GMAT REAL score 460 .....my Goal 550

Hi kjone189.

How how you prepared so far?

What materials have you used, and how have you used them?

What practice tests have you been using?

When you do practice questions, do you seek to finish them in around two minutes, or do you allow yourself enough time to figure out the answers, even if doing so takes more than two minutes?

With enough effective training, you can score whatever you want to score whether your goal is 500, 600, 700, or 800.

Marty Murray wrote:Hi kjone189.

How how you prepared so far?

What materials have you used, and how have you used them?

What practice tests have you been using?

When you do practice questions, do you seek to finish them in around two minutes, or do you allow yourself enough time to figure out the answers, even if doing so takes more than two minutes?

With enough effective training, you can score whatever you want to score whether your goal is 500, 600, 700, or 800.

So far I have been using Gmat Official Guide 2015 practice test
manhattan GMAT
Prep4Gmat app
Youtube videos Kaplan,Magoosh
And I just been doing practice questions in the book and the app daily some day just a few minutes other days a couple hours but I been consistently studying

-I do the questions within 2 minutes
-I used GMAT Prep software for practice test

Hi kjone189.

Your test score shows that you have lot of room for improvement in both quant and verbal, and especially in quant.

Meawhile, one thing that you said stands out.

-I do the questions within 2 minutes

Here's the situation with that way of doing things.

Many people feel that since they will have about two minutes per question when they are taking the test, when they are practicing they should similarly give themselves two minutes per question, and some GMAT preparation courses recommend that method as well. The truth is, however, that practicing that way is rather ineffective, as in what it often produces is wrong answers followed by reading of explanations.

Preparing for the GMAT requires learning how to get right answers, and getting wrong answers and reading explanations doesn't really lead to getting right answers.

That's why I have seen people's scores jump 100 points or more when those people have switched from doing practice questions in two minutes each to doing practice questions untimed. You have to learn how to get right answers, and if doing so takes ten minutes, or more, per question at this point, then that's what it takes.

So start taking your time when you do both quant and verbal questions, and learn to see what you need to see and do what you have to do in order to get right answers.

On another note, given that you have so much room for improvement in quant, I want to make something else clear. The best way to increase your quant score is to work on quant questions category by category, working on one type until you are really good at answering questions of that type and then moving to another type and doing the same thing.

For instance, you could start with exponents questions, which show up a lot on the test, and get really good at answering those. Then you could move on to working on rates questions, then circle questions, and so on.

If you were to work on ten categories that way, and to get really good at handling questions of those ten types, likely you would readily hit your 550 goal and maybe even that 600 goal.

Thank you thats helpful I will start doing that today!