750 - Q48/V45 - Some Advice - The Beat The GMAT Forum - Expert GMAT Help & MBA Admissions Advice

I am so excited about my score, and being able to post my success story here is part of the dream! I hope I can share something that will motivate someone on a day that they need a pick me up related to GMAT study! After a tough study session, I certainly turned to this forum a lot for inspiration!
I find a lot of folks here have really strong quant, but perhaps less strong verbal. I had the opposite issue – so hopefully this debrief will speak to some others like myself!

Background: Life sciences background, but currently working in finance. Considered myself stronger quantitatively than with verbal, but struggled with the Quant section of the exam throughout my study process.

Strengths: RC, CR
Challenges: SC, PS, DS

Study materials:
1) MGMAT 9-week course (incl. all 8 Strategy Guides)
2) Official Guide 11
3) Official Guide Quantitative Review
4) Kaplan 800

I think the MGMAT strategy guides are really good. Especially the 3rd edition Number Properties guide. The SC guide has received many compliments, but for me it was just okay.

Test Scores: (took 7 practice tests)
MGMAT Free: 640 (First experience w. the GMAT – did not know yet what CR or DS was. Did not take under real test circumstances… took lots of breaks and stopped the timer! Took this before enrolling in MGMAT course)
MGMAT CAT 1: 690 (4 weeks after first test. Ran out of time during the quant section, left one question blank – Great thing to happen to me because I never took timing forgranted after that. )
MGMAT CAT 2: 640 (4 weeks later. I was SO disappointed… but this really motivated me to improve my study habits for my last 5 weeks of preparation. More on this later)
Test Day -14: Kaplan Free: 660
Test Day -12: GMAT Prep 1: 700 (48/37)
Test Day -7: GMAT Prep 2: 730 (47/44)
Test Day -6: GMAT Prep 1 repeat: 720
Actual GMAT: 750

I saved my best for the real thing! Given that, I think my success was partially based on my mindset going into the test. I am generally a good test taker, and with my goal being 700+, I knew that if I could repeat what I did for the GMAT Prep, I would be fine. One thing to realize is that a poor quant can be made up for with a good verbal section. And vice versa. View each section of the test as its own separate entity. Don’t let your feeling of how you performed in one section affect your motivation to attack the other.

My preparation:
I prepared for the test over about a 3-month window, but it feels like it was much longer!

I started by signing up for the MGMAT course because I knew I wouldn’t have the motivation to study without it. But in hindsight, I think structuring a detail outline of a week by week plan (equivalent to the homework schedule I got from taking the course) would have given me the same results. The other benefits of the course were the camaraderie from others studying for the exam (which can also be found on this board!) and there were a couple valuable online strategy labs that were included as part of the MGMAT course.

I read all the MGMAT strategy guides cover to cover. They go really in depth on the topics. I feel the 3rd edition guides are significant improvement over the 2nd edition. The 3rd edition bridges the gap between the concepts and the GMAT by targeting the concepts towards actual GMAT questions. The “advanced” sections were particularly useful.

During this time, I did questions from the OG11 as prescribed by the strategy guides. The guides include a list of questions in the OG related to the topics in the guides. I spent about 2 hours a night during the week studying. And 2-3 hours on the weekends. I tried to do this as consistently as possible. My approach was shorter periods every day rather than marathon study sessions. Also, it’s great to study when you are tired (or even hungover!) because it gets you to build stamina. You are going to be tired during the real thing!

Now to the low point in my preparation. About 8 weeks into my prep and 5 weeks before my exam, I did my third MGCAT. My score was 640, the same exact score I got before I started studying!!! I was so depressed and began to panic! Looking back, this was a blessing. I really kicked into gear after this, and my last 4-5 weeks (including a week of spotty study over the thanksgiving holiday) were by far the most effective.

Here’s what I did: I went back through all the CATs and OG problems and analyzed each problem I got wrong. I would write down the type of material the question was testing, why I got it wrong, and what I could do in the future to make sure I would get it right if I saw the same problem again. I created a spreadsheet in excel to track this. This is not to say I didn’t review my work prior to this. I definitely did. BUT, there is something distinctly different between just looking over the solution and saying “ok, I get it” (which is what I was doing) and forcing yourself to actually write down why you got it wrong and identify action next steps.

If there was one key thing for my success, this was it. I began to identify trends in my mistakes and areas to work on. Putting it into words really helped me to get the important takeaway when reviewing my work.

