Time management?

[marcovg]

Hi all,

I just finished my first MGMAT CAT exam (1), and I scored a dismal 490, but I'm optimistic, and here is why:

Quant: 23, I only answered 23 questions of 35!
Verbal: 34, I rushed in the last 3 questions.

I think is important to mention that I did the exam at 4am and I drank a red bull before start. By the time I reached the Verbal section I felt better, more on fire, even though I knew I screwed on the Quant section.

On the one hand, by the time I answered question number 23 I was in the 70th percentile but then it lowered to 12th (obviously because of unanswered questions).

On the other hand, I'm optimistic because I see improvement on my verbal score, (a month ago, I scored 22 on Verbal and 44 on Quant, 550 overall), the thing is that I improve on one section and decrease on the other one. I think my math fundamentals are solid, but I get stress with questions that seems very simple.

I have 2 months of study and practice and my deadline is July 25th. In the last month (50%verbal and 50%quant focus), I've been practicing OG13th and Kaplan Premier exercises, reading MGMAT chapters and surfing GMAT forums. I have the Kaplan 800 book, and the Official Verb and Quant Review, yet I don't want to practice with those books, because I feel I have to improve TM and my %correct is around 80-70%.

The question is, what are my chances to improve my time management?

My target score is 700. (my target school has a 670 average score, but I always try to aim higher)

Any advice is more than welcome!

Thanks in advance

MV

p.s:I assume that my 490 score is due to TM, but If you find any other issue that I have to correct, please mention it

[StaceyKoprince]

Yes, you definitely have some time management issues. :) Of course, there are other things to improve, but that's a big one. And, yes, you can improve that; it's just going to take some work and some time!

2 months may be enough time, but I suspect that it won't be - you may have to postpone your exam. You don't need to decide anything now though. Just start working on the below and you can see how things are going in about 5 to 6 weeks.

For timing, read these:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... to-win-it/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -to-do-it/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... nt-part-1/

Also, read the how to learn / study section of this article:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -the-gmat/

After you have done all that, use the below to analyze your most recent MGMAT CAT(s):
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... ice-tests/

Note that in this analysis, you will have to tweak some of the normal steps. For instance, you may have gotten more questions than normal wrong due to speed / careless mistakes, so some category might look like it's a big weakness (because you got them all wrong), but maybe part of the problem was simply that you were rushing because you'd messed up the timing elsewhere.

Then come back here and tell us the results of your analysis and what you think you should do based on that analysis. We'll tell you whether we agree and advise you further. (Note: do share an analysis with us, not just the raw data. Part of getting better is developing your ability to analyze your results - figure out what they mean and what you think you should do about them!)

[marcovg]

Thank you Stacey!

I just read your articles and let me tell you, they are inspiring and they made me realize that I DO have a Time Management problem. These two words will stay in my mind till I destroy the GMAT: RIGHT MINDSET.

The way I approached the GMAT was the wrong one, trying to ace every question, I even spent like 5 min per question, really hurting my score in the long run.

Right now, I will extensively device my exam, and try to come with a new study plan. I'll follow your tips such as quant material distribution, TM, "quality over quantity" approach and takeaways from my exam.

Anyway, I'll keep you posted! :P

Thanks for your tips and support!

MV

p.s. One last question, when do you recommend me to practice CAT exams (I have 7 left, 2 GMATPREP and 5 MGMAT)? In July? or on a weekly basis starting this weekend?

[marcovg]

Hi Stacey,

I just finished to device my 1st mgmat test:

QUANT:

I solve 23 questions out of 35.
Takeaways: I have Time management issues, especially with PS questions. These kinds of questions are like the ones that I used to solve back in high school or in the university. I didn’t have the GMAT MINDSET that you mentioned in your articles. I just got carried away trying to solve the problem. I think these stats don’t reflect my real quant because I didn’t answer all the questions, BUT it really helped me understand the right way to approach the GMAT quant section. As for the content and topic, I see I have weakness with number properties and quadratic eq. Although it wasn’t tested in the exam, I do have problems with combinatorics and permutation. As for my study plan, this week I will review MGMAT books (refresh some concepts and basics) number properties, FDP and Word problems and then do some drills (with you quality over quantity approach) under timed conditions of course. These three books represent my weaknesses and of course a big chunk of GMAT exam.

By question format:
PS: 43% right out of 14 questions difficulty ranging 600 to 660. My timing is the worst 3:58 RIGHT and 4:15 WRONG questions.
DS: 60% right out of 10 questions difficulty ranging from 550 to 650. My timing was 1:51 Right questions and 1:58 wrong questions.

