GMAT Strategy

Marty Murray wrote:

800_or_bust wrote:Even some rather easy sentence correction questions are tripping me up. I don't have time to do a full review today, but I spotted one that I should have gotten correct. Missed it, but only spent 26 seconds on it. I must have simply picked the first answer that sounded correct, instead of carefully reading and analyzing all four of the answer choices.

There you have it, and it's a good bet that you did similar things in missing some of those CR and RC questions.

Next Tip: Even if you are pretty sure that you have found the right answer, make sure that the one you that you think is right is actually better than all of the others. In other words, unless you are out of time for some reason, always look carefully at all five choices, and don't use the "splits" method on more advanced questions as they can contain false splits. Look at each choice on its own.

Basically shoot for 100% of all three types. When you go over those CR and RC questions, for the most part you will find that had you just seen certain things you would have gotten them all right. I say "for the most part", because there may be little issues in some of the practice test questions. Official questions will be tighter though.

Had a little setback last night. Decided to take another verbal exam and focus on taking my time and eliminating unnecessary mistakes. I took the GMAT Club practice exam, since they allow you to do quant or verbal separately. Unfortunately, it seemed much more difficult than the Veritas Prep exams. I went from having 15-20 minutes left each time to scrambling to finish. All of the reading passages were quite long - even the critical reasoning prompts were rather long at times. With respect to SC, several times it seemed as though entire sentences were underlined. And these were long, wordy sentences. Needless to say, my score dropped - all the way to a 33V. Honestly, I didn't think I did that poorly. Only missed a few more questions than I had been missing (missed 12 out of 41) and the overall difficulty of the questions seemed much greater. With that said, I really hope the Veritas Prep scores are more reliable. Guess I'm not going to have a true idea of where I stand until I take the official GMAT Prep practice exams, but I'm saving those exams for later in my studies.

What's funny is I started using the GMAT Club Toolkit App to focus on CR and SC, and I have a solid 81.0% accuracy on SC and 93.4% on CR (out of 117 total questions I've attempted). But the questions on their practice exam seem much more difficult. I reviewed the exam, and one of the questions had a 92% miss rate. Oh well, the goal is still the same. Nothing less than perfection. I need to get to the point where I'm not missing any of these types of questions - 600 level, 700 level, or 800... Just very discouraged by this result.

800_or_bust wrote:

Marty Murray wrote:

800_or_bust wrote:Even some rather easy sentence correction questions are tripping me up. I don't have time to do a full review today, but I spotted one that I should have gotten correct. Missed it, but only spent 26 seconds on it. I must have simply picked the first answer that sounded correct, instead of carefully reading and analyzing all four of the answer choices.

There you have it, and it's a good bet that you did similar things in missing some of those CR and RC questions.

Next Tip: Even if you are pretty sure that you have found the right answer, make sure that the one you that you think is right is actually better than all of the others. In other words, unless you are out of time for some reason, always look carefully at all five choices, and don't use the "splits" method on more advanced questions as they can contain false splits. Look at each choice on its own.

Basically shoot for 100% of all three types. When you go over those CR and RC questions, for the most part you will find that had you just seen certain things you would have gotten them all right. I say "for the most part", because there may be little issues in some of the practice test questions. Official questions will be tighter though.

Had a little setback last night. Decided to take another verbal exam and focus on taking my time and eliminating unnecessary mistakes. I took the GMAT Club practice exam, since they allow you to do quant or verbal separately. Unfortunately, it seemed much more difficult than the Veritas Prep exams. I went from having 15-20 minutes left each time to scrambling to finish. All of the reading passages were quite long - even the critical reasoning prompts were rather long at times. With respect to SC, several times it seemed as though entire sentences were underlined. And these were long, wordy sentences. Needless to say, my score dropped - all the way to a 33V. Honestly, I didn't think I did that poorly. Only missed a few more questions than I had been missing (missed 12 out of 41) and the overall difficulty of the questions seemed much greater. With that said, I really hope the Veritas Prep scores are more reliable. Guess I'm not going to have a true idea of where I stand until I take the official GMAT Prep practice exams, but I'm saving those exams for later in my studies.

