GMAT Strategy

Hi,

I took my first GMAT exam yesterday and scored a 680 (Q-48, V- 35). I was not disappointed with my score but I've been aiming for a 720+, and given the amount of preparation I put in for this first exam, I was actually relieved with my performance on the test.

So here's my experience of the first test. Going into the test I was confident about my quant skills since I had been scoring 49 consistently on the prep tests, but I knew I had timing issues. With verbal, I had scored between 33-38 on the Practice Tests, and I knew my verbal wasn't up to the mark as I wanted it to be, but I had come a long way from the 25 in my Verbal when I took the first mock test and began my preparation a month back.

I am planning to take the GMAT again sometime in October and hoping to get the 740 I long for. I understand there is a lot of areas I need improvement on, but I lack an understanding of what materials to use for specific areas I need improvement on and I could really use some advice on that.

Below I've listed the level of preparation I did for the first exam followed by my weaknesses and strengths based on the exam.

Preparation:
Started 20th June, approx. 5 weeks
Avg 4-5 hrs on weekdays.

Materials Used:



1. Veritas Prep Series - Set of about 14 books (good for foundation)
2. Offical guide 2017, Verbal Review, Quant Review
3. Manhattan Prep Advanced Quant Review
4. GMAT Club Tests


Mock Tests:

GMAT prep Exam 1: 590 (Q44, V27) - June 19th, 2016
GMAT prep Exam 2: 620 (Q40, V35) - July 8th, 2016
GMAT prep Exam 3: 640 (Q44, V34) - July 15th, 2016
GMAT prep Exam 4: 660 (Q 49, V32) - July 21st, 2016
RETAKE- Gmat prep Exam1: 710 (Q49, V38) - July 24th, 2016


GMAT EXAM 680 (Q48, V35) - July 27th, 2016


My current understanding of the GMAT:

I had been actively reading through posts on Gmat Club Forum and Beat the GMAT. I understand that GMAT is more of a test of strategy of application of skills than just of skills itself because given enough time, there is no question on the GMAT that is hard enough to solve, but the trick is to solve it under that stress and timing constraint. Although the importance of the first 10 questions of each section on the GMAT is widely debated, I felt that getting the first 10 right, or most of them right can really affect your score. It makes sense if you think about it from an algorithmic point of view. The more questions you get correct in a row, the higher threshold you end up building, and then getting questions right or wrong after that only marginally brings up or drags down your score (unless you get way too many questions rights or wrong in a row). I maybe wrong about this, but as I mentioned, this is my understanding of the exam.

Weaknesses:

Quant-
1. TIMING: I can't stress this enough but this is by far the biggest issue. Even during the exam, by the end of the first 10 questions I was on track, but then I started losing track of time (Stress got to me or the 21st question on the exam, The question asked what percent is 36 of 1000. For a minute I felt I've gotten all the questions wrong that the exam gave me that easy a question). However I took 30-45 seconds extra here and there and ended up having to complete the last 8 questions in about 10 minutes.
Here is what I don't understand. Almost all GMAT experts advise to not waste more than 2 minutes to 2.5 minutes on any question. But what I don't know is when to let go of a question. I know I cant solve every question on there, and there are going to be questions that I have to let go but which ones? I feel if I let this question go, I might come across another such questions and end up getting a lot wrong. To some extent I know I have to make the informed decision of leaving the question but to some extent I need to hone my quant skills.

2. Weak Topics:
- Inequalities: Going into the exam I knew this was one of my weaknesses but I also knew stressing about it the last day wouldn't help, so I revised the formulas, did a couple of questions which I easily solved, but I knew that given a very tricky question of a typical DS inequality type, I would get stuck, which I did.
- Advanced Overlapping Sets: Was not fast enough to understand how to organize the given information. (Where 3 sets are involved) Make a table or the venn diagram. I did a lot of questions, but couldn't come across enough challenging ones that could help me build confidence on this topic.
- Data Sufficiency Questions in General: Not that I get them always wrong, but 1 out of 5. Sometimes I do not understand the questions well enough, or sometime I assume stuff that I should not and sometimes I do not assume stuff which I should. I need more practice but don't know where from.

