GMAT Strategy

matiman wrote:A test taker whose GMAT practice test results below 500, but planning to score 660 and above? And how can I control my emotions while taking the real GMAT test?

Hello guys, I have been studying GMAT (Princeton's and Wiley.The.Official.Guide.For.GMAT.Review.12th.Edition.Mar.2009,I have also others like Kaplan's and so many books on GMAT, and I am going to study them for a month from now on) for less than 3 weeks. And I scored 440, Math 37 and Verbal 14. I was out of a time to do 8 Verbal questions and 6 Math questions. I think the time was the big problem for me to score such badly. Not only that but it makes me to hurry in questions and when I faced hard questions I become so angry while taking the exam. I will try to avoid my personal problems but, if possible let me hear from you; how to control my emotions on the GMAT exam.

Here is how I studied. Before a month I started studying Princeton's cracking the GMAT for 1 week only (both MATH and VERBAL part with one test on each of the sections) and my score was excellent in MATH and very good in VERBAL. After 2 weeks I took the Diagnostic test on OG 12 and my result, on both MATH and VERBAL, was just Average. Because, OG 12 was difficult for me, specially the MATH (by the way is the real GMAT exam harder than the OG or a at least a little bit easier?)

Then, after taking the OG's Diagnostic test, I made a plan like this
From Jun6- 13 ................ Only Reading Comprehension
From Jun 14-20............... Sentence Correction and MATH in general
From Jun21-27 ................ Critical Reasoning and MATH in General
From Jun28-July4 ............ Sentence Correction
From July5- 12 ..... Practice tests with AWA and some readings on the necessary subjects.
The above weekly plan also includes one test at the end of each week. By the way my exam is on July 13.
By following my plan I just studied for 1 week only RC and took the test today and scored 440.
Can you advise me guys please, please? I am just an undergraduate student who has a good business and communication skill and trying to get full scholarship, if I scored 660 on GMAT.
I hope you will help me on some strategies on timing and other questions I posted in this topic.

Thank you for your time.

Stacey Koprince wrote:Received a PM asking me to respond.

So, let's see, we have several issues to address:

1) timing
2) stress
3) content
4) goal score and timeline

I'm going to start with the last one first. You scored a 440 on your most recent test. Your score was brought down by the fact that you ran out of time, so your actual ability level to answer individual questions is higher than your test score - but that's still your test score, because part of doing well on this test is being able to manage the time.

You want to score 660 or higher on the test. You're planning to take the test on July 13 and today is June 18, so less than a month from now.

It would be very unusual for someone to improve by more than 200 points in less than a month. I'm sure someone somewhere has achieved this, but most people would not - so the first thing we need to do is set a more realistic goal.

There are two things you can alter: your goal score or the timeframe in which you study. If you want to keep your test date the same, then you would be wise to lower your goal score. If you want to keep your goal score the same, then you are going to have to take significantly more time to study. For a 200+ point increase, you can't even really set a test date at this point - it may take 2 months, or 4, or 5. You'd just have to study and track your progress and see how things go. When you start to get within about 50 points of your goal score, then you can start to plan to take the test (maybe within 4 to 6 weeks of that).

Next, you mention various books that you have and you mention a general study plan. Your study plan only mentions things at the level of the 5 overall question types. Do you know your strengths and weaknesses more specifically than this? Do you have books that teach you all of the content (facts, etc) that's tested on the exam, as well as all of the techniques for the different kinds of questions (eg, CR is a major question category, and then there are many types of CR questions that ask you to do different kinds of analyses - do you know what these are?).

You may benefit from this article: https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/02/ ... study-plan

You may also benefit from this article: https://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/09/23 ... tice-tests

After you've read those two, come back and tell us the data andwhat you learned from it, and then give us your proposed (and more detailed) study plan based upon what you've learned. We'll help you to figure out whether you're on the right track. (FYI for you and anyone else reading this: I'm leaving for vacation on the evening of 22 June and I will not be back until 6 July. I will not be working at all during that time, so if you do have more questions for me, either ask another instructor or be patient until I return. It's probably going to take me the rest of that week to get through all of the PMs, etc.)

In terms of stress managment, try these articles:
https://www.manhattangmat.com/stress-tips.cfm
https://www.manhattangmat.com/strategy-series-stress.cfm

Test out the techniques until you find things that work for you.

