can anyone help please?

Hey Bond,

I'll try to offer a few suggestions:

1) This is just a hunch, but I'm pretty confident in it based on what you wrote:

As for the quant, I have gone over the 5 MGMAT books very carefully and took lots of notes. I'm did fairly well on the OG quant questions, yet most of the test questions seemed pretty tricky!

My theory based on that - you're approaching the GMAT like a high school final exam. You're reading over and taking notes on rules and formulas; you're reviewing the detailed solutions of questions and trying to remember step-by-step how to do them. But your study is focused almost entirely on "remembering" and not on "thinking". The GMAT is not a high school or college final exam - it does not test what you know. It tests how you think - how you apply what you know to solve problems efficiently and logically. Practice test problems should seem tricky - they should usually look like nothing you've seen before, but provide you with one or two anchor points that you know and know well that you can use to get on track.

Like this article (https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/02/ ... ngineering) notes, the GMAT is big on requiring you to reverse-engineer a concept that you know from top down - you've probably learned how to go from A to Z, but they'll ask you to start in the middle and work your way to either end. If you're focused on "remembering how to do rates/percents/algebra" it's really tough to have that flexibility; if you're thinking in terms of assets ("well, I do know __________ and that allows me to solve for ___________") you're thinking the right way.


2) Your early pacing on the practice test you linked put you in a quick hole...6 of your first 11 questions took you a standard deviation longer than the 2:05 per question average, and while you got 4 of those right it's noticeable that you had to hustle in the back half of the test to compensate. You'll need to develop a pretty good sense within the first 30-45 seconds of looking at a question whether you know you have a path to a correct answer or you just need to make a decent selection and move on. 3 minutes on a wrong answer is a pretty rough use of time; even 3 minutes on a right answer is bittersweet since it's reduced your available time somewhat (I'll still argue that if you know you're on the right track it's probably worth it), but 3 minutes and wrong? That's at least the equivalent of 1.5 wrong answers if not more...you've gotten one wrong and burned half of your time allotment for another question.

With a nod to my first point, I'd recommend that the best way to overcome this is to think more in terms of identifying your assets at the outset - what is the given information and how can you use it to move forward? I'm a big fan of a drill I call "Quick First Step" in which you give yourself 30 or 40 seconds for each of 10 questions and hold yourself accountable for getting started - have something actionable on paper within that initial 30 seconds. Then go back and finish the set. The goal is to train yourself to make use of that initial 30 seconds to either get started quickly or realize that you probably won't be able to get a good foothold and know that it's time to move on.

3) From what I've heard, I think you're right that the Manhattan practice tests are a little harder than the actual test, which I think is a good thing - you're better off practicing on difficult material so that you're ready for anything you might see on test day. So don't let yourself take too much of a confidence hit on this...just use it as a learning experience to identify the kinds of mistakes you're making and the types of questions that are throwing you off.


I hope that's helpful...

Brian@VeritasPrep wrote:Hey Bond,

I'll try to offer a few suggestions:

1) This is just a hunch, but I'm pretty confident in it based on what you wrote:

As for the quant, I have gone over the 5 MGMAT books very carefully and took lots of notes. I'm did fairly well on the OG quant questions, yet most of the test questions seemed pretty tricky!

My theory based on that - you're approaching the GMAT like a high school final exam. You're reading over and taking notes on rules and formulas; you're reviewing the detailed solutions of questions and trying to remember step-by-step how to do them. But your study is focused almost entirely on "remembering" and not on "thinking". The GMAT is not a high school or college final exam - it does not test what you know. It tests how you think - how you apply what you know to solve problems efficiently and logically. Practice test problems should seem tricky - they should usually look like nothing you've seen before, but provide you with one or two anchor points that you know and know well that you can use to get on track.

Like this article (https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/02/ ... ngineering) notes, the GMAT is big on requiring you to reverse-engineer a concept that you know from top down - you've probably learned how to go from A to Z, but they'll ask you to start in the middle and work your way to either end. If you're focused on "remembering how to do rates/percents/algebra" it's really tough to have that flexibility; if you're thinking in terms of assets ("well, I do know __________ and that allows me to solve for ___________") you're thinking the right way.


2) Your early pacing on the practice test you linked put you in a quick hole...6 of your first 11 questions took you a standard deviation longer than the 2:05 per question average, and while you got 4 of those right it's noticeable that you had to hustle in the back half of the test to compensate. You'll need to develop a pretty good sense within the first 30-45 seconds of looking at a question whether you know you have a path to a correct answer or you just need to make a decent selection and move on. 3 minutes on a wrong answer is a pretty rough use of time; even 3 minutes on a right answer is bittersweet since it's reduced your available time somewhat (I'll still argue that if you know you're on the right track it's probably worth it), but 3 minutes and wrong? That's at least the equivalent of 1.5 wrong answers if not more...you've gotten one wrong and burned half of your time allotment for another question.

With a nod to my first point, I'd recommend that the best way to overcome this is to think more in terms of identifying your assets at the outset - what is the given information and how can you use it to move forward? I'm a big fan of a drill I call "Quick First Step" in which you give yourself 30 or 40 seconds for each of 10 questions and hold yourself accountable for getting started - have something actionable on paper within that initial 30 seconds. Then go back and finish the set. The goal is to train yourself to make use of that initial 30 seconds to either get started quickly or realize that you probably won't be able to get a good foothold and know that it's time to move on.

3) From what I've heard, I think you're right that the Manhattan practice tests are a little harder than the actual test, which I think is a good thing - you're better off practicing on difficult material so that you're ready for anything you might see on test day. So don't let yourself take too much of a confidence hit on this...just use it as a learning experience to identify the kinds of mistakes you're making and the types of questions that are throwing you off.


I hope that's helpful...

Thanks a lot for your reply. I definitely need to speed up my timing on the questions that I am not to sure about, so that im not taking away precious time from the ones that i know how to do, but may take me a bit over 2 minutes to solve.

I just looked over the answers i got wrong on the quant part and tried to solve each one. I ended up getting all but 2 right. So it shows that I do have the knowledge to solve these, but I think i need to take a few seconds to actually figure out my next steps instead of jumping into the problem right away.