Dissapointed With My GMAT Score. Need Urgent Help!!!!

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Hi Ron,

I am a non native speaker of english . I am really dissapointed that inspite of taking two attempt at GMAT, I am still unable to achieve my target score. I really need few suggestions from you, which I believe will help to give me some confidence in giving GMAT another go.

I have always read you replies(especially your SC explanations) on the forums and found them really helpful. From your posts I can figure out that you have a knack of helping people with their GMAT issues and that you really give them frank opinions. This is the exact reason why I am �writing to you for help.

I will give you a brief on my GMAT history and on my issues with this test. To start with, I have taken GMAT twice till date. First, I took it on September 2009 and scored a 610(Q46, V28). I was not prepared well first time.After the exam I knew that I need to significantly improve my verbal score in order to achieve my target score(740+). I was confident that with some analysis, I would do well in maths as I am an engineer by profession and consider myself good at quants .Although I rigorously worked on my DS, which was the troubling factor for me in quants,I devoted most of my time in preparing for verbal. I worked religiously on SC from various resources and i worked on my CR and RCs. After I felt confident(more on this later) of my preparation,I took my GMAT for the second time in dec 2010 with a hope of a 700+ score. But when my score popped up, it was 620 (Q49,V26). After so much of preparation my verbal score actually dropped by 2 scaled score(disgusting)

I am really shattered and disappointed with my score and as I mentioned I am really lookng forward to get some help from you.Let me tell you frankly that what I think of myself as a GMAT test taker. I think I am good( though not terrific) in quants and average in verbal. I certainly deserved atleast a 35 if not more in verbal this time around.

I bought all the MGMAT strategy guides before my second attempt and went through all of them(except for RC and CR guides) atleast thrice.For verbal I mainly practiced through OGs(10,11,12) but I didn't use the corresponding verbal supplements.

Tests taken:

Gmatprep1: 690 (Q43,V40) (Around 20/09/2010)

I was rusty in quants when I took this test. After this I bought the gmat club tests and started taking them. After taking around 10 of them I started feeling more confident in quants.

Gmatprep2: 660 (Q47,V34) (Around 05/10/2010)

I was very nervous while taking the test.I don't know that what was the reason but I found the Verbal tougher than Gmatprep1.


I took all the MGMAT CATs under timed conditions and scored as below.

MGMAT CAT 1: 620(Q43,V32) (28/09/2010)
2: 640(Q43,V34) (29/09/2010)
3: 630(Q44,V32) (02/10/2010)

At this point I analysed the previous tests and worked on my timing as I was struggling to finish the quant section till this point of time
4: 670(Q47,V34 ) (06/10/2010)
This time I finished quant on time and that was why there was a score jump but verbal was still not improving. I decided to work on my verbal timings and took the GMAT sets 1-10 as a practice for tuning verbal timing.

5.690 (Q47,V37) (14/11/2010).

There was some improvement in verbal this time around

6:710 (Q49,V37) (19/11/2010)

Crossed the 700 mark and felt really good.


Knewton free CAT:700 (Q45,V40) (21/11/2010)


Gmatprep 1 retake : 760(Q49,V44)

I analysed the test and found that there were exactly 9 repeats from verbal and 3 from quants.

Gmatprep2 retake: 740(Q49,V41)

In Verbal there were 11 repeats and in quants there were 3 repeats.


At this point of time, I thought that I am somewhere around the 700+ mark and I booked the date for my real GMAT. But as already mentioned, I scored a dismal 620.After putting my heart and soul into my preparation for at least 6 months, it didn't pay off for me. I was disappointed and devastated and feeling so was quite obvious.


I would like to give you a brief on my test experience this time around

1> I couldn't sleep well on the previous night of the GMAT. I was full of anxiety and though I booked the 14:30 PM slot for the exam I didn't feel fresh when I reached the exam center. By the time I was at the half way mark in my quants I started losing my concentration. I somehow controlled myself and finished the quant section. After finishing the quant section, I took the much needed break and returned to face the verbal.
2> In verbal I started well but around my 6th question there was a RC and it was a difficult one. I think I messed up my test mainly here. By the time I answered the 3 of these Rcs I was running 7 minutes behind the target time. Things got worse from here. I again started losing my concentration. Though I tried my best to answer all the verbal questions, by the time I reached the 31st question there were 09:00 minutes left. The 32nd question was a RC. RC was a long one but I found it easy to answer, but after I finished this RC, the rest of my answers were almost guessed after having only one read to the questions. Overall I just messed up with the timing and also my concentration level didn't help. I found the Sc s to be time consuming for whatever reasons and this contributed in giving lesser time to CRs.

