Timing Dunce Cap

[dwmay35]

Timing is everything in life and on the GMAT.

I thought I would provide my two cents for all the future GMAT test takers out there, as well as to selfishly clear my own head. I took it this morning and received a 640 (46Q - 32V). My target score is 700, so obviously I’m a little disappointed. I would say that I have studied intensively (about 10 hours during the work week; and 12+ hours on the weekend breaking my Saturday and Sunday up into 3 or 4 segments per day) for most of August and September. I studied for a bit of time last winter and reviewed most of that material in July. I would say that I was diligent in my preparation and focused on mastering content early on. I’m an American, my work background is in accounting and finance, and I have a MAcc from a strong state school.

I’ve taken tests from a few different sites, including MGMAT, 800score, and the GMAT Prep. On Quant, I was scoring anywhere from 44 to 48, so a 46 score today wasn’t surprising. My verbal was steady in the mid 30s until 7 or 8 days ago. Over the last week, my verbal began to really pick up steam; I scored a 43, 44, and 44 on the 800 Score practice tests on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Today, I was expecting a score line around 45Q and 40V based on my last minute push on verbal.

During my final practice days, I focused on spending a little extra time on the first 7 or 8 problems, knowing full well that I would have to make up that time elsewhere. In practice, I made up that time on the last 7 or 8 questions by quickly guessing on Reasoning problems and actually solving the Sentence Correction Problems. If a Reading Comp passage appeared, I would try to solve the easier questions (like main point, find X in the passage) and guess on the more detailed questions. It seemed to work on practice tests.

Also, I’ve heard many different things about the first 7 or 8 questions. I’ve heard that you need to get almost all of the first 7/8 problems right in order to get harder problems and a higher score. I’ve heard that the last 5 or 6 problems don’t affect your score much on verbal and that all questions are weighted equally. I’m not a test maker and I don’t have the keys to the GMAT algorithm. However, I can attest that no matter how well you have done on the first 7 or 8 problems, if you have 11 minutes to do 14 problems, your score is going to suffer at the end.

On the first 9 questions of today’s exam, I received 3 sentence corrections and a simpler reasoning question. Then I received a medium level reading comp passage followed by a Reasoning Flaw question and then a Boldface question (Correct me if I am wrong, but I think these are the hardest of the CR questions). Because I received 2 of the hardest verbal question types early and I was nearly 100% confident of every answer choice I made, I deduced that I had achieved my goal of answering the first 7 or 8 questions correct. I also started to receive some very lengthy underlined sections of SC problems after the Boldface question.

I believe I had about 52 minutes remaining after answering the 9th question. I was about 5 minutes behind on time, but it was certainly correctable at that point. I just needed to move quickly on the middle 20-25 questions and make up some ground. However, I was never able to do this and failed miserably because I was not able to do so. I was in a slower gear from the start and couldn’t get back into "eliminate 3 answer choices, pick one, and move on" mode. I stretched my strategy of "spending a little extra time on the first 7 or 8 questions" into "spending a little extra time on the first 17 or 18 questions". This is what cost me the most. I got stuck on too many questions in the middle round and would spend too much time deciding between 2 answer choices instead of taking my 50/50 shot in a few seconds. I would love to see a detailed score report, because I would venture to guess that I was 80% correct for the first half of the test and 80% wrong for the second half of the test.

So what can you (and I) learn from this?

1. Timing is everything - Correct it quickly because it only gets worse as the minutes dwindle.

2. Have a back-up plan for the worst scenario - No one plans to have 11 minutes to do the final 14 problems. If you find yourself in a similar situation, know what questions you will guess quickly on and what questions you will answer.

Good luck to everyone in your GMAT prep. Be sure to avoid wearing the Timing Dunce Cap that is currently atop my head.

GMAT: see you again in 31 days.

[StaceyKoprince]

I'm sorry you learned this lesson the hard way. Thanks for sharing your story. It is, in fact, a myth that the earlier questions will "lock" you into a higher score and that the later ones don't really matter much. In practice, it really does work out to be the case that All Questions Are Made (nearly) Equal.

Read these two articles:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... to-win-it/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... nt-part-1/

And start doing what they say. :)

Re: boldface questions, while many students do find these more challenging than other types, it's perfectly possible to get a medium-level boldface question. They're not only hard. It's a really bad idea to play the "how am I doing?" game while taking the test. You can never really know and you're risking messing yourself up during the section. Just address the question in front of you right now - to the best of your ability in a reasonable* amount of time. Then move on to the next one. (*Reasonable defined as roughly within the expected timing guidelines, as shown in that time management article above.)

If you'd like to get more detailed advice for your future studies, use the below to analyze your most recent MGMAT CAT(s):
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... ice-tests/

Then come back here and tell us the results of your analysis and what you think you should do based on that analysis. (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!)