What's funny is I started using the GMAT Club Toolkit App to focus on CR and SC, and I have a solid 81.0% accuracy on SC and 93.4% on CR (out of 117 total questions I've attempted). But the questions on their practice exam seem much more difficult. I reviewed the exam, and one of the questions had a 92% miss rate. Oh well, the goal is still the same. Nothing less than perfection. I need to get to the point where I'm not missing any of these types of questions - 600 level, 700 level, or 800... Just very discouraged by this result.

I wouldn't look at it as a setback. First, even if the score were from an official practice test, it doesn't necessarily mean that you'd like duplicate the performance on the real thing - everyone has off days. (I've seen swings of 100+ points from an official practice test to the real exam.) Moreover, in my experience, the gmatclub tests tend to underestimate performance. So you never want to be too emotionally invested in a single data point. Make a list of 2-3 strategic adjustments you can make for next time, and then do more drills in whatever areas need to be addressed. The goal of the practice tests isn't to see a score that makes you happy (though that's always nice.) It's to help determine what adjustments you can make so that you maximize the odds of having a peak performance when you sit for the real thing.

(And for what it's worth, there's no need to save the official tests until the end. Now there are six total - two free ones and four more you can purchase. The question banks that the tests draw from are sizable enough that you can reset the exams, take them again, and see plenty of new questions.)

800_or_bust wrote:Had a little setback last night. Decided to take another verbal exam and focus on taking my time and eliminating unnecessary mistakes. I took the GMAT Club practice exam, since they allow you to do quant or verbal separately. Unfortunately, it seemed much more difficult than the Veritas Prep exams. I went from having 15-20 minutes left each time to scrambling to finish. All of the reading passages were quite long - even the critical reasoning prompts were rather long at times. With respect to SC, several times it seemed as though entire sentences were underlined. And these were long, wordy sentences. Needless to say, my score dropped - all the way to a 33V. Honestly, I didn't think I did that poorly. Only missed a few more questions than I had been missing (missed 12 out of 41) and the overall difficulty of the questions seemed much greater. With that said, I really hope the Veritas Prep scores are more reliable. Guess I'm not going to have a true idea of where I stand until I take the official GMAT Prep practice exams, but I'm saving those exams for later in my studies.

The truth is that some of the GMAT Club verbal questions are flawed. In other words, the supposed right answers aren't really right. So probably part of the issue is not that the questions were hard but, rather, that some of them don't make sense.

So, yes, you will get a more accurate sense of where you stand later, when you take the GMAT Prep tests. Meanwhile, you can just focus on learning from whatever resources you are using.

You can get some more ideas on how to hit a high GMAT score goal here. How to Score a 700+ on the GMAT - A Mini Guide for Success

Marty Murray wrote:

800_or_bust wrote:Had a little setback last night. Decided to take another verbal exam and focus on taking my time and eliminating unnecessary mistakes. I took the GMAT Club practice exam, since they allow you to do quant or verbal separately. Unfortunately, it seemed much more difficult than the Veritas Prep exams. I went from having 15-20 minutes left each time to scrambling to finish. All of the reading passages were quite long - even the critical reasoning prompts were rather long at times. With respect to SC, several times it seemed as though entire sentences were underlined. And these were long, wordy sentences. Needless to say, my score dropped - all the way to a 33V. Honestly, I didn't think I did that poorly. Only missed a few more questions than I had been missing (missed 12 out of 41) and the overall difficulty of the questions seemed much greater. With that said, I really hope the Veritas Prep scores are more reliable. Guess I'm not going to have a true idea of where I stand until I take the official GMAT Prep practice exams, but I'm saving those exams for later in my studies.

The truth is that some of the GMAT Club verbal questions are not very good. In other words, the supposed right answers aren't really right. So probably part of the issue is not that the questions were hard. Part of the issue is that some of them don't even make sense.

Veritas tests are more representative of the real thing, and GMAT Prep questions are even tighter than some Veritas questions.

If you want some somewhat higher quality quant separate from verbal CATs, you could try the 800Score CATs.

I'm glad you mentioned the quality of the GMAT Club verbal questions, because I noticed the same thing. Lots of questions were poorly worded with even grammar and spelling errors here and there - and I felt like some of the "correct" answers fixed one or two problems, only to create other new problems, such as the addition of non-idiomatic English.