I don't know exactly what went wrong with me on the D-day,but I am sure RON that you could figure it out and give me some suggestions.

According to me (what I can analyse from my practice tests) I shouldn't have performed so badly in the GMAT.

The reason could be or a combination of

1>Having less sleep before the test.
2> Awful time management in the verbal
3>Having the tendency to stick to a particular question and spend more time on it even if I have no clue at all about it. More so when the question is among the first 10-15 questions.
4> overstudying before the GMAT.

Ron, the above reasons are all speculative and I am not sure whether they are the reason of my unexpectedly low score. I still believe that the score is not at all reflective of my capabilities. And the problem has to be more with strategy rather with concepts But these all are my own opinions.

What really matters to me is your frank opinion that what you think of my situation. What is the issue here? Is it more related to strategy rather than the concept or the vice-versa or it is a mix of both? Whether I can achieve my target score? If yes then how much time from now is required to achieve that kind of score. What need to be done to achieve the score. I am also ready to take a few hours of private tutoring from you if it is needed. The budget is a little problem but I will still manage if you say It will help. I have always been a sincere student and I am sure I have given my best effort . Since last 3 months, I have studied for 5-6 hours per day without fail. But I think I lacked some expert guidance, which I hope you will now provide me with.


Let me know incase you need further information.


Waiting for your reply,

Sincere Thanks,

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by lunarpower » Sun Dec 26, 2010 7:31 pm
aiming800 wrote:I will give you a brief on my GMAT history and on my issues with this test. To start with, I have taken GMAT twice till date. First, I took it on September 2009 and scored a 610(Q46, V28). I was not prepared well first time.After the exam I knew that I need to significantly improve my verbal score in order to achieve my target score(740+).
well, that's ... ambitious. i think your goals here may be a bit unrealistic -- and, in your specific case, that's probably not such a good thing.
what i mean by that last comment is that unrealistic goals/expectations can help some people, but can hurt others. if someone is a naturally low-stress "dreamer" type, then setting unrealistically high goals can actually help, in the sense that it can provide the sort of enthusiastic motivation that such people need in order to get started on anything. on the other hand, for someone who is more prone to stress and/or test anxiety, exactly the opposite is true: setting unrealistically high goals/expectations just exacerbates the effect of that stress, with no positive benefit.
from the things you posted elsewhere on this thread about anxiety attacks, lack of sleep, etc., i can tell that you definitely fall more toward the latter of these two groups -- so setting a goal of 740+ (which is not necessary to get into any school, anywhere in the world) is going to do little except amp up the stress level before you even get started!

in any case, you're a non-native speaker of english, trying to go from 620 to 740 primarily -- if not exclusively -- by increasing your verbal score. that is going to be very difficult -- so difficult, in fact, that i don't think i've actually seen it happen in any actual cases.
if you revise your goal score (to something like maybe 690-700) you can have a goal score that will be more realistic / more achievable, and which will consequently not have such a pernicious effect on your stress level.
I was confident that with some analysis, I would do well in maths as I am an engineer by profession and consider myself good at quants .
question:
why an MBA? do you have something specific that you want to do with it?
don't forget that an MBA is the only american professional degree that does not actually serve as a license to do anything, so, if you are considering leaving the engineering profession (in which you have probably built some sort of considerable professional prowess and/or experience), make sure that you have a good reason for wanting to do so.

also, if you are looking at using your MBA to pursue a career in actual management, keep in mind that the optimal skill sets of engineering (a very rules-based, mechanical, logical endeavor) and of management (a very human, inconsistent, intangible, non-rules-based, political endeavor) are VERY different -- almost polar opposites, in many if not most of their important aspects.
Although I rigorously worked on my DS, which was the troubling factor for me in quants,I devoted most of my time in preparing for verbal. I worked religiously on SC from various resources and i worked on my CR and RCs.
this is where you're going to need to give me some more detail.
what does "worked on" mean? that could be anywhere from highly productive to nearly useless, depending on what you were actually doing; note that just working tons and tons and tons of problems, especially from sketchy third-party sources, falls on the "nearly useless" type of that spectrum.

