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Is my score Correct?

by stubbornp » Sun Oct 26, 2008 9:17 am
Gmat Gurus,

I want to give brief description of my GMAT powerprep simulated test-Last sunday,I went through first powerprep-

Score-620(78 percentile)

Quant-50(1 q's wrong 97 percentile) and Verbal 23(10 q's wrong
27percentile)

In the math section,Only due to silly mistake i did wrong..No problem with quant.

In verbal section,Below is the list as i did wrong Q's with type number wise--

SC -------------RC--------------------------- CR

1 ---------------3(specific q)-------------6(resolve paradox)
----------------23(global q)--------------11(Assumption)
----------------24(specific q)------------12(Resolve paradox)
--------------------------------------------29(weaken the conclusion)
--------------------------------------------34(Bold Face q)
--------------------------------------------38(Weaken)

Out of these,only 3(as of my thinking) are of high difficulity.

My Questins--

1)Is this score is fine or there is any kind of problem in algorithm of Powerprep software?Bcoz usually I went through GMAT prep or manhattan,I did more question wrong than that..But i got 640 average.

2)Reading comprehension is a big problem for me...But whenever i went through Any simulated exam,I did well enough in RC.What's the reason for that?Is it due to stress?

3)CR....I studied a lot for CR..Manhattan book,powerscore bible..but all are in vain..Here it is totally opposite than RC.Bcoz ,at simulated test,Cr smashed me totally as above in POWERPREP..Need suggestions especially for BOLD FACE Q's?

Kindly Suggest any strategies which follow to boost my score to 700+.My exam is on 16 Dec.So more than a month i ve.But due to word load,I am devoting 2-3 hours daily to my preparation.Is it enough time for preparation.

I apologies for posting so many question in one post.Thanks
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Re: Is my score Correct?

by Charming » Sun Oct 26, 2008 6:13 pm
stubbornp wrote: My Questins--

1)Is this score is fine or there is any kind of problem in algorithm of Powerprep software?Bcoz usually I went through GMAT prep or manhattan,I did more question wrong than that..But i got 640 average.

2)Reading comprehension is a big problem for me...But whenever i went through Any simulated exam,I did well enough in RC.What's the reason for that?Is it due to stress?

3)CR....I studied a lot for CR..Manhattan book,powerscore bible..but all are in vain..Here it is totally opposite than RC.Bcoz ,at simulated test,Cr smashed me totally as above in POWERPREP..Need suggestions especially for BOLD FACE Q's?

Kindly Suggest any strategies which follow to boost my score to 700+.My exam is on 16 Dec.So more than a month i ve.But due to word load,I am devoting 2-3 hours daily to my preparation.Is it enough time for preparation.

I apologies for posting so many question in one post.Thanks
In verbal part, you only have 10 wrong, but just get 23. The key problem is you didn't do well for the first 15 questions(5 wrong). I usually got 9 wrong in verbal part, but the result is around 38-43. So slow down while doing the first 15 questions. If you had just got 1-2 wrong in the first 15 instead, I bet the result would be much better.

CR: Bold face is the most different, I think. But you can try to figure everything else right, especially weaken and assumption. I did LSAT CR, but it's not necessarily helpful. I guess you can try this way: sort all CR questions into some types: strengthen, weaken, assumption, infer, explain, paradox, bold face...you may find your way out by just focusing on one type per week.
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Re: Is my score Correct?

by lunarpower » Mon Oct 27, 2008 3:42 am
a few thoughts.
stubbornp wrote:1)Is this score is fine or there is any kind of problem in algorithm of Powerprep software?
there's probably not a problem with the scoring algorithm; that software has been through many, many iterations and versions. if there were any sort of major problem, it would probably have been ironed out by now.
maybe not, though; you never know. some of the official products are actually pretty sloppy. in fact, for at least a few months, the front page of GMATFocus said "Graduate Managment (sic) Admission Council". now that is just inexcusable carelessness. it's possible that that carelessness slipped through into the programming of the algorithm, but that's EXTREMELY unlikely.

you are right, though, that a score of 23 is insanely low for missing only 10 questions.

