GMAT Strategy

Here is the deal:

I took my first CAT using PR, scored 480; this was after about a month of studying. I then took Kaplan two weeks later, scored 550. Have been doing OG for the last three weeks, and see that it is a real treat. Today, I took my third CAT using the second test from PR, and scored a 490.

I went to all three exams and read every single quant and verbal question and answer choices. Here are my conclusions:

1. Princeton structures and words their questions in a way that should lead you to use their strategies. This is especially true on the math part. Their questions were not readily given to solving using traditional mathematical methods (which is absolutely true of OG. Almost all of the math is readily given to traditional mathematical setups and equations).

2. Their verbal is extremely poorly phrased and structured. The answer choices the choose to present often appear to be testing another concept. For example, they will ask you to find a proper conclusion to a CR question, but the answer choices will be phrased as if the question is asking you to make an inference.

3. There were some questions on CR that actually required you to mentally finish writing the passage for them in order to choose the answer. I am not talking about the question type that actually asks you to finish the thought for them. No...no... I mean, the passage does not appear to be finished. When I looked at some of the explanations, the question required you to draw a conclusion, infer absolutely outside of the scope of the argument, and then do what the question actually asked you to do...resolve the paradox.

4. On the math section, there quite a few questions that were pretty vague. In other words, if a certain piece of information was present, the answer would be, say, D. But if you are supposed to assume that we are to deal without that piece of information, then the answer is A.

This is all pretty frustrating. If anyone else found this to be true, please let me know. I am curious to see what others think of the tests.

From now on, I am sticking to Kaplan (which isn't exactly stellar, mostly because of the way they smudge together their CR stimulus with the questions and the answer choices). I am yet to try MGMAT, and I have only heard good things about the GMATPrep software.

Hi,

I was thinking of taking princeton exams, which year exams are you referring 2007 ?

I got the exams from esnips, Well I was also planning to take one mgmat and 1 PR exam and see where i stand. I have done on gprep exam and found that I have serious timing issues in verbal, I am working on that.

well feel free to PM or mail me if you want to discuss anything. I am in the same boat. Meanwhile I am finishing up on OG 11 stuff.

thanks
V-

Wow, I had a totally different experience (I have the 2007 DVD). Which ones you did take? I thought mine were right on the money, whereas Kaplan....way off.

btw vgmat2....if you got those tests from esnips, then you downloaded illegal materials. Not a good idea, aside from the fact that they're stolen, they could have viruses or other probs.

Hi Spence,

Well I tried installing it is asking for password and these are 2005 exams. I am not going to use it anyway. I will see if I can purchase from online PR. that way I will get the good or updated questions, in case PR updates their question bank....

Let me know how was your experience with the pR exams, how much did you score. And how do you compare with gmat prep ?

V-

The PR and Kaplan tests I've taken come from the 2008 book editions. I would say that thus far PR is my least favorite preparation guide. Its verbal review sections are pretty good, but I am pretty strong on the verbal part anyway, with some improvements needed in RC. SC and CR, I've pretty much been killing. In fact, on my last Kaplan test I scored a 36 on the verbal and the only thing that really tripped me up from going into the 40s was RC. I really do not see how someone can accidentally score 36 and accidentally have a hit rate of 90 to 98% in the OG, and then slide down to the 20s on the PR exams.

Don't get me wrong, there were questions that I simply did not answer correctly on. HOWEVER, there were questions that, as I say above, ask you to do one thing, and the answer choices seem to be taken from another conceptual area, e.g., a question will test your ability to draw a conclusion on a CR question, but the answers will be written as if you are asked to infer, etc etc etc.

The math part is much clearer on the Kaplan tests, quizzes, and the practice questions in the book.

The best of them all, obviously, is the OG, though I have not yet taken any of the exams from MBA.com.

From now on, I am going to take one CAT every single week, every Saturday. I am sticking to GMATPrep, Kaplan, and MGMAT (have not tried their tests either, yet).

Hey, by the way, have you guys tried any good sources for number properties practice. I have gone through MGMAT, Kaplan, PR, and I am working through the OG and OG Quant right now (the latter two do not have any input worthy of noting as far as strategies and so forth go, as you already know). I would really appreciate it. I have developed my abilities on word problems to a pretty strong level (interestingly enough, I only saw about 6 word problems on the last PR exam, the rest were number properties [heavy emphasis] and arithmetic).

I would really appreciate your or anyone else's input on a good source for practice and strategies for the # properties. Thanks!