check out this advice for how to study SC in general:
https://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/pos ... tml#p47593

if you're studying SC the way you should be studying SC, then just the OG12 alone should be enough to keep you occupied for at least a couple of months.
I bought all the MGMAT strategy guides before my second attempt and went through all of them(except for RC and CR guides) atleast thrice.For verbal I mainly practiced through OGs(10,11,12) but I didn't use the corresponding verbal supplements.
if you have og10, you don't need the verbal supplement; all of the problems in the verbal supplement are also in og10. (at least this is true for SC; i don't know for sure about the other two verbal types.)
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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by lunarpower » Sun Dec 26, 2010 7:31 pm
1>Having less sleep before the test.
you should try to recreate, as exactly as possible, the sleep context in which you normally study. this means that if you normally get N hours of sleep per day and normally wake up at time X, then you should try to get N hours of sleep, and wake up at time X, on the day of the test.
2> Awful time management in the verbal
3>Having the tendency to stick to a particular question and spend more time on it even if I have no clue at all about it. More so when the question is among the first 10-15 questions.


DO NOT WORRY MORE ABOUT THE FIRST 10-15 QUESTIONS. of all the bad pieces of advice out there, this is probably the worst.

also -- if you really have no clue on a problem, then QUIT! quit early! what are you doing lingering on things you don't understand, on a test where time management is already a crushing weight?
if you are honestly clueless on a problem, there is absolutely nothing wrong with just taking a wild guess after about 30-40 seconds and moving on. in fact, that's one of the best things you can do.
4> overstudying before the GMAT.
well --
* you should take 1-2 days/week COMPLETELY OFF studying
* you should make sure that you have at least 1.5 to 2 hours of unstructured time every day
* you should not *study* for more than about 5 hours in any one day
see here:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/620-660-what ... tml#320149
What really matters to me is your frank opinion that what you think of my situation. What is the issue here? Is it more related to strategy rather than the concept or the vice-versa or it is a mix of both?
i have no way of knowing that, of course, but it's probably strategy.

* can you articulate a CLEAR strategy / methodology for each different problem type in CR? can you point out the important differences between those problem types and their strategies?
if you think that all CR should take the same approach, or that all RC should take the same approach, you're never going to improve at those two -- you must realize that every problem type is different, and formulate different strategies accordingly. (fortunately, there aren't that many problem types on these two areas.)

* do you study by just memorizing a bunch of facts / rules? (bad)
or do you study by getting actionable lessons (i.e., IF I SEE/RECOGNIZE ______ on FUTURE problems, then I SHOULD DO/KNOW ______)? (good)
Whether I can achieve my target score?
i think that you should recalibrate your target score, as explained above.
If yes then how much time from now is required to achieve that kind of score.
weeeelllll ... it's not that simple.
this is a very "engineering mentality" -- you're asking the question with a presumption that this is a state function, i.e., that there are formulas into which you can input X effort/tasks and get Y result. that's not how it works.

number one, this sort of thing is absolutely different for every student taking this exam, for many, many reasons. what could be a 3-month timeline for one student could be a 12-month timeline for another student, even if their surface ability levels are very similar.

number two, it's also going to depend on whether, and how quickly, you can fundamentally change the way that you study and think about strategy.
this also varies from student to student. for some students -- in particular, those who have never really learned anything by methods other than rote memorization -- it's practically going to be impossible. for other students -- in particular, those who don't depend much on memorization and are able to "intuit" things regularly -- it could be a very quick process.
I am also ready to take a few hours of private tutoring from you if it is needed.
maybe -- that's a conversation to have privately, to see whether that would make sense.
I have always been a sincere student and I am sure I have given my best effort .
it's good that you're industrious, but this is definitely one of those "work smarter, not harder" things.
i.e., the proper response to long periods of work with few results is not to work even longer or harder! the proper response is to change the way you're working.
Since last 3 months, I have studied for 5-6 hours per day without fail.
that's not a good thing -- that's WAY too much studying.

and, if that's seven days per week, then you are going to be completely burnt out. if you've been studying 6-7 days per week for 5-6 hours per day, you need a complete vacation from the GMAT. NOTHING for at least 3 weeks. meaning, NOTHING.

imagine the physical shape you'd be in if you tried to work out in the gym 7 days a week for several hours. you wouldn't be in good shape at all -- you'd practically be crippled with injuries and fatigue.
the brain isn't much different.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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by ezhilkumarank » Sun Dec 26, 2010 8:57 pm
@aiming800 - Looking at your post was a great help. Many thanks to you for coming out and posing straight forward questions here.

