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Huge Performance Drop in OG-12 Q#100+ Data Sufficiency

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Huge Performance Drop in OG-12 Q#100+ Data Sufficiency

by clawhammer » Thu Nov 04, 2010 9:00 am
Okay, I've been doing the OG-12 main book Data Sufficiency problems, and I'm finding a huge increase in mistakes in questions after #100. The newly added questions on this part of the book seem REALLY hard, and I'm not even doing the last 10-15 questions yet. I'm getting about 50% of these questions wrong, and for many of them, there's no way I could come up with the right answer in 2 mins. Also, many concepts seem new.

So does this mean getting 700 is now far fetched for me? People seem to say OG questions are easier than actual test, but from the level of difficulty in the new DS question in OG-12, it seems very hard for me!

As I'm solving more problems, it's not getting my performance better as I go further into the section Q#120+.

I didnt have such difficulties with new questions added to other sections, but I don't know if my performance just fell, but I tried doing these questions, and feeling completely beaten by the level of these questions.

Can anyone suggest any strategy? I have 3 weeks, this is getting me nervous.
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by Ian Stewart » Thu Nov 04, 2010 3:11 pm
When they released OG12, most of the changes to the Quant section were in the DS chapter - it's not only longer than before, but it's much more challenging. I consider it to be considerably more difficult, overall, than the PS section. It is great practice material, and the newly added questions do feel more like current GMAT questions (even if some of them are actually from old paper tests), but you'd normally expect to do worse in the DS chapter of OG12 than in the PS chapter, just because the questions are harder.

If you're aiming for a 700+ score, you'd probably like to be getting more than half the questions right in the DS section, but you don't need to be at all close to perfect on high level questions to get a good score. Take those questions you find difficult as a learning opportunity, particularly those questions which test important concepts (some questions in OG12 are so idiosyncratic that they almost aren't worth studying - the question about Carl's account balances, for example - as you aren't likely to see anything similar on test day, while others test fundamental concepts like ratios or number properties that are certain to be heavily tested on your real GMAT). If DS is more difficult for you than PS (that's true for almost all test takers), then you know what you can focus on between now and test day to make the biggest improvement.
For online GMAT math tutoring, or to buy my higher-level Quant books and problem sets, contact me at ianstewartgmat at gmail.com

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by clawhammer » Thu Nov 04, 2010 6:39 pm
Thank you so much Ian. I'm trying to get myself back into this. When I saw I made 5 mistakes straight form Q#120-124, along with frequent mistakes, I was just blown away.

So if I do focus and learn, there would at least be some 'similar' concepts I might see right? - That's some sort of a relief.

Anyone with a list of Q#'s or Concepts that I should especially focus on for the DS section? - Especially for the last half of the section.
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by clawhammer » Fri Nov 05, 2010 3:07 am
I would again like to sincerely thank Ian. have been doing the remaining problems, and my performance seem to have gotten better. Made less than 10% mistakes.

Something happened to me when I was solving Q 100 ~ 125. And for last 3 days even easier questions seemed somewhat challenging. But feeling more confident now that I have gone though all of them (4 q's remaining). The questions around that middle part seemed more difficult, and that doesn't make sense, as the ones later should have been tougher. May be something just happened to me.

I would still consider the following DS Q's from OG-12 to be considerably difficult compared to where they have been placed in the book: 78, 109, 115, 120, 123, 124, 161
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