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How to keep calm and carry on.

Problem Solving — algebra and arithmetic (GMAT Focus Edition)
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How to keep calm and carry on.

by Orion007 » Mon Dec 21, 2015 2:29 pm
Hi Guys,

I've got an exam on Jan 6th. And I need some advice to improve as much as I can over the next two weeks.

Background: Took the test a year ago, got a 640 (80% verbal, 50% quant) but I want to up it to 700.

Since I've started up studying about a month ago, I feel I've hit a plateau. My issues, I think, are as follows, and I was wondering would you all could suggest to fix them.

1) Frustration, dejection. Specifically on Quant, I start to feel/ think I'm getting question wrong because I never confident in my answers (a separate issue). When this happens I get incredibly frustrated and then I get dejected and just want to give up and quit. I put so much time into doing this right and that I lose focus when things go wrong. Do you guys have any tips to maintain focus and deal with this?

2) Pacing, I am always short on time on the quant section. I think this comes from me not being able to diagnose the best most efficient way to solve a problem. I feel I can waste a considerable amount of time just reading the question to understand it. This just means less time actually solving the problem. Do you have any drill suggestions that would improve my ability to diagnose and or understand problems more quickly?

3) Going back to time management, do you guys have an effective strategy for managing time during the exam, to know how ahead/behind you may be? On top of that, any suggestions no how to improve my time will be appreciated.

Thanks and please let me know if I should elaborate more.
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by [email protected] » Mon Dec 21, 2015 3:09 pm
Hi Orion007,

All three of the issues that you're describing are impacted by how you studied, the materials you used and 'your way' of working through each of the questions in the Quant section. To ultimately 'fix' these issues, we need more information about how you've been studying thus far:

1) How long have you been studying?
2) What materials have you been using?
3) How often are you using Tactics when dealing with Quant questions vs. how often are you just 'doing math'?
4) How often do you end up getting Quant questions wrong because of a silly/little mistake?

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by Orion007 » Mon Dec 21, 2015 4:11 pm
Hi Rich,

1) For this go around, I've been studying since about Middle of November. But, as I alluded to, I took the GMAT last year and studied for about 3 months all said and done.

2) I have been using veritas prep. I took the live classes last year and have since resumed using the study materials the course provided.

3)Difficult question, depending on the meaning of tactics I suppose. I generally try to solve problems using algebra or conceptual understanding as much as possible. Admitingly, I am weak on alternate techniques, like having a good guessing strategy. What will happen is that I will typically try to solve a problem using my preferred methods, but if I can't, then I'm strapped for time and just have to guess.

4) A fair amount I'd say. I would say about a little less than half the errors I make can be due to rushed math on scratch paper (I forget to carry a # or do simply division wrong) or slightly misreading the question (thus causing me to answer the wrong question or to not properly leverage everything out of the question stem.) I supposed these can all be attributable back to being in a panicked or rushed state of mind.

Thanks for responding.
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by MartyMurray » Mon Dec 21, 2015 6:31 pm
Hi.

I am curious about how you have been scoring on practice tests recently, but assuming that you have been scoring around the same as or somewhat higher than you did on that actual GMAT you sat for, here are some ideas.

One thing I learned was to just soldier on, even if I were behind the clock. I used some particularly difficult practice tests at one point in my preparation, and I would find myself way behind the clock. I had to learn to just continue calmly doing questions and being as accurate as I could. I figured I would have to just see what I could do, and guess what, it tended to work out.

Are you aware that if your right answers are in the right pattern you can score Q50 or Q51 with around 30 right answers? So even if you were way behind the clock and had to guess on the last 8 questions, getting only one of them right, if you had already gotten say 26 or 27 right you would get a pretty high score.

People sometimes guess to catch up with the clock, but doing that is pointless and can actually drag your score down, because it may cause you to get an easier question wrong, and it can make your right answer pattern less likely to get you a high score. The only reasons to guess are that you don't think you will get the answer to a particular question in a reasonable amount of time and that you need to at the end of a section to complete it.

So the only things you can do about timing are to get faster at answering questions and to get better at knowing when to guess and move on. I personally am not very good at the second. I am bull headed and seek to answer every one, taking an attitude that may not always work out for me. Still fortunately I got good at the first.

Regarding frustration and dejection, I find that the less people even use the word frustrated, the more likely they are to succeed in everything they do. What does frustrated even mean? Seems to be a meaningless word to me. Either you are working on something or you aren't. If you work on it you make progress.

So next time you start to feel frustrated or dejected, ride out the urge to sink into that. It's just an emotional habit, a habit kind of like smoking, that does not do you any good. So ride out the urge just as a smoker might ride out the urge to smoke, and similarly to how a smoker might chew gum to help himself ride out the urge to smoke, get to work on problems to help you to ride out the urge to get dejected. By making work the cure for dejection, you get yourself into a good habit to have on the test.

