GMAT Strategy

Hello,

I took a Manhattan Prep CAT this morning and scored a 680 (Q44, V38). My missed questions are as follows:

VERBAL
7 SC
5 CR

QUANT
More difficult to distill. I seemed to miss a number of questions across many categories.

It's disappointing as I have been studying for 3 weeks and was hoping for improvement on my 700 MGMAT score. However, I know improvement isn't always linear. The only thing I can think of is that I was a bit sleep deprived today going off <6 hours last night. My September 19th deadline now feels much closer...

My plan now is to closely analyze all missed questions. I am not sure exactly how to do this, but at the moment plan to just go question by question and try to truly understand my error. I've attached the analytical reports. I would really appreciate any insight you all have.

EDIT: I had trouble with uploading images so my results are summarized in a single Excel file.

Note: I took this CAT under full exam conditions

Thanks,

Steve

Are you saying you got all RC right?

I am adding the final two attachments as there seems to be a limit of 3 per message.

Marty, yes I was 12/12 on RC. This area has always been a natural strength of mine, likely because I'm an avid reader. SC is my biggest weakness.

My advice: continue to thoroughly break down your most recent test. Jot down four or five strategic adjustments that you can make on your next one. Then, once you've given yourself a few days off, take an official practice test from mba.com to get a clearer idea of where you stand.

CR is not all that different from RC. Maybe there are just more tricks and twists in CR.

If you spend some time on CR, doing questions slowly and learning about the patterns and tricks, I bet you can pretty readily get to a 100% hit rate, or close, in CR also.

If you do a BTG search on CR, I think you will find some good explanations, including the ones I have written. From those you can get some ideas on how to get CR right more often.

Also, it might help to read this chapter, just to make sure you have the CR basics covered. Notice what it says about inferences. https://www.powerscore.com/newmedia/GMAT ... pter-2.pdf

For SC, there are two things that lead to higher scores, being clearer about certain types of rules and structural conventions and getting better at hacking the questions. You don't need to know all the rules, but it helps to know some, while being good at hacking the questions is indispensable.

So get better at hacking SC. I can understand your getting a few wrong, but not seven, even if you never were to learn another rule. You could probably learn a lot about modifiers and the logic of word placement by reading this and doing the exercises. https://owlet.letu.edu/grammarlinks/modi ... ier2d.html

On quant, I am sure you can find some patterns. You don't need to figure out everything, just some stuff you could get better at, and obviously there are plenty of things for you to work on. Get better at one thing at a time, practicing slowly and carefully to develop form before speed, and basically you will score higher each time you get better at something.

Thanks both for the advise. I spent an entire day breaking down my CAT and have learned a lot. A number of times on the quant side I did all of the steps correctly and for some reason chose an illogical answer. So I think I need to do a quick "sanity check" before submitting answers.

Marty, thanks for the resources. Unfortunately the link for the modifiers is not working. Do you have another one by chance? Modifiers are an area I can definitely improve upon.

Seve

Here is a decent modifiers post. I hope that that other one becomes available again. That lesson was so good.

https://grammarii.blocked/2005/01/m ... nting.html

Steve, regarding the errors you have been making on quant, I have seen many times people getting almost all the steps done and then making an error in choosing the answer. One thing this type of problem can be attributed to is just plain getting too excited about completing the hard part.

Now that last step seems like nothing and somehow one does not pay attention when taking it, and one gets the wrong answer after all that...

So yes, make sure that you follow through all the way to the end of answering questions, and make sure that you are answering the question being asked.

Hello All,

Quick update here.

Marty thanks for the link and advise. I've become stronger and modifiers and am making a conscious effort to do quick "final checks" to reduce my chance of making careless errors.

My exam is this Saturday the 19th - definitely feels tangible now. I took a CAT yesterday and scored 740, a 40 point improvement over my first CAT and much better than my middle CATs. Here's a full summary:

8/11: GMAT PREP #1 - 700 (Q47, V39)
9/2: MGMAT #1 - 680 (Q44, V38)
9/9: MGMAT #2 - 640 (Q42, V36)
9/14: GMAT PREP #2 - 740 (Q47, V44)

It's interesting to see the gulf between my GMAT PREP and MGMAT scores. Obviously I'm hoping the real exam is more in-line with the official Prep software.

Form my most recent CAT I've noticed that I'm still making too many silly errors (4/11 missed) and that 3/7 of my missed verbal questions are related to SC subject-verb agreement issues. I'll surely focus on these in the coming days.

Do you all have any other tips or suggestions as I count down the final few days before the exam? To date you help and advise has been outstanding!

Steve

Hi Steve.

Yes, the actual GMAT will be more like a GMAT Prep test than an MGMAT test.

One difference between GMAT Prep and the actual test that you might notice is that SC on the actual test may be more hackable and less rule or idiom driven than the SC on a GMAT Prep test. So be ready to reason your way to right answers to SC questions.

As far as those silly errors go, maybe one thing you could do is seek to develop more of an accuracy mindset. Even in your last post here, I see a few typos. While there is not really any reason your posts need to be perfectly written, it's still interesting that you made those little errors or omissions. So maybe one thing you could to to be more accurate on the GMAT is to seek to be a little more accurate in everything you do.

Another thing that helps reduce silly errors is becoming aware of the types of silly errors you tend to make. Once you are more aware of how you operate, likely you will be able to start catching yourself in the act, before you go with the result of an erroneous calculation, as in "Ahah, ALMOST did THAT again."

Hello,

I sat for the GMAT yesterday and scored a 770 (Q49, V46), much higher than even my most optimistic expectations! Marty, thanks for the advise about keeping an accuracy mindset, I consciously made this a priority during my exam and I know it saved me from making a few foolish errors. I also did find the SC questions much easier, or hackable as you say, than the CATs.

I'm not exactly sure why I performed so much better than any of my CATs (my highest CAT was 740). The test felt easier the whole way through which had me thinking that I was either doing extraordinarily well or unknowingly bombing the thing. I also have a track record of performing better on test days under pressure, so that probably played a part as well. I'll do a full write-up about my approach to studying and my test day experience.

Thanks for all of your help and support! Truly an excellent community here at beatthegmat.com.

Steve

So cool to see the plan come together and be executed so well.

Nice work, Steve.