By difficulty:
PS: I got right 100% 300-500 questions and 500 -600 questions, 22% right 600-700 questions and 50% 700-800 questions.
DS: I got right 100% 300-500 questions and 500 -600 questions, and 43% right 600-700 questions.

By topics:
Linear equations: 50%, Exponent & Roots: 100%, Quadratic equations: 0%, Formulas: 50%.

VERBAL

I answered all the questions, 41 out of 41.
Takeaways: For Verbal, during the exam I knew I was doing great at SC, because I’ve been doing SC drills EVERYDAY at least 5 sc questions. I know that if I want to improve my score, SC has to be my propriety. I will continue with my habit of doing SC questions every day, but I will study those questions like you said in your article. Something odd in my report is that I had 33% correct of 600-700 level questions which represents 1 out of 3 questions. My conclusion here is that both wrong answers were related to grammar English, so I will have to read more of GMAT grammar (I downloaded a gmatclub grammar book that looks very strong in these kind of content). For CR, I think I can do better, I know the basics, find the conclusion, premises etc and apply some techniques such as negate, etc. The problem (TBH, I don’t know whether is a problem or not using them lol) is that I don’t use this techniques because I find them I little waste of time; instead, what I do is pre-think. I find pre-thinking VERY useful. Last but not least, RC... I don’t really like it, but in order to improve my score in RC, I read the economist (it is my homepage, I read at least 1 article a day). This way, I get used to English grammar, vocabulary, and I improve my reading speed and my understanding (I indirectly study for SC in that I see how are the sentences structured, clauses, punctuation, etc.)
So as for Verbal goes, as I said before, I will continue to practice and practice, but with your approach.

By question format:
SC: 67% correct, difficulty ranging from 740 to 710. My timing was 1:59 (right) and 1:58 (wrong)
CR: 57% correct, difficulty ranging from 700 to 730. My timing was 1:19 (right) and 2:12 (wrong)
RC: 42% correct, difficulty ranging from 690 to 710. My timing was 2:04 (right) and 1:33 (wrong)

By difficulty:
SC: 33% correct of 600-700 and 75% correct of 700-800 questions.
CR: 100% correct of 500-600 and 67% correct of 600-700 qs and 50% correct of 700-800 qs
RC: 75% correct of 600-700 qs and 29% correct of 700-800qs

By topics:
SC: BEST at SVA, MOD, Concision, Parallelism and Comparisons, Worst at Quantity and Idioms
CR: BEST at Evaluate the Argument and Worst at Describe the role.
RC: Best at passage structure and WORST at inference (1 out of 4)

Overall, my plan is to Study each question format a day, (with a quant focus pattern) for example: PS, DS, SC, PS, DS, CR, PS, DS, RC and so on. I will start today with PS till June 22nd when I will do my 2nds mock test.

If I follow this plan, I would have studied for 6 days PS, 6 days DS, 2 days for SC (I will try to do at least 5 SC everyday), 1 day of CR (I will try to do a couple of CR questions everyday) and 1 day of RC (plus reading journals)

Per question format I plan to study:
PS: Number properties, Inequalities, FDP and word problems (the same for DS).
For verbal in general, I plan to read the gmatclub grammar book first, then study SC: IDIOMS, and SVA and practice the rest of topics, but a lot of emphasis on IDIOMS.
CR: Practice inference questions and boldface question (I hate this qs, hit or miss most of the time)
RC: Read the economist and other journals and practice GMAT passages.

The books that I will use for this first stage are MGMAT books and OG 13th (although I know every questions answer, I will redo them, from start to finish and I will go further, and try to understand what is behind these questions). I also have Kaplan but I don't find them useful and I don't trust them.

On a side note, I bought the GMAT quant and verbal review, I think I will use them after my 2nd mock test. I don't want to waste them.

Finally, I wanted to say that even though I have 3 months of study I don't find them a waste of time, but a stage where I could get used to the questions the gmat throws at and build some of the basics. The good news is that I realize how to attack the gmat thanks to your articles.

Well, as I said before, I’m very optimistic and I do want to improve my gmat score. I will completely redesign my studies habits as I plan to do my next mock test one week before July. Lets see how it goes.

MV

p.s when you say "it will take 2 months to improve X score or 3 months" what are the things that you consider? Is it because your meticulous technique of study? a common indicator?

[StaceyKoprince]

when do you recommend me to practice CAT exams (I have 7 left, 2 GMATPREP and 5 MGMAT)? In July? or on a weekly basis starting this weekend?

