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My Gmat Study

by vidhya16 » Sun May 15, 2011 4:16 am
Guys,

I have been preparing for GMAT from past 2 months. I initially worked 3 hours every day and felt the burnt of reading. I studied from the internet source, beatthegmat.com articles, pracice questions and enrolling to Master GMAT 7 day free trial. I went on to register for Master GMAT program and bought the MGMAT set. I practiced Master GMAT, MGMAT and beatthegmat questions. I was so exhausted and my confidence plumented drastically. This went on for one month.

I then gave a thought and asked few suggestion.Based on suggestion I slow down on hours I spent for preparation but my approach didnt change.I just breezed through the topic and wanting to give the test ASAP. Nothing is helping me.

At this stage,I took a step back and decided to do Master GMAT for 45 mins everday and worked on MGMAT material one topic everday. I havent done any practice other than that accompanies the 45 mins program or MGMAT topic. Slowly concept was sinking in and started to show some improvement. However,I would take long time for some question but would breeze through the some. It is night mare how Im going to give this high intense exam.

Im confident in Quantitative side and on verbal I need improvement in CR and RC but my SC needs lot of attention.

Now, My question to the reader of this post is "When one should start considering practice and gauge their performance". Any help is appreaciated.

Thanks
Last edited by vidhya16 on Mon May 16, 2011 5:35 am, edited 2 times in total.
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by prachich1987 » Sun May 15, 2011 7:44 am
did u take any diagnostic test?
If not ,i would advise u to do so first.SO that u will get an idea where exactly u stand
You are preparing for GMAT for almost two months
I think now you should start taking tests.
take one test on every weekend..analyse where u r going wrong..try to improve in those areas
then take another test on the next weekend.
see if u have improved in the middle period...
All the best!
Thanks!
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by vidhya16 » Sun May 15, 2011 8:19 am
Prachi,

I have taken the GMAC prep test 1 before one month and I had very poor score 330/800(V19,Q14). At this time, I was concentrating only on Verbal and didnt give any thoughts on Quantitative as I know that with little practice I will do better. I will try giving the test once again and see how I have improved.

Thanks
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by lunarpower » Sun May 15, 2011 8:42 am
i received a PM regarding this post.

are you on some sort of accelerated timeline on which you have to apply to school? because, if not, you may want to consider laying off of the GMAT-specific materials for some time, so that you can devote some time exclusively to practicing your skills in reading and writing the english language in general.
what i mean is this: i can tell from the writing of your post that you have not yet learned written english to in extent that will allow you to achieve competence on this exam within the given time constraint. (i know that the correlation between one's reading and writing abilities is not perfect, but it is nevertheless a strong correlation.)
i would suggest that you step away from the specific GMAT verbal testing materials for the time being, and take at least a few months for intensive study of the written english language in general. try to expose yourself to high-quality written english materials (magazines, journals, etc.), so that you can get a sense for both the general rhythm and the particulars of the written language. if you see sentence structures that are new to you or with which you have trouble, mark them while you are reading, and then, once you are done reading, try to go back and write your own, similarly structured sentences.

Im confident in Quantitative side
if you scored q14, then you should also start reviewing your quantitative skills, starting from absolutely basic fundamentals.
if you are "confident in quantitative", that you should not be scoring anywhere close to q14; that is a score that reflects a rather severe lack of fundamental quantitative knowledge, UNLESS either (a) you took the practice test without understanding how the questions work, particularly data sufficiency, or (b) you basically just skipped through the quantitative section in order to get to the verbal part.

are either of the above things true? i.e., is it true that (a) you haven't yet learned how data sufficiency questions work, or that (b) you basically just skipped through the quantitative part, guessing on most of the questions, so that you could get the verbal part earlier?
if *neither* of these things is true, then a score of q14 indicates that you need to go back to first principles and start from there.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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by vidhya16 » Sun May 15, 2011 9:54 am
Ron,

Thanks for your suggestion. Im in no hurry to give the GMAT test.I took the GMAT prep diagnostic test with out knowing the rules of the game. I had no understanding how the question worked in any of the section except Sentence Correction. My understanding to sentence correction was also very limited. All I knew was to find correct choice that is concise and grammatically correct.

Though I have been preparing from past two months, I have not completed MGMAT material or Master GMAT course. I still need to do plenty of learning.

I will now give a serious thought and will take your suggestion on board.

Thanks
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by lunarpower » Sun May 15, 2011 1:44 pm
vidhya16 wrote:Ron,

Thanks for your suggestion. Im in no hurry to give the GMAT test.I took the GMAT prep diagnostic test with out knowing the rules of the game. I had no understanding how the question worked in any of the section except Sentence Correction. My understanding to sentence correction was also very limited. All I knew was to find correct choice that is concise and grammatically correct.

Though I have been preparing from past two months, I have not completed MGMAT material or Master GMAT course. I still need to do plenty of learning.

I will now give a serious thought and will take your suggestion on board.

