GMAT Strategy

Hi Elizabeth,

First of all, congratulations on getting your practice test scores to those levels! That's impressive and definitely cause for confidence and congratulations.

Honestly, the best way to combat a "plateau" in any training regimen (athletic, academic, etc.) is to shake things up a little bit - do things differently, because repeating the steps that got you to that plateau are often only enough to keep you there.

For the GMAT, specifically, it's usually a matter of really analyzing what's holding you back. The culprits are usually:

1) Making the same mistakes. It's easy to brush off a mistake or two on a practice test as "ah, silly mistake...I know how to do that", but when you make the same kind of silly mistake repeatedly, it's nothing to brush off...there's a pattern in how you commit errors when testing. Keep a log of frequently occurring errors and make notes to yourself to be aware of them on future practice tests (and the real thing).

2) Inefficient pacing. If you're finishing with too much time left (>2 minutes or so) on either section, you can probably make better use of that time to correct mistakes and/or double-check work. If you're rushing on the last few questions and finishing either just-in-time or by having to guess once or twice, you can probably improve your speed to make sure that you're able to better answer all questions. Even finishing "just in time" has its perils - at some point you're probably rushing to answer and making a careless mistake along the way. Do pacing drills to improve your ability to quickly recognize and act upon major themes that you do well, so that you can slow down and methodically attack those problems that need it.

3) Harder-to-decipher concept gaps. If you dig for it, you can probably find that you're making mistakes on, say, weaken-themed CR questions or Specific-Detail RC questions. To get to 700 you have to be pretty good at everything so you may not notice offhand that "Data Sufficiency is a concern", but if you dig deeper looking for patterns in your tests and practice sets, you may well find that you tend to struggle with DS questions that involve exponents or inequalities, for example. Analyze what's holding you back and you'll probably find at least 2-3 things that you can focus on.


Since you mentioned verbal, let me prescribe a few things that could help you to root out things to work on:

1) Do a set of 20 SC problems and jot down quick notes regarding why you eliminated answer choices. If you write things like "sounds wrong", "idiomatic", "awkward", etc. too often, then go back and determine which major themes you DIDN'T notice on those questions...those kinds of elimination reasons shouldn't come up too often, and you may realize that you don't have a great handle on 1-2 major error categories.

2) Look at the CR questions that you miss and see how often you missed them because your answer choice was just slightly outside the scope of the conclusion of the argument (or of the paradox). I'd argue that most mistakes that high-scorers make on CR questions come from being just off of the exact conclusion.

3) See if you can categorize the mistakes you're making on RC questions - are they more specific detail? Primary purpose? Critical-reasoning based? If you find a pattern there, share with the community and we can help, or you may just want to simply be aware of it and you can work on that area on your own.


I hope that helps - the other main benefit of that kind of analysis is that even if you just find 1-2 little ways to improve, you'll have that satisfaction and confidence of knowing that you've specifically addressed something and added to your overall GMAT repertoire. Sometimes that earned-confidence is enough on its own to push you over that hurdle.

odannyboi wrote: I do realize that I've made a mistake of canceling my score... but I am going to study like I received a 490 (no offense nehs!)

I did learn what NOT to do during the real thing so it wasn't a complete loss. Back to the books!

No offense taken,either

And good to hear that you are back to the books. That should be the spirit,my friend
Good Luck

Brian@VeritasPrep wrote: Learn from this experience, guys - someone was telling me the other day that the average # of GMAT attempts per person is 2.2 (which I'm not sure about...it sounds high), so there's definitely not a scarlet letter for taking it twice. Just learn from the first experience and use it to improve!

That was a great post,Brian.
Yes, we have to learn from our experience.
I am back in GMAT prep mode :mrgreen:

Hi Brian,

Thank you so much for your suggestions! I am going to try them out tomorrow, hopefully shaking things up can help improve the scores a bit. I do usually get wrong answers from RC and sometimes CR, SC seems to be okay for me since is more about structure and rules. I find that i usually start off pretty okay with most questions correct and in 90+ percentile. Then towards the end, i would end up in 75+ percentile due to a couple wrong answers at the back end of the test. Sames goes for quants for me. I usually start off at 97th percentile, then towards the end, with a couple of incorrect choices, i would end up in 85+ range. Is there any advice in terms of time and effort spent throughout the exam? SHould i put more time and focus on the first part of the exam?