Happy studying and wish you success in your next attempt. Go on 'Beat the GMAT'!!!

@ Ron - Wow!!!

It is such a great learning experience, reading your response to each sub-query posed. Your response is very straight and enlightening. I understand that you are trying to draw out the generic lesson of each problem and conceptualizing it (not memorizing) and then applying it to specific instances. Guess this is the learn-ability quotient!!!
* do you study by just memorizing a bunch of facts / rules? (bad)
or do you study by getting actionable lessons (i.e., IF I SEE/RECOGNIZE ______ on FUTURE problems, then I SHOULD DO/KNOW ______)? (good)
The proper response to long periods of work with few results is not to work even longer or harder! the proper response is to change the way you're working.
Thanks!!!
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by lunarpower » Mon Dec 27, 2010 10:25 pm
ezhilkumarank wrote:@ Ron - Wow!!!

It is such a great learning experience, reading your response to each sub-query posed. Your response is very straight and enlightening. I understand that you are trying to draw out the generic lesson of each problem and conceptualizing it (not memorizing) and then applying it to specific instances. Guess this is the learn-ability quotient!!!
yep -- that's the basic idea.

notice that this idea has extra importance for this particular test, because this is a test on which the test questions are not going to resemble the practice problems -- they'll contain the same concepts, but "remixed" beyond all recognition. therefore, if you just memorize the "script" of the practice problems, then that script will have no value when you approach the new, differently written problems.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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by aiming800 » Tue Dec 28, 2010 2:18 am
Hi ezhilkumarank,

Thankyou for all the appreciation.


Hi Ron,

Thanks a lot for your detailed response.I don't know whether I can answer all your questions to your satisfaction, nevertheless I will try my best to do so.


why an MBA? do you have something specific that you want to do with it?
don't forget that an MBA is the only american professional degree that does not actually serve as a license to do anything, so, if you are considering leaving the engineering profession (in which you have probably built some sort of considerable professional prowess and/or experience), make sure that you have a good reason for wanting to do so.



I have been working since last 3.5 years as a s/w engineer. In the long term I want to start my own enterprise. Also in short term, say 3 to 4 years down the line, I will need to have good management skills in order to get promoted in the organizational hierarchy. As I understand my profession, there is a limit till where you can reach only with the help of your technical skills. To move further up the ladder one needs to have the business knowledge as well as good managerial skills. I think that's where an MBA degree from a reputed institution will definitely give me leverage. Needless to say that a good pay cheque doesn't hurt either�


what does "worked on" mean? that could be anywhere from highly productive to nearly useless, depending on what you were actually doing; note that just working tons and tons and tons of problems, especially from sketchy third-party sources, falls on the "nearly useless" type of that spectrum.


Well, As far as SC is concerned I understood all the rules from the manhattan Sc guide(I revised the guide at least 3 times) and then solved the OG problems. I did problems from the 1000 Sc also( I know you don't like this resource). The strategy I followed in SC was that I tried to find out that what's wrong with the wrong answer and more often than not I was able to get the answers right with this strategy. If I could say that the particular option is wrong for this specific reason I would knock that answer off straightaway. I would also use the split and the re split strategy to boost my speed in solving SCs.
On the exam day the Scs seemed to be quite different from what I have ever seen. There were no splits visible and mostly two or more of the answers seemed probable. But when I solved OG this was not the case. I could confidently say that why a particular option is wrong. My accuracy was around 85-90% in OG questions.Also when I took Manhattan CATs I got very few scs wrong because of a concept problem. Most of the Sc questions which I got wrong in Manhattan CAT verbal section have to do with the timing issue.


Can you articulate a CLEAR strategy / methodology for each different problem type in CR? can you point out the important differences between those problem types and their strategies?
To a decent extent, Yes. I can articulate that in case of CR. for example,I know that in case of must be true questions or main point questions scope is strictly restricted to what has been explicitly stated in the passage. But while dealing with weaken/strengten questions new information which is not stated in the passage can be a possible answer.An assumption is an unstated premise and will be not stated explicitly in the passage. Also negating a right answer for an assumption question should weaken the argument..