If you are interested in getting the entire MGAT books, OG guide and access to the remaining 7 online courses and additional 3 months of access to course content, then email me at: [email protected]

I signed up for MGMAT and now I do not have to take the GMAT for the emba program I am attending.

I will unload the entire package for $400.

AleksandrM wrote:The PR and Kaplan tests I've taken come from the 2008 book editions. I would say that thus far PR is my least favorite preparation guide. Its verbal review sections are pretty good, but I am pretty strong on the verbal part anyway, with some improvements needed in RC. SC and CR, I've pretty much been killing. In fact, on my last Kaplan test I scored a 36 on the verbal and the only thing that really tripped me up from going into the 40s was RC. I really do not see how someone can accidentally score 36 and accidentally have a hit rate of 90 to 98% in the OG, and then slide down to the 20s on the PR exams.

Don't get me wrong, there were questions that I simply did not answer correctly on. HOWEVER, there were questions that, as I say above, ask you to do one thing, and the answer choices seem to be taken from another conceptual area, e.g., a question will test your ability to draw a conclusion on a CR question, but the answers will be written as if you are asked to infer, etc etc etc.

The math part is much clearer on the Kaplan tests, quizzes, and the practice questions in the book.

The best of them all, obviously, is the OG, though I have not yet taken any of the exams from MBA.com.

From now on, I am going to take one CAT every single week, every Saturday. I am sticking to GMATPrep, Kaplan, and MGMAT (have not tried their tests either, yet).

Hi,
Its good to know that you are doing good on verbal. I am preping myself hard on verbal. Can you please give me some tips for e.g
a) when you take the exam in verbal part - how do you maintain the time 2 min/q?
b) Do you take notes for RC and CR ?
c) Do you reread the questions - ans back and forth ?
d) Do you think verbal in PR is good ?

Please let me know. I am getting killed in timing. My last 10 questions happen to be blind quesses, which pulls my score down. I am trying to pace myself....

As far as num properties - you can get mgmat book for number properties. Eventhough I donot have, it costs less than20 bucks and you can get all the online mgmat exams included in that price.

thanks in advance for the reply...

V-

My response to each of your questions follows (your questions are in bold):

a) when you take the exam in verbal part - how do you maintain the time 2 min/q?

The most important part of verbal is to time yourself whenever you do practice questions. Also, don't time yourself on just ten or twenty, and then take a break and check your answers. Do about 40 (this is a nice round number and is close to the number of questions on the verbal part). Do not worry about time per question. Instead, think about your time per type of question. Your most time consuming questions (at least this is true for me) will be on RC followed by CR. While it is important to get your time within reasonable bounds on these question types, it is also important to gain time for these types of questions by decreasing the amount of time you spend on each SC question. I now spend about 40 seconds to a minute on SC, depending on complexity. After this, try to cut down your time on CR, and the best way to do this is to just practice and practice and practice. RC is very tricky. It takes time to acquire a strategy that really works for you. You might also notice that on RC questions, there is question type that you might consistently get wrong (for me this was the inference question; I improved on this by doing a lot of inference CR and RC, until I figured out what kind of a response to eliminate and look for - remember, eliminating can often be more useful than recognizing the correct answer choice). I use a little bit of Kaplan strategy for RC and a little bit of PR. I read the entire first paragraph, then every first senctence of every paragraph, but then, instead of just looking over the words, I skim the information in each paragraph until I hit too much detail - I just note where this is and move on - remember, you can always come back to the passage, it does not disappear once you move on to answering questions.

b) Do you take notes for RC and CR ?

I made about 20 flashcards for CR, and none for RC. My CR flashcards pretty much consist of text copied down from the Kaplan and PR books, as well as some of my own conclusions, which I presented to you above.

c) Do you reread the questions - ans back and forth ?

This is something that many people obviously run into. Your goal is to read everything once, but thoroughly - for the exception of RC. It is inevitable that you will come back to some answer choices more than once because they seem to be correct. This usually yields two answer choices, one of which has to be proven wrong or reasoned away. However, as you go through each answer choice, do not merely read it. Consider what is being presented, does it have any key words that give away the fact that it is the second best answer. Sometimes I hit CR questions that are quite complex, which forces me to reread a part of the passage. As you do this, learn a way to write down the information to then compare to the answer choices. For example, if the passage says that say...The city Y has 10 percent less emission that city X.....however, city X blah blah, and the residents of city Y blah blah. Then, answer choices all say something about percentages, well go and write down relationships, for example, "Y 10%<X" You get the idea.

d) Do you think verbal in PR is good ?