Thanks
ok.

so, you probably knew this was the next question, but ...
if you had no idea how the questions even worked, why didn't you stop & reset the tests?
remember that there are only 2 distinct tests in the gmat prep software, so those tests are, so to speak, valuable real estate; why waste a whole test?

if the answer is "i just wanted to get a numerical score, even though i had no idea what i was doing", you should realize that this is the worst possible approach that you could take to the test -- i.e., you are elevating the importance of a random (and meaningless!) score over that of actually learning how to do the test!
if that's the way you're approaching the test, then it has to change right now, or else most of your time will be wasted (just as 100% of the time you spent taking this practice test was wasted).
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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by bkw » Sun May 15, 2011 2:36 pm
vidhya16 wrote:I took the GMAT prep diagnostic test with out knowing the rules of the game. I had no understanding how the question worked in any of the section except Sentence Correction. My understanding to sentence correction was also very limited. All I knew was to find correct choice that is concise and grammatically correct.
Hi!

Here are some motivation https://vimeo.com/bubbasour/never-give-up , notice what he say, you need to spend plenty of time to score well especially if you are unfamiliar with the concepts.

MGMAT books are good, especially their quant (SG1-4?). Work through them carefully. After that, look for recommended Verbal material in the forum, and study verbal. Doing any test before you are familiar with the basic concepts will not help. So, save the OG-problems and CATs until you are familiar with the basics. While you prepare, improve your English abilities (vocabulary, speed, comprehension, ...) by reading what's recommended here https://www.knewton.com/blog/gmat/verbal ... prehension

Good luck!
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by vidhya16 » Mon May 16, 2011 12:30 am
Ron,

You are right. I was suggested to take test before I started the preparation.I just wanted a numerical score to know where I stood. Though I gave the test,I didnt mark it complete. Now I have enough knowledge on all section but still need to learn many concepts.

Is it a good idea to wait giving practice test until I have covered 75% of material?


Thanks.
Last edited by vidhya16 on Mon May 16, 2011 1:14 am, edited 4 times in total.
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by vidhya16 » Mon May 16, 2011 12:32 am
BKW,

Thank you. I will look in to the suggested link.

Vidhya
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by vidhya16 » Mon May 16, 2011 12:58 am
BKW,

That was an excellent resource. Thank you.
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by lunarpower » Wed May 18, 2011 12:42 am
vidhya16 wrote:Is it a good idea to wait giving practice test until I have covered 75% of material?
what do you mean by "75% of the material"?
remember that this test is ultimately a test of reasoning, not a test of knowledge or memorization; this isn't really a test for which there's a finite, quantifiable set of material to cover.
the above is true especially for the verbal section, on which the majority of problems (CR and RC) are reasoning exercises that don't require any outside knowledge, so i'm curious as to what you mean by this.
75% of what, exactly?
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by vidhya16 » Wed May 18, 2011 7:30 am
what do you mean by "75% of the material"?
I meant that when I cover 75% of course material (MGMAT set of strategy) , I should start practising Qbank/CAT?.

Thanks,
Vidhya
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by lunarpower » Thu May 19, 2011 4:23 pm
vidhya16 wrote:
what do you mean by "75% of the material"?
I meant that when I cover 75% of course material (MGMAT set of strategy) , I should start practising Qbank/CAT?.

Thanks,
Vidhya
you could probably do that for math, but it's not a good idea for verbal -- you can't realistically learn 75% of the verbal material in an academic/theoretical sort of way, and then suddenly try to put it all to work at the same time.

if you have those materials, you'll have lists of practice problems from OG, etc. that correlate to the different topics (these will be listed in the back of the strategy guide). when you're doing verbal, you should make sure to do at least some of the problems that go with each individual unit.
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by vidhya16 » Thu May 19, 2011 11:44 pm
Thanks Ron.

Vidhya
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by Kavita_Singh » Mon May 23, 2011 4:50 am
Firstly I would say that don't worry and stay confident. Lot of people stress out at this stage and you are not alone.
Sometimes taking few days off work for preparing for the GMAT can help a person tremendously. If you have time this may not be a bad idea. Take practise GMAT tests to see how you are doing. If you cannot do that don't worry.What might work instead is to set aside 1-2 hours at night on weekdays and major part of your weekend to study and prepare for GMAT- in this case we will suggest a good 3 months preparation.
However we recommend you to keep taking practise tests to gauge your performance. It will help you in identifying your weak areas and you can focus on them accordingly.

Thanks!

vidhya16 wrote:Guys,

I have been preparing for GMAT from past 2 months. I initially worked 3 hours every day and felt the burnt of reading. I studied from the internet source, beatthegmat.com articles, pracice questions and enrolling to Master GMAT 7 day free trial. I went on to register for Master GMAT program and bought the MGMAT set. I practiced Master GMAT, MGMAT and beatthegmat questions. I was so exhausted and my confidence plumented drastically. This went on for one month.

I then gave a thought and asked few suggestion.Based on suggestion I slow down on hours I spent for preparation but my approach didnt change.I just breezed through the topic and wanting to give the test ASAP. Nothing is helping me.

At this stage,I took a step back and decided to do Master GMAT for 45 mins everday and worked on MGMAT material one topic everday. I havent done any practice other than that accompanies the 45 mins program or MGMAT topic. Slowly concept was sinking in and started to show some improvement. However,I would take long time for some question but would breeze through the some. It is night mare how Im going to give this high intense exam.

Im confident in Quantitative side and on verbal I need improvement in CR and RC but my SC needs lot of attention.

Now, My question to the reader of this post is "When one should start considering practice and gauge their performance". Any help is appreaciated.

Thanks
Thanks!
Kavita Singh
FutureWorks Consulting
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