But I feel i rarely attempted the official questions with consciously keeping in mind all these strategies. In case of OG questions I more often went with my intuition to choose the correct answer.In OG correct answer always seemed quite obvious to me. But again in the real GMAT this was not the case with CR. I could come down to two answers and these two answers would be very very close.

In the real test because of the close answer options I spent more time than usual to solve these questions, affecting my performance.


In case of RC, I categorized questions into basically two types. One is inference based and the other is detail based. There are subcategories also to these question types. For the main point questions or primary purpose questions I answered on the basis of the feel I got after the first read of the passage. If in doubt I use to re read the first few lines and the last few lines of the passage. I also generally eliminated the options with the extreme words.My accuracy was little low on these type of questions.

For the specific detail questions. for example. questions that mostly start with"According to the passage.........",I used to go to the part concerned and then read one linebelow and above it to answer the questions. Most of the times I use to get answers right with this strategy. I would like to mention here that except the one RC,which I have mentioned in my previous post, I found all the Rcs in the real GMAT quite straight forward.


maybe -- that's a conversation to have privately, to see whether that would make sense.

Please let me know how can I contact you in order to have a private conversation. That would be of immense help.


do you study by just memorizing a bunch of facts / rules? (bad)
or do you study by getting actionable lessons (i.e., IF I SEE/RECOGNIZE ______ on FUTURE problems, then I SHOULD DO/KNOW ______)? (good)


I would say that it is not exclusively any one of the above. When I started my preparation I followed more of the second approach(getting actionable lessons). But at the end of my preparation I tend to memorize a lot of things, thinking that doing so will help me. I think thisapproach overloaded my brain just before the exam, proving to be counterproductive. In hindsight, Memorizing those(Mostly quant formulas and sc idioms and few advanced SC rules that later I found to be not very useful)was not of much help.But I can assure you that my method of studying is more like the second approach mentioned by you above(actionable lessons)

I hope you could figure out few more reasons for my low score in GMAT from my above answers and suggest me the way to adress those issues. I have already been on a vacation from GMAT since last 3 weeks(Infact, This is the 4th week in progress) as I badly felt to do so�. I would try my best to incorporate all your suggestions in the future to the best of my abilities. As mentioned above please let me know how can I contact you to have a private conversation to discuss the tutoring aspect.



Thanks a lot,

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by lunarpower » Thu Dec 30, 2010 2:41 am
aiming800 wrote:
I have been working since last 3.5 years as a s/w engineer. In the long term I want to start my own enterprise. Also in short term, say 3 to 4 years down the line, I will need to have good management skills in order to get promoted in the organizational hierarchy. As I understand my profession, there is a limit till where you can reach only with the help of your technical skills. To move further up the ladder one needs to have the business knowledge as well as good managerial skills. I think that's where an MBA degree from a reputed institution will definitely give me leverage. Needless to say that a good pay cheque doesn't hurt either�
ok -- what i'm doing here, more than anything else, is just making sure that you have some sort of good reason.

in any case, when i have live students who are in software engineering (there seem to be a lot of those), i give them the following issues to think about:
* where would you rank your people skills, on a scale of 0-10? (0 = i've always had trouble in social situations, and i'm a lot more comfortable with things than with people; 10 = i'm a social butterfly who can't concentrate on anything unless it involves personal interaction)
* where would you rank your leadership and management skills, on a scale of 0-10? (0 = i'm naturally a follower and am most comfortable when other people are telling me what to do; 10 = i'm a natural leader, and, if my entire team were stranded on a desert island, i would be the one giving orders)
* rank 0-10: are you generally most comfortable when things follow rigid, memorized rules (0), or are you comfortable dealing with things on a case-by-case basis and improvising rules if necessary (10)?
* rank 0-10: are you primarily detail-oriented and better at hashing out the minute details of specific sub-problems (0), or are you a big-picture, visionary type who is better at overall planning and worse at the "micro" part (10)?

if you rank much closer to 0 than to 10 on these scales, then you may find management difficult, rather unrewarding, and ill-matched to your skill set (and you may have a hard time getting promotions). on the other hand, if you rank closer to 10 on these scales, then management may be a better choice.