I think that the verbal part in PR is extremely well put together. I did not try anything from MGMAT, but I hear/read good things about their books, especially the SC guide. However, I would say that paying close attention and making flashcards out of the PR sections would do you good. Also, as you make the flashcards, write down a question representing that question type (I did this, and it helped getting all of the concepts tested down and straight in my head).

As far as num properties - you can get mgmat book for number properties. Eventhough I donot have, it costs less than20 bucks and you can get all the online mgmat exams included in that price.

I already went though this MGMAT book, and am looking for more practice and strategies in other books. This is the most challenging question type as far as quant goes. I get killed on MOST number properties questions.
[/quote]

vgmat, I would definitely get the newer tests. I had no complaints with the 2007 tests, am surprised to see such a difference experience for the 2008 ones. Haven't seen that complaint before.

The others had good answers for our other friend, and I don't think I can add to that! Nicely done, everyone.

AleksandrM wrote:My response to each of your questions follows (your questions are in bold):

a) when you take the exam in verbal part - how do you maintain the time 2 min/q?

The most important part of verbal is to time yourself whenever you do practice questions. Also, don't time yourself on just ten or twenty, and then take a break and check your answers. Do about 40 (this is a nice round number and is close to the number of questions on the verbal part). Do not worry about time per question. Instead, think about your time per type of question. Your most time consuming questions (at least this is true for me) will be on RC followed by CR. While it is important to get your time within reasonable bounds on these question types, it is also important to gain time for these types of questions by decreasing the amount of time you spend on each SC question. I now spend about 40 seconds to a minute on SC, depending on complexity. After this, try to cut down your time on CR, and the best way to do this is to just practice and practice and practice. RC is very tricky. It takes time to acquire a strategy that really works for you. You might also notice that on RC questions, there is question type that you might consistently get wrong (for me this was the inference question; I improved on this by doing a lot of inference CR and RC, until I figured out what kind of a response to eliminate and look for - remember, eliminating can often be more useful than recognizing the correct answer choice). I use a little bit of Kaplan strategy for RC and a little bit of PR. I read the entire first paragraph, then every first senctence of every paragraph, but then, instead of just looking over the words, I skim the information in each paragraph until I hit too much detail - I just note where this is and move on - remember, you can always come back to the passage, it does not disappear once you move on to answering questions.

b) Do you take notes for RC and CR ?

I made about 20 flashcards for CR, and none for RC. My CR flashcards pretty much consist of text copied down from the Kaplan and PR books, as well as some of my own conclusions, which I presented to you above.

c) Do you reread the questions - ans back and forth ?

This is something that many people obviously run into. Your goal is to read everything once, but thoroughly - for the exception of RC. It is inevitable that you will come back to some answer choices more than once because they seem to be correct. This usually yields two answer choices, one of which has to be proven wrong or reasoned away. However, as you go through each answer choice, do not merely read it. Consider what is being presented, does it have any key words that give away the fact that it is the second best answer. Sometimes I hit CR questions that are quite complex, which forces me to reread a part of the passage. As you do this, learn a way to write down the information to then compare to the answer choices. For example, if the passage says that say...The city Y has 10 percent less emission that city X.....however, city X blah blah, and the residents of city Y blah blah. Then, answer choices all say something about percentages, well go and write down relationships, for example, "Y 10%<X" You get the idea.

d) Do you think verbal in PR is good ?

I think that the verbal part in PR is extremely well put together. I did not try anything from MGMAT, but I hear/read good things about their books, especially the SC guide. However, I would say that paying close attention and making flashcards out of the PR sections would do you good. Also, as you make the flashcards, write down a question representing that question type (I did this, and it helped getting all of the concepts tested down and straight in my head).

As far as num properties - you can get mgmat book for number properties. Eventhough I donot have, it costs less than20 bucks and you can get all the online mgmat exams included in that price.

I already went though this MGMAT book, and am looking for more practice and strategies in other books. This is the most challenging question type as far as quant goes. I get killed on MOST number properties questions.

[/quote]

Thanks for the response. It was nice to know the details. I always ask myself how do people scoring 40's in verbal think and do stuff.

