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need advice

by PGMAT » Sat Feb 26, 2011 10:05 pm
I need advice on possibly what went so wrong and what my next steps should be. I was consistently scoring good on mgmat practice tests and gmatprep tests but got over 100 less on real one. Verbal was very low with just 20. Never expected such low score on verbal. I got around 30-34 on practice tests.

I prepared for GMAT for about 3 months. 2 hours on a weekday and about 7 hours each day on weekends. Studied from mgmat guides religiously. Practiced all problems from mgmat guides and OG 12. I followed quality vs quantity. I thoroughly practiced all the problems in these books and understood why an answer is wrong or right and the easiest way to do a problem.

For Quant, my score on real test is consistent with what I got on practice tests. So does not pose any questions for me. There were some weaknesses but I decided to make educated guess on such problems, if at all they show up. Quant seemed to be pretty okay during test, I finished on time. Though last couple of problems were very difficult. I had 1 minute and 45 seconds for last problem, but I made a guess since I was not sure how to solve it.

Verbal is the question here. I was doing good on SC, 70% or more correct on all practice CATs and mgmat question bank. I read mgmat SC guide at least 3 times and made good notes to revise before the test. But I found the questions on real test a bit harder. After the test, I was trying to recollect why exactly I found SC tough but my mind was blank. On practice tests, I used to take maximum of 1 minute 15 seconds, but usually 1 minute. On the actual test I am sure I took 2 minutes or so. What mistakes did I make here? How can I prepare differently next time?

CR - I was very good and enjoyed solving these questions when I started preparing for gmat but later on not sure what happened, I kept getting most of them incorrect. So I revised my notes but did not help much.
RC was always a gamble based on the passage topic. Some times I would get all correct and other times all incorrect. I read the entire passage before I answer any questions. My strategy is to read first paragraph thoroughly and first sentence of each of the remaining paragraphs thoroughly and skim through remaining sentences. Try to get a gist of what is going on. I don't remember exactly but believe I got 4 passages on the test and one of them was very long. RC was never my strong area, so I was not counting on it a lot. SC and CR, yes, but not sure what happened. Could it be my energy levels? Though I did not feel it during the real test, I felt that during practice tests. Before the test day, I made sure I was well rested.
Or maybe I did fine on SC but all CR and RC went wrong, have no idea what happened.

I am trying to understand what went wrong and how not to repeat it next time. What should I do next?

thanks.
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by lunarpower » Mon Feb 28, 2011 2:52 am
some responses:
PGMAT wrote:I need advice on possibly what went so wrong and what my next steps should be. I was consistently scoring good on mgmat practice tests and gmatprep tests but got over 100 less on real one. Verbal was very low with just 20. Never expected such low score on verbal. I got around 30-34 on practice tests.
how many times did you take gmat prep? your writing here strongly suggests that you took gmat prep more than 2 times -- i.e., that you took repeated tests.
if you did:
scores on repeated tests are meaningless! ignore these scores!

when you repeat tests, you see repeated questions. the presence of these questions will inflate your score, so the resulting number doesn't mean anything.
the inflation is huge, too -- seeing as few as 5-6 repeat problems (on the whole test) could easily add 50-80 artificial points to your score.

I prepared for GMAT for about 3 months. 2 hours on a weekday and about 7 hours each day on weekends. Studied from mgmat guides religiously. Practiced all problems from mgmat guides and OG 12. I followed quality vs quantity.
this still sounds like a little bit too much quantity.

* there's no point in studying for more than 5 hours in a single day -- this is the approximate threshold of learning in most adult human brains. and even that is a long, long time, only feasible if you break those 5 hours up into at least two sessions that are quite far apart.