With that said, I went ahead and purchased the 5 exam pack from 800score.com. And took one of the verbal exams, and was very, very pleased with my score. Rocked a 44 (97th percentile). Only missed 7 questions on the entire exam. I've attached the score overview for this exam below. Note that Q8 and Q24 are red because I flagged them, but I got them both correct. As you can see, I managed to get the first 10 questions right - and an impressive 33 out of the first 36! Faltered at the end as I started to run out of time. I got this question for Q37: https://www.beatthegmat.com/a-math-quest ... 81806.html. I had no idea how to answer it and wasted a ton of time, but based on the expert opinions in that thread, this particular question is a BAD question so I don't feel too bad about missing it! I was doing really well on time management until this one popped up and stumped me. Had only about a minute left to answer the last two. Might have been able to answer them correctly with more time. All in all though, this is a solid score. And I'm pleased with it.

I'm definitely going to need to completely knock verbal out of the ballpark on game day if I'm going to achieve the type of score I want. I really believe I can score V50-51 with enough practice and repetition. Not sure I can exceed mid- to upper 40s on quant though. It is going to be an incredible struggle.

800_or_bust wrote:Not sure I can exceed mid- to upper 40s on quant though. It is going to be an incredible struggle.

Scoring Q51 is a fairly straightforward process. You just keeping finding things that you could be better at and get better at each one in turn. When you have gotten better at enough things, you score Q51. One thing that happens as you get better at things is that you get more right answers to questions that involve the things that you have gotten better at. Another thing that happens is that you get certain things done faster. So you have more time for other things.

You can get better at handling certain topics and you can get better at things that you use to get answers.

For instance, if you want to score high in quant you could benefit from getting good at doing things like getting from the area of an equilateral triangle to the perimeter. You need to be able to bang out combinations and permutations, because you can use them to get answers to multiple types of questions. You need to get good at handling overlapping sets, because while overlapping sets questions are not particularly difficult to understand, they can be time consuming. You need to be good at prime factoring. See the following post. I say do 2 - 100 a couple of times.

https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/07/ ... r-problems

Working topic by topic on quant works great. For any topic with which you are not comfortable, work on that topic until it's your best friend and you are PSYCHED to see questions of that type on the test.

For great topic by topic quant practice, set up a practice account in the GMAT area here. https://bellcurves.com Then work on each topic until your average score for all the questions in the topic is 80%+. Do the questions of a type slowly at first, seeking to get right answers. Then as you become more comfortable with the topic, speed up. Some of the questions are better than others, and last I checked the Standard Deviation section was weak at best. Also, the way the combinations questions are handled is not great, and I don't recommend using the explanations to combinations questions as your template for handling such questions. Overall though, the quant questions there are awesome for refining and turbocharging your GMAT quant game. Get to that 80%+ level on all the topics except for Standard Deviation and you are almost guaranteed Q51.

Alternatively, you could just work on certain topics that you need to work on. You might be amazed at how tightening up what you are doing in a half dozen key topics sends your score up.

Also, accuracy is key. Even just working on accuracy itself can result in a person's quant score increasing significantly.

Marty Murray wrote:

800_or_bust wrote:Not sure I can exceed mid- to upper 40s on quant though. It is going to be an incredible struggle.

Scoring Q51 is a fairly straightforward process. You just keeping finding things that you could be better at and get better at each one in turn. When you have gotten better at enough things, you score Q51. One thing that happens as you get better at things is that you get more right answers to questions that involve the things that you have gotten better at. Another thing that happens is that you get certain things done faster. So you have more time for other things.

You can get better at handling certain topics and you can get better at things that you use to get answers.

For instance, if you want to score high in quant you could benefit from getting good at doing things like getting from the area of an equilateral triangle to the perimeter. You need to be able to bang out combinations and permutations, because you can use them to get answers to multiple types of questions. You need to get good at handling overlapping sets, because while overlapping sets questions are not particularly difficult to understand, they can be time consuming. You need to be good at prime factoring. See the following post. I say do 2 - 100 a couple of times.

https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/07/ ... r-problems

Working topic by topic on quant works great. For any topic with which you are not comfortable, work on that topic until it's your best friend and you are PSYCHED to see questions of that type on the test.

