The Studying Dip
I have a GRE class that’s right now winding down to our couple final classes, and the first panicked email has just come in. This always happens in GRE (and GMAT and LSAT) classes as the end approaches. People start freaking out, because they’re studying, and they’re learning things, and they know more than they did before “ but the score isn’t budging. Or if it is budging, it’s not increasing enough! Or worst, it’s going down! And they start to lose hope. But they’re just in the dip.
The Studying Dip
When Seth Godin wrote about The Dip, he was talking about the time in a business where you feel like things will never improve, but they’re just about to get better. He was trying to quantify, or at least clarify, when you should stick with it despite the obstacles, versus when you are just on a steady downward streak.
When we talk about the dip, we’re talking about that time in studying for a standardized test when you’re working, and working, and working, and you wonder, Is this working?
The Bad News
Let’s start with the bad news first. The bad news is that if what you’re doing isn’t making your score go up, after a number of weeks, you have to change it. But this section is very short because that’s the only bad news.
The Good News
Exercise Makes You Smarter
I just read a really fascinating post on the New York Times’ Well blog. We’ve known for a long time that exercise has a whole host of good benefits, including benefits associated with memory. Two recent studies have delved even deeper into how this works.
How does exercise help memory?
In the blog post, New York Times journalist Gretchen Reynolds details the two new studies¾one conducted on humans and the other conducted on rats.
In the human study, elderly women who already had some mild cognitive impairment were split into three groups. One group lifted weights, the second group engaged in moderate aerobic exercise, and the third group did yoga-like activities.
The participants were tested at the beginning and end of the 6-month exercise period and the results were striking. First, bear in mind that, in general, we would expect elderly people who are already experiencing mental decline to continue down that path over time. Indeed, after 6 months, the yoga group (our control group) showed a mild decline in several aspects of verbal memory.
The weight-training and aerobic groups, by contrast, actually improved their performance on several tests (remember, this was 6 months later!). In particular, these groups were not losing as much of their older memories and they even became faster at some spatial memory tests involving memorizing the location of three items. In other words, the women were both better at making new memories and better at remembering / retrieving old ones!
Using The 5 lb. Book To Study Advanced Quant
I’ve got another one for you from our 5 lb. Book of GRE Practice Problems, and this one’s serious. I took it from the Advanced Quant chapter. Try it out and then we’ll chat!
Triplets Adam, Bruce, and Charlie enter a triathlon. There are nine competitors in the triathlon. If every competitor has an equal chance of winning, and three medals will be awarded, what is the probability that at least two of the triplets will win a medal?
(A) 3/14
(B) 19/84
(C) 11/42
(D) 15/28
(E) 3/4
© ManhattanPrep, 2013
Yuck. I’m not a fan of probability in general and this one is particularly annoying. Why? Because they ask for the probability that at least two will win. Most of the time, when a probability question uses at least or at most language, we can use the cool 1 “ x shortcut because there’s only one not-included case.
For example, if I tell you I’m going to flip a coin three times, I might ask you to calculate the probability that I’ll get at least one heads. There’s only one case where I wouldn’t: zero heads. So you can just calculate the probability of zero heads and subtract from 1.
But we can’t do that here, because it’s possible for just 1 twin to win a medal and it’s also possible for zero twins to win a medal. Sigh.
Okay, how are we going to tackle this? Probability is a measure of the number of desired outcomes divided by the total number of possibilities. Let’s figure out the total number of possibilities first.
Take a look at the question again. Is this one of those questions where the order matters? If you don’t win, you don’t win. If you do win, does the question make a distinction between coming in first, second, or third?
I Feel The Earth Move Under My Feet
Many a true word is said in jest.—I don’t know, but I heard it from my mother.
I moved to Los Angeles, to a little bungalow in Laurel Canyon, the day before the Northridge earthquake. Timing is everything, just like on the GRE. I woke up around 3 in the morning. Because the bungalow was jumping up and down. As a stupid easterner, I thought, Oh, it’s an earthquake. They have them here. I didn’t know it was The Medium One. (It was amazing to see the damage—piles of rubble on Ventura Boulevard and in Hollywood, and the I-10 ramp to the 405 fell down.) As long as I was awake, I decided to go to the bathroom. The first big aftershock threw me into the door frame. It’s unsettling not to have a firm foundation under your feet. You feel out of control and at the mercy of forces larger than you.