the reason that i feel compelled to write all this here is that i have had quite a few students who, frankly, score very close to 0/0/0/0 on these four scales -- and many of those students are attracted to the engineering profession because it is solitary, rigid, detail-oriented, and based on well-defined tasks defined by others.
since i'm a gmat instructor and not an admissions or career consultant, i generally refrain from getting any sort of direct advice/counsel regarding these individuals' career plans -- but the truth is that their personalities are completely mismatched to the requirements of american corporate management. (i have also had many others who, i can tell, would be absolutely amazing in management.)
Well, As far as SC is concerned I understood all the rules from the manhattan Sc guide(I revised the guide at least 3 times) and then solved the OG problems. I did problems from the 1000 Sc also( I know you don't like this resource). The strategy I followed in SC was that I tried to find out that what's wrong with the wrong answer and more often than not I was able to get the answers right with this strategy. If I could say that the particular option is wrong for this specific reason I would knock that answer off straightaway. I would also use the split and the re split strategy to boost my speed in solving SCs.
On the exam day the Scs seemed to be quite different from what I have ever seen. There were no splits visible and mostly two or more of the answers seemed probable. But when I solved OG this was not the case. I could confidently say that why a particular option is wrong. My accuracy was around 85-90% in OG questions.Also when I took Manhattan CATs I got very few scs wrong because of a concept problem. Most of the Sc questions which I got wrong in Manhattan CAT verbal section have to do with the timing issue.
one very important detail that you left out here: how often were you eliminating choices because of grammar errors? vs. how often were you eliminating that because of errors in meaning?
i hope it's not 100%/0% -- especially because some large classes of SC errors (such as modifier errors) are almost ALWAYS based on the meaning of the sentence.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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by lunarpower » Thu Dec 30, 2010 2:41 am
But I feel i rarely attempted the official questions with consciously keeping in mind all these strategies. In case of OG questions I more often went with my intuition to choose the correct answer.In OG correct answer always seemed quite obvious to me. But again in the real GMAT this was not the case with CR. I could come down to two answers and these two answers would be very very close.

In the real test because of the close answer options I spent more time than usual to solve these questions, affecting my performance.
ya, you shouldn't deliberate.
if you get into a situation in which you just have no clue between two (or more) options, then just guess and move on.

In case of RC, I categorized questions into basically two types. One is inference based and the other is detail based. There are subcategories also to these question types. For the main point questions or primary purpose questions I answered on the basis of the feel I got after the first read of the passage. If in doubt I use to re read the first few lines and the last few lines of the passage. I also generally eliminated the options with the extreme words.My accuracy was little low on these type of questions.
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pm, to start with.


I would say that it is not exclusively any one of the above. When I started my preparation I followed more of the second approach(getting actionable lessons). But at the end of my preparation I tend to memorize a lot of things, thinking that doing so will help me.
hopefully you've learned that it won't -- at least not without an intuitive understanding.
I think thisapproach overloaded my brain just before the exam, proving to be counterproductive.
ummmm yeah. definitely.
it's also an extremely low-success method -- remember that the test problems won't resemble the homework problems.
most students i see who just memorize huge quantities of information are very bad at recognizing analogous problems when even a couple of small changes are made to the format of the problem -- the memorized information is only useful if they see an exact replica of the previous problem (i.e., pretty much never).
In hindsight, Memorizing those(Mostly quant formulas and sc idioms and few advanced SC rules that later I found to be not very useful)was not of much help.But I can assure you that my method of studying is more like the second approach mentioned by you above(actionable lessons)

this is also a HUGE misallocation of priorities that i see on a lot of forums.
"GENERAL" TOPICS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN "ADVANCED" TOPICS!

in general, "advanced" tends to mean "obscure" -- i.e., things that just aren't tested as often.
this is especially important because many of the most difficult problems on the test are NOT based on concepts that are themselves difficult -- in fact, two of the hardest quant problems that i've seen involve nothing more than adding and subtracting integers.
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by papgust » Thu Dec 30, 2010 2:47 am
lunarpower wrote: ok -- what i'm doing here, more than anything else, is just making sure that you have some sort of good reason.

in any case, when i have live students who are in software engineering (there seem to be a lot of those), i give them the following issues to think about:
* where would you rank your people skills, on a scale of 0-10? (0 = i've always had trouble in social situations, and i'm a lot more comfortable with things than with people; 10 = i'm a social butterfly who can't concentrate on anything unless it involves personal interaction)
* where would you rank your leadership and management skills, on a scale of 0-10? (0 = i'm naturally a follower and am most comfortable when other people are telling me what to do; 10 = i'm a natural leader, and, if my entire team were stranded on a desert island, i would be the one giving orders)
* rank 0-10: are you generally most comfortable when things follow rigid, memorized rules (0), or are you comfortable dealing with things on a case-by-case basis and improvising rules if necessary (10)?
* rank 0-10: are you primarily detail-oriented and better at hashing out the minute details of specific sub-problems (0), or are you a big-picture, visionary type who is better at overall planning and worse at the "micro" part (10)?

