What does this mean?

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What does this mean?

by amirp » Sat Jan 30, 2010 1:24 pm
Hi guys,

I have been taking 5 CATs so far

1 GMATPrep, 3 Kaplan and 1 MGMAT,,, in the quant section, for all 5 tests is around ( 29 - 32 )
I was looking at the tests and I noticed a trend, I seem to do pretty well and answer many questions till i get to question 20-21,,, then at that point i start getting 10-11 wrong in a row... its weird cause I saw this trend for all my CATs so far... any Idea why this is happening and what steps I can take to overcome this issue?

thanks
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by Osirus@VeritasPrep » Sat Jan 30, 2010 6:05 pm
You may have an endurance problem. After you miss a few questions, you usually get easier questions that you should be able to get correct. If you are missing more than two in a row, odds are you need to work on your endurance. Are you taking the test after a long day of work? That could affect your endurance.

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by money9111 » Sat Jan 30, 2010 8:29 pm
- how is your pacing? around the 20th question are you realizing that you're behind and begin rushing through?

- is there a certain type of problem that begins tripping you up, which then shoots your confidence down thus causing you to lose focus?
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by amirp » Sun Jan 31, 2010 6:53 pm
Thanks guys for the points,

I looked at the stats and tried to make more sense of it, It looks like once i get to the 700-800 points I start missing couple of them in the row and loose my confident. Maybe I should practice those questions more,,, one thing I noticed is that I am not pacing very good either,,, When I get to the last 4-5 questions, I am very close to the end of the test and just have to guess most of them... based on these points, any tips you guys can tell me that worked for you guys?

Thank you

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by money9111 » Sun Jan 31, 2010 7:13 pm
practice practice practice... it's actually very common to get tripped up on the 700-800 level questions... that's not necessarily a bad thing! at least you're getting to those level questions.... the more you practice them the better you'll do at them...

one thing that you'll have to get very good at is separating each problem.... once you click next/submit that's all you can do... forget about it... and try to trick your brain... if say question 32 is hard... and you get another hard/harder question... say to yourself "wow i must have gotten that last one correct" and then just start over and begin to decipher the current question....

the timing aspect will have a big impact on that as well because we all begin to worry when we're near the end of the test and really want to tackle the question but just can't due to time constraints... try picking up 10/15 seconds on the earlier questions so that you dont have to rush towards the end...

i'm trying to think of a book you can use to practice the harder ones... maybe someone else can lead you in ther ight direction
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by amirp » Sun Jan 31, 2010 11:41 pm
Thanks man for the tips, I was just looking at my Kaplan course, noticed their 'quiz bank' I think that would be a great source since I can make my own quizes and set the difficulty that I need for it. Any other sources anyone can recommend for difficult quant problems?

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by Osirus@VeritasPrep » Mon Feb 01, 2010 6:07 am
amirp wrote:Thanks man for the tips, I was just looking at my Kaplan course, noticed their 'quiz bank' I think that would be a great source since I can make my own quizes and set the difficulty that I need for it. Any other sources anyone can recommend for difficult quant problems?

Thanks
Manhattan GMAT has a great source of difficult quant problems, but some of their problems will be much more difficult than anything you will see on the actual exam.

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by money9111 » Mon Feb 01, 2010 12:52 pm
yeah no matter how good you are at Quant, you can't help but look at some of the most difficult MGMAT questions and think to yourself - "really? you've got to be kidding me.. there's no way this can be done in the allotted time!" but in fact they can be... I know that MGMAT has two 750+ online Quant classes available if you're willing to pay of course...
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