at mgmat we don't, however, stand behind the idea that the first X questions are more important than the other questions. (in the above post X was 15, although we usually hear 10 when students say this.) the main reason we don't believe this is that GMAC's head of development actually told us that it's not the case, but we've also collected some empirical data (from gmatprep) showing likewise.
2)Reading comprehension is a big problem for me...But whenever i went through Any simulated exam,I did well enough in RC.What's the reason for that?Is it due to stress?
are you doing anything differently during the rc questions? are you taking more notes? fewer notes? (surprisingly, taking more notes can often be detrimental; it wastes time, and, if the notes are too detailed, can distract you away from the main points of the passage.)
do you find that you're driven to distraction by the energy ("test anxiety" - i prefer to call it "energy" instead) that you experience during the exam? if you study at a different level of mental arousal than that at which you take the actual exam, then you're probably not going to do as well. this sort of learning is highly situational.
if you need to simulate stress, you could always sit down and take some RC sections after a stressful or stimulating experience. maybe you could sit down and take them after listening to loud trance music, or fighting with your gf/wife, or taking a large dose of caffeine, or ... anything else that will put your mind at a higher-than-normal level of stimulation.
Need suggestions especially for BOLD FACE Q's?
the basics:
* always FIND THE CONCLUSION FIRST. this is trivial for most passages, but not for the ones with boldfaced statements. since those passages depend on your actually finding the structure of the passage, they're going to make it more difficult than usual to find the conclusion.
- if necessary, use the "therefore test" to determine which of 2 (or more) claims is the conclusion: if "x therefore y" makes sense but "y therefore x" doesn't, then y is the conclusion and x is a premise.
I am devoting 2-3 hours daily to my preparation.Is it enough time for preparation.
depends on your learning style, attention span, stress level in the rest of your life, etc.
many people can't study effectively for more than that much time anyway; others can. this is an entirely individual thing.

good luck.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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Re: Is my score Correct?

by Avernusaur » Mon Oct 27, 2008 7:56 am
stubbornp wrote: SC -------------RC--------------------------- CR

1 ---------------3(specific q)-------------6(resolve paradox)
----------------23(global q)--------------11(Assumption)
----------------24(specific q)------------12(Resolve paradox)
--------------------------------------------29(weaken the conclusion)
--------------------------------------------34(Bold Face q)
--------------------------------------------38(Weaken)
Here's my take:

This particular test result has nothing to do with your performance on a particular set of questions, but rather the frequency in which you answered incorrectly. Ideally, you never want to miss a question more than once every 4 or so.

You missed:
1, 3, 6
11, 12
23, 24
29
34, 38

If you examine the grouping above, I think the issue becomes more obvious. By the time you got to Question #7, you're potentially right back to where you started again (down, up, down, up, up, down) It's pretty hard to climb up to the 40's if your first 6 questions don't even count, but it certainly isn't impossible. Unfortunately, missing two questions in a row is very damaging. This happened for you at 11&12 and 23&24. Each time this happens, you drop your difficultly level by one or two tiers.

None of us know exactly how the official scoring system works, but in theory you should see better results when your errors are evenly distributed.

On the bright side: If you can improve your CR, you'll be knocking on the door to the 700 club :)
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Re: Is my score Correct?

by stubbornp » Mon Oct 27, 2008 9:46 am
lunarpower wrote: are you doing anything differently during the rc questions? are you taking more notes? fewer notes? (surprisingly, taking more notes can often be detrimental; it wastes time, and, if the notes are too detailed, can distract you away from the main points of the passage.)
do you find that you're driven to distraction by the energy ("test anxiety" - i prefer to call it "energy" instead) that you experience during the exam? if you study at a different level of mental arousal than that at which you take the actual exam, then you're probably not going to do as well. this sort of learning is highly situational.
if you need to simulate stress, you could always sit down and take some RC sections after a stressful or stimulating experience. maybe you could sit down and take them after listening to loud trance music, or fighting with your gf/wife, or taking a large dose of caffeine, or ... anything else that will put your mind at a higher-than-normal level of stimulation.
Ron,

Actually at the time of taking simulated exam,usually i use to sit on chair ..But at a time of normal study,Either i am using chair or Bed..Is it makes a difference?..
Regarding my strategy in RC,I am jotting down points from differnt paragraphs in different sets and assign a particular name to each set....I am using that particular name of set for Global Q's and Keywords inside sets for specific Q's but most of the time I am confused b/w the last two best options among five especially in global Q's...And 7 out of 10 times,I went with the wrong answer.Same problem with CR and SC as well.Thanks
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by Ian Stewart » Mon Oct 27, 2008 11:58 am
Was it a PowerPrep test that you did, or a GMATPrep? My impression, though it's been a while since I've analyzed PowerPrep, is that PowerPrep contains an easier pool of questions than GMATPrep. So while it's easier to get a higher percentage of questions correct on PowerPrep, this doesn't make it easier to get a higher score. If you get something wrong on PowerPrep, you've gotten something wrong which is probably not extremely difficult, so that might hurt your score a fair bit. On the other hand, some GMATPrep questions are extremely difficult, and getting them wrong only proves that you're not a perfect test-taker. You still might be just shy of perfect -- simplifying things, getting a couple of 800-level questions wrong only proves that you're below the 800 level, but you still might be a 790.

