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Please help me to decide a strategy

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Please help me to decide a strategy

by riteshbindal » Sun Aug 16, 2009 8:49 pm
Hi,

I took GMATPrep today and scored 710 (Q50, V35). I was expecting more out of my verbal but didn't get :?
I got 8 wrong in Quanta and scored 50 however when I got 12 wrong out of 41 in Verbal, I just scored 35. Point to note was that I had none of the first 10 wrong in verbal whereas I had a couple wrong in first 10 of quanta.

Somehow, I do not understand the scoring system of GMAT. The only thing which I could figure out was that I had two bunches of 3 consecutive wrongs in verbal. One was in the mid part (20,21,22) and another was at end (38,39,40) when I was running out of time, I just guessed.

I checked the distribution of wrong answers based on type for verbal and found out that
S.C. - 5/17 wrong. (3 were in bunch i.e. 20, 21, 22)
C.R. - 4/11 wrong. (3 were the guesses in bunch at the end of the section)
R.C. - 3/13 wrong (Got 4 RCs and got one wrong in each of the last 3 RCs).
I am not able to decide on strategy to go for.

Can anyone please help me out to decide on a strategy? Should I concentrate more on C.R. or the timing so as I don't have to guess or something else?

My target is 750 :(
Please help.
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by riteshbindal » Mon Aug 17, 2009 7:15 am
Can any expert please help me?
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by hk » Mon Aug 17, 2009 11:05 am
I'm no expert but i can give you some idea on why you got a 35 in verbal despite you getting the same number of mistakes as on Quant.

As you know the test is adaptive and as you get the right answers the questions become increasingly difficult. With that in mind here is a speculative scenario.. You are getting a lot of correct answers in Verbal, i.e., you are able to nail those 600-700 level questions but when you are given a 700+ level question in verbal, you get it wrong. Now the software shoots a lower level question and you get it right and this happens until you get a 700+ level question where you stumble. This would make the software decide on a score which is somewhere between 600 to 700 level or a 34 to 38 level approx.

But in case of quant you might have made some silly mistakes in questions that were 600 level but then soon recovered in the middle and got those toughie 700+ level questions correct boosting your score to a nice round 50!!!

How to overcome this? Well this calls for nailing all those tough verbal questions!! This can be done by working hard on the basics and practicing some really tough verbal questions..

Hope this helped..
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by Stacey Koprince » Thu Aug 27, 2009 7:15 am
Received a PM asking me to reply. Sorry for the delay; I've been on vacation.

First, nice job on your test. I know your goal is higher, but you still got a great score!

A few things:
1) this test is not scored based upon percentage correct; it's scored based upon the difficulty levels of the questions you're answering
2) everybody gets a lot of questions wrong; it doesn't really matter how good you get (the test will just give you something harder!)
3) the earlier questions are not worth more than the later questions - that's a myth. You have to maintain steady performance to the end of the test. The thing that kills your score is a string of questions wrong in a row - so if you, for example, spend extra time at the beginning and run out of time at the end and get 5 wrong in a row... your score will drop quite a bit.

If you want a 750, you MUST fix the timing; you will NOT get that score without having perfect timing. Notice that I do not say: you must get them all right. You won't get them all right. That's okay. What you need to do is get most right (maybe 30 or so out of 41) while not having strings of questions wrong in a row.

That requires you to recognize when you really just don't know - it's going to happen, because the test can always give you something harder - and then just let go before spending too much time. One rule I follow: when I've narrowed down to 2 choices on verbal, I look at each choice ONCE more and then I pick. Either I know or I have a good guess or I don't. Agonizing for a while between the two isn't going to improve my odds.

I think it would be a good idea for you to take a practice test that gives you data on your timing and the difficulty level of the questions - the GMATPrep tests don't do this but a lot of test prep company tests do (ours gives you this data, for example). That way you can see how much time you're spending, where you tend to spend too much time, etc. You can also see what the difficulty levels are. For instance, you had 5 SCs wrong, but maybe they were all 700+ questions, so that's not necessarily a weakness. Conversely, if some or most were sub-700, then you'd have to consider that a weakness (given your goal).

Next, you don't mention what you are using to study. Where are you learning the grammar rules? How are you learning what to do with the different kinds of CR and RC questions? Those things are difficult to learn on your own, just by doing practice problems. If you don't already have books that teach you how to do these verbal questions, you'll need to identify some good sources and buy them. Ask around here to see what people have used and liked. (I don't make specific recommendations because I'm obviously biased towards my own company! :))
Please note: I do not use the Private Messaging system! I will not see any PMs that you send to me!!

Stacey Koprince
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