When you are taking the test, you want working carefully on questions to be the cure for worries and panic. You feel like panicking? Get to work. Worried about the clock? Get to work. Just keep yourself busy doing questions and you will forget about panicking or worrying.

If you could just make fewer silly mistakes, you might get enough questions right to hit your score goal. It sounds as if you are making a commonly made error, that of thinking that preparing is about learning about math and how to do problems rather than about focusing on getting right answers. Get it? All that matters is getting right answers, no matter how you get them, and knowing all kinds of math is useless without right answers. So when you are preparing, any time you don't get a right answer, ask yourself why you didn't get a right answer and do something about that.

It's easy to say, "Well I knew the concept. Just didn't get the right answer," but getting right answers is the point. So when you do practice questions, you have two goals, getting right answers and getting them as quickly as possible. Fast but not right is useless too. So take whatever time it takes to get right answers, and as you go along seek to find ways to work more efficiently and get right answers more quickly.

To get better at doing quant problems, you need to do focused work, topic by topic. You can do 20 - 50 questions of one type, figuring out how to get that type done, even researching, using Beat the GMAT and other resources to get ideas. On Beat the GMAT experts answer questions in cool efficient ways that you can apply yourself or learn from. Also, you can post quant questions on here and see how they get explained. Then you can go back and apply in your practice what you have seen. Get good at handling a type of question, wicked good, two minutes per question good, and then move on to the next type and do the same thing.

If you work on question types one after the other, spending one or two days on each type for the next two weeks, you will work on maybe eight to ten types that way. If you get wicked good at handling ten types of questions, when you take the test you will answer questions of those ten types faster and more accurately than you have before, and you will give yourself more time to get right answers to questions of other types. You didn't say how you have been scoring, but if you do that and you stay calm by keeping yourself busy working on questions, I am guessing you will hit your score goal.

One source of categorized questions is the question bank here, https://bellcurves.com. You can access it by going to the GMAT section and setting up a practice account.

You might get some more insight by reading this. https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/careless-m ... gmat-math/

Also, to speed up, get good at doing things like working with triangles and factoring integers so that when you have to do those things in order to answer questions, you will do them quickly and accurately. Here's an exercise I strongly recommend you do at least once or twice. https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/07/ ... r-problems

Here's my overall philosophy of how to increase GMAT scores. https://infinitemindprep.com/raising-you ... the-board/
Last edited by MartyMurray on Mon Dec 21, 2015 10:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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by Orion007 » Mon Dec 21, 2015 10:10 pm
Thanks Marty.

So in my 15 days until my next test, you recommend dedicating a day to a particular quant type questions (like 50 a day) until I've gotten very competent at the topic?

Thanks!
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by MartyMurray » Mon Dec 21, 2015 10:33 pm
Orion007 wrote:So in my 15 days until my next test, you recommend dedicating a day to a particular quant type questions (like 50 a day) until I've gotten very competent at the topic?
Yes, basically, and if takes more than a day, then it takes more than a day. Also, it's not just about doing questions. It's about making a project of each type, learning about any concepts that you need to understand, figuring out cool ways to handle the questions, and doing questions, probably getting them done slowly at first and then speeding up as you figure out how to do them more efficiently and how to do them accurately while doing them quickly.

And remember, nothing matters but getting right answers. The test is testing, among other things, how effective you are at on the fly coming up with a way to get something done. Fwiw, while eventually I did all kinds of preparation, before doing much I scored 740 on my first practice test. Didn't know much about anything, but I was determined and intense and I surely could hack my way to answers. You can take that "There has to be a way to get the answer" attitude and approach to the bank.
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by MartyMurray » Mon Dec 21, 2015 10:58 pm
Also, is there any particular reason why you are not talking about the verbal section here?

640 is a great starting point. Get a little better at seeing what you have to see and hacking your way to verbal answers, and you are already at or close to 700. Then get a few more quant questions right and you are above 700.

700 itself starts to look rather doable.

Make it so.
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by Orion007 » Tue Dec 22, 2015 11:03 am
Thanks Marty,

My verbal skills are good and can obviously improve. But it is very clear to me that my quant skills are lacking. So most of my focus is dedicated to quant for now.
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by [email protected] » Wed Dec 23, 2015 9:00 am
Hi Orion007,

When was the last time you took a FULL-LENGTH CAT (including the Essay and IR sections)? How did you score on that CAT (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores. Since your 640 is from over a year ago, we really shouldn't be using that score result as a 'baseline' for your current studies. A more recent CAT score will give us a better idea of what you should be focused on during these last 2 weeks.

1) Do you have the flexibility to push back your Test Date (even if it's just for a couple of weeks)?

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