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Need help with my score

by hk_4u » Tue Jan 05, 2010 8:03 am
Hi

I have a GMAT score of 680 Q 48 V 35 AWA 5.5 (Oct 2008). I am aiming a score of 720+ .With this intention, I started my preparation again around September last year . I have taken 3 Tests in last 40 days.

1 Gmatprep1 - 700 Q -49 V - 35 ( 11 Q Wrong in each section)

2 MGMAT1 - 660 Q - 47 V - 33 (17 Q wrong in Quant, 20 Q wrong in Verbal)

3 MGMAT2 - 750 Q - 48 V - 45 (14 Q wrong in Quant, 11 Q wrong in Verbal )

I am happy with my progress so far. I feel I have really improved in all sections of the test and I am on my way to my target score.

However I am worried for the following reasons:-

1 - I am not sure how good an indicator MGMAT tests are. From my experience, I know that people who score 720+ usually don't get more that 7-8 questions wrong and that too spread evenly.I have asked people who scored 750+ in their Gmatprep and they said that on average, they got only 4-5 question wrong (in each section).
I know instructors/moderators/forum users will talk about a standand algorithm which GMAT uses or standard deviation attached to GMAT and MGMAT tests. And I agree with them too.
But I had planned to book my test date once I am able to score 720+ in a couple of practice test just to ensure that I am not bounded by time( considering my other commitments) and be sure of the score range I may land up in . Some how I get a feeling that I need to get the number of mistakes in each section down to 7-8 to be confident of 720+ score.


2 - I have performed badly in RC in both the MGMAT tests

MGMAT 1 - 9 Q wrong out of 15

MGMAT 2 - 7 Q wrong out of 12.

I must admit I have not really stressed on RC as much as I have stressed on other sections of the test. But, saying that I really feel confident in RC . I follow the simple method of reading the passage with an intention to know the main idea and gist of each paragraph. Further I make sure I don't spend too much time in details, instead I am able to make a map to identify a particular detail asked in the Question.

Although my accuracy rate in OG RC has been around 80 %,somehow I am not able to replicate the same in MGMAT RC.

It seems pretty strange ,back in 2008 , I struggled to get to a score of 700 in all 8-10 tests I gave. Today I have 2 prep scores over 700 but still my confidence is not that great.

In short , Help me in
1 - Identifying where I really stand in terms of my target score.
2 - improve my RC .

I need to take GMAT by January end ,so I have just 25 days to improve.
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by Osirus@VeritasPrep » Tue Jan 05, 2010 8:24 am
I have to take it by the end of January as well and I am in the same boat. I don't know how good of an indicator MGMAT tests are. The first one I took I got a 660 and then the next one I got a 700 but I got the same amount of questions right each time. Also, they don't seem to properly distribute the questions. On my second test, I got the 500 level question right and the next question was a 700-800 level probability question, so I don't know how they structure their algorithm. In terms of reading comprehension, the only thing you can do is just practice. Attempt to read for 30 minutes a day. Many have said that they have found reading articles from the economist helpful, so go to www.economist.com and read for 30 minutes a day until your test date. We have the same goals for our target score. Good luck.
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by NL48 » Tue Jan 05, 2010 9:06 pm
Here are a couple of things that has helped me increase my RC score thus far.

1) When reviewing your RC Questions, pay close attention to the kinds of questions they ask. Eventually, you'll start to get a feel for the type of questions they will ask, which will in turn help you to put more emphasis on specific content of the passage, while you're reading. Such as the point of view of the author or specific individual, arguments, etc. This not only helped me improved my speed, but also helped me to sort out and recall specific content of the passage more efficiently.

2) Continue to practice your ability to summarize each paragraph. To help you, if necessary, breakdown each sentence and put it in layman's terms to make it easier to understand.

3) A good way to start getting use to "zoning in" in on important details/main points, write them down until you no longer need to.

4) The LSAT RC has been a huge help to me, use them for advanced RC Review.
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by hk_4u » Tue Jan 05, 2010 11:05 pm
Thanks NL48

I am doing the things you suggested, though not consistently . I guess practice will make me perfect.