When you have made substantial progress attacking the weaknesses you identified from your last CAT. That usually means a minimum of 2 weeks and often more like 3 or 4.

Practice CATs 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.

when you say "it will take 2 months to improve X score or 3 months" what are the things that you consider?

I'm just giving averages based on what I've seen from thousands of students over the last 20 years. :) Also, I won't say that it will take 2 months to improve to X score, because I don't know whether a particular person will *ever* get to that score, let alone when. Too many variables.

I will say, on the other hand, that someone is unlikely to get to X score in a certain period of time - again, just based on the averages that I've seen over the years. Some people do get a 100-point improvement in 4 weeks... but most don't.

On to your review. Number Properties (divis and prime, odd even pos neg) and quadratic equations are relatively frequently tested - therefore important. Combinatorics and probability are infrequently tested - therefore not important. Don't spend much time on the latter.

The other major takeaway is that your time is fine on DS but way too slow on PS, which means your major problem is with computation. You know a lot of the concepts (which is why you can do DS), but you struggle to do the actual work (which is why you struggle with PS). So you've got a lot of work to do on actual solution processes.

For SC, when you're only talking about 3 questions, don't read as much into the percentages. You had 2 holes in your foundation; they both happened to be tested in 6-7 level questions. That's okay - just go learn those things now. :)

You mention that, on CR, you don't use the "techniques" because you find them a waste of time, but you also say that you think you could do better. That involves changing something. It might be that the techniques that you've tried to learn don't work for you, true, but it might also be that you haven't spent enough time to really learn how to use them effectively and efficiently.

In any event, you've got to change something in order to get better, so you'll have to think about what that is. Check this out as one possibility:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... g-problem/

Back to SC. Your timing is too slow - it needs to be closer to 1m20s on average. Read the articles linked in this article:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... orrection/

You're going a bit fast on RC; if you can get your SC timing down, that will help your RC performance.

RC
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... p-passage/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -passages/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -passages/

RC infer:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/a ... estion.cfm
another one:
https://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/inde ... m-passage/

For CR, don't worry about boldface - chances are you'll get just one on the test. The four major types (most common) are find the assumption, strengthen, weaken, and inference - concentrate on those.

here's CR infer:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... e-Problem/

Okay - you've got a plan. Let me know how it goes!

[marcovg]

Hi Stacey, how are you?

I finished my 2nd MGMAT CAT and I score 610 (Q40, V33).
As you can see I improve from 490 to 610. I attribute this improvement thanks to your article and the right GMAT mindset. Now that I know how to tackle each question, I have 1 month to polish my weaknesses and practicing with other CATS I still have available.

I have been revising my exam, quant and verbal I see I got some questions right by educated guess and other question I got them wrong because of pressure. TBH I felt like I was rushing, I had 4 mins left in my last quant exam. I did every question again to see whether the pressure of the clock played a role and certainly did. I realize that those "bizarre" question are actually easy. I significantly improve in Num Prop, which was a weakness but I had trouble in other areas, especially Geometry and Rates, topics that I felt comfortable beofre. I unbalance my study. As for timing, they are just right under 2 mins for PS and DS.

For verbal, I improve in CR (50%) and RC too (50%) correct. Before (30%s in both). SC is my strongest section (70%) correct. In order to surpass my 33/34 verbal score to a +38 I will study RC and CR as you said.

Realistically My Target score is 670! I have to improve 60 points in 30 days. I will do everything I can to do this. I will make a study plan and I will post it so that you can comment and give me some feedback, please :)

Thanks in advance!

Marco

[StaceyKoprince]

That's great - nice work!

I will warn you: the higher you go, the harder it gets to go even higher. It's possibly that another month will be enough, but it's also very possibly that you'll need more time to get up to 670. If you don't have a hard deadline, give yourself the flexibility to take it when you're ready - it's not terrible to postpone if you need to do so. (You don't need to make a decision now - see how it goes for the next couple of weeks.)

You'll *always* feel time pressure, no matter how good you get - that's how they design the test. Read this newer article (I don't think I gave it to you before):
https://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/inde ... lly-tests/

Okay, let me know your plan when you have it!

[marcovg]

Hi Stacey,

While revising my 2nd CAT exam, I see a disproportion regarding the level of difficulty of the questions that I had to answer. The ratio is the following:
RATIO
500-600: 5 1
600-700: 13 3
700-800: 19 4

Why the test threw at me more 700-800 level questions? I could answer 6 out of 19, really damaging my quant percentile. I understand how the GMAT works (adaptive) but I think that answering 6 questions out of 19 is kind of odd.

