GMAT Strategy

Hi Rich,

It's a bit overdue (2 weeks past after 2nd CAT) but I took my 3rd MGMAT CAT today.

1st CAT - 380 - (Q 22 V 23)
2nd CAT - 460 (Q 27 V 27)
3rd CAT - 450 (Q 25 V 28)

I am not really sure what to take from it. All I know is that studied for almost 50 hours after my 2nd CAT on March 26th (More on this sentence later).

With regards to my 3rd CAT:

1) As always, I tried to take the full test under test conditions. I did hear some noise in my flat and that distracted me a little bit, so I'll take my next CAT in the office. I didn't stop during the test and took the exact 8 min breaks.
2) I believe I improved on my time management skills and didn't have to rush much towards the end. In the Quant part, I did rush a bit towards the end and guessed on the questions I didn't know through the session.
3) On the very last quant question I ran out of time and couldn't submit the answer, which was correct by the way!
4) I am guessing a lot on the Quant part. On my 1st CAT I wasn't using Triage and got 11 questions right out of 24 guesses. Many of those were pure luck ( for instance, getting questions right under 18-50 secs) On the 2nd CAT, I tried to guess strategically not to spend time on questions that I knew I had no clue or when I was stuck so I tried to use Triage and got 4 questions right out of 20 guesses. I believe that my 2nd CAT was very inflated due to the questions I got right while guessing. For instance, I got 15 right out of 37 questions on the 2nd CAT and 15 out of 37 questions on the 3rd CAT. Not really sure what that means. Perhaps I'm answering more questions right without guessing?!

Meanwhile, I have covered 38% (37% Quant and 30% Verbal) of the EMPOWERgmat course and I very keen to go through it till the very end. It has been actually super fun to learn all the math and the verbal part as well.

As I mentioned above, I studied for almost 50 hours in 2 weeks (183 hrs studied so far) and will have studied for approximately 322 hours (according to my Excel) or more by May 11th (Test day is on the 13th). I really hope to complete the EMPOWERgmat course by then. For many people, what I am doing seems insane and definitely sufficient to get a 700+. But I know myself and math was never my strength neither in high school nor in college. I actually learned/re-learned a lot with the Manhattan Foundations of Math and I am learning tons with you and Max. To sum up, I'm slow and a recommended exercise/study session takes usually double time for me, and the same ends up happening on the CATs. I'm sure that if I had more time I could answer many more exercises

Well, apologies for the novel I wrote above.

Tomorrow morning I will spend time digging into the CAT and comparing CAT 2 and CAT 3.

I'll report back after the 4th CAT.

Cheers,
Diego

diegocml wrote:Hi Rich,

It's a bit overdue (2 weeks past after 2nd CAT) but I took my 3rd MGMAT CAT today.

1st CAT - 380 - (Q 22 V 23)
2nd CAT - 460 (Q 27 V 27)
3rd CAT - 450 (Q 25 V 28)

I am not really sure what to take from it. All I know is that studied for almost 50 hours after my 2nd CAT on March 26th (More on this sentence later).

With regards to my 3rd CAT:

1) As always, I tried to take the full test under test conditions. I did hear some noise in my flat and that distracted me a little bit, so I'll take my next CAT in the office. I didn't stop during the test and took the exact 8 min breaks.
2) I believe I improved on my time management skills and didn't have to rush much towards the end. In the Quant part, I did rush a bit towards the end and guessed on the questions I didn't know through the session.
3) On the very last quant question I ran out of time and couldn't submit the answer, which was correct by the way!
4) I am guessing a lot on the Quant part. On my 1st CAT I wasn't using Triage and got 11 questions right out of 24 guesses. Many of those were pure luck ( for instance, getting questions right under 18-50 secs) On the 2nd CAT, I tried to guess strategically not to spend time on questions that I knew I had no clue or when I was stuck so I tried to use Triage and got 4 questions right out of 20 guesses. I believe that my 2nd CAT was very inflated due to the questions I got right while guessing. For instance, I got 15 right out of 37 questions on the 2nd CAT and 15 out of 37 questions on the 3rd CAT. Not really sure what that means. Perhaps I'm answering more questions right without guessing?!

