630@MGMAT

abhijit_s_2000 · Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 11:02 am Post subject: 630@MGMAT

Hi,
I got a 630(43Q, 32V) score in MGMAT. I have just 20 days left for GMAT.
Should i postpone the date. I want a 700+ score. I need help in CR section of GMAT. Its my major weakness. I just get 50% of CR questions right. I have been struggling in CR section right from begining of GMAT preparations. Actually i have aversion for reading small passages in CR.
Can anybody help and guide me. Any help will be appreciated.

Regards
Abhijit

beatthegmat · Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 2:09 pm Post subject:

How have you been performing on GMATPrep tests? These tests are the most accurate indicator of your GMAT performance.

mjjking · Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2007 9:21 am Post subject: GMATPrep

They are the most accurate, but they are only two! I took the first one before start studying and I got 590... after three week I took a MGMAT test and took 650... I guess I have improved!

Stacey Koprince · Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 6:31 pm Post subject:

Not to bring you down, but know that all of these tests have standard deviations - no one test gives you a score that is exactly your score. You could take 5 tests in a row and have pretty different scores every time. So any practice test isn't a super-accurate indicator of the score you can expect on test day - even the official GMAT itself.

The standard deviation on the official GMAT is about 30 points. The GMATPrep standard deviation is not published but will be higher than 30 points because it is not the real thing. The standard deviation on MGMAT tests is about 50 points.

Guest · Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2007 8:51 pm Post subject:

Hi,

I got another jolt at MGMAT. In my second test at Manhattan i score i meagre 540 (Quant: 39, Verbal: 27).

I am really demoralised and I am planning to cancel GMAT.
I think its not my cup of tea. I have put i lot of effort for CR, but still score are just not improving in CR. I have been reading from all sites for RC but no change in accuracy. My GMAT date is just 5 weeks. Do I stand any chance of crossing 700. I kindly request members in the forum to offer tips for CR and RC.

abhijit_s_2000 · Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2007 8:52 pm Post subject:

Hi,

I got another jolt at MGMAT. In my second test at Manhattan i score i meagre 540 (Quant: 39, Verbal: 27).

I am really demoralised and I am planning to cancel GMAT.
I think its not my cup of tea. I have put i lot of effort for CR, but still score are just not improving in CR. I have been reading from all sites for RC but no change in accuracy. My GMAT date is just 5 weeks. Do I stand any chance of crossing 700. I kindly request members in the forum to offer tips for CR and RC

Stacey Koprince · Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2007 9:44 pm Post subject:

In order to improve at anything, you have to have a very concrete understanding of your strengths and weaknesses. And in order to provide you with a useful answer to "how do I improve?" we need a detailed outline of those strengths and weaknesses, too.

The way I tell my different students to improve varies drastically based upon what I see on their tests, what I see when we work together, and what they tell me they've learned themselves about their strengths and weaknesses.

You wrote about 15 days ago that you had 20 days to go, and asked if you should postpone the test. It doesn't sound like you are prepared to hit the target score you are seeking so, yes, you should postpone. Don't let one test result cause you to be so discouraged that you quit, however! The one certain thing is that you won't hit a 700 if you don't even try.

You may need to take a class or do some private tutoring to improve significantly on the verbal. The fact that you asked for a generic "how do I improve" without detail about where you're struggling tells me that you probably need some help right from the start, to diagnose your strengths and weaknesses accurately (and don't feel badly about that - a lot of people come on these forums asking this pretty generic question, and I tell them the exact same things I'm telling you!).

FYI your actual accuracy level won't change much - as you get better, you start getting harder questions, so everyone's accuracy level stays at about 50%, regardless of the score level (except at the very high and low ends).

Guest · Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2007 11:05 pm Post subject:

Hi Stacy,

Thanks for the reply. My sterngths and weakenness are as follows:

1) SC: Sentence Correction (I usually have 70% accuracy)
2) PS: Problem Solving (Around 80% accuracy)
3) DS: Data Sufficiency (Around 80% accuracy)

My weakness are:

1) RC: Reading Comprehension (Around 50% accuracy)
2) CR: Critical Reasoning (Around 50% accuracy).

The area of weakness in CR are as follows:

1) Take a long time (2-3 minutes to solve CR questions)
2) Usually founder at assumption, strengthen and weaken questions.
3) Takes a long time for me to identify the pattern of argument and implicit assumptions

Area of weakness in CR are as follows:
1) Take a long time to read passage
2) Generally make mistakes in tricky questions where the answer is not direct in passage

My approach to resolve these weaknesses:

CR:
1) Solve the 1000 CR document and questions in forum. Spent as much time as possible to undertand the pattern and stimulus of question.
2) Solve 20-25 questions at a go to build stamina and speed

RC:
1) Read editorials and articles from sites such as McKinseyQuarterly, Yale Global, NYTimes, Project Syndicate
2) Make an outline of entire passage as suggested in Manhattan RC guide.