And that’s the way students feel about the GRE. And for the same reason, metaphorically speaking. In every GRE class I’ve taught, most of the students were bewitched, bothered, and bewildered by the shakiness of their foundation knowledge. The ground was not firm beneath their feet. It paralyzed them. They understood the concepts of the problems and the relevant strategies to employ, but could not then solve the problems in a timely manner, if at all. Especially on the quant side, the GRE tests a logic system—be precise, don’t assume, pick the choice that must follow. The arithmetic and algebra are the moral equivalent of reading English. You would like to be able to take those skills as much for granted as you do reading words. When I say 7 times 13, you say 91. Think of it as a rap. When you see .625, you say 5/8. Woot. All seriousness aside, people waste 30 seconds a question in the quant because they don’t know their times tables or squares or the fractional decimal percentage equivalencies. Or their algebra isn’t smooth and silky. Think about how much time that uses up during the section. How do you fix that? How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. That’s a New York joke—LA classes hate it. Having that mastery frees you to identify the type, the approach, and the traps—to do what has to be done to score well.
But I Studied This – I Should Know How To Do It!
When was the last time you thought that? For me, it was sometime within the past week. I knew that this problem was not beyond my reach! Meanwhile, the clock was ticking away and all I could focus on was the fact that I couldn’t remember something that I should have been able to remember.
That horrible, sinking feeling is universal: we’ve all felt it before and “ unfortunately “ we’re all going to feel it again. How can we deal with this?
Recognize the But! feeling
You almost certainly already know what this feels like, but here’s a longer list of the ways in which this manifests. When was the last time you thought any of these things?
– But I studied this
– But I should know how to do this
– If I just had a little more time, I’m sure I could figure it out
– I’ve already invested so much time, I don’t want to give up now
– I’ve been struggling with this for 2 minutes but I really did finally figure out now what I need to do; it’s just going to take me another 1.5 minutes
My Timing Is Killing Me
I’ve written a lot “ and you’ve read a lot “ about timing already, but I want to address something that I’ve been hearing lately from students particularly those who have been studying for a while and are really struggling to make progress on practice tests.
My best timing was on my very first practice test
I’ve spoken with a few students lately who’ve told me that they felt more comfortable with the timing before they started studying all of this stuff. How is that possible?
Actually, it’s fairly common. Here’s what happens: on your first practice test (before or shortly after you started studying), you know what you don’t know and so it’s much easier to let go of the too-hard questions. Once you start studying, you’ll see something and think, Oh, I studied that! I can get this one! But it turns out that one is still too hard only, this time, you won’t let go when you should. Do that a few times and the whole situation snowballs: you realize you’re behind on time, you start to panic and rush, that causes careless mistakes. Then you get stuck on another because you feel like you’re getting a bunch wrong so you don’t want to get this one wrong too now you’re wasting even more time, and then the section ends with a bunch of guesses or even blank questions.
I’m fine with OG / untimed / with shorter problem sets
I’m sure it’s no surprise to you that you’re better when the timer isn’t ticking. We all are. Unfortunately, the real test is timed, so our untimed performance doesn’t matter. Lots of people also discover that everything’s fine when doing sets out of the Official Guide, especially shorter problem sets. This, again, is to be expected “ it’s easier to keep track of your global time for 5 or 10 questions rather than 37 or 41.
So what do I do?
The Role of Confusion in Your Prep
Wait, is that a typo? Maybe I meant Confucius, the Chinese teacher and philosopher?
I actually do mean confusion. ; ) Journalist Annie Murphy Paul recently contributed a post to KQED’s Mind/Shift blog: Why Confusion Can Be a Good Thing.
Go ahead and read it “ I’ll wait. It won’t take you more than 5-10 minutes. Take particular note of item 2 on her 3-item list.
Why Is Confusion Good?
Ms. Murphy Paul supports her thesis with an important point: When we don’t know the right way to do something, we open up our minds to many potential paths “ and sometimes an alternate potential path is better than the official path.