if you rank much closer to 0 than to 10 on these scales, then you may find management difficult, rather unrewarding, and ill-matched to your skill set (and you may have a hard time getting promotions). on the other hand, if you rank closer to 10 on these scales, then management may be a better choice.

the reason that i feel compelled to write all this here is that i have had quite a few students who, frankly, score very close to 0/0/0/0 on these four scales -- and many of those students are attracted to the engineering profession because it is solitary, rigid, detail-oriented, and based on well-defined tasks defined by others.
since i'm a gmat instructor and not an admissions or career consultant, i generally refrain from getting any sort of direct advice/counsel regarding these individuals' career plans -- but the truth is that their personalities are completely mismatched to the requirements of american corporate management. (i have also had many others who, i can tell, would be absolutely amazing in management.)
This is just amazing..! Very good way to measure ourselves. Thank you!
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by sashish007 » Wed Jan 05, 2011 11:09 am
lunarpower wrote:imagine the physical shape you'd be in if you tried to work out in the gym 7 days a week for several hours. you wouldn't be in good shape at all -- you'd practically be crippled with injuries and fatigue.
the brain isn't much different.
@lunarpower - this's a great analogy and in fact i was thinking about it as i read the preceding text!

like the body, even the brain needs to rest. for instance, for muscle hypertrophy to occur, protein supplement and workouts (similar to studying for the test) are just half the story. the other half is ,in fact, rest. once the body has tore all the muscles after workout, it requires complete rest and up to 7-8 hours of sleep to rebuild new and larger muscles using the protein from the supplement. and those bigger muscles facilitate lifting even heavier weights.

a simple story -- 3 years ago i bought 10-lb bags of protein every month and kept working out everyday with 4-5 hours of sleep and minimal rest, thinking i will gain muscle. there was not enough muscle gain and majority of that protein went down the drain. recently, i ensure i give my body 8 hours of rest the day i workout. and this has made a huge difference in muscle gain.

during GMAT studies, those periods of rest or latency are when learned knowledge settles in.
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by VivianKerr » Wed Jan 05, 2011 11:21 am
Hi all,

Just read this post. Thought you might take some inspiration from it. I know I did!

https://www.beatthegmat.com/3-yrs-4-atte ... 72531.html
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by lunarpower » Wed Jan 05, 2011 8:08 pm
sashish007 wrote:@lunarpower - this's a great analogy and in fact i was thinking about it as i read the preceding text!
thanks
a simple story -- 3 years ago i bought 10-lb bags of protein every month and kept working out everyday with 4-5 hours of sleep and minimal rest, thinking i will gain muscle. there was not enough muscle gain and majority of that protein went down the drain. recently, i ensure i give my body 8 hours of rest the day i workout. and this has made a huge difference in muscle gain.
haha -- been there, done that. when i first got out of college sports and started working out on my own, i worked out so hard and so often that i developed "severe overtraining syndrome". let me tell you, that was not fun.

i definitely believe, in a very literal sense, that the same is true for the brain -- and there is more and more research to support that claim. rest is key.
during GMAT studies, those periods of rest or latency are when learned knowledge settles in.
yep.
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by sashish007 » Thu Jan 06, 2011 9:17 am
lunarpower wrote:haha -- been there, done that. when i first got out of college sports and started working out on my own, i worked out so hard and so often that i developed "severe overtraining syndrome". let me tell you, that was not fun.
jesus - 'm sure you went overboard there in getting the perfect physique, just like the score! good to know your other side.
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by lunarpower » Thu Jan 06, 2011 2:49 pm
sashish007 wrote:jesus - 'm sure you went overboard there in getting the perfect physique, just like the score! good to know your other side.
heh. let's just say that moderation was something i learned as i got older.

re: the score, i taught standardized tests for 12+ years before i even touched the gmat, so the gmat itself didn't require a lot of preparation from me -- there are a lot of common threads running through the different standardized tests.
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by purvi.gupta.g » Fri Jan 07, 2011 3:21 am
Readng this entire conversation has been a wonderful learning experience!

Thanx a lot!!