GMAT Strategy

Hi pk27,

Your next practice CAT score will give us a much better sense of how far you've progressed. To score 49/50 in the Quant, here are some things that factor in (beyond knowing the material and tactics): you have to have strong pacing skills, you can't really afford any silly mistakes, and you have to control as many of the "outside" variables as possible (get enough sleep, eat breakfast, stay calm, etc.). The GMAT will give you the score that you EARN, so you have to be willing to do what's required - work hard, stay organized, make good decisions.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Hello!
One more piece of advice to consider. It's not enough to do a bunch of practice questions one time and then review them directly after. You need to highlight all of the mistakes that you made, write down why you made the mistakes you made, and then go back and redo all of the questions that gave you trouble a couple weeks later. A lot of students make the mistake of doing a ton of questions without redoing the questions they had trouble with the first time. However, a better way of studying is to do a set of questions (maybe all of the ones in the OG 13), master them by continually redoing the questions you have trouble with until they aren't problematic, and then move on to a new set of questions.

Cheers!
Dan

Hi pk27,

DS questions represent a big part of the Quant section, so knowing how to handle them (as well as knowing all of the patterns and shortcuts that are typically built into DS questions) is essential to scoring 49+ in the Quant. As such, you might need more than just books to help you learn all of these details. A GMAT Course (either with an instructor or self-study with online materials) might be exactly what you need to pick up those missing points.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Hello again!
Some more good problems include the other OG books (math and verbal), the GMATPrep question pack (more official practice), and perhaps the paper tests that you can get on MBA.com's website. As you can see, I'm a fan of official practice problems. The downside is that their explanations aren't always great so if you find a question that has a poor explanation look it up on google to see if you can find a better one.

Cheers!
Dan