* DO NOT study for seven days a week.[/b]
first of all -- your brain needs rest, just like the rest of your body. if you work out seven days a week, you will be weaker and in worse shape than if you work out 4-5 days a week; the same is true of your brain -- you'll learn LESS by studying 7 days per week and by studying 5 days per week.
also, if you don't give yourself sufficient time off, your brain won't be able to perform lateral learning -- the kind of learning that connects and synthesizes different concepts. many studies have shown that this type of learning actually happens when you are NOT studying -- so, if you are using almost all your free time to study and are studying every single day, you aren't going to learn to connect the different things you are studying to each other. instead, if you study too much, your studying is going to turn into pure memorization, linear thinking, and recitation -- a skill set that is pretty much useless on this test, beyond a very basic level.
I thoroughly practiced all the problems in these books and understood why an answer is wrong or right and the easiest way to do a problem.
you shouldn't worry about the "easiest" way to do the problems -- you should be trying to collect as many methods as possible for solving the problems.
i.e., even if you find a really "easy" way to solve a problem, you should still go back and try to find other ways to solve it.
remember, the problems on the test WILL NOT look like the problems that you see in practice -- so it doesn't matter which method is "easiest" for a given practice problem. however, the more approaches you develop to the practice problems, the more approaches you'll have for attacking unusual problems on the test itself.
Verbal is the question here. I was doing good on SC, 70% or more correct on all practice CATs and mgmat question bank. I read mgmat SC guide at least 3 times and made good notes to revise before the test. But I found the questions on real test a bit harder. After the test, I was trying to recollect why exactly I found SC tough but my mind was blank. On practice tests, I used to take maximum of 1 minute 15 seconds, but usually 1 minute. On the actual test I am sure I took 2 minutes or so. What mistakes did I make here? How can I prepare differently next time?
when you do SC, what % of your thinking is dedicated to grammar, and what % of your thinking is dedicated to the meaning/context of the sentence?
it should be about 50/50. if the majority of your thinking is about grammar and only grammar, then a good fraction of the questions on the real test will simply be beyond your grasp, because you will have to understand the context of the sentence to solve them.
this is one reason why you might score higher on the mgmat practice tests than on the real test -- our tests have a slightly greater emphasis on grammar, and a slightly lesser emphasis on context/meaning, than does the real test. this is not a mistake on our part; a lot of the questions in our problem bank date from the days of og9/og10, in which the emphasis on grammar was much greater than it is now.
CR - I was very good and enjoyed solving these questions when I started preparing for gmat but later on not sure what happened, I kept getting most of them incorrect. So I revised my notes but did not help much.
there are some CR problem types on which thinking about rules is useless -- most notably strengthening/weakening problems (which make up about 50% of all CR problems that you'll see). if you are trying to approach those kinds of problems with rules, you will actually get worse at them.
is that what you're doing?
are those the question types with which you have the most trouble?
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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by PGMAT » Mon Feb 28, 2011 9:22 pm
Hi Ron, thanks for the detailed reply.

I took two gmatprep tests. Did not repeat any tests. In addition, I took six manhattan cat tests. That's about it.
Time was always a major constraint for me, so tried to use every minute I could.

As for SC, you are correct, I focused entirely on grammar. Is mgmat going to update question bank any time soon to emphasize on meaning as well?
CR, I have most trouble with assumption and weakening question types. I am fine with others such as boldface and evaluate question types.

again, thanks for your valuable inputs. At least I know where I went wrong.
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by lunarpower » Thu Mar 03, 2011 3:32 am
PGMAT wrote:As for SC, you are correct, I focused entirely on grammar. Is mgmat going to update question bank any time soon to emphasize on meaning as well?
well, meaning isn't always a *separate* issue. for instance:
* you use grammatical rules to assign modifiers, but the issue of whether the modifier is actually correct (i.e., whether the assignment makes sense) is a meaning issue, not a grammar issue.
* you use grammar to check whether a pronoun correctly matches singular/plural, but the assignment of the pronoun is a function of meaning, not grammar.
* ALL decisions about verb tense are based in meaning, not grammar. (grammar can tell you whether you should use a verb vs. something that's not a verb, but grammar has nothing to say about verb tenses.)
* parallelism is a function of both grammar and meaning.
etc.

there are very few error types that are only grammatical -- and some error types (such as modifiers, pronouns, and verb tenses) are never just grammatical issues -- so, if grammar is all you're thinking about, then a large proportion of the problems on the test are going to be inaccessible to you.

for instance:
the coach sent 12 players onto the field, which led to a penalty for his team.
--> this sentence has no grammar errors, but the "which" modifier creates a meaning error (i.e., it seems to be saying that the field itself caused a penalty).

the coach sent 12 players onto the field; it led to a penalty for his team.
--> again, this sentence has no grammar errors, but the pronoun creates the same meaning error (i.e., the sentence again seems to be saying that the field itself caused a penalty).

etc.

CR, I have most trouble with assumption and weakening question types. I am fine with others such as boldface and evaluate question types.
there are some systematic approaches to assumption questions, such as the "reversal method". check out the march 4 video here:
https://www.manhattangmat.com/thursdays-with-ron.cfm

on the other hand, strengthening/weakening problems are *not* systematic. if you attempt to approach those problems with "rules", then you will probably get worse at them; you've got to turn on the intuitive / common-sense / real-world-thinking side of your brain for those questions.
if you're trying to memorize a bunch of rules for those questions, that would explain your continuing difficulty with them.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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