As has been said before, it is not the percentage correct that determines your score, but rather the difficulty level of those questions you answered correctly and incorrectly.
For online GMAT math tutoring, or to buy my higher-level Quant books and problem sets, contact me at ianstewartgmat at gmail.com

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Re: Is my score Correct?

by lunarpower » Mon Oct 27, 2008 1:06 pm
stubbornp wrote:
lunarpower wrote: are you doing anything differently during the rc questions? are you taking more notes? fewer notes? (surprisingly, taking more notes can often be detrimental; it wastes time, and, if the notes are too detailed, can distract you away from the main points of the passage.)
do you find that you're driven to distraction by the energy ("test anxiety" - i prefer to call it "energy" instead) that you experience during the exam? if you study at a different level of mental arousal than that at which you take the actual exam, then you're probably not going to do as well. this sort of learning is highly situational.
if you need to simulate stress, you could always sit down and take some RC sections after a stressful or stimulating experience. maybe you could sit down and take them after listening to loud trance music, or fighting with your gf/wife, or taking a large dose of caffeine, or ... anything else that will put your mind at a higher-than-normal level of stimulation.
Ron,

Actually at the time of taking simulated exam,usually i use to sit on chair ..But at a time of normal study,Either i am using chair or Bed..Is it makes a difference?..
Regarding my strategy in RC,I am jotting down points from differnt paragraphs in different sets and assign a particular name to each set....I am using that particular name of set for Global Q's and Keywords inside sets for specific Q's but most of the time I am confused b/w the last two best options among five especially in global Q's...And 7 out of 10 times,I went with the wrong answer.Same problem with CR and SC as well.Thanks
hmm.

a handful of things.

1 * are you sure that the "wrong 7 times out of 10" statistic is accurate? if you guess correctly, then the problem will just blend in with all the other problems on which you had correct answers. therefore, unless you've actually kept a separate record of the problems on which you were down to 2 answers, you'll mostly just notice the problems that you got wrong.

2 * i'm not so sure whether the chair vs. bed makes that huge of a difference - i mean, switching to a chair isn't going to gain you 100 points or anything - but there is something to be said for situational learning. in other words, you should try your best to create a study environment that is as similar as possible to the eventual testing environment, as studies have shown that this similarity will help you do better on the test.

3 * try not to get too detail-oriented when you "jot down notes" on rc passages. especially if you're missing lots of 'big picture' questions, you may be concentrating TOO much on details and ignoring the larger gestalt of the passage.
to this end, try making your notes into the equivalent of a TABLE OF CONTENTS of the passage. in other words, try not to write more than a few 'headings' - and, in the style of a real table of contents, the headings should form a coherent, logical list of the contents in the passage.
in general, i find that it's better to write fewer notes than to write more notes. this doesn't mean that you should write nothing, but if you're deliberating on whether a particular point merits being written down, then it probably doesn't.
as an exercise / experiment, you may want to try to take MINIMAL notes - i.e., a bare table of contents, with just headings that fit into the larger scheme of things - and see how that goes. (this is a bit extreme, but that's why it's an experiment.) as a rule, you're going to have to look up the detail-oriented questions in the passage anyway, so it's pointless to write down an excessive amount of detail.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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by Stacey Koprince » Tue Oct 28, 2008 8:56 am
I received a PM asking me to respond.

Ron and Ian offer some good advice, above. PowerPrep was not built on the official GMAT algorithm, so it does not mimic the real test scoring as well as GMATPrep does (GMATPrep is actually built on the same algorithm as the official test).

Re: RC, some exercises that might be useful:
- after doing a passage + questions, go back and look through the notes that you took and the questions you had to answer. How useful were your notes? Ideally, your notes should allow you to (a) answer any "main idea" questions without returning to the passage, and (b) figure out which paragraph to go to for any "detail" questions, while (c) not providing enough info to answer any "detail" questions directly. If you can't answer the main idea question with your notes, you didn't get down enough high-level info. If you can answer a detailed question with your notes, you wrote down too much detailed info.

- for any question you got wrong, figure out why you got it wrong. Did you misunderstand what the question was asking? Did you understand the question but use the wrong part of the passage to answer the question? Did you use the right part of the passage but misunderstand what the passage was saying? Did you understand both the question and the passage but get sucked into a trap answer? Etc.

- also spend some time studying why the wrong answers are wrong; this is really important for both CR and RC. On any problem (whether you get it right or wrong), be able to articulate: which wrong answer is most temping and why (in detail) it's so tempting; why it's wrong anyway; why someone would be tempted to cross off the right answer; why it's right anyway
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by stubbornp » Tue Oct 28, 2008 9:00 am
Thanks a lot to all....I ll implement these things and post the results on same post.
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