance on how soon after the 9-week course to take the test. (I am applying to schools in the second round, as pulling together quality applications by the first round deadlines will be infeasible.)

I can commit about 2 quality hours on weeknights to studying (...I usually spend about 3, but given the nature of my job, I sometimes hit fatigue earlier than I’d like), and about 5 hours per weekend day (occasionally must miss a weeknight of studying due to job).

Any specific thoughts or advice you have with respect to my preparation/timing/strategy would be tremendously appreciated.

Thanks so much, in advance. (If there’s any other feedback I can provide for you based on my studies to this point, please let me know. Thanks.)

[StaceyKoprince]

Current level: mid-600s (maybe). Did you take these tests under official testing conditions, including essays? If not, how did you deviate from official testing conditions? (Certain types of deviations can lead to inflated scores.)

Goal score: 700 minimum, preferably higher

Time frame: 6 weeks

Timing issues on both quant and verbal. Spending too long on some quant problems (any patterns? DS vs PS? specific content areas? theory? wordy word problems? etc). Spending too long on CR.

Some content area weaknesses as well.

Good start on analyzing your current state. Use this article to do an even more in-depth analysis of your practice tests: http://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/09/23 ... tice-tests

The results of the above analysis will tell you what to do (though if you want advice about how to do it, please share the analysis results with us and we will help!).

We've already got a couple of areas to tackle.

1. Timing

First, you need a mindset change. Think of this as a tennis match, not a test. You're going to win some points and the other guy is going to win some points; you're not going to win them all, right? Your goal is to put yourself into position to win the LAST point. Translated, that means you have to put yourself in position to answer the last question - you have to have time to address it. Otherwise, you've lost the last point, and by extension the match. When the other guy hits a winner, don't go running after it so fast that you hit the fence and injure yourself, thereby hurting your chances on the later points. (Translation: don't go way over when the problem is too hard.)

Next, how do you stop yourself from spending too much time? Know when you tend to do it, first of all - if there are any patterns you can identify, just know where your "danger" areas are so that you can already be on the alert when those kinds of problems pop up.

Then, you need to learn 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).

Note: at the same time that you are using the stopwatch to time this "1-minute" thing, also use the OG Stopwatch (in your student center) to track the total time spent on each question.

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.) You can spend up to another additional minute making an educated guess.

* 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.

The above also requires you to know HOW to make an educated guess. This isn't something you can just do; you need to learn how to do this. On quant, can you estimate? Can you do some of the work? Can you test some real numbers? Can you deal with one of the two DS statements?

On verbal, have you studied what wrong answers tend to look like and how they trap us into picking wrong answers and eliminating right answers? If not, add that to your to-do list. When studying any verbal Q, you should be able to articulate:
- why was the wrong answer so tempting? why did it look like it might be right? (be as explicit as possible)
- why was it actually wrong? what specific words indicate that it is wrong and how did I overlook those clues the first time?
- why did the right answer seem wrong? what made it so tempting to cross off the right answer? why were those things actually okay; what was my error in thinking that they were wrong?
- why was it actually right?

Also, on verbal, use a "two-pass" approach to the answers. On your first pass, your goal is to split the answers into two categories: "maybe" and "I'm never looking at this choice again because it's definitely wrong." DO NOT try to decide between "maybe" and "right!" on your first pass. Eliminate first.

THEN take time to examine your "maybe" answers more carefully. You'll have fewer than 5, hopefully, which will make it easier to compare the answers. (And if you couldn't eliminate anything on your first pass, then this one's looking like a good candidate for a random guess!)

For verbal, try these two articles for RC:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/04/ ... mp-passage
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/07/ ... rc-passage

For CR, it is okay to shortcut the note-taking process for some types - eg, for boldface Qs, my first goal is to find the conclusion. If I need to diagram to find it, I do, even if it's only partially. Once I've found the conclusion, I focus exclusively on trying to understand the relationship of the boldface statement to the conclusion. The stuff that isn't in boldface and isn't the conclusion I mostly ignore (unless I need to understand it in order to understand how the boldface stuff relates to the conclusion).

Also, someone else asked about CR note-taking already today, so take a look at this post:
diagramming-and-note-taking-on-the-verbal-section-t10491.html

Okay, and finally, I would NOT recommend taking a practice test every week-end for the next 5 weeks. CAT exams are really good for (a) figuring out where you're scoring right now, (b) practicing stamina, and (c) analyzing your strengths and weaknesses. The actual act of just taking the exam is NOT so useful for improving. It's what you do with the test results / between tests that helps you to improve. If you have not actually fixed all of the major things that you identified as problematic during your last practice test, then you just aren't ready to take a new one yet - and you can typically find a good 2-3 weeks' worth of work out of one practice test (using that first article I linked to about how to analyze your tests).