For great topic by topic quant practice, set up a practice account in the GMAT area here. https://bellcurves.com Then work on each topic until your average score for all the questions in the topic is 80%+. Do the questions of a type slowly at first, seeking to get right answers. Then as you become more comfortable with the topic, speed up. Some of the questions are better than others, and last I checked the Standard Deviation section was weak at best. Also, the way the combinations questions are handled is not great, and I don't recommend using the explanations to combinations questions as your template for handling such questions. Overall though, the quant questions there are awesome for refining and turbocharging your GMAT quant game. Get to that 80%+ level on all the topics except for Standard Deviation and you are almost guaranteed Q51.

Alternatively, you could just work on certain topics that you need to work on. You might be amazed at how tightening up what you are doing in a half dozen key topics sends your score up.

Also, accuracy is key. Even just working on accuracy itself can result in a person's quant score increasing significantly.

Thanks for the advice. I have registered an account on bellcurves.com, but I haven't gotten around to attempting any of the practice questions yet. Still focusing on finishing up my overview of all of the mathematical concepts before I shift that focus towards practicing those concepts. It's a challenge for me though. I haven't really done any math at all in at least seven years. But I guess that's not necessarily a bad thing - I'm coming at this with essentially a clean slate. No bad habits. Just need to master the art of the GMAT, not become a mathematician.

For what its worth, I took another verbal practice exam on 800score.com. Finished with a scaled score of 44 again (97th percentile). Like the last one, I correctly answered 34 of the 41 questions. This time, however, I got off to a bumpy start. Missed 2 of the first 6 questions, then proceeded to answer correctly 16 in row. Was really fortunate to still manage a 44. I knew I was struggling right out of the gate, so I wasn't surprised to see I had missed a couple. Still finished with over 15 minutes left though!

800_or_bust wrote:For what its worth, I took another verbal practice exam on 800score.com. Finished with a scaled score of 44 again (97th percentile). Like the last one, I correctly answered 34 of the 41 questions. This time, however, I got off to a bumpy start. Missed 2 of the first 6 questions, then proceeded to answer correctly 16 in row. Was really fortunate to still manage a 44. I knew I was struggling right out of the gate, so I wasn't surprised to see I had missed a couple. Still finished with over 15 minutes left though!

You were really fortunate to still manage a 44 in spite of wasting fifteen precious minutes that you could have used to get right those early two, and some others!!! Also, you are fortunate, or unfortunate depending on how you look at it, in that I don't know where to find you, as if did I might hunt you down and give you what for for finishing early again!!!!!!

To score higher on verbal, you could do the following.

When you are doing practice questions, get accustomed to getting to the right answers, pretty much every time, no matter how long it takes you to do each question. Learn to grapple with a question until you find some angle, some hack, some way to understand which answer is right.

Then, when you are taking a test, do pretty much the same thing, within reason.

At one point, when I was doing a verbal section of a test I would work on a question and be like, "Ok, I spent enough time and energy on that one. Time to move on." Then when I was finished with all of the questions in the section, I would still have time left.

Then the last time I took the test I took a different approach. I basically didn't leave a verbal question until I was sure that I had the right answer. On one particular question I spent a lot of time, but I finally got it right, after first choosing the wrong answer. While I barely finished the section in time, I scored V51.

Determination to get right answers can be a huge factor.

Marty Murray wrote:To score higher on verbal, you could do the following.

When you are doing practice questions, get accustomed to getting to the right answers, pretty much every time, no matter how long it takes you to do each question. Learn to grapple with a question until you find some angle, some hack, some way to understand which answer is right.

Then, when you are taking a test, do pretty much the same thing, within reason.

At one point, when I was doing a verbal section of a test I would work on a question and be like, "Ok, I spent enough time and energy on that one. Time to move on." Then when I was finished with all of the questions in the section, I would still have time left.

Then the last time I took the test I took a different approach. I basically didn't leave a verbal question until I was sure that I had the right answer. On one particular question I spent a lot of time, but I finally got it right, after first choosing the wrong answer. While I barely finished the section in time, I scored V51.

Determination to get right answers can be a huge factor.

