Hi Bond777, thanks for your response. Sometimes it seems like I'm just yelling into the ether, but it's posts like yours that make the time spent here worthwhile.
Bond777 wrote:I really wanted to get to 50/51 in quant and I am confident that I have the capacity. Now, from your experience what is the difference between a Q49 test taker and Q50/Q51 test taker?
The difference between
one score of q49 and
one score of q50/51 is probably statistical randomness.
On the other hand, if someone has
several scores of q48/49 yet hasn't managed to break 50, then what's usually missing is
strategic diversity.
meaning, the student is usually too focused on trying to use "textbook approaches" to the problems, and isn't making enough use of alternative methods such as backsolving, plugging in numbers, testing cases on DS, and estimating answers.
In the test in which I received 49, I don't remember leaving a question (other than two) in which I was not confident about my answer. I thought I got 35 out of 37 questions correct. I still ended up with 49 and that means I missed a ton. What's my prep strategy should be now to get to that coveted Q50/Q51 level?
You should practice the alternative methods described above.
I've given a partial outline in this post:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/thought-i-d- ... tml#632012
Basically, the idea is that you want to (a) focus
exclusively on one method at a time, until you've achieved total comfort with it-where "total comfort" means "i'm just as comfortable with that method as i am with algebra/other traditional methods"-and then try to integrate it in with your other problem-solving techniques.
After reading your posts multiple times, I exactly knew what to do in Quant. Such as this:
here's a test: imagine that someone came up behind you, tapped you on the shoulder, and asked you, "what's the PURPOSE of the step you're doing?"
if you have a concrete answer to this question, then you should keep working.
if not, you should quit.
This was so helpful that I start asking myself the question "Do I know what I am doing?" to myself at around 1 minute mark. It sound so simple but it can make a day and night difference on your timing.
Now I need similar thing for verbal. I really need to get this verbal timing under my control. What kind of strategy would you suggest that would help me to quit the problem in time? As you said in your post "quitting means quit what you are doing and try alternate approach," is there similar statement you can make for verbal?
you can make some analogous statements, yes.
for instance, let's say you're working on an assumption problem. if you are not getting very far by looking at the passage and trying to find weaknesses in the reasoning, then you can QUIT that approach, and then try the "negating the answer choices" method (an alternative method). I'd say that's basically analogous to quitting, say, algebra and trying plug-in-numbers.
If you're doing boldface CR and you get stuck in trying to identify the role of each statement directly, QUIT and try processes of elimination. For instance, forget trying to define the roles so explicitly, and instead just realize which side of the argument each boldface statement is on. Then eliminate the choices that put that statement on the wrong side of the argument.
Etc.
Basically, if I had to summarize this whole idea all at once, I'd summarize it like this:
Never cover the same ground twice.
If a certain thought process didn't work the first time, then, well, it's probably not going to work the second (or third or fourth) time, either. So try
doing something different-different in at least some important way.
Quitting in Verbal: When do I tell myself "you should quit on this problem now?" Just like your example of "somebody tapping the shoulder and asking question," can I have something like "if you found yourself reading three answer choices more two times without having any clue of what could be the ans "its time to quit that SC"?" Or can I say "even after reading multiple times for a minute, if you could not follow the logic in the CR, you should just quit the question"?
Both of those sound like good advice.
Before quitting the question, though, I'd add in one more step:
Step back and make sure you're considering the passage from a "planet earth" point of view, rather than an "academic" point of view.
Too many people-especially those who have been studying this stuff for way too many hours-fall back easily into the "academic" point of view, in which they forget that CR passages are
normal human arguments from the real world, flaws and all, and instead try to concentrate on "classifying" or "categorizing" the statements in the argument. That kind of thinking directly impedes
intuition and true
understanding-so, if it's there, you have to snap out of it and get back into a more "conversational"/"real world" frame.
So,
before quitting the problem, ask yourself, "Have I slipped into trying to use formal logic to analyze this?"
If the answer is yes, then take a deep breath, go back to it, and try to transform the passage into a "lunchtime conversation" or "something I just read in a magazine". Neither of which you would ever dream of trying to classify into categories-and both of which you'd understand, and be able to critically evaluate, quite easily.
I know you don't want us to make rules on these kinds of things, but I found myself going in circle again and again with few ans choices wasting my time; sometime, even after spending 2 minutes into the question, I become more clueless than I was when I first saw the question (especially in SC and sometime in CR). I need some kind of loop breaker to apply to myself so I can come out of that loop and not waste time and still get the wrong answer.
Again, at the end of the day, it's really a matter of "
Know when you are stuck."
"Stuck" is a universal phenomenon-it's the idea of just not knowing where to go, or the feeling of just doing random things without any real goal. There's nothing particular to math or verbal about that feeling; it's the same feeling whenever and wherever you encounter it. You could encounter it on math, on verbal, in a relationship, at work, in traffic, anywhere.
If you are stuck, QUIT.
there it is.
in SC, "QUIT" doesn't have to mean moving on right away. for instance, if you aren't getting anywhere with the splits in the answer choices, then you can QUIT looking at the splits, and then go down the following "checklist" of major SC topics:
* Do I see parallelism?
* Do I see any subject/verb issues?
* Do I see any pronouns, anywhere? (Including pronouns in the non-underlined part!)
* Do I see any modifiers that are moved around?
* Do I see any modifiers that alternate with other modifiers (among different choices)?
* Are there any choices with an absurd meaning, regardless of whether they are grammatically sound?
If you can get through this entire checklist without finding anything, then you should probably just guess and move on.
I know some of your posts below are applicable for the whole test, but I think those are mostly appropriate for Quant. Would you please share some of your teachings similar to the below posts that are more applicable to verbal? Is there something we can formulate for verbal similar to the very last post listed?
As I wrote above, nothing here is any more germane to math than it is to verbal (or relationships, or driving, or work, or etc.)
The only really important variable is the time constraint-i.e., if this were an untimed test, then everything you've quoted here would be horrible advice. (E.g., relationships don't normally come with severe time constraints, so "quit if it's not working right away" is, well, s***ty advice there. On the other hand, if someone hypothetically has some disease that gives them a 2-year window to have children, then now we've got a time constraint, and suddenly this stuff becomes
good advice. Lol.)