Meanwhile, I have covered 38% (37% Quant and 30% Verbal) of the EMPOWERgmat course and I very keen to go through it till the very end. It has been actually super fun to learn all the math and the verbal part as well.

As I mentioned above, I studied for almost 50 hours in 2 weeks (183 hrs studied so far) and will have studied for approximately 322 hours (according to my Excel) or more by May 11th (Test day is on the 13th). I really hope to complete the EMPOWERgmat course by then. For many people, what I am doing seems insane and definitely sufficient to get a 700+. But I know myself and math was never my strength neither in high school nor in college. I actually learned/re-learned a lot with the Manhattan Foundations of Math and I am learning tons with you and Max. To sum up, I'm slow and a recommended exercise/study session takes usually double time for me, and the same ends up happening on the CATs. I'm sure that if I had more time I could answer many more exercises

Well, apologies for the novel I wrote above.

Tomorrow morning I will spend time digging into the CAT and comparing CAT 2 and CAT 3.

I'll report back after the 4th CAT.

Cheers,
Diego

Hi Diego,

My statistics are a bit different than yours, I am about 17% into the empower course, this is my 3rd week in but I really really take the time into analyzing the hell out of all the questions I got wrong. I am up to the part now where its mostly OG quizzes for all the sections. Pretty much every OG question that I got wrong I keep the #, Mistake, What I did, tracked in an excel sheet. I usually try to redo random 5 problems from that excel tab every few days, and before I re-do those problems, I read my error log Notes, then apply that into actually doing the problem. The log doesnt specifically record how to do the problem, but I write down what I did, and what NOT to do for this particular problem.

I took my 4th MGMAT last Saturday, which was the first CAT exam I took every since I Started Empower, and I got a 70 point increase, 540. 37Q 28V.

Are you sure you are understanding the concepts, formulas, tricks ? I noticed a lot of my errors weren't from lack of material, but from being careless and not THOROUGH enough, like Rich emphasizes to be in most of his videos.

For example today, did about 15-20 problems total, but I have been reviewing everything for about 2.5-3 hours now, before take break for half a day and come back later. It is really important to understand what Rich is saying in his videos, and attempting to redo the problem yourself, but not by memorization, but because of the concept, applying knowledge, and abusing the Test It and Test the Answers approaches.

Let me know if you have any questions - I'm sure Rich will be here any minute with input as well.

Hi bmierz86,

First of all, congrats - that's a sweet improvement on your score! Glad to hear you're progressing well!

I believe I am understanding well the content. Whenever I get an exercise wrong, I also try to understand why I did get it wrong and add it to my error log. For instance, if I get one exercise wrong, I watch Rich's explanation and make sure I am able to apply the same tactics to solve it. But if Rich shows one exercise that I believe to be way too advanced and beyond my league, I am okay with moving on without understanding it 100%. I'd be concerned with those hard exercises if my goal would be to score above 700+. Frankly, I am trying to dissect the exercises I get wrong the best I can, but without sacrificing too much time on them (Don't get me wrong, I'm not neglecting any exercise I get wrong). Since I have 31 days till test day I want to maximize the EMPOWERgmat course within that time frame.
Sometimes I do have problems to replicate some of the methods/concepts in 'new' exercises. But after watching Rich's explanations it all makes sense. I feel very comfortable using Test It, with some challenges on using the correct test scenarios on DS questions. Test the Answer is a tactic I still need to master.

Hi Rich,

I've done a thorough analysis on the quant section of my 3 CAT and found the following.

Out of the 22 questions I missed (including the one I ran out of time), 11 were 'gettable'!



For the 11 'non-gettable' questions, I basically did not know the content. Meanwhile, for the 'gettable' ones, it's a combination of mistakes that I believe to be a result of the pressure/lack of time on the CAT.



I think it's wise to continue with the 2-months study plan and go through all the EMPOWER content. However, the Score Booster seems reasonable, too.

As always, thank you for you valuable feedback.

Cheers,
Diego

Hi Brent,

Only a tiny portion of those errors were due to careless/silly mistakes. I have read that article at least 3 times already.

I actually noticed that I dropped some questions in the middle when I realized that I was spending too much time and had to move on, so I tried to take educated guesses that did not work quite well. Truth is, I could have gotten 11 of them right should I had seen them through the end.