Marty, how accurate are those 800score CATs? I finished the quant section of one of the two I had started (both had 44V) and scored a 49Q! What has me concerned is that I ran out of time and failed to answer the last four questions... I feel like there is no way I possibly could have scored a 49. Pretty sure the actual test would have penalized me far greater than the 800score algorithm. While I was doing well up to that point, and had been getting their very hardest questions for quite awhile, I still had missed 8 of the first 33. I just don't know how them came up with 49. I felt like I was doing worse than I did on my last two VeritasPrep exams (which were scored as 46Q and 47Q, respectively).

800_or_bust wrote:Marty, how accurate are those 800score CATs? I finished the quant section of one of the two I had started (both had 44V) and scored a 49Q! What has me concerned is that I ran out of time and failed to answer the last four questions... I feel like there is no way I possibly could have scored a 49. Pretty sure the actual test would have penalized me far greater than the 800score algorithm. While I was doing well up to that point, and had been getting their very hardest questions for quite awhile, I still had missed 8 of the first 33. I just don't know how them came up with 49. I felt like I was doing worse than I did on my last two VeritasPrep exams (which were scored as 46Q and 47Q, respectively).

While I doubt that the accuracy of the scores that those CATs generate is spot on, from what I have seen in my, limited, experience with those CATs, the scores are reasonably close to what people get on the official tests. Also I have kind of gotten the impression that the 800Score quant questions can be more difficult than official questions.

Meanwhile, the truth is that one can get a high 40's quant score given a right-wrong answer pattern like the one you described.

So while I don't know that I have really given you much new information, I guess that 49 might be fairly accurate. Anyway, it's not equal to a 39, and you got some practice, some insights, some indication of where you stand, and some more information regarding what you have to work on in order to hit your score goal, and I think that getting those things is what 800Score CATs are good for.

Marty Murray wrote:

800_or_bust wrote:Marty, how accurate are those 800score CATs? I finished the quant section of one of the two I had started (both had 44V) and scored a 49Q! What has me concerned is that I ran out of time and failed to answer the last four questions... I feel like there is no way I possibly could have scored a 49. Pretty sure the actual test would have penalized me far greater than the 800score algorithm. While I was doing well up to that point, and had been getting their very hardest questions for quite awhile, I still had missed 8 of the first 33. I just don't know how them came up with 49. I felt like I was doing worse than I did on my last two VeritasPrep exams (which were scored as 46Q and 47Q, respectively).

While I doubt that the accuracy of the scores that those CATs generate is spot on, from what I have seen in my, limited, experience with those CATs, the scores are reasonably close to what people get on the official tests. Also I have kind of gotten the impression that the 800Score quant questions can be more difficult than official questions.

Meanwhile, the truth is that one can get a high 40's quant score given a right-wrong answer pattern like the one you described.

So while I don't know that I have really given you much new information, I guess that 49 might be fairly accurate. Anyway, it's not equal to a 39, and you got some practice, some insights, some indication of where you stand, and some more information regarding what you have to work on in order to hit your score goal, and I think that getting those things is what 800Score CATs are good for.

Thanks for the response. I signed up for Magoosh, and have been using their question bank. I know, I know - there are numerous other question banks for free. But I got it is as part of a deal for registering for the GMAT Club practice exams. They had my range quite a bit lower, although I do feel they were underestimating my actual range. I've gotten 76% of quant questions and 86% of verbal correct so far (using Magoosh) and they have me estimated at 40-44Q and 38-44V. This is within the range of my earlier practice exams, but I think it's a little low. Nevertheless, it's not terrible. Corresponds to an overall score range of approximately 640 to 720. Taken literally, the 800score CAT would be around a 750!

I'm planning on taking my first GMAT Prep exam next Sunday (including IR and AWA). This should give me the best idea of where I stand at the moment. I have nearly four months left until test day, so I've given myself plenty of time to make the adjustments to get into the high 700 range. It is just going to be a matter of execution.

Marty Murray wrote:

800_or_bust wrote:Marty, how accurate are those 800score CATs? I finished the quant section of one of the two I had started (both had 44V) and scored a 49Q! What has me concerned is that I ran out of time and failed to answer the last four questions... I feel like there is no way I possibly could have scored a 49. Pretty sure the actual test would have penalized me far greater than the 800score algorithm. While I was doing well up to that point, and had been getting their very hardest questions for quite awhile, I still had missed 8 of the first 33. I just don't know how them came up with 49. I felt like I was doing worse than I did on my last two VeritasPrep exams (which were scored as 46Q and 47Q, respectively).