We’ve all had the experience of reading an official solution and thinking, Seriously? That’s how you have to do this? only to find a better way on an online forum or via discussion with a teacher or fellow students.
Further, as far as a test like the GRE is concerned, the discomfort inherent in figuring out that best path allows us to determine why a certain approach is preferable. That knowledge, in turn, helps us to know when we can re-use a certain line of thinking or solution process on a different (but similar) question in future.
How Can I Use Confusion To Help My Prep?
Murphy-Paul offers three suggestions (quotes below are from the article; the rest is just me):
(1) Expose yourself to confusing material
On the GRE, you have no choice: you’re going to be exposing yourself to confusing material every day! So I’ll tweak Murphy-Paul’s suggestion slightly: embrace the confusion. Instead of feeling annoyed or frustrated when that feeling of confusion creeps in, tell yourself: okay, I’m on track here. I’m going to figure this out “ and, when I do, I’m going to remember it because my current confusion is actually going to help me remember better once I do know what I’m doing!
(2) Withhold the answers from yourself
What’s the first thing you do after finishing a problem or problem set? If you’re anything like my students, you look at the answer to see whether you got it right. Is that really the best move?
Read more
GRE Redux: What To Do About The Redo
Took the GRE once and it didn’t go exactly as you planned? Join the club. I’ve always been pretty good at standardized tests, and tests in general. So I thought I could just sort of review the GRE material, show up, and do a great job. But that’s not what happened. I didn’t get a great score. I didn’t even get a good score. I got a terrible score.
The GRE really has a special way of making you feel dumb. The questions look easy, at a glance. You’re just deciding which of two values is bigger, and they’re often expressed in very simple terms. Or you’re picking a word to put in a sentence! And sometimes they are words you’ve heard a thousand times, but you still can’t be quite sure what they mean. It’s not like they’re asking you to build a rocket. And yet there we are, smart, educated people, driven to frustration by this seemingly simple test.
But it’s not simple. You already know that “ presumably, you’re reading this because you’re studying for the GRE. And whether this is the first time you’re taking the test or your getting ready for your next shot, here are a few pieces of advice from someone who’s been there.
Don’t get discouraged.
This might not seem like an important step, but it really is. Succeeding at the GRE takes perseverance, and it’s hard to stick with it if you don’t see success as a possibility.
The 5 lb. Book: Regular Quant Theory Problem
We’ve got another problem for you from our new book, the 5 lb Book of GRE Practice Problems. The book contains more than 1,100 pages of practice problems (and solutions), so you can drill on anything and everything that might be giving you trouble.
This regular problem solving question asks us to pick one correct answer (other variations might ask us to select more than one answer or to type in our own answer). Give yourself approximately 2 minutes to finish (or make a guess).
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The 5 lb. Book: Quantitative Comparisons
Our latest book, the 5 lb. Book of GRE Practice Problems, just hit the shelves! The book contains more than 1,100 pages of practice problems (and solutions), so you can drill on anything and everything that might be giving you trouble.
We’ve already tried out a regular math problem. This time, we’re going to try out one of the weird Quantitative Comparison problems. If the question type looks unfamiliar, or if you just haven’t had much practice with QC yet, you might want to check out this introductory article first.
Alright, are you ready to try one? Give yourself about 1 minute and 15 seconds to do this problem. (Remember that these times are averages, not limits “ you can choose to take a bit longer, but don’t go beyond about 30 seconds longer than the average. At that point, all the extra time is telling you that you don’t really know how to do this one.)
0 < a < < 9
Quantity A Quantity B
9 “ a b/2 – a
© ManhattanPrep, 2013
Yuck. That inequality thing at the top doesn’t look fun. It might have been fine if it said 0 < a < b < 9, but I'm not really sure how to think about that b/2 piece.
Let’s see. So a itself is between 0 and 9. What about b/2? Here’s a cool little trick: when we have a multi-part inequality (an inequality with 3 or more pieces), we can just chop out two parts as long as we keep the correct relationship. So let’s look just at the last two parts: b/2 < 9. Read more