I am also working on LSAT passages and have a accuracy rate of 70 % in around 8-10 passages I have done.
One thing - I am taking around 5-6 mins to read the LSAT passage. Are you also taking that long ?
GMAT passages /OG12 passages suggest that you will not really face long passages (LSAT type) in the test. I dread spoiling my timing on GMAT by doing excess of LSAT because LSAT passages really force you to read very carefully and spend more time so that you are confident facing the questions.

Thanks osirus0830 and best of luck to you too. Economist is IN , nytimes OUT :)

Anyone with more critical views on the MGMAT tests performance ?
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by NL48 » Wed Jan 06, 2010 2:44 am
I'm glad your practice is coming along well.

Reasons as to why the LSAT is a good RC practice is because they're lengthier and more difficult to interpret. If you are able to consistently breakdown and get what you need from the LSAT RC Passages, the GMAT Passages will be easier as you'll soon see. Kind of like high altitude training, you'll be able to go through the GMAT RC section faster, more efficiently, and more confidently.

Also, don't be afraid to spend a bit of extra time on the passage. The reason for this is that while doing the RC, if you notice, you'll tend to go back and forth sometimes while doing the questions. If you're able to get the key facts, and spend less time going back and forth (Only going back to the passage to double check), thus spending a small amount of times in the question itself, you're actually spending less time overall. This becomes even more true in the difficult RC Questions.

Of course, sometimes it's a gamble as some RC Passages have more questions than others, thus requiring a bit of adaptation, but I found this method to work out well for me. You'll have to see what works best for you in terms of balancing out spending your time in the passages, or on answering the questions.
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by DanaJ » Fri Jan 15, 2010 6:07 am
Received a PM.

1. Most people I've talked to argue that MGMAT tests are slightly harder than what you'll see on the real thing, especially in quant. I myself have taken a couple of their tests and can testify to the fact that indeed, quant is harder. I did not note anything peculiar about the algorithm, though.
However, their tests are, almost by unanimous vote, the best the prep industry has to offer (except GMATprep, of course). I'd say you should trust MGMAT, especially if the difference between your MGMAT scores and your GMATprep scores is not that big. There is something that worries me though: the range of your scores is almost 100 points, which is A LOT. There has to be something other than your current level that might be affecting your performance. Have you been taking the tests in the same conditions? If the answer is no, then that's probably the reason behind this.

2. RC is hardest to improve upon if you're a non native speaker. However, the fact that you get over 80% accuracy in the OG but this falls to below 50% in MGMAT might tell you something: you may be good at GMAT RCs, but be bad at MGMAT RCs! This is of course good news, since you don't want to ace the MGMAT tests, but the real deal.

Here's my approach to RC:

What you need to remember is that RC passages are usually well-written. This is the reason why they have a particularly clear structure, i.e. first paragraph - introduction; second paragraph - alternate explanation to a theory etc.... The paragraphs are linked to one another in a neat way, meaning that there's usually no abrupt "rupture" in the text. You will often see connectors, such as therefore, however, moreover to signal that a different section is about to come your way - like an alternate explanation (for however) or something that strengthens the initial idea (for moreover).

I usually follow the structure of the passage by these red flags, so to speak, which enables me to understand the purpose each paragraph in the whole thing. This is another important part of RC: you must be able to spot the purpose of each paragraph. That's particularly useful when you have questions such as "What is the main point of paragraph X?".

While this is the "macro" level of the stimulus, the "micro" level concerns each phrase of each paragraph: they too are connected by similar words. Each phrase has its own little role in everything! You should look for parallelisms, enumerations, supporting ideas: this gives you a general feel for it all.

Also, an important part of your RC practice is trying to work on your vocabulary. Most of the times, the answer choices that just take whole groups of words out of the text are wrong - this is a "cheap shot" designed to test you attention. The right answer will not only test your understanding of the passage, but it will also check for the "strength" of your vocabulary, your rephrasing "capabilities".