While I doubt that the accuracy of the scores that those CATs generate is spot on, from what I have seen in my, limited, experience with those CATs, the scores are reasonably close to what people get on the official tests. Also I have kind of gotten the impression that the 800Score quant questions can be more difficult than official questions.

Meanwhile, the truth is that one can get a high 40's quant score given a right-wrong answer pattern like the one you described.

So while I don't know that I have really given you much new information, I guess that 49 might be fairly accurate. Anyway, it's not equal to a 39, and you got some practice, some insights, some indication of where you stand, and some more information regarding what you have to work on in order to hit your score goal, and I think that getting those things is what 800Score CATs are good for.

And, yes, I am getting a good idea of my weaknesses. Currently, one glaring deficiency is on Data Sufficiency questions. I've mostly ironed out my weaknesses on SC and CR - now getting around 85-90% of both correct on the various question banks I'm using. However, DS questions are giving me a lot of problems! I'm like you where I can hack my way to a solution on a lot of the PS questions. It's easier than DS because you can use the answer choices to your advantage - you cannot hack your way to answer and compare it to the DS choices! The DS answer choices offer no insight at all. On this morning's 800score CAT, I did much, much worse on DS than PS - a similar pattern to my Magoosh practice results.

Any tips or advice on DS? I feel like on a lot of the DS questions, I'll hack my way to a good, solid insight. But miss the fact that a number can be 0 or negative, or something silly like that, which causes me to make an incorrect conclusion.

Any tips or advice on DS? I feel like on a lot of the DS questions, I'll hack my way to a good, solid insight. But miss the fact that a number can be 0 or negative, or something silly like that, which causes me to make an incorrect conclusion.

Some of my students find it helpful to sketch a number-line at the top of their scratch paper and to designate -1, 0, and 1. So you'd have

---------(-1)---------0--------(1)---------

It may seem silly, but it takes two seconds, and my sense is that it helps prime the subconscious to consider certain crucial intervals on DS. (Testing between 0 and 1. Testing 0, etc.)

Last, Marty and I are both big fans of mindfulness meditation. The difference between scoring 680-720 and scoring 760+ is often psychological: being relentless on verbal questions; remembering to test 0 on quant; not making careless mistakes; not panicking when a question seems tougher than it really is, etc. Interesting research on meditation/standardized testing: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archi ... on/275564/

800_or_bust wrote:And, yes, I am getting a good idea of my weaknesses. Currently, one glaring deficiency is on Data Sufficiency questions. I've mostly ironed out my weaknesses on SC and CR - now getting around 85-90% of both correct on the various question banks I'm using. However, DS questions are giving me a lot of problems! I'm like you where I can hack my way to a solution on a lot of the PS questions. It's easier than DS because you can use the answer choices to your advantage - you cannot hack your way to answer and compare it to the DS choices! The DS answer choices offer no insight at all. On this morning's 800score CAT, I did much, much worse on DS than PS - a similar pattern to my Magoosh practice results.

Any tips or advice on DS? I feel like on a lot of the DS questions, I'll hack my way to a good, solid insight. But miss the fact that a number can be 0 or negative, or something silly like that, which causes me to make an incorrect conclusion.

Being aware of the kinds of silly things that you do is a good start.

Now maybe if you get smoked enough times, you will learn to change what you do.

To practice making sure you see all the possible scenarios in DS questions, you could do simple questions that are not so much calculation based and math heavy as logic based, questions in sections like Exponents, Inequalities and Mean, Median and Mode.

Meanwhile, in general, you have to develop an accuracy and RIGHT ANSWERS mindset. In the beginning you might get excited by seeing that you know how to do a certain type of question; whether you get it right or not at least you understand it. Now probably you have to take things to the next level and practice getting right answers pretty much all of the time, although, especially in verbal, getting 100% of test prep company questions right is not really doable, as some of the questions are flawed. Then the third level is getting right answers almost all of the time AND within two or three minutes each.