Cheers,
Diego

I think I have hit a plateau.

I took my 4th CAT today and it's quite disheartening.

Economist - 1st CAT - 380 - (Q 22 V 23)
MGMAT - 2nd CAT - 460 (Q 27 V 27)
MGMAT - 3rd CAT - 450 (Q 25 V 28)
MGMAT - 4th CAT - 450 (Q 25 V 28)

Tomorrow I'll dissect the CAT and will post my findings here.

Cheers,
Diego

diegocml wrote:I think I have hit a plateau.

I took my 4th CAT today and it's quite disheartening.

Economist - 1st CAT - 380 - (Q 22 V 23)
MGMAT - 2nd CAT - 460 (Q 27 V 27)
MGMAT - 3rd CAT - 450 (Q 25 V 28)
MGMAT - 4th CAT - 450 (Q 25 V 28)

Tomorrow I'll dissect the CAT and will post my findings here.

Cheers,
Diego

Another way to look at your results is that you have a solid foundation from which to move up.

Clearly there are things that you can get better at. As you get better at those things, your score will increase, surely as day follows night.

Have you been working on quant topic by topic? Which types of questions are you not totally comfortable with? What are you doing to get better at handling questions of those types?

Have you been doing verbal questions untimed? What's your hit rate when you give yourself plenty of time to get to the answers? What do you have to get better at in order to increase that hit rate?

There's always something going on. You can figure out what you need to do in order to score higher and when you figure that out and do what you need to do, your score will increase.

Whats up Diego...how is your progress?

I took another CAT Exam Today, I seem to have reached a plateau as well, 36Q 29V, verbal has been the same for last 3 CATs now.

Marty Murray wrote:

diegocml wrote:I think I have hit a plateau.

I took my 4th CAT today and it's quite disheartening.

Economist - 1st CAT - 380 - (Q 22 V 23)
MGMAT - 2nd CAT - 460 (Q 27 V 27)
MGMAT - 3rd CAT - 450 (Q 25 V 28)
MGMAT - 4th CAT - 450 (Q 25 V 28)

Tomorrow I'll dissect the CAT and will post my findings here.

Cheers,
Diego

Another way to look at your results is that you have a solid foundation from which to move up.

Clearly there are things that you can get better at. As you get better at those things, your score will increase, surely as day follows night.

Have you been working on quant topic by topic? Which types of questions are you not totally comfortable with? What are you doing to get better at handling questions of those types?

Have you been doing verbal questions untimed? What's your hit rate when you give yourself plenty of time to get to the answers? What do you have to get better at in order to increase that hit rate?

There's always something going on. You can figure out what you need to do in order to score higher and when you figure that out and do what you need to do, your score will increase.

Hey bmierz86,

All good buddy, despite the challenges with the GMAT. - I took another CAT today and had another slap in the face.

I'm putting in the efforts, but I don' see the results.

Economist - 1st CAT - 380 - (Q 22 V 23) - January 23rd, 2016
MGMAT - 2nd CAT - 460 (Q 27 V 27) - March 26th, 2016
MGMAT - 3rd CAT - 450 (Q 25 V 28) - April 9th, 2016
MGMAT - 4th CAT - 450 (Q 25 V 28) - April 23rd, 2016
GMATPrep - 5th CAT - 450 (Q27 V 25) - May 9th, 2016

This post translates well how I feel and what I've been experiencing.

https://www.beatthegmat.com/studying-har ... 88704.html

I'm sitting for the exam this Friday and while I am always super optimistic with almost everything in life, I can't help but feel that I'll be like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible trying to score a 600.

I don't want to sound negative but at this point in time in the GMAT game I'm already thinking (and I totally dislike the thought) on my next steps.

1) Continue with my GMAT preparation. It will require a complete restructure on my learning style and resources.
2) Take the GMAT once I'm consistently scoring above my target score.
3) Apply for my desired program in 2017.

It just blows that I might have to postpone all my plans for one year.

The battle is not over yet and whatever the outcome is, I will have learned a lot from all of it.

How's it going with you? I hope you're getting closer and closer to your target score

Let me know.

Cheers,

Hey bmierz86,

How did your GMAT go?