Btw: on b) - I was asking when you write the exam do you take notes to solve the question. for e.g in case of CR writing premise, conclusion etc. Similarly, for RC, like taking 2-3 lines of notes for each para ?

thanks again
V-

Btw: on b) - I was asking when you write the exam do you take notes to solve the question. for e.g in case of CR writing premise, conclusion etc. Similarly, for RC, like taking 2-3 lines of notes for each para ?

For critical reasoning questions, the first thing I do is read the question and write down whether it is asking me to conclude, weaken, strengthen, infer, resolve (a paradox), explain, etc. This helps me focus; this also allows you to avoid rereading the question. After reading the question and writing down a one-word summary of what it is asking me to do, I go on to read the passage, and then move on to the answer choices. That is all the "notes" I take - the one-word summary.

For readinc comprehension, I sure as hell do not advise you to take 2-3 lines of notes per paragraph because you'll end up making 6-9 lines of notes total and end up spending too much time. Your summary of a paragraph should not exceed two to three words. I usually only write paragraph "summaries" when I am facing the science passage. For business and social science passages I will maybe write down three words for the entire passage. UNLESS, it is a social science passage that is at the 700 level - this will envolve a lot of arguments and counter-arguments as well as pretty indepth analysis of an issue - then I will approach it as if it is a science passage.

I do not suggest writing a lot. Simply write down some key "association words" - these are words that, FOR YOU, sum up the paragraph.

For example, say you are going through a science passage about two different approaches to the evolutionary theory. The first paragraph will introduce the two approaches - one will be the gradualist approach to evolutionary phenomena the other will be the punctuated equilibrium approach. (You could summarize it in the following way - gradual vs. puncture). The second paragraph will tell you about two researchers that have defended each and attacked the other, such as Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould. (You could summarize it like this - Dawk = grad & Gould = puncture). The third paragraph will provide evidence and the authors own conclusion. (You could write - evidence + conclusion = disagrees [here the author disagrees with both, for example]).

I really hope this helps man, because I've been writing this stuff for you instead of studying my math stuff. If you need any more clarification pleas provide me with your credit card number, I charge only 300 USD per answer, so the last two have been a sample of my work FOR FREE.

On the serious side, if you do have any more questions, ask... I'll try my best.

Hey,

Thanks for your time. I really appreciate it. This definitely helps me. btw I hate social science....well ...I need to read some articles on that...

I hope you are mastering quant by now...from past 5 days I have not touched quant I am just focusing on verbal part. Today I tried solving 20 CR in timed env, thought I will do in 40 mins, but my time exhausted when I was on 15 question. It was very demoralising to see the time exhaust....well I guess I need to speed up more.



thanks
V-

AleksandrM wrote:Here is the deal:

I took my first CAT using PR, scored 480; this was after about a month of studying. I then took Kaplan two weeks later, scored 550. Have been doing OG for the last three weeks, and see that it is a real treat. Today, I took my third CAT using the second test from PR, and scored a 490.

I went to all three exams and read every single quant and verbal question and answer choices. Here are my conclusions:

1. Princeton structures and words their questions in a way that should lead you to use their strategies. This is especially true on the math part. Their questions were not readily given to solving using traditional mathematical methods (which is absolutely true of OG. Almost all of the math is readily given to traditional mathematical setups and equations).

2. Their verbal is extremely poorly phrased and structured. The answer choices the choose to present often appear to be testing another concept. For example, they will ask you to find a proper conclusion to a CR question, but the answer choices will be phrased as if the question is asking you to make an inference.

3. There were some questions on CR that actually required you to mentally finish writing the passage for them in order to choose the answer. I am not talking about the question type that actually asks you to finish the thought for them. No...no... I mean, the passage does not appear to be finished. When I looked at some of the explanations, the question required you to draw a conclusion, infer absolutely outside of the scope of the argument, and then do what the question actually asked you to do...resolve the paradox.

4. On the math section, there quite a few questions that were pretty vague. In other words, if a certain piece of information was present, the answer would be, say, D. But if you are supposed to assume that we are to deal without that piece of information, then the answer is A.

This is all pretty frustrating. If anyone else found this to be true, please let me know. I am curious to see what others think of the tests.

From now on, I am sticking to Kaplan (which isn't exactly stellar, mostly because of the way they smudge together their CR stimulus with the questions and the answer choices). I am yet to try MGMAT, and I have only heard good things about the GMATPrep software.

- this seems to be conflicting with many other review I have read. I know it's all personal preference, but has anyone else had similar same issues regarding the actual questions on the PR practice exams?

My understanding was that PR gave a pretty good background review of the GMAT subject matter.

Thanks!