On another note, regarding this,

Taken literally, the 800score CAT would be around a 750!

, who knows. I took some raggedy practice test during my preparation and it indicated 780. I was like, "Silly test." and as it turned out, 780 was pretty much where I was at that point. From the work you are doing, 750 seems within the realm of possibility.

Marty Murray wrote:

800_or_bust wrote:And, yes, I am getting a good idea of my weaknesses. Currently, one glaring deficiency is on Data Sufficiency questions. I've mostly ironed out my weaknesses on SC and CR - now getting around 85-90% of both correct on the various question banks I'm using. However, DS questions are giving me a lot of problems! I'm like you where I can hack my way to a solution on a lot of the PS questions. It's easier than DS because you can use the answer choices to your advantage - you cannot hack your way to answer and compare it to the DS choices! The DS answer choices offer no insight at all. On this morning's 800score CAT, I did much, much worse on DS than PS - a similar pattern to my Magoosh practice results.

Any tips or advice on DS? I feel like on a lot of the DS questions, I'll hack my way to a good, solid insight. But miss the fact that a number can be 0 or negative, or something silly like that, which causes me to make an incorrect conclusion.

Being aware of the kinds of silly things that you do is a good start.

Now maybe if you get smoked enough times, you will learn to change what you do.

One way to practice DS is by signing up for a BellCurves practice account. The guys at BellCurves have a sense of humor and they created thousands of funny, tricky DS questions. Some of them are stupid and others are messed up so that they don't make sense, but most of them are great. To practice making sure you see all the possible scenarios you could do simple questions that are not so much calculation based and math heavy as logic based, questions in sections like Exponents, Inequalities and Mean, Median and Mode.

Meanwhile, in general, you have to develop an accuracy and RIGHT ANSWERS mindset. In the beginning you might get excited by seeing that you know how to do a certain type of question; whether you get it right or not at least you understand it. Now probably you have to take things to the next level and practice getting right answers pretty much all of the time, although, especially in verbal, getting 100% of test prep company questions right is not really doable, as some of the questions are flawed. Then the third level is getting right answers almost all of the time AND within two or three minutes each.

On another note, regarding this,

Taken literally, the 800score CAT would be around a 750!

, who knows. I took some raggedy practice test during my preparation and it indicated 780. I was like, "Silly test." and as it turned out, 780 was pretty much where I was at that point. From the work you are doing, 750 seems within the realm of possibility.

Just a quick update. I do have an account on bellcurves.com, but haven't tapped into their question bank yet. Too busy juggling work, and keeping up with the Magoosh study lessons and the Magoosh question bank.

Anyways, 800score.com wouldn't give me a composite score until I completed the last exam. After getting two of the last four correct, it bumped my Q49 to Q50 - actually, initially printed 51, then dropped to 50 after I refreshed. This, coupled with the V44, was good for a 770. Now, obviously this is inflated because I ran out of time, but even the 49/44 would have been good for a 750/760. I still feel this is a tad inflated (given my last VeritasPrep exam score three weeks earlier was 700), but I'm taking my first official GMAT Prep exam Sunday morning so I should have a better idea as to where I stand.

Back to Magoosh, they are tough with their estimated scores on the question banks. I'm routinely getting 80-85% of their hard questions (even 70% of the very hard) correct, and they are only estimating 42-45Q and 35-42V, which is a 640-710 composite range. Note the verbal was 38-44, but it seems like their range cutoff is 85%, and I recently dropped to 84% - but even that only increases the composite range by 10 on both ends. I feel like these are probably low-end estimates, because they allow you to retake questions you miss (only using your final answer in the score calculations). I've only done each question once, and still have about 350 quant and 350 verbal questions left.

Anyways, I should have a better idea of where I stand on Sunday. I'm hoping for a result in line with the 800score exam. That would suggest I'm progressing far faster than I had assumed. I was going to take the full exam with the essay and IR, but I decided against it. I know Rich and some others are big on getting the full experience, but I haven't even touched the essay or IR yet. So it seems like a waste of time. I'm a really good essayist, so I assume that won't be any problem. And I'd like to tack on an IR score of 8 just to add some icing to the cake, but I have plenty of time to study that still.