Verbal-
Critical Reasoning: Ok this is probably the weakest. On the verbal review, I did well on almost all of the med-hard questions, and fair (About 60% accuracy) on the hard questions, but to be honest, during the exam I was almost always unsure about the answer that I had marked for any given CR question. It was almost as if my skull was too thick to understand the given information there. I was reading each argument atleast twice to make sure I understood the meaning right.

Reading Comprehension: I wouldn't say its weak, but I believe I can manage a 100% accuracy rate on this given enough practice.

Strengths:

1. Sentence Correction: Weakest when I started my preparation, Veritas Prep Material helped build me a good foundation and after reading a bunch of articles on Magoosh about grammar errors that occur, I was so confident with this that I stopped reading the complete answer choices. Read the original statement, spot the errors, check all the answer choices in parallel, eliminate all but two, and then its quite easy to spot the right answer. Its time efficient too!

2. Good Test Taker: Although this might seem a little redundant, but I feel one needs to have the right mental state before giving the exam. After all, it's a 4hr exam! I was really relaxed and confident about giving the exam, even though I knew I had weaknesses, but what could have I done about them anyways.


Now that I have my second attempt coming up sometime in October, I have nearly a month and a half in between (after a 10 day break). I want to achieve my desired score, but I have NO idea where to begin from. What material should I get now for improving on my weaknesses? How to fix timing? How often should I practice exams? And how to understand Critical Reasoning arguments better?
I would really love all the help I can get on this!

[email protected] wrote:Hi amalhot,

First off, a 680/Q48 is a fantastic score (it's right around the 85th percentile overall), so it could be enough to get you into your first-choice School. As such, a retest might not be necessary.

Considering that many Test Takers spend 3 months (or more) of consistent study time before they hit their 'peak' scores and that many Test Takers who use a 'book heavy' study approach end up getting 'stuck' at a particular score level, you've done remarkably well. Given another 1-2 months of study, you could make some significant improvements to your overall skills and score at a higher level. The question now is really just about how you choose to proceed. You could continue to study as you have been or invest in some new materials that would help you to focus on new Tactics. Many of the issues that you described about your own 'weak spots' might disappear if you continue to study as you have been studying.

A few points to consider if you continue studying:

1) Inequalities, DS and CR are all significant contributors to your overall score (advanced Overlapping Sets is NOT), so learning the necessary Tactics to handle these question types and putting in the necessary repetitions would likely lead to some easy point gains.

2) Certain Quant questions DO require upwards of 3 minutes of work on your part, so anyone who tells you that every Quant question has to be answered in 2 to 2.5 minutes or less is not an Expert (and probably not someone you should be listening to). There IS something to be said about efficiency though, and it's likely that some of the methods that you're using are not the most efficient ways to approach the Quant section.

3) You're going to see some really easy questions no matter how well you're doing in the Quant section, so don't get distracted when they show up. Do the necessary work (on the pad) and get them correct.

4) Retaking a CAT that you've already taken will almost certainly lead to an unrealistic, 'inflated' score result, so you should plan to take NEW CATs each time.

What Schools are you planning to apply to?
When are you planning to apply?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Thank you so much Rich for the quick reply!

I'm planning to apply to top B schools in India (IIMs and XLRI) this November and they all require scores upwards of 700 (for a good shot at getting into them)
So I'm certainly going to retake the GMAT, especially when I know that my first attempt was probably not my best effort.

After browsing for a while and searching for what books to get now to go further from here, I narrowed down to a few for Verbal! Let me know how you feel about them. Others, I'm still totally confused about.

Verbal
1. Critical Reasoning - PowerScore CR Bible (I've heard its the best for CR)
2. Reading Comprehension - PowerScore RC Bible or Manhattan Prep Gmat RC ?
3. Sentence Correction - Manhattan Prep GMAT SC and GMAT Club's Ultimate Grammar (thats free so i can buy the other one!)

Quant
Can you advice my any material or question bank that is heavy with tough material and/or any specific book that targets DS specifically?


Would it be helpful to go back and revise the old material that I've already exhausted? One mistake that I've learnt about through my first prep is that I have to TIME EVERYTHING! like even if i do a set of 5 questions I'll make sure to time it now.
I will be able to obtain the 6 Manhattan Prep Tests through one their books and purchase the Gmat Prep Exam Pack 2 later if necessary. How often should I do these practice exams (under all 'exam' conditions)?

Any other suggestions would be most appreciated.