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Nobody to help ??? 35 days to GMAT Exam -

by vaibhav.mittal » Sat Aug 01, 2009 11:45 am
Hi Guys

I've my exam on 7th Sept and I'm yet not complete with the syllabus once.

Therefore, I need your Suggestions and Help:

My story so far:

VERBAL:

SC: completed Manhattan SC and OG12 entire SC exercise. My accuracy is 80% and I'm confident to improve it further. Next, I'll be doing SC from Kaplan 800 in a day or two followed by Verbal Review and then again revision of OG12.

CR: It's bad, I'm midway in OG12 CR exercise and just getting accuracy rate of 60-70%. The problem is that I'm from an Engineering background and do not understand the Economic terms, Marketing Strategies, Insurance policies type of questions. Even after spending a lot of time I get these type of questions wrong!
Please suggest a way to fathom it.

RC: I've an innate talent of reading and my accuracy is 80% in this as well. So far I've just been able to complete 50% of OG12 RC.

For Verbal I intend to refer to Kaplan 800 and Verbal review apart from OG12. Any suggestions ????

QUANT:

Geometry: I've completed the entire geometry twice with questions from Quant Review, Manhattan GMAT archives.

Arithmetic: I've done it once and redoing it for better grasp. Right now, I'm on Number System & HCF/LCM.

Algebra: The above will be followed by revision of Algebra. I have planned to finish all this by Aug 06 after which I'll complete my OG12 in next 4 days. So by Aug 11 I should have completed with Quant topics once except for Probability which I'm yet to start : (


I also have to give 15-20 full length tests. Indeed, I've not given a diagnostic yet because I feel that If i'm not conversant with basic Maths questions and its types, how can I go ahead with Full Lengths test.
Do you think it's the right strategy?

Please give your inputs for me to improve or re-strategize, I'm targeting a score of at least 650-700.

Thanks
Vaibhav Mittal
Last edited by vaibhav.mittal on Wed Aug 12, 2009 2:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Best,
Vaibhav Mittal
W: https://in.youtube.com/Vaibhav8584
B: https://womenlibber.blocked

"The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves" - L.P. Smith
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No one to help on BeattheGMAt forums

by vaibhav.mittal » Fri Aug 07, 2009 12:12 am
I'm surprised that there's not even a single person who can help me.
Best,
Vaibhav Mittal
W: https://in.youtube.com/Vaibhav8584
B: https://womenlibber.blocked

"The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves" - L.P. Smith
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by Stacey Koprince » Fri Aug 14, 2009 8:29 am
Received a PM asking me to respond.

Sounds like you're making good progress on the SC front. For CR, you mention only OG. What are you using to teach you HOW to do CR? If you don't have anything other than OG, then you need to identify a test-prep book that actually teaches you what you need to know / how to reason on CR. Don't keep doing OG problems until you've first had a chance to learn what to do - it's not easy to learn HOW to do these problems just from OG.

You may or may not need to do the same for RC - if you already think you're good enough on those, then you can get away with just doing practice problems. But know that you probably won't improve a lot without some source that teaches you how to do these as well.

For quant, again, what are you using that teaches you everything you need to know for the test? It's hard to get this just from doing problems in OG.

Overall, from what you've written, it sounds like you are going for what I call the "quantity" approach: doing lots and lots of stuff. That's not as good as a high-quality approach: doing fewer problems and tests but really studying and analyzing them well.

For instance, I would recommend that most people take between 4 and 6 practice tests total. Taking 15-20 practice tests will NOT help you more than taking 4-6, and it has a real potential to hurt you.

CAT exams are really good for (a) figuring out where you're scoring right now, (b) practicing stamina, and (c) analyzing your strengths and weaknesses (and then doing something about it!). The actual act of just taking the exam is NOT so useful for improving. It's what you do with the test results / between tests that helps you to improve. If you take 15 practice tests, then you can't spend much time analyzing and improving between tests, so you're not getting the benefit that you need to get out of taking a practice test.