To sum it all up: read the passage critically, just as you would if you were an established book critic! Look for the "signs" and avoid traps. I believe you've heard this before, but do try to read some quality material in English - like The Economist or smth like that. It not only trains "your eye" for reasoning/smart paragraph structure, but it also helps your vocabulary for rephrasing.

Hope this helps!
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by Stacey Koprince » Fri Jan 22, 2010 3:12 pm
Received a PM asking me to reply. (Note: I just got to the end and saw that you posted this on 5 Jan and you're taking the test sometime relatively soon - I just got the PM today, but the PM didn't contain an update as to how things have been going since you first posted. If you have any updates or more specific details about your weaknesses, let me know, because you don't have enough time left for me to give you any kind of long plan about what to do and all I know so far is that you've struggled a bit with RC in general.)

As a general rule, I think GMATPrep is the best indicator with MGMAT a close second. GMATPrep is from the people who make the real thing, so it doesn't get any better than that.

We have calculated a standard deviation of about 50 pts from the final practice test a student takes to the official test - so most students score in a +/- 50 point range on the real test. Some, though, score higher or lower, of course.

You don't mention when you took each of the tests and one of the things I'm wondering about is the 660 to 750 progression. Did those two scores come far enough apart to make such a leap reasonable? Or was something else possibly inflating or deflating one of those scores?

Did you take the tests full official conditions? (30m each for two essays, 8m break, 75m quant, 8m break, 75m verbal) If you deviated in any way on either test, tell us what that deviation was. The major scoring difference was on the verbal side - sometimes people will see a big jump in verbal if they skip the essays, for example - but that score jump can't be replicated because you have to do the essays on the real test.

I wouldn't worry at all about the number of mistakes - that's not how this test is scored. You're focusing on that (as lots of students do) because you're used to tests being scored in that way, but that's how paper tests are scored, not CATs. I pay so little attention to this that, when I do test reviews for myself or my students, I never even bother to calculate the total number of questions wrong - that's how much this is NOT what you should worry about. :)
I must admit I have not really stressed on RC as much as I have stressed on other sections of the test. But, saying that I really feel confident in RC .
How did you do on RC in GMATPrep? OG unfortunately can give you an advantage you'd never have on the real test. OG includes all of the questions written for a passage (typically 5 to 9 questions), but on the real test you are given only 3 or 4 of those questions. When you answer additional questions, you have an advantage for each additional question: you've already gathered a lot of information from answering the previous questions. So you're performance tends to go up as you answer the 5th, 6th, 7th questions for a passage - but you'll never get that advantage on the real test.

At the same time, sometimes our (MGMAT's) RC questions are not as good / precise as they could be (compared to OG / GMATPrep), so part of the problem may also be that. That's why I'm asking about GMATPrep - does your GMATPrep performance more closely resemble your OG performance or your MGMAT CAT performance?
Today I have 2 prep scores over 700 but still my confidence is not that great.
For a lot of people, the confidence level doesn't change a whole lot - you always feel like you could do more / get better. I think that's because you have to decide when to schedule the test, so you can keep pushing it off indefinitely. In the "olden days," the test was only given a few times a year, so you just had to suck it up and take it. Ask yourself this: would you feel better or worse than you do right now if your three test scores were 650, 660, 680? Remind yourself of the alternative and your current performance will start to look pretty good! Your scores are going in the right direction, so you should be starting to feel more confident - really!
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by hk_4u » Fri Jan 22, 2010 9:25 pm
Hi Stacey

I have actually posted the same query in 2 threads . One here (under gmat strategy) and other in (ask a manhattan rep).
Now that you have replied here , I am consolidating all my posts and questions here .

I knew your reply is just round the corner.

I was advised to take gmatprep to know where I really stand. And I gave gmatprep 2 last weekend (17th Jan) and scored 650 (Q 48,V - 31). I gave the test in full test conditions and wrote the essays too.