I also have a question i came across just now that i didnt get the answer explanation from manhattan review CAT:

If AD is 6, and ADC is a right angle, what is the area of triangular region ABC? (AD is the height and A is the top vertex, B the righthand side vertex and C the lefthand side vertex Sorry couldnt copy the diagram)

(1) Angle ABD = 60°

(2) AC = 12

Thats the answer:

The formula for the area of a triangle is 1/2(bh). We know the height of ΔABC. In order to solve for area, we need to find the length of the base. We can rephrase the question:

What is BC?

(1) INSUFFICIENT: If angle ABD = 60°, ΔABD must be a 30-60-90 triangle. Since the proportions of a 30-60-90 triangle are x: x: 2x (shorter leg: longer leg: hypotenuse), and AD = 6, BD must be 6. We know nothing about DC.

(2) INSUFFICIENT: Knowing that AD = 6, and AC = 12, we can solve for CD by recognizing that ΔACD must be a 30-60-90 triangle (since it is a right triangle and two of its sides fit the 30-60-90 ratio), or by using the Pythagorean theorem. In either case, CD = 6, but we know nothing about BD.

(1) AND (2) SUFFICIENT: If BD = 6, and DC = 6, then BC = 12, and
the area of ΔABC = 1/2(bh) = 1/2(12)(6) = 36.

The correct answer is C.

I chose D where both statements alone is sufficient. If i knew that angle ABD is 60 degrees, surely it means that is a equilateral triangle since the height bisects the base. Or does it?

THANK YOUUUUU!!

Hey Elizabeth,

Good question,and in a way it's actually fitting that you couldn't draw the triangle in here, because on data sufficiency questions you definitely don't want to get locked into only seeing a shape the way it's drawn - it's best to imagine that shape in multiple ways and to only use the explicitly-provided information to make your decisions.

Here's where you're just-slightly off on your reasoning there. The height of a triangle need only form a RIGHT ANGLE with the base; it doesn't necessarily bisect it. It will only bisect the base if the triangle is symmetrical - if the other two angles are the same. So, if it were an equilateral triangle the height would bisect the base; if not, it won't (say, for example, that the angles of the triangle were 60, 80, and 40).

Does that explain it? So often the drawings that they give you look enough like they'd bisect an angle or side that you just want to assume that it will, but even if it's thisclose - if the angles are 59, 60, 61 - it won't directly bisect that base.



For your your bigger-picture timing question, actually the fact that you tend to start strong and fade in the end suggests that you may want to see how you can speed up a little bit up front so that you have more time for the latter half. Obviously the trick there is to do so without sacrificing accuracy in the first half, but I do wonder if you're pressing a little bit later in the test to get done on time and that's costing you some points...

Brian@VeritasPrep wrote:Hey Elizabeth,

Good question,and in a way it's actually fitting that you couldn't draw the triangle in here, because on data sufficiency questions you definitely don't want to get locked into only seeing a shape the way it's drawn - it's best to imagine that shape in multiple ways and to only use the explicitly-provided information to make your decisions.

Here's where you're just-slightly off on your reasoning there. The height of a triangle need only form a RIGHT ANGLE with the base; it doesn't necessarily bisect it. It will only bisect the base if the triangle is symmetrical - if the other two angles are the same. So, if it were an equilateral triangle the height would bisect the base; if not, it won't (say, for example, that the angles of the triangle were 60, 80, and 40).

Does that explain it? So often the drawings that they give you look enough like they'd bisect an angle or side that you just want to assume that it will, but even if it's thisclose - if the angles are 59, 60, 61 - it won't directly bisect that base.



For your your bigger-picture timing question, actually the fact that you tend to start strong and fade in the end suggests that you may want to see how you can speed up a little bit up front so that you have more time for the latter half. Obviously the trick there is to do so without sacrificing accuracy in the first half, but I do wonder if you're pressing a little bit later in the test to get done on time and that's costing you some points...

Thank you brian!! That was very helpful. One more quick question: Is Manhattan GMAT's CATs more difficult than the real one? I have been scoring somewhat lower than the other practice tests and the maths were really hard!!

From everything I've heard/seen, Elizabeth, I think you're right - those tests tend to be a little tougher than others in the market and the scoring seems tweaked to round down (which I think is a terrific thing and it's definitely how we've tried to work the scoring/difficulty on our own tests, too). The idea with those harder tests is to make sure you're prepared for everything you could see on the test - pacing, difficult questions, etc. - and to encourage you to fix mistakes and prepare thoroughly, so don't let the score discourage you, but do let it motivate you!