So, slow down. :) Your task is not about volume. Your task is about study and analysis and mastery - really trying to gain a deep understanding of the ways in which the questions can be worded, how to recognize what to do, etc. Here are some questions to ask yourself when studying (you ask these whether you got the question right or wrong):

Was I able to CATEGORIZE this question by topic and subtopic? By process / technique?
Did I make a CONNECTION to previous experience? Or did I have to do it all from scratch?
Did I COMPREHEND the symbols, text, questions, statements, and answer choices?
Did I understand the CONTENT being tested?
Did I choose the best APPROACH?
Did I have the SKILLS to follow through?
Am I comfortable with OTHER STRATEGIES that would have worked, at least partially? How should I have made an educated guess?
Do I understand every TRAP & TRICK that the writer built into the question, including wrong answers?
Have I MASTERED this problem? Could I explain every aspect, fully, to someone else?
How will I RECOGNIZE similar problems in the future?

On verbal questions, you can also ask yourself:
- why was the wrong answer so tempting? why did it look like it might be right? (be as explicit as possible)
- why was it actually wrong? what specific words indicate that it is wrong and how did I overlook those clues the first time?
- why did the right answer seem wrong? what made it so tempting to cross off the right answer? why were those things actually okay - what was my error in thinking that they were wrong?
- why was it actually right?

Good luck - let us know how things go!
Please note: I do not use the Private Messaging system! I will not see any PMs that you send to me!!

Stacey Koprince
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510 - GMATPrep, Exam Rescheduled, Strategies??

by vaibhav.mittal » Sun Aug 23, 2009 11:48 pm
Hello Stacey

Thanks for the reply, I read it with great interest and have inferred a lot of learnings from it.

In fact, I gave a diagnostic on Saturday last week and scored 510 with the following break up:

Quant (Score-35, 23 Correct)
Verbal (Score-25, 23 correct, only 38 attempted)


For Verbal:

SC: I got most of SC questions correct.

CR: As suggested by you, I did try to study CR basics from various sources but I am just unable to apply the strategy in most of the questions. Though I tried my best to understand the stem and question but still couldn't get the correct answer. Every time, it boiled down to using spontaneity and basic understanding of the passage.

The biggest problem I'm facing is in the Economy related questions of CR & RC. Actually, I'm from an Engineering background and do not understand the questions which contain Economic terms, Marketing Strategies, Insurance policies. Even after spending a lot of time on figuring the correct answer, I tend mark wrong answer on these type of questions. Need a real help here ....

RC: Though I was able to understand and attempt RC's during the GMAT prep test but I encountered one RC passage (Out of 4) which dealt entirely with Economy and even after repetitive attempts I could not understand the passage. Hence, I got all the wrong answers.

For Quant:
I reviewed the quant section and found the areas where I'm lacking competence - Coordinate Geometry, Probability and Combitronics (P&C) and DS type questions of Applied Maths.

I've already completed PS questions of OG and currently mid way in DS.

I'm yet to study the P&C topic but will try to complete it in this week. I've reviewed Coordinate geometry once and now confident about it.

The problem I'm facing the most is in DS type Applied problems in which I tend to spend more than usual on coming to an conclusion required for answering the questions. I did try to learn and improve the nitty-gritty of such questions by studying Kaplan Math workbook and Kaplan Premier CD, it really helped but the speed required to answer the question is missing.

Please suggest a way to improve now.

I've rescheduled my GMAT appointment for September 29th.

Regards
Vaibhav Mittal
Best,
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W: https://in.youtube.com/Vaibhav8584
B: https://womenlibber.blocked

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by Stacey Koprince » Thu Aug 27, 2009 7:31 am
Okay, good, so SC is working. For CR, I'm going to quote myself from my last post:
For CR, you mention only OG. What are you using to teach you HOW to do CR? If you don't have anything other than OG, then you need to identify a test-prep book that actually teaches you what you need to know / how to reason on CR. Don't keep doing OG problems until you've first had a chance to learn what to do - it's not easy to learn HOW to do these problems just from OG.
I didn't see anything in your new post that addressed this. If you do not yet have a book that teaches you HOW to do CR, you need to get one. Ask around to see what people have used and liked, but it's not enough to just try to learn how to do this from OG. The explanations there are not good enough for learning how to get better / what to do.

Ditto on RC.

