GMAT Strategy

Alright, so I got back into studying after the disappointing GMAT result last Friday, mostly due to struggling on quant (46, 73rd percentile).

I whipped out the CD from my old Peterson's GMAT book and took a CAT. After the quant section, I was going to save it and move onto the verbal, but accidentally skipped the verbal. I checked my quant score and I scored a 60, with 35/37 correct.

Not mentioning the dubious/antiquated algorithm that allows scoring beyond a 51...I really need a challenge on quant. That was way too easy.

I've maxed out the MGMAT CATs and the 800score CATs, both of which provided a pretty rigorous quant challenge. Books are no good for me anymore, because I would drop 40 dollars on a book, and 90% of the quant section would be too elementary.

Any other companies make good CATs with very challenging quant sections?

Please let me know...thanks.

Will be retaking the GMAT in a little over 3 weeks (stupid 31 day rule)

Dude,

You have pretty much done with the hardest quant material out there. Your 46Q could be due to

a.) overall timing issues - practise with SETS 31 (found on esnips.com) and try to finish the test in 60 mins (question are like GMAT but on the eaier side).

b.) some chinks in your quant armor like statistics, geometry , P&C, probability, inequalities - you need to figure that out and work on the fundamental concepts for those problems from a fundamental source(not the typical GMAT material).

You never mentioned your performance on GMATPrep. How did you do there? It's not the "hardest" material but its for sure the most "accurate" material. I'd be interested to know those data points.

Luke.Doolittle wrote:You never mentioned your performance on GMATPrep. How did you do there? It's not the "hardest" material but its for sure the most "accurate" material. I'd be interested to know those data points.

GMATPrep1 - 680 (three months ago, one of my 1st CATs)

GMATPrep2 - 730 (several weeks later after intense prep)

GMATPrep1 retake - 770 (1.5 months gap, saw 4-5 questions that vaguely seemed familiar, so results slightly skewed)

GMATPrep2 retake - 750 (4 days before GMAT Gameday, same, saw 4-5 questions that were vaguely familiar.)

Game day quant was unequivocally tougher than GMATPrep quant.

That's so interesting because I had the opposite experience. I felt like the actual Quant I just took was about the same if not slightly easier than on the GMATPrep. And I scored about the same (A point lower on the actual quant but that's a long story revolving around the proctor screwing up my login and me losing some time).

In deference to your question, I found the questions that were the hardest and most consistent with the actual GMAT other than official problems to be the GMATClub problems. Some are worded a little funky and some test things in a way I'm sure the GMAT wouldn't, but they are pretty good.

My Advice (which you can feel free to take or leave): I would put a substantial amount of effort into understanding why your Quant was lower than it should have been rather than seeking out banks of hard problems. What types of problems did you struggle with on gameday? What problems on the GMATPrep?

I tried your approach myself once. When I got stuck on a Q score after 2 months I spent a lot of time doing the MGMAT challange problems, advanced quant and gmat club. Interestingly enough I wasn't able to get unstuck. In fact I thoroughly believe doing nothing but the hardest problems puts you at a disadvantage because the actual GMAT doesn't ask all 700 level questions, even if you are scoring 50+. It wasn't until I went back to official problems and tried to do them in two or three different ways, and do some easier problems of the types I was struggling with that I was able to unstick myself.

That's my .02

Thanks bro...I don't know. I feel like I just scored at the lower end of my range this time, and given a retake, I should be able to pull a 48-50.

I want a 750+ so so so bad...

sunman wrote:Thanks bro...I don't know. I feel like I just scored at the lower end of my range this time, and given a retake, I should be able to pull a 48-50.

I want a 750+ so so so bad...

There is also the possibility you just had a bad day / got a bad lot of questions. If that's the case I would just do a minimal number of problems to keep yourself fresh, maybe take another GMATPrep and then retake. It sounds like that may be the case.

Best of luck.