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help!!500 on my first exam. 1 month left to reach 690

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help!!500 on my first exam. 1 month left to reach 690

by kristines » Fri Apr 29, 2016 2:56 am
I have been studying for like 3 months and I also took a preparation course but my Gmat exam was a failure.
I got Q 29, and V 29. Obviously I rejected the score since my target is 670 - 700.
I need to take the exam at the end of May because of my application deadlines. Could someone please give me some advices about how can I improve?

QUANTITATIVE: I have been studying and practicing for quantitative on GMAC quantitative questions and other questions from my gmat course. I think the issues here are my lack of confidence and the fact that during the exam I really did the first questions in a hurry and there were still 15 mins left and 3 questions. When I practice I try to monitor the time, but still I cannot correct this behaviour during my test-attempts. Any advice?

VERBAL: As for verbal, I have been reviewing the guides provided by Manhattan review and relative questions + questions from GMAC verbal review. SC is pretty ok and I have a good hit but the part I am having most troubles with is Critical Reasoning and I now bought powerscore bible e-book - hopes it will help.

Given that I really studied a lot I think i have troubles with strategy here. Could someone please help me reach my target and be accepted to my dream university? Pleasseeee!
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by [email protected] » Fri Apr 29, 2016 9:05 am
Hi kristines,

The type of score improvement that you're talking about will likely take far more time than you have allotted. Since you've been studying a certain way for so long, you've likely developed some 'bad habits' that will take time to fix. So beyond learning/practicing new Tactics, you have to change the fundamental way that you 'see' (and respond to) the Exam. Your score goal is achievable, but it's probably going to require another 2-3 months of consistent, guided study to get to that level.

1) What Course did you take previously?
2) When is the next application deadline for the School(s) that you're interested in?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
Contact Rich at [email protected]
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by MartyMurray » Fri Apr 29, 2016 8:45 pm
Hi Kristine.

One thing that you probably have to change is your perception of how to prepare for this test.

My take is that you have the impression that if you learn a bunch of stuff, you will get right answers. The truth is that learning about the building blocks of the questions and about a bunch of strategies will only get you so far. What you have to do now is to develop skill in getting to right answers.

Doing that can take a fair amount of work.

To increase your quant score, probably you should go over your practice tests and see what types of questions you found most challenging and focus in learning how to get those right, one type at a time. You need more quant questions to work with, and one way to get more is by setting up a free practice account in the GMAT section here. https://bellcurves.com The questions in the question bank on that site are arranged in dozens of categories. Any category the handling of which you are not totally confident in is probably one that you need to work on in order to score high enough on quant to get a total score around 700.

For verbal, while you can get some ideas from resources like the PowerScore bible, probably you will have to do many new practice questions to develop an eye for the details and logic that you need to see in order to get right answers to critical reasoning questions and other verbal questions. Generally when practicing doing these questions, you should work UNTIMED, in order to develop the skills you need to get right answers. Once you are getting right answers 80 - 100% of the time, then you can seek to speed up.

To get better at managing your time during the test, you could do some practice questions, seeking to take two to three minutes each. Also, by taking a practice test once a week, you would get more experience handling the clock. Meanwhile, I suspect that if you were better at handling the questions and doing the work, managing your timing would come more naturally.
Marty Murray
Perfect Scoring Tutor With Over a Decade of Experience
MartyMurrayCoaching.com
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