Because you're struggling with Economic and Business topics on both CR and RC, you may also want to start subscribing to the Wall Street Journal and/or The Economist. Have a good dictionary book-marked so that you can look up unfamiliar terms. This is something you'll have to do a little bit every single day - it's not something you can cram for.

Next, you need to fix your timing problem on verbal. You only attempted 38, which means 3 questions were left blank. That is a HUGE penalty - about 3 percentile points per blank question! And I assume you had a higher incidence of wrong answers towards the end as well because you were probably rushing? That is just going to kill your score.

The test is ALWAYS going to give you stuff that's too hard for you - it doesn't matter how good you get. So part of your task is to recognize when something's just too hard and make a guess BEFORE you've lost time on that question. Frankly, you're going to end up making a guess on such a question anyway, so you might as well guess sooner rather than later.

On quant, I'm not familiar with the specific Kaplan materials you mention. Do they teach you the actual math, how to do DS, both? You need both, obviously. If you want things from my company, that's going to come from a combination of the books, class recordings, and labs (people can purchase access to those things without actually taking the full course). Other companies also offer various resources targeted at DS, so again, start asking around to see what people have used and liked. If you liked the Kaplan materials so far and they have something that targets DS specifically, then you may want to look into that.
Please note: I do not use the Private Messaging system! I will not see any PMs that you send to me!!

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What should be the right schedule?

by vaibhav.mittal » Sat Aug 29, 2009 9:15 am
Hello

I have a complete month to my exam and I really need to make a good strategic plan to give the best shot of my life for it.
These days I'm just focusing on my weakest areas - CR (by reading Powerscore) and Permutation & Combination/ Probability (by learning basics). I'm not studying anything else, not even revising anything right now.

I'm yet to complete Quant - DS section of OG. Although, I've already done SC, CR, RC & PS from it. I intend to revise OG followed by Verbal Review and Quant Review.

I'm not too sure of the strategy or plan to be followed. So, I need your inputs to best use the time available.

The target score for me is at least 650 and exam is on Sept 29th.

Thanks
Vaibhav Mittal
Best,
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W: https://in.youtube.com/Vaibhav8584
B: https://womenlibber.blocked

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by Stacey Koprince » Tue Sep 01, 2009 7:26 am
Received your PM after your last post, but it doesn't seem that you've replied to the things I discussed in my last post (from 27 Aug). Perhaps your response was deleted or you didn't see my last post? If you'd like additional help, please read and respond to my last post.

Also, FYI - combination and permutation problems are very low frequency on this test. Most people get just one (out of 37 questions!). So I wouldn't put that topic very high on your priority list even if it is a big weakness. It's just not common enough to warrant a lot of time and energy.
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by vaibhav.mittal » Tue Sep 08, 2009 7:56 pm
Dear Stacey

Thanks so for your replies! It works!

The Kaplan book is a very basic maths book and teaches good fundamentals and I have gained a lot from that book. It teaches you about DS also but I am practicing these questions very carefully! I can say that I got the hang of it. :)

I'm doing CR from Powerscore Bible. For RC's, I am solving it under time limits and also reading from various sources to crack it!

I got your point about P&C and thus spending time to have a strong grip on other topics.

Best,
Vaibhav
Best,
Vaibhav Mittal
W: https://in.youtube.com/Vaibhav8584
B: https://womenlibber.blocked

"The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves" - L.P. Smith
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by goginenivineeth » Wed Sep 09, 2009 12:44 am
I have started my prep for gmat with princeton review book. Needed guidance from you for the future prep strategies.
Right now i have completed each and evert question in quant form princeton. So after this how should i follow and with which book. Thinking of OG11,1000SC's,LSAT CR...one after the other. Is that ok? Please help me out as i am planning to take the date in dec.
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by Stacey Koprince » Wed Sep 16, 2009 10:50 am
gogin - I'm guessing that you haven't gotten any responses yet because you haven't provided very much information. Suggestion: start your own new thread and provide a LOT more detail about what you've done so far, what your goals are, what your strengths and weaknesses are, etc.
Please note: I do not use the Private Messaging system! I will not see any PMs that you send to me!!

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