Some observations
1 - I actually felt tensed during the test. 10 questions into the Quant section, I was feeling like quitting the exam . Got string of 6 questions wrong in quant (Q14 - Q19). In total , got 12 questions wrong , most of them to careless mistakes

2 - Got 13 questions wrong in Verbal. Started with a string of 4 wrong questions. 8 questions wrong in the first 12.

I am feeling a little frustrated now. As I have mentioned in my earlier post, I am targeting a score of 720+ and I had planned to book a test date once I score in that range in 2-3 tests. I have no idea how to go about it now .

A few more questions

1 - I really feel I had an off day and this is not my true caliber. However, how to avoid such a situation on the test day ?

2 - I have taken both the gmatprep tests now . Any idea, how often GMAC updates its question bank ? I intend to download the software again and install it fresh.

3 - I still have 4 MGMAT tests and OG11 and OG verbal guide to study. Till now, I have studied with OG10 and OG12.
I intend to takes these tests in next 2-3 weeks and go for the final exam. What do you make of it ?

I am preparing for almost 3 months now, although the total number of study hours is not that much because of my work commitments. I dread a burn out situation now and would want to get my target score ASAP and get over the exam.

Please help!
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by hk_4u » Fri Jan 22, 2010 9:44 pm
Hi Stacey
I just got to the end and saw that you posted this on 5 Jan and you're taking the test sometime relatively soon
I still have to book a date. As I wrote earlier, this will be my second attempt, so I will go for the test once I reach my target score (720) . That is the reason for this thread :)

You don't mention when you took each of the tests and one of the things I'm wondering about is the 660 to 750 progression. Did those two scores come far enough apart to make such a leap reasonable? Or was something else possibly inflating or deflating one of those scores?
There was a 2 week gap between these 2 tests. 660 one was without essays. 750 one was similar to full test conditions.
I happened to read your articles on "How to analyze a practice problem" and "How to analyze practice tests" . Went back to OG10 and OG12 and applied the principles to SC and CR . Also practiced a lot of Quant.

After the 750 test , I realized that my RC at MGMAT tests is bad compared to OG, so initiated this thread , took all the advice and concentrated a lot on RC . For 2 weeks (3rd Jan - 16th Jan) , I did RC from LSAT and OG12 and then gave gmatprep 2 and scored 650 .
How did you do on RC in GMATPrep? OG unfortunately can give you an advantage you'd never have on the real test. OG includes all of the questions written for a passage (typically 5 to 9 questions), but on the real test you are given only 3 or 4 of those questions. When you answer additional questions, you have an advantage for each additional question: you've already gathered a lot of information from answering the previous questions. So you're performance tends to go up as you answer the 5th, 6th, 7th questions for a passage - but you'll never get that advantage on the real test.
OK, this clears a lot of things .My performance in OG might be skewed . How to improve ?
I have read your (and Ron's) posts on RC. I am pretty much doing the same you guys have suggested. I can classify the errors in 3 categories
1 - silly mistakes - I didn't really get what the question is asking
2 - tricky questions - tough inference questions mostly
3 - questions where I didn't really get the main idea of the passage - On Some passages, even after spending 4-5 mins, I feel I am not getting the gist . And then most of the inference/main idea/purpose Q go wrong
I wouldn't worry at all about the number of mistakes - that's not how this test is scored. You're focusing on that (as lots of students do) because you're used to tests being scored in that way, but that's how paper tests are scored, not CATs. I pay so little attention to this that, when I do test reviews for myself or my students, I never even bother to calculate the total number of questions wrong -
This is exactly what I am asking . Well I am asking a few other things as well - See my questions in post above this one.
If number of questions is not a big factor , that what else is ? How do you judge your student's performance ? I just wanna go for the exam with some assurance of my score. I don't want a 100 point delta .

Please advice.
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by Stacey Koprince » Fri Jan 29, 2010 10:26 am
I agree that you don't want a 100 point delta going into your test. :)

That article I wrote on how to analyze practice tests is exactly how I analyze my students' performance. You'll notice that the article never mentions adding up how many you got wrong - because I don't even do that myself.

