GMAT Strategy

I'm one of your 'working full-time' GMAT test taker who is trying to put in 6-10hrs over the weekend and around 2hrs on weekdays.

I took the official GMAT on Feb 25th and this was my score-
GMAT 590 / 59%
Verbal - 25 / 36%
Quant - 46 / 71%

Determined that I can get a higher score with better preparation, I registered to retake GMAT on May 4th. I joined the Manhattan GMAT class and have been studying mostly over weekends and 1-2 hrs on weekdays.

I took a MGMAT exam on March 24th. I messed up on timing because I tried a new strategy and this was my score -
Total 580 / 56%
Quant 41 / 54 %
Verbal 29 / 54 %

I continued working on my mistakes, studying new material as part of the MGMAT course and took another exam on April 9th. This time I stuck the timing strategy I'm used to and did both Essay and IR and this was my score -
Total Score 590 (59th %)
Quant - 44 / 63%
Verbal - 28 / 48%
IR - 7 / 81%

Although I haven't completed my MGAMT course, I was expecting to see an increase in my overall score. I feel like the past month was completely wasted and now I barely have 20 days until my exam. I'm panicking and not sure what strategy to follow and make the most of the remaining 20 days.

Does anyone have any strategies or advice on my situation? What should I continue doing and what can I change/start doing?

anyone has any suggestions?

i will share with you my thoughts on the matter.

I started preparing for the GMAT some 2 months ago. Not too much time when you are doing several things simoltaneously, but in my case I studied only for the GMAT and the TOEFL. Addionally, I have also prepared from the manhattan gmat strategy guides, just as you have done.

On my first GMAT Prep exam (w/o any preparation) I got 610. After I finished all preparation and knew all strategy guides from cover to cover I retook the exam and got 650. Yesterday I took my first Manhattan gmat exam and was pretty dissapointed to see the score of..... 610 again.

Now, here is what has happened. Halfway thourgh verbal (somewhere after the 20-th -22-nd question)I was in the 90th percentile. Then a streak of 12 wrong answers in 18 questions. This was also the case in my 650 score a few weeks back. Thus I assumed that after I take the essay, IR, make 37 quant tasks, and the half of the verbal prompts, I just loose my concentration so fast, that the situation becomes almost uncontrollable. The techniques with deep breathing and massaging your neck are very good, but toward the end of the exam they are not particularly helpful; this is simply because i get so tired that it is tough to keep the concentration at a level to read passages, solve CR tasks and all this at a rapid pace.

So my advice to you in short, look if you are not loosing too much points at one particular point of the exam. If it happens in the beggining of the test, it means that you lack the warming up, so to speak, and have to work on your PSYCHOLOGICAL (not knowledge) skiills. If the majority of your errors come toward the end of the GMAT it means you should do something to better your concentration and stamina. I am currently looking for a solution to the second problem and will start a thread here as well.

I hope I could give you some alternative perspective to analyze your areas of improvement. If not, I believe you will be able to figure it out yourself. You already started preparing for the gmat, want to go to a good business school, so this challenge is just another stepping stone on your way to success. Just dont let it get on the top of you. And remember PSYCHOLOGICAL SKILLS, CONCENTRATION, AND STAMINA ARE JUST AS IMPORTANT AS KNOWLEDGE AND QUANT/VERBAL SKILLS.

Firstly, congrats for taking another test date. That was important.

Secondly, kudos for working so hard on improvement. 2 hours a day every working day and 6-10 hours a day every weekend is a lot of hard work.

Lastly, thanks for posting this question. The answers to this question will help a lot of people in the BTG community.

Now, your score is not guaranteed to improve every few weeks just because you are working on it. You have hit a plateau and that is completely normal and even if this was exactly 2 weeks before G-day, I wouldn't worry! There's still time and hope.

The problem is you have not defined what your "higher" score is. So, what we'll do is set a target score, analyze the MGMAT tests you have already taken and improve on the weak areas using a mix of official and M resources. Then you rest and take mgmat test. Finally your score jumps! Read on, only if you want that to happen!

So here's the general approach:
Step 1: Define the goal(target score)-650 (just assuming).
Step 2: Analyze your score - we see that your verbal is weak. Within verbal which section is weak ? CR or RC or SC ? and within the weakest sub-section which particular topics will you need to work on. As you know by know, all of that information is on your page when you login into your mgmat account.
Step 3: Pick up the weakest area and gather as much info about it as possible within a day. So I would visit btg forums looking for words of wisdom, I would look at relevant videos from ron and I would read up on what the official guide has to say about that topic(if anything at all). Then I would collate that information, come up with my attack strategy and practice specific questions related to my weak area. By practice, I mean solve 10 and then analyze the flintstones out of them. Do not think about timing while learning.
Step 4: Repeat step 3 for the second weakest topic. and so on.
Step 5: Balance out your preparation- Ultimately you need to know that verbal is RC+CR+SC, so focus on improving something in each area, especially your reasoning ability. So, this whole crazy act will take a full week. Do not test till then.
Step 6: Rest a day. By rest i mean rest! No GMAT for day number 8. Not even thinking about it. Divert your mind for one day! Don't think you are wasting time. That sort of thinking will hurt your score. Rest and then take the test on (say)the 9th day. Your score would have jumped!
Step 7: Come back here and tell us about your improvement. So that the final few days can be taken care of too. Remember, following this advice means, that the next mock test you take, might as well be your last one before the real test!

Also, please do share your target score. Or just tell which schools you are looking for and that would give an idea too.

Hope this helps...

I'll throw in my 2 cents as well:

My situation was I scored a 570 and recently retook the test and scored a 650. Right now, I am going for my third time and ranging from a 710-740 on the practice tests.
1) You need to categorically separate out the questions. You don't study a math book by doing 1 problem of each different type of questions, so why would you take the OG as is and study like that? For example - if you buy a calculus book it doesn't just briefly go over kind of how to do 1,000 different types of questions and then gives u jumbled mess of the questions with only 1 example of each. The math book tells you how to do it and then gives you specific problem questions after telling you how to do it and then it will give you a different set of problems based on other theories. Your brain will not make the correct connections unless you categorically separate the questions to see how the questions will be asked and the different types of questions per category.
2) Extract the general rules to follow from the questions that you do have. For example - for Geometry no where in the OG does it say that you have to know how to find the largest distance in a 3 dimensional Cube or how to find the parameter of a Picture frame. Those are things you figure out as you go through the book. You should keep a rule sheet of all the different types of questions/ rules you are finding out. I would also go through the OG and LABEL the questions based on question type. It isn't nearly as important to merely do the questions as it is to understand all the different rules the questions are testing over. Another example: If you see 4^17- 4^16 in your mind you should immediately think ok this can be broken down as 4^16 (4^1-1).
3) Once you have done this go through all the GMAT PREP questions in the exact same way. You can review them now so just write them down and continue to add to your rule sheet.
4) Know when to let a question go. you should have such a good understanding of the test to know whether or not you can answer a question in under 2 minutes. If you see it, you have no idea wth it is, make an educated guess and move on.
5) Know that the test, in the grand scheme of things isn't really that important. It is more of a barrier of entry than anything else. In twenty years no one is going to ask you what your GMAT score was, just like no one cares what your act score is now. It just one piece of the puzzle.
6) I personally ignored the Manhattan test. I think the questions are not an accurate representation of the real test, but that is just my opinion./
7) There is only a limited number of topics that can be covered. It is beatable and people do it all the time, so you can too, it just may take more time than the guy who took AP everything in High School.

Good luck .

-BP