Another thing that was still bothering me was timing in the Quant section. I was getting squeezed for time, leading to panic, leading to confusion, leading to even more time pressure. During all my remaining CATs and the including the real test, I started to write down the target time at which to complete EVERY question. This is totally against what most people advise which is to look at the time only every 5 questions or so. But for me, I could get really behind by that point. So what I did was take a look at the clock before starting each of the 37 questions and subtract 2 minutes or so and write the ending time on my scrap paper. This way, I would not have to try and remember where I needed to be. I would just know I should move on when the clock reached the target time. Every 5 questions or so, I compare my progress with the general timing standard of 5 questions/10 minutes.
For example, at the first question I would write down 73 – to target completion at 73 minutes left. Then I would write 71 for the next one. If I got ahead and finished question 2 at 71:30, then I would write 69:30 for question 3. And so on. This might sound like it would be hard or confusing… but really it’s quite easy to execute. It really worked for me!!

The last week before the test, I re-read the MG Number Properties guide and focused on completing the hardest 50 or so OG11 problems in each of the sections. (Did not do this for RC)

Thoughts on each section:

Quantitative: In my opinion, the number one most important area for Quant is number properties. I really think the MGMAT book does a great job of explaining all the concepts you need to know without making it overly complicated. The Number Properties strategy guide is one of the best math guides. Also, don’t over emphasize probability and combinatorics. There are so few questions of this type on the test. I would also recommend definitely knowing the basic geometry rules, especially shortcuts for triangles (1-1-root2 and 1-root3-2), but not to spend too much time going above and beyond on geometry.

PS: Treat word problems like you would critical reasoning. Read every sentence carefully and slowly. Take notes and diagram while reading. These questions can be quite confusing. Make sure to clearly identify if it is an overlapping sets, ratio, probability or combinatorics question as they can sometimes those can seem similar. Make sure you don’t overlook something in a lengthy question stem – it could be the key to solving the problem.
Secondly, take a second to look at the answer choices. For harder questions, I’ve noticed the GMAT gives you a huge range in the answer choices. You might find that you can estimate for some of these questions and still get the right answer. I have seen several questions where they will give you something like -35, -5, 0, 5, 35. The GMAT is hard, but here is one area where they cut you some slack. Finally, don’t forget to learn simple and compound interest rates. There aren’t many examples in the OG, but one came up every time for me in the GMAT Prep and real thing. They are pretty easy if you know the equation making for easy points.

DS: Here is where Number Properties really comes in to play. Spend time getting comfortable with divisibility, prime factors, odds/evens, POSTIVE/NEGATIVE and exponents. Just by knowing these few concepts well will have a huge impact on your performance on this section. Remember, inequality questions are almost always really positive/negatives questions in disguise.

Also, people have mentioned the AD/BCE grid. Always go to the easy statement. If you can eliminate one or prove one statement to be correct then you can eliminate several answer choices. Always rephrase the question. For example, it makes a big difference whether the question is asking for the value x and y. Or just x minus y. (You need two equations for the first one. But only one for the second, because it’s a relationship.) Whenever there are averages involved, write out the equation for averages then plug in all the data you have. You might have more info than you think from just reading the question. Also helpful to write out the profit equation when that comes up.

Some guessing techniques: if the two answer choices are parallel, as in 1) x=3 and 2) y=1/2… this may be oversimplified, but there is usually no reason to choose A and not B. Or B and not A. So your answer is either C, D or E. (This is not always the case… the GMAT does also take advantage of this to try and trick you.)

Also, if you get one statement that is like x=3. And the other is much longer and gives more than one piece of information, such as “If you add 3 to x, then y will be twice as large as z.”, if I had to guess, I would pick the long answer choice as sufficient.

Verbal:
Timing was generally not a major issue for me in this section. However, the key thing is to stay on an average of 1:15 pace for each sentence correction. This will give you plenty of time to focus on RC and CR. I think many of us have potential to score well on these two question types so we should aim for top accuracy here. Pick your battles and leave yourself with enough time to give the questions a fair shot.

SC: This type of question is no fun. One thing that helped me was to write down the object or subjects in the sentence. Here are some examples of things to write down:
1) Objects being compared
2) Antecedents for pronouns
3) Object/Subject being modified
4) Object or subject doing the action
5) If there is a list, the first word after the comma. (parallelism question)
(By the way, you can pretty much always eliminate answer choices containing the word “being”)

Writing down this info will help you extract the info you need with minimal confusion and helps you ID the concept they are testing. You don’t actually need to ID the concept, but writing down will help you keep the real object/subject/verb top of mind, and not confused when you review the answer choices.
Unfortunately, what they say is true. You cannot always go by what sounds right. (Until maybe when you are down to two answer choices) You must look at the splits between answer choices and find something actually grammatically wrong with every answer choice you eliminate.