Brian@VeritasPrep wrote:From everything I've heard/seen, Elizabeth, I think you're right - those tests tend to be a little tougher than others in the market and the scoring seems tweaked to round down (which I think is a terrific thing and it's definitely how we've tried to work the scoring/difficulty on our own tests, too). The idea with those harder tests is to make sure you're prepared for everything you could see on the test - pacing, difficult questions, etc. - and to encourage you to fix mistakes and prepare thoroughly, so don't let the score discourage you, but do let it motivate you!

Yup Brian, I see that alot of people score lower on MGMAT and Veritas. I think its a good thing... the real quant section looks like a joke compared to these two... Maybe that's why I thought I was doing bad on the real thing (I'm used to seeing harder stuff and used it to judge difficulty).

Thank you guys! That calmed my nerves a bit
I just did a kaplan free practice test and scored 650. Is Kaplan scores skewed to the downside of the scale? I would have thought i scored higher considering the maths wasnt so bad and i scored 40 on verbal.

One more quick question.

Data sufficiency question:

If x is a prime number, what is the value of x?

(1) x is smaller than 15

(2) (x - 2) is a multiple of 5.

I chose C as you can only 7 would fit both criteras but the answer is E as Kaplan says that 0 is a multiple of 5 as well.
If a question posts sth is a multiple of 3, should i consider that to be 0, 3, 6, 9, etc...?

Thank you!! gmat in two days I AM SO SCAREEEDDD!!!

I just took my GMAT and scored 730!!! I am sooo so sooo happyy and relived that all the work has paid off!! Thank you Brian!!

Wow - congratulations, Elizabeth! I'm thrilled for you, and so happy to hear that things worked out so well. I hope that you're celebrating before you tackle the applications.

I should also apologize for missing your question from Saturday (I can't log in from home...my password is saved to my office computer and I don't dare change it and mess with what's working!), but just for anyone else reading 0 is definitely a multiple of all other numbers. 0 is an important concept on this test - it's even (multiple of 2), a multiple of any other number, it's neither positive nor negative (the only number that doesn't fit in either category)...

Congratulations - and best of luck with the applications (although you just severely reduced your dependence on luck)!

Congrats Liz! Great score. Liz what did you get for the Q section of the kaplan CAT?

I would take x-100 where as x≠0, x is 720≤x≤800 or x=your score on my test day.

I just took the kaplan practice cat and got that one wrong too! I still only got a 39 on Q... If I get a 35 on V I'll be gravy.

Thanks for the explanation Brian. I kept searching google and found conflicting information as to the whereabouts of "0" and it being a multiple.

BTW 39 isnt good on Q... but I only got 3 wrong on DS. I was really attacking DS since my 1st GMAT exam.. I used to get about 8/15 wrong on my CATs. Progress...

I cant exactly remember but i got i think 49 or 50 on Q and 39 on V for my kaplan practice test. The kaplan one is not very representative of the overall experience.

Dont worry about it Brian, i figured something must have gone wrong coz you usually reply pretty quickly, if not instantly

I am not sure if i am the person to speak on the strategy for gmat studying but the following are some things i learnt from my experience:-
- Never start studying from the OG coz they dont provide any sort of rules/ strategies. (I made this mistake and got so worried about verbal coz i was getting 70% of them wrong without knowing why) Read up on a strategy book from either princeton review or manhattan review before tackling the OG. I heard Powerscore Bible on CR is great but i personally havent used it before.
- Manhattan gmat's CATs are somewhat more difficult than the real thing (especially on the quants part) but i highly recommend them as it helps getting to a higher level of technicality during practice and you will find the quants part on the real GMAT a lot easier.
- 800score.com offers good notes on AWA but the CATs are a little off the scale in terms of scores. They are not so representative of the real thing. Good exercise to help with time management though.
- This might not work for everyone but i find it extremely useful just to jot down all the key theories as i do the qus. You will start seeing a pattern of concepts u get wrong in.
- BTG has the BEST AWA template ever. I think is in the directory, is almost guaranteed a 5.0 to 6.0 if you use it correctly!

Sorry this is more directed to the verbal part as the verbal part is my weakness, especially RC. Good luck everyone!!!! )