GMAT Strategy

i received a PM about this question -- sorry for the delay, i am behind by hundreds of messages at this point.

Suz wrote:Hi.. I gave my second CAT(mgmat) and got a 660(45 Q, 35 V). My exam is exactly one month from now. Could you help me work on a game plan till my exam please? I'm aiming for a 750+ score-- is it possible in the given amount of time?

aiming for a score above 750 is pretty dicey. empirically -- that is, just looking at the results that people have gotten, not necessarily thinking about why people have gotten those results -- we don't often see people getting into that range, unless their starting scores were already 700-ish or higher.
the good news, though, is that you don't *need* a score like that for admission into any school.

I've nearly done all the MGMAT strategy guides- and the corresponding OG 13 questions.I should also add that I'm not working at the moment.So I'm dedicating all my time to test prep.

this isn't really the kind of test to which you have to "dedicate all your time". in fact, on certain areas -- especially critical reasoning -- if you spend too much time, the most likely effect is a decrease in your score. (remember, critical reasoning requires you to think about the situations with which you're presented. if you try to study too much, or too systematically, then your brain is going to try to start replacing actual thinking with "rules" -- and that's when the trouble starts.)
the sweet spot is usually anywhere from 5-15 hours per week of studying, depending on the individual. more than that isn't generally going to be any better, and may well be worse.

in general, make sure you have the following tools:

for SC:
there are only a few truly major topics tested:
* meaning, in general
* agreement (of various types -- subject/verb, pronoun/noun, plural things should be plural, etc.)
* parallelism
* modifier placement & usage
* overall sentence structure (avoiding run-on sentences and fragments)
if you can find these in general, you should be OK to ace most of the problems on SC.

for CR and RC:
* make sure you have a "fit on a business card" type of mental approach for each of the main question types.
for instance, for RC detail and inference questions, your "fit on a business card" approach could be:
... pick the choice that MUST be true
... don't use larger context
... find "search terms" in the question and stick to that part of the passage

etc. basically, if you can't clearly articulate a strategy for each question type in, say, 2-3 concise principles, then you need to build a more precise understanding.

for quant:
the vast majority of your ability to improve, if you are already at 45Q, is going to come from mental flexibility -- in particular, the ability to use methods other than traditional "textbook" methods to solve the problems.
you should master the following methods and use them often:
PS -- backsolving (working backward from answer choices)
PS -- plugging in your own values for undetermined quantities ("VIC" or "smart numbers" in our guides)
PS -- estimating answers
DS -- testing cases

together, these methods solve over half of all gmat math problems, so you should be all over that. if you are at 45Q then you know pretty much all the actual math that you need to know; you should concentrate almost exclusively on those strategies.

I'm worried about the IR section.I haven't done much for it- except attend one IR workshop and give a practice test with IR right now. But given the number of days I have, how much time should I dedicate to this section? I know this score is relatively unimportant right now- but I'll probably use my gmat score in another 3 years.

basically, just study IR enough to ...
... be familiar with it (so that it doesn't freak you out)
... minimize the amount of effort that you have to spend on it

once you get to that point, there's not much of a reason to continue studying it.

Suz wrote:1) I've given three mgmat CAT's now.how many more should I give till my GMAT( haven't given any GMAT Prep yet)

it depends.

remember that, at the end of the day, there are really only two reasons to take a practice test:
1/ to practice your overall timing and rhythm on the exam
2/ to assess areas of relative strength/weakness

note that "improve skill set" is NOT in the above list. in other words, don't forget that a practice test is NOT a tool for actual improvement -- it's just a skill for assessment, and perhaps for timing practice. taking practice tests isn't going to make you any better at solving actual gmat problems, because there's no concentrated practice in any area; there are basically just a whole lot of single questions in varied topic areas. lots of breadth, no depth.

so, basically, it depends on how your timing skills are at the moment.
if you are fine in this regard -- if timing is basically not an issue for you -- then you should take just 1 gmat prep test(s). you should take this test early enough to review it thoroughly. especially in quant, you should spend much more time reviewing than actually taking the test -- you should concentrate on finding more than one way to solve most of the quant problems.

if your timing is an issue, then you should use the remaining MG tests mostly as timing practice. you don't need to review those very thoroughly, since that isn't the point -- the point is just to be able to get through them with decent timing.
you should also take at least 1 gmat prep test; you should review this one thoroughly, as discussed above.

2) I've finished the questions in OG 13.At this point- do you think its a good idea for me to do the questions in the previous OG's( just the non overlapping ones) / just continue working on my weak areas

first -- have you really "finished" them? or have you just solved them and moved on?

remember, there's a lot more that you can do with them.

before you can truly say that you are "done" with the OG, you should have done basically all of the following:

quant:
* find EVERY possible way to solve each of the problems, even the ones that you found "easy" the first time.
concentrate especially on the following:
PS: backsolving (= working backward from answer choices); plugging your own values (= VIC / smart numbers); estimating answers.
DS: testing cases.

SC:
* plug the correct answer back into the sentence. then try to explain EVERY construction in the correct sentence -- including the non-underlined part.
... if there's a modifier, identify exactly what it is describing, and why it makes sense.
... if there's a pronoun, identify exactly what it stands for.
... if there's a verb, identify its subject.
... if there's a parallel structure, identify it. explain why those elements should be parallel in the first place (in terms of meaning), and also explain why they are parallel from a grammatical standpoint.

CR:
* for all problem types except "boldface" and "draw the conclusion", make a new correct answer to the problem. in other words, make up a new "answer choice" that doesn't work like the original correct answer, but that would also be a correct answer if it appeared in the choices.
this will help your brain start thinking in the way it actually has to.

if you haven't done these things, you should revisit the OG13 problems and do them. in fact, doing these things is just as valuable, and perhaps more so, than solving the problems themselves.