CR:
The MGMAT CR strategy guide does a good job of breaking down the different types of CR questions. If gives you a glimpse into how a test writer operates. Once I saw enough of these, this type of question it became easy for me to understand how testwriters write wrong answer choices.
I would encourage diagramming to write down all the key takeaways from the passage. It may be more time consuming, but the GMAT gives you enough time to do this. (The key is to stay under 1:30 per sentence correction)
After reading the passage, I would usually be down to two answer choices. Resist the one that you didn’t think of while reading the passage. I there would often be an answer choice that would bring up a perspective I had not thought of while reading the passage. I would think, hmmm that’s interesting. Could that be right? Resist picking that choice, its usually wrong. For both CR and RC, stay conservative!

RC:
This was my strength all along. I read through the passage carefully - including all the detail - and re-read each sentence until I understood it. MGMAT advises diagramming the passage and not spending too much time reading into the detail. They even suggest reading only the first sentence of the paragraph for long passages. My accuracy actually went down considerably when I did not pay attention to the entire passage. Depending on how fast you read, I would recommend experimenting to find out what works for you.
Most correct answer choices paraphrase the passage. Look for that and make sure not to be tricked into an answer choice that refers to the wrong part of the passage. Stay conservative and avoid extreme word choices.

On the other hand, watch out for fake extreme word choices. Two that come to mind are “critical” and “many”. I mistakenly thought these were extreme. But if you think about the meaning, they are actually not.

CATs:
The MGCATs have an insane quant section!! They are not realistic at all, imho. I stopped taking the MGCATs after my disappointing 640. I didn’t want to hurt my confidence further! I would say working on MG quant problems for someone who is not that strong in quant will freak you out and distract you from honing in on the fundamental concepts. I also don’t think the quant questions are similar to real GMAT questions.

As other people have noted, the Kaplan test scored is skewed down. I only got 4 verbal questions wrong and about 8 quant and my score was only 660. However, I think the test is much closer to the level of the real GMAT and the questions were quite good.

Kaplan 800 also has good harder quant practice.

Give yourself time to run each of the 2 GMAT Prep CATs twice, as you will get many new questions in both sections.

Finally, I found doing the full CAT very draining. Two weekends before my test I took 2 tests with a one day break in between. The last weekend I did one a day. I think I was still tired from my first one when I was taking the second one! Therefore, I do not think it hurt me to not have had taken a practice week in the last 5 days of my preparation. Personally, I think resting helped me save my energy for the final one.

Signing up for the test:
Even up until 2 weeks before the test, I felt completely unprepared for it. But by the week of the test, I was ready to go. You will never be ready for the test unless you sign up for the test. Just do it! (Or rather, do so!)

Test Day
I was actually really looking forward to the test, if only just to get it over with. Didn’t get the greatest night’s sleep due to nerves. I got up at 7:30 to arrive at the test center by 9:30. My test started at 10am. I was still a little groggy, so I can’t imagine taking the test at 8am! I made sure to eat a good breakfast and bring snacks.
Extremely nervous going in. But glad to start w. essays, to get the jitters out. Every break I tried to move around, stretch and snack to get my energy and blood sugar levels up. Took a couple sips of energy drink each break. It is a mistake not to eat and not to get the blood flowing between sections! Your brain needs fresh blood and sugar for energy!
(Also, move your keyboard out of the way after the essay section. No reason not to give yourself enough space to work!)
Tried to maintain positive thinking through out the test. Consciously denied myself from thinking about how I was doing. After the math, I wasn’t sure. But I told myself that a bad quant could be made up for with a good verbal. Keep the 75 minute session in perspective, at barely over an hour it’s really not such a long time. It seems much more bearable if you take a good break.
When my score came up, I was shocked. My highest ever!

Last comments:
1) Sign up for the test! You will never be prepared if you don’t. Give yourself a deadline to work towards
2) Proactively analyze your mistakes and make action items for yourself to correct them
3) A good verbal can make up for a bad quant. And vice versa. Keep your spirits up during the test
4) Read about other’s successes. Other’s have said this and I can’t agree more. This forum helped to inspire me so much
5) Take the test seriously. Reading other’s success stories also showed me how much work people need to put in to succeed. If you take it seriously, over a defined period of time, you can beat the GMAT!

I know this is verry long, but just wanted to unload everything I went through! (I guess its as much for me as it is for anyone else!) But of course I Hope something in here will be helpful to someone! Feel free to ask questions and GOOD LUCK!

750 - Q48/V45 - Some Advice

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