I have been following these approches for last 2-3 months. For CR I have been trying since 3-4 months. But there is no improvement.

Hence I am a bit frustrated. I would appreciated if you could provide me some guidance.

Regards
Abhijit.

abhijit_s_2000 · Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 3:00 am Post subject:

Hi Stacy,

Thanks for the reply. My sterngths and weakenness are as follows:

1) SC: Sentence Correction (I usually have 70% accuracy)
2) PS: Problem Solving (Around 80% accuracy)
3) DS: Data Sufficiency (Around 80% accuracy)

My weakness are:

1) RC: Reading Comprehension (Around 50% accuracy)
2) CR: Critical Reasoning (Around 50% accuracy).

The area of weakness in CR are as follows:

1) Take a long time (2-3 minutes to solve CR questions)
2) Usually founder at assumption, strengthen and weaken questions.
3) Takes a long time for me to identify the pattern of argument and implicit assumptions

Area of weakness in CR are as follows:
1) Take a long time to read passage
2) Generally make mistakes in tricky questions where the answer is not direct in passage

My approach to resolve these weaknesses:

CR:
1) Solve the 1000 CR document and questions in forum. Spent as much time as possible to undertand the pattern and stimulus of question.
2) Solve 20-25 questions at a go to build stamina and speed

RC:
1) Read editorials and articles from sites such as McKinseyQuarterly, Yale Global, NYTimes, Project Syndicate
2) Make an outline of entire passage as suggested in Manhattan RC guide.

I have been following these approches for last 2-3 months. For CR I have been trying since 3-4 months. But there is no improvement.

Hence I am a bit frustrated. I would appreciated if you could provide me some guidance.

Regards
Abhijit.

Stacey Koprince · Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 11:50 am Post subject:

Oh, good, you do know a lot about your strengths and weaknesses!

Just FYI - you start with a list of percentage correct. That's really not how the test is scored, so that's not necessarily a great indication of strengths and weaknesses. (It's directionally accurate, obviously, but it's not the primary factor you should be considering.)

Are you using our 2007 edition of the RC and CR guides or the older one (one book that contained both)? If you're using the older ones, I really hate to suggest that anyone spend more money, but the newer guides we just published a couple of months ago are substantially better.

I don't know where you're located but if you can get to a Barnes & Noble or other big bookstore, you might want to drop by and browse through the new ones to see if they would be of more help to you. (The two topics have been split into two separate books now.)

Another thing you don't mention but that is crucial to doing well on CR and RC is a thorough understanding of the wrong answers. Are you spending as much time understanding why the wrong answers are wrong as you spend understanding why the right answer is right? A large part of CR and RC is simply process of elimination - you find the four wrong answers and cross them off and whatever you're left with is the right answer.

If you are struggling with identifying assumptions and getting the structure or pattern of the argument, then trying to spot the wrong answers, rather than the right answer, may really help you.

It looks like you're also, in general, spending a lot of time reading on both CR and RC. Here, you really need to make sure you're only getting the basics, especially for RC. DON'T get into the detail, DON'T try to understand every last thing in the passage. Just understand the high level stuff - what's the one sentence you could use to summarize each paragraph? If you can answer, or even begin to answer, any detailed questions without first having to go back to the passage and figure things out, then you're reading too much on your first read-through. You just want to know where the detail is located on your first read-through, so you can find it easily if you get a question on it - but you don't actually want to understand it at that point. You'll try to understand if (and only if) you get a question on it.

Remember for RC that you will only get 3-4 questions for a passage, though they will have written 6-8 questions overall. So you won't get questions about everything that's in the passage. (You will see all of the questions in the OG - but not on the official test.)

Also, as much as possible, work from OG. This is true for the whole test, but particularly for RC and CR because there are no facts to work from here. It all hinges on the language of the question-writer and how s/he structures the passage / argument and question(s), so you need to make sure that you are working from the actual source. Don't use 1000 CR. And I wouldn't spend too much time reading articles / editorials, either. Go to the source - OG. Pick those apart until you start to get a feel for how they write the passages / arguments, how they write wrong answer choices, what things are intended to be traps to get you to pick the wrong answer, etc.

abhijit_s_2000 · Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 9:09 pm Post subject:

Hi Stacy,
Many thanks. I am using the older version of Manhattn guide for CR and RC (a single guide for CR and RC). I followed the technique suggested in the book of diagramming for CR. I tried the technique for a week, but I found that it slowed my speed. Hence i stopped the diagramming technique for CR. I am located in India. Is the new version of Manhattan guide available in Inida??

