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Need Advice - GMAT in a week

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Need Advice - GMAT in a week

by rish » Sun Aug 30, 2009 2:25 pm
Guys, please help me out here. I am giving GMAT in 5 days. I dont think i am anywhere near what i want to achieve. Here's a brief

I have given 3 MGMAT till date. Here are the scores
MGMAT 1 - overall 680 (Q43,V39)
MGMAT 2 - overall 660 (Q45,V35)
MGMAT 3 - overall 670 (Q47,V34) (this i gave yesterday)

So today, to see a real picture, I gave GMAT Prep1
Overall 690 (Q49,V35)

So undoubtedly, Verbal is the Pain (and i know this). I have tried really really hard to overcome this, but somehow its not paying off.

Guys, please suggest me whats the quickest things that i can do to cross 720. I really need to be there.

I have studied from OG, Manhattan SC Guide and Kaplan Verbal.
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by DanaJ » Sun Aug 30, 2009 10:05 pm
Actually, a 690 puts you in the range for a 720. The GMAT has a 30-point confidence interval, so if you're scoring a 690, your true score is between 660 and 720. Notice however that there is a lower side to that interval!

My advice on test day:
- don't be stressed, follow your daily routine
- be excited/happy about the test. Say to yourself: "Yay! I'm here! In 4 hours I'll be done with all the studying/stress!"
- try to get a good night's rest

For practice, I suggest you focus exclusively on official questions for these last few days, particularly the more difficult ones/the ones you've had trouble with.

There's no quick fix for verbal, unfortunately. Just try to follow the above study regime and be confident on test day: it's gonna help you touch that 720, the upper mark of your range!
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Re: Need Advice - GMAT in a week

by lunarpower » Mon Aug 31, 2009 4:35 am
rish wrote:Guys, please help me out here. I am giving GMAT in 5 days. I dont think i am anywhere near what i want to achieve. Here's a brief

I have given 3 MGMAT till date. Here are the scores
MGMAT 1 - overall 680 (Q43,V39)
MGMAT 2 - overall 660 (Q45,V35)
MGMAT 3 - overall 670 (Q47,V34) (this i gave yesterday)

So today, to see a real picture, I gave GMAT Prep1
Overall 690 (Q49,V35)

So undoubtedly, Verbal is the Pain (and i know this). I have tried really really hard to overcome this, but somehow its not paying off.

Guys, please suggest me whats the quickest things that i can do to cross 720. I really need to be there.

I have studied from OG, Manhattan SC Guide and Kaplan Verbal.
if you have 5 days, and verbal is your low end, then you should study CR and RC problems.

in particular:

CR FIND THE ASSUMPTION
CR DRAW THE CONCLUSION
RC INFERENCES
these question types are EXTREMELY similar to one another. here's the common thread to all of them:
on all 3 of these problem types, you're looking for statements that 100% HAVE TO BE TRUE, with NO additional facts.

this single realization is sometimes enough to catapult you 50 points in the verbal.

also:
RC MAIN IDEA
always answer these BY YOURSELF before you look at the answer choices.

yes, this means that you should literally cover up the answers on the screen when you realize you're facing one of these.

my advice:
* go back to the OG
* re-practice all of these problem types
* BE ABLE TO EXPLAIN WHY -ALL- WRONG ANSWERS ARE WRONG (especially the ones that are "out of scope" on the aforementioned CR types)

don't try to absorb too much SC if you have only 4-5 days left, although you may benefit from reviewing rules etc. that you already know.

good luck.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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by rish » Mon Aug 31, 2009 8:41 am
Great. Thank You guys. Extremely appreciated.
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by Stacey Koprince » Tue Sep 01, 2009 7:32 am
Received a PM asking me to reply. Love what Ron said - listen to him!

Please also be really careful not to burn yourself out in the last few days. A lot of people make this mistake and then they don't have the mental energy to perform well on test day. You know what you know and you don't know what you don't know - and you're not going to make big changes to that in the last few days. So accept that and just concentrate on high-level review.

If you really feel that you must get a 720 and anything lower won't be acceptable, then you may want to consider postponing your test until your practice test scores are higher. If, on the other hand, 720 is your ideal score, but you'd still be happy with something a little lower, then go ahead and take the test with confidence.

The one other last-minute thing that might be helpful: make sure you know exactly what to do on the essays. Ideally, you want to be able to get a "good enough" score on the essays with the minimum necessary effort / brain power, so you can save all that energy for the verbal (and quant) portions of the exam.

Good luck - let us know how it goes!
Please note: I do not use the Private Messaging system! I will not see any PMs that you send to me!!

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by NicoFalcon » Tue Sep 01, 2009 9:33 am
There is some sound advice in this thread!
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by rish » Tue Sep 01, 2009 7:52 pm
Stacey Koprince wrote:Received a PM asking me to reply. Love what Ron said - listen to him!

Please also be really careful not to burn yourself out in the last few days. A lot of people make this mistake and then they don't have the mental energy to perform well on test day. You know what you know and you don't know what you don't know - and you're not going to make big changes to that in the last few days. So accept that and just concentrate on high-level review.

If you really feel that you must get a 720 and anything lower won't be acceptable, then you may want to consider postponing your test until your practice test scores are higher. If, on the other hand, 720 is your ideal score, but you'd still be happy with something a little lower, then go ahead and take the test with confidence.

The one other last-minute thing that might be helpful: make sure you know exactly what to do on the essays. Ideally, you want to be able to get a "good enough" score on the essays with the minimum necessary effort / brain power, so you can save all that energy for the verbal (and quant) portions of the exam.

Good luck - let us know how it goes!
I am devastated. I gave my second GMAT prep today and i got 620 (Q50,V25). I just dont believe this. I never thought i would perform so badly. I have decided to postpone my exam for a week. But this is highly demotivating and demoralizing.

Verbal is giving me nightmares.
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by Stacey Koprince » Wed Sep 16, 2009 8:32 am
I'm sorry you're having a tough time with the test. (I'm also sorry I haven't responded sooner - I've been traveling and haven't been on BTG much lately.)

It's really important to try to figure out WHY your verbal score dropped so much. If you figure out why, then you can do something about it.

Did you do the essays? Had you been doing the essays on the other practice tests (when you had higher verbal scores)?

Did you do the test under official timing conditions? What about your earlier practice tests?

How was your timing? Did you have to rush at any point? (If so, how much and on how many questions?) Did you run out of time? Conversely, did you go too quickly and finish with a lot of time left over?

Did you have a string of 4+ wrong answers anywhere in the section? If so, where and how many questions?

Were there any other differences that you noticed between your earlier practice tests and this one?
Please note: I do not use the Private Messaging system! I will not see any PMs that you send to me!!

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