Stacey Koprince wrote:

So if I studied well for the next 3 weeks, I hope I can make a big change. At least for 600.

Progress on this test is not linear. I'm not saying that you shouldn't have a big goal - on the contrary, you should always go for it and try to do your best! - but I do just want to make sure that you're aware that most people would not be able to achieve that kind of score improvement in that timeframe.

If you can achieve a score of 40 on quant, then you would need around a 35 on the verbal to get 600 overall. 40 on quant is about the 58th percentile and 35 on verbal is about the 73rd percentile. In other words, you would have to do significantly better on verbal than you do on quant (if your quant is 40 and you want to get 600).

In order to give you good, specific advice about what to do, I really need the specific data that you will get from doing the analysis of a practice test described in the article that I included in my last reply. The information that you did give me in your last post is too general for me to be able to give you very detailed advice. If you read through that article more carefully, you will see the level of detailed analysis that is necessary for us to gather good data about our strengths and weaknesses.

We do know that timing is an issue for you, so we can begin to address that part at least. First, you want to try to figure out when and why you tend to spend too much or too little time:

- if you spent too much time, why? specifically, which part of the problem and what caused you to spend the extra time? did that extra time help? did that extra time hurt on a later problem? (if you spent more than 30sec over, the answer is yes, even if you got this problem right) how did that extra time hurt? specifically, where did you then not have enough time?

- if you spent too little time, why? were you rushing b/c you were behind? why were you behind; on which ones did you spend too much time? or did you think the problem was easy and you didn't need that much time? how often did you make mistakes on those "easy" problems on which you felt you didn't need full time? (On problems like that, you should make almost no mistakes - 95%+ accuracy. So if it's anything lower than that, you're hurting yourself by choosing to go fast when you think a problem is really easy.)

You may also benefit from a timing exercise: learning about how long one minute is without looking at a watch or stopwatch. (It normally takes more than 3 weeks to get good at this - but you'll just have to get as good as you can in the time that you have.) If you don't have one already, buy yourself a stopwatch with lap timing capability. When you go to do a set of problems, start the stopwatch but turn it over so you can't see the time. Every time you think one minute has gone by, push the lap button. When you're done, see how good you were - and whether you tend to over or underestimate. Get yourself to the point where you're within 15 seconds either way on a regular basis (that is, you can generally predict between 45 sec and 1min 15 sec). Note: at the same time that you are using the stopwatch to time this "1-minute" thing, also use the OG Stopwatch (in your student center) to track the total time spent on each question.

Now, how do you use that when doing problems? If you're not on track by one minute*, make an educated guess and move on. (The general idea is that if you're not on track by the halfway mark, you're unlikely to figure out what's holding you back AND have time to do the whole problem in the 1 min you have left.)

The general timing benchmarks are:
Quant:
Q10: 55 min left
Q20: 35 min left
Q30: 15 min left

Verbal:
This is trickier because it partially depends upon where the 3 or 4 RC passages begin. The below assumes that one new passage starts within each quarter of the test (Q1-10, Q11-20, Q21-30, Q31-41).
Q10: 56 min left
Q20: 37 min left
Q30: 19 min left

You may have to adjust the above if the passages don't start in the way described above. For instance, if by the time you get to Q10, you've actually had 2 passages start, not just one, then you should expect to have fewer minutes left - maybe 53 instead of 56. If, on the other hand, you get to Q10 and you've had no passages start, then you should expect to have more - maybe 59 left. Every time a new passage starts, I keep track with a tick mark on the first page of my scrap paper. If you're worried about losing that or having to flip back to find the tick marks, then keep track on your hand - maybe with dots, so that you don't have as much skin to scrub later.

Now, if you discover that you're behind, what do you do? Here's the basic rule: as soon as I discover that I'm more than 2m behind (or ahead), I do something about it immediately. (Less than 2m ahead or behind isn't a huge problem.) If I'm behind, the next time I see a question that seems extra hard within the first 15-20 seconds, I pick a random answer immediately and move on. If I'm still behind, I do that again the next time I see something extra hard (even if it's the very next one).

(Note: that's because, the first time you do it, you're probably going to get that question wrong, in which case there's a good chance you'll be able to do the next one. If you happen to get very lucky and get it right, then maybe you won't be able to do the next one - after all, the first one was already extra hard - so it doesn't hurt to skip the second one because you got lucky on the first one!)