I have tried the questions in CR from OG 11. I have tried all the questions in OG. When I retry these questions I know answers for most of the questions. That acts as a show stopper.

To improve on CR, for every wrong answer in CR I track the argument structure in Flash Cards e.g. Find:..., Consumptions:.....,Best way to tackle:.... I really don't spend much time on right answers. I would like to know from you as to how to improve from right answers. When i get aCR wrong, I try it again till i get it right. However even after following these techniques my speed and accuracy in CR is not increasing.
What are techniques to eliminate wrong answers in CR. If I can't locate an answer in CR i try to re-read the passage, that sucks my speed. I would appreciate if you can offer some tips in this regard.

About RC. I tried the strategy in Manhatann guide. I make a skeletal map of passage.However i get stumped by tricky question in RC. Typically not the inference questions but questions whose answers are not stated directly in the passage. Worst thing when I tried analtyzing my last CAT in Manhattan I couldn't answer why my answer was wrong.

While analysing my CAT, I try to find out why my answers are wrong in SC, PS and DS. However I can't identify why I went wrong in CR and RC.
I would appreciate if you can tell me how to analyze CR and RC questions in CAT for improvement.

Last question to you is if I don't attempt question in CAT, how much does it lower my score. I n my last Manhattn CAT I attempted only 29 questions in Quant and 35 in Verbal. I generally try to spend more time in initial questions to get them right.

Regards
Abhijit.

Stacey Koprince · Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 9:24 pm Post subject:

Ah, okay. We've found your problem. Any question you don't answer is marked wrong and, because of the way the CAT works, a string of wrong answers in a row is the absolute worst thing - it will kill your score. That's why your score went down so much. Well, better to learn that on a practice test than on the real thing!

It is a myth that you should spend more time on early questions. DO NOT DO THIS. I'm going to start calling it an urban legend because so many people believe it.

Your accuracy does not improve when you spend more than about 2.5 minutes on a question - in fact, the more time you spend after that point, the more your accuracy goes DOWN. This has been proven in formal studies and I make my students go look at the questions on which they spend more than 3 minutes on their tests and add up their results - just for those. Do that - prove to yourself that going way over on time doesn't actually help you.

In fact, you end up hurting yourself twice - you get a lot of those questions wrong anyway when you spend too much time, and then you also don't have time for questions at the end. No matter how good you get, the test WILL throw things at you that you can't do. The trick is to identify those and let them go, rather than blowing way too much time on them.

I will post another post about CR / RC - I don't have the time right now to answer that part. But you HAVE to fix your timing - if you do this on the real test, you will not do as well as you could with proper timing.

abhijit_s_2000 · Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 12:40 pm Post subject:

Hey Stacy,
Tell me one thing. I got 8 out first 20 questions in verbal wrong and I attempted only 35 in verbal.Now my low score in verbal is due to more incorrect questions in first 20 or not atempting the last 6 questions.

Stacey Koprince · Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 2:02 pm Post subject:

The biggest factor in your score is just the mix of difficulty levels in the questions that you got right vs. wrong throughout the entire test.

Each question is worth the same amount, so in a vaccuum, it hurts you more to get 8 questions wrong than 6. But 6 in a row is worse than 6 spread out because of the way the algorithm works.

I can't directly answer the question b/c I would need to know the difficulty levels of the questions in each group to know how much it hurt you. But we can assume that, of the 8 that you got wrong, you really should have gotten most of those wrong (that is, they were too hard for you) because you actually tried them. This is as compared with the 6 at the end that you skipped: at least some of those would have been questions you could do.

The algorithm essentially penalizes you more for getting things wrong that it expected you to know how to do, based upon past performance. (That's not exactly what's happening, but it's the easiest way to think about it without really explaining the entire algorithm.) So, those 6 at the end likely hurt you a lot more than the 8 out of 20 at the beginning because, as the computer marks each skipped question "wrong" it keeps "giving" easier questions next - to the point that you likely could have done the majority of those questions - and the downward score impact just spirals. (Though, again, I'd need to know the individual difficulty levels of those questions to be able to show you that definitively.)

abhijit_s_2000 · Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 9:23 pm Post subject:

Hi Stacy,

Thanks for the response. Actually MGMAT doesn't provide details of the question skipped, hence I can't provide details of the skipped questions.

Meanwhile could you please post about RC/CR improvement points.