I have been scoring around 40 in quant. Does this mean that I have reach the 600s plateau and now I have to focus on more difficult questions? Or was the exam "unbalance" regarding level of difficulty? My goal is 670 as you know.

Thanks in advance.

Marco

[StaceyKoprince]

That is exactly how the test works. It gives you a wide range of questions around your general scoring level, looking for what you can AND can't answer. They want you to get a lot wrong - that actually confirms that they're placing you at the "right" level with the score.

Now, how did you do on those questions? If you got all of the 500-600 and 600-700 level questions right, then you can start to move in general to higher level questions (though be aware that you should still review lower-level ones periodically to ensure that mistakes don't creep in).

If you missed some of those lower levels ones, then you need to figure out why and what you need to do to get those right in future.

It's probably going to be the case that you missed some of the lower level ones - careless mistakes, holes in your foundation, whatever. So the answer is probably going to be a mix: you have some lower-level skills to develop but you can also start working on harder levels too.

[marcovg]

Hi Stacey,

I just finished my 3rd CAT and I scored 600 (Q43 V29)

As you can see, my overall score dropped, but my quant actually got better. The last couple of weeks I have been dedicating more time to study math, and I have put aside verbal. This was a really bad move.

As you can see I have been progressing in quant, but my verbal score has dropped significantly:
490 Q29 V34 June 4th
610 Q40 V33 June 22nd
600 Q43 V29 July 6th

For this week, I will dedicated at least 70% of the time to verbal and rebuild my 34-ish level I had. At this moment, I am reviewing my mock test. The most significant takeaway I have found so far is that my % of correct answer in SC has dropped and is the reason of my low verbal score. Before, this was the topic I felt I dominated. I have to rebuild this confidence. For the next 3 Mock test I will do it with IR. Ill keep you posted.

Marco

p.s. I have a question, what is my real level? this last exam 600 or my two best scores 43 and 34 in Q and V respectively. The thing is that Now I know what I need to score a 43 in Q and a 34 in Verbal. If I combine these scores, I would get a 640. Ill appreciate your point of view.

[StaceyKoprince]

Good work on quant! I'll answer your last question first: your current level is around 600.

The schools will never separate the scores; they'll take your one highest score from a single official test. Yes, if you can get your best two scores on one test, then your score will be higher - but, until you've done it, you're not there yet. :)

You are making progress, though - you just have to learn how to put the two performances together. So, yes, do start working on verbal again - but don't neglect quant! You need to find a way to balance the two.

Next, you said that you will do IR on the next 3 tests. Does that mean you haven't been doing IR on these earlier tests? If so, then your score may be lower than 600. Skipping the IR (and essay!) gives your brain a lot more energy for Q and V - so those scores might be artificially inflated. Let's hope that your scores will hold up when you take tests under official conditions, but don't be surprised if your scores drop and you have to work to build up that mental stamina.

[marcovg]

Hi Stacey!

During this last weeks, I was completely off the GMAT because my boss recommended me to apply for a position outside the country, an event that really distracted me. Since I wasn't selected (the guy who selected has an MBA, what an irony), I am more than determined to ace the GMAT and get my MBA.

I resumed my studies on August 1st and I did my 4th CAT MGMAT exam yesterday. I scored 620 (Q41, V 34) with IR and Essay for the first time (my best combine score). I am happy with the results. I feel that doing an essay and working through IR really helps my brain to warm up, just before tackling Quant and Verbal. Today, as I was assessing my exam, I found different places for improvement, from concept errors to silly mistakes (WOW!).

I wanted to do this exam to test myself and have a notion where I stand at this point. Now, I more than ready to study for this month and to sit on the GMAT on September. I am will not rush anymore. My goal is to score between 680 and 650. I have to improve +40 points.

For this month and the next one, I plan on studying this couple of weeks and do my 5th CAT Exam on August 23rd. Then, I will do my 6th CAT on august 30th, and finally, by mid September, I will do GMAT Prep 1 and 2 exams. I heard that GMAT Prep exams are the most accurate predictor of the real test, so it is recommendable to do both exams in the last part of the preparation.

Ill keep you updated!

Regards,

Marco

[StaceyKoprince]

Great! Good work.

Don't pick specific dates now for your practice tests. You take a practice test when you feel that you have made significant progress in at least some areas since you last took a practice test. Don't force it just to take a test - the whole point is to see how you've *changed* since the last test. You'll waste a test (and a whole day!) if you take a test based on some pre-determined calendar even if you're not ready.

Good luck!