The more important questions are "Why?" and "How?" Ask these over and over. WHY did I get this one wrong? I made a careless mistake. Okay, WHY did I make the careless mistake? I read too quickly or glossed over something I did read. Okay, HOW am I going to prevent that mistake from happening again? Maybe there was a clue that some detail was important, but I missed the clue. What is that clue? Where is it located? How should I have known to recognize the clue?

In short, if you can really figure out WHY and HOW, then you will minimize the chances of making that same careless mistake in the future.

The same holds for falling into traps. WHY did you fall into this trap? And on the verbal, WHY did I think the wrong answer was right? (What was my actual mistake?) And WHY did I think the right answer was wrong? (Because if I pick a wrong answer on verbal, I've actually made 2 mistakes - I thought a wrong answer was right, and I also thought the right answer was wrong.) If you actually figure out why you made the mistake, then you can learn that those reasons are not good reasons to choose or eliminate answers in the future - so you'll be less likely to pick wrong answers or eliminate right answers.

And the same holds true for fixing areas where you just didn't have the skills yet. You didn't get the main idea. Okay, now that you have all the time in the world, go back and figure out what the main idea is. First try this before reading the explanation; if it's not working, then try using the explanation to help you understand. Then, once you do get it, ask yourself WHY you weren't able to get it the first time you read it. Unfamiliar vocabulary? Convoluted sentences? A strange structure / organization? Then, what can you do to overcome that on future passages? Sometimes, you can actually get away with not knowing all of the vocabulary - they'll either give you enough context to figure it out, or you can classify the unknown word as "some scientific theory" or "some business term" and just leave it at that. If you have our book, we have a whole section on how to "unpack" really complex, convoluted sentences. If the structure / organization of the info was weird, try to map it out. What's weird about it? Where do they put the important info in this one? Why is that different than typical passages? Now you know that it's possible to organize a passage that way.

Okay, on your test results, I think it's encouraging that your higher score was the one on which you mimicked the official test. Your score dropped again, though, on the GPrep 2 test, so we really need to figure out what's going on there. Try this article:

https://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/10/26 ... went-wrong

What you want to do is try to figure out why your score dropped on the GPrep 2 test. Either your ability really is higher but something happened to cause your performance to drop, or the 750 test was an outlier for some reason. (It's tough to have a 750 outlier unless something fairly unusual was going on - maybe having seen a bunch of the questions before, taking it untimed or with extra time, etc.) It may be the case that your performance is really in the middle somewhere - there might have been some minor issues that inflated your 750 score and some other minor issues that deflated your 650 score.

Also, let's start with: did both quant and verbal drop a lot on the 650 test? Or did one section account for much more of the drop than the other?

I don't know how often GMAC updates the question bank, but I do know that they only change some of the questions, not all, so you may see questions you've seen before. It's really important to time yourself on every single question when taking GMATPrep - the test won't do this for you, and you need that data to see what's going on. (Timing issues are a leading cause of score swings.)

You can still take GMATPrep (and MGMAT CATs) with repeats as long as you follow a few guidelines to minimize the chance of artificially inflating your score via question repeats. First, anytime you see a problem that you remember (and this means: I know the answer or I'm pretty sure I remember the answer, not just "hmm, this looks vaguely familiar..."), immediately look at the timer and make yourself sit there for the full length of time for that question type. This way, you don't artificially give yourself more time than you should have. Second, think about whether you got this problem right the last time. If you did, get it right again this time. If you didn't, get it wrong again. If you *completely honestly* think that you would get it right this time around if it were a new question (even though you got it wrong last time) because you've studied that area and improved, then get it right this time.

So, a summary: concentrate first on trying to figure out what's going on with the score swings - if you don't figure that out, then you can't fix whatever's going on, so you can't have confidence that you'll avoid a score drop on test day. If you need help in interpreting what you find out when reading the above "my score dropped" article, come back on here and post.

FYI - I am traveling all week next week and almost certainly will not be on BTG while I'm gone. If you take another MGMAT test in that timeframe and want more feedback, you may want to ask my colleague Ron to respond.
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