Thanks for your reply.

my target score was 650 or above. I felt pretty good about my subject-matter understanding up until now. I didn't think STRATEGY specifically when solving problems on the actual exam, but relied mostly on the natural ability i gained from solving tons of questions. I scored considerably lower on Verbal, so thats what I'm mainly trying to improve.

I'm thinking of buying the 3 MP books (RC, SC, CR). Do you think thats a good idea? Or should I go back to OG and just do the q's all over again?

I'm really confused, because I don't feel I have a specific weakness, other than time management, as I realized after writing the actual exam.

I would appreciate any additional thoughts you may have.

Hi,

The exact same thing happened to me this December.
I score 550, while I never had such terrible score in any of the tests.


Some tips:
1.You need to keep watch on atleast 2 GMAT Forums on daily basis. By reading the explainations for difficult question posted, I have observed remarkable change in aptitude.

2. For every section you should have a strategy. This will avoid unwanted errors.For Ex. in Cr 1 strategy I have made is to identify Assumption,premises and conclusion. Earlier I used to answer using my understanding and instict, Though mapping stratgies to Questions cost some time, but I would say it is worth the effort.
3. Try to make flash cards,Again a time consuming process, I realized there is not shortcut to success:)

I observed that when I gave GMATPrep after reading OG , some questions came from that, so the score I achieved does not reflect my true capability.

I will keep posting anything new I come across.

Cheers,

So when I read your post, the first and most immediate weakness in your study plan is the lack of timing practice. A select few have a natural ability to internally manage their time and do exceptionally well without significant timing practice; however, for the majority of people out there, we need practice in order to train our internal 2 minutes/question clock.

From an initial examination, it seems like you have put in the necessary amount of hours and worked with the appropriate materials. But I have two areas of concern:

1) What were your hit rates? Were you keeping track of the hit rates for each topic? You mentioned that you didn't "feel" that you had any specific weaknesses, but can you quantify that? I kept track of my cumulative hit rates as I moved through my materials so by the end of the OG11, I was able to clearly show that my hit rates for each topic were in the high 80s except for DS, which dropped to 70%. Thus I knew RC, CR, SC, and PS were all about equal, but my real weakness was hard DS questions.

2) Timing practice. You must practice timing. I personally believe that as soon as you learn the basic strategies and move into OG11, you should immediately start timing all your practice. The untrained internal clock will not cut it (unless you have natural talent). Here's the other point: you said you analyzed and brokedown each question - did you do this after each individual question or after a set of questions? Why do I ask this? Because if you do the former, you are reinforcing one of the biggest time wasters on a CAT - that is overanalyzing and overthinking your answers. If you did this, I strongly suggest stopping this practice and instead working in problem sets that are timed. This more closely mimics real testing conditions and forces you to move onto the next question. After you have finished the practice set, then by all means sit down and analyze all you want - the more the better (honestly)!

You have exhausted some of the best materials available (OG11, OG Q, and Kaplan 800). I suggest buying the other respected materials that are left (OG V and the MGMAT books). You didn't mention which cats you used, but I'm guessing GMATPrep and Kaplan based on your original materials. If this is the case, I suggest using the MGMAT and PR cats.

Please provide more details about your study habits and strategy so we can critique it.

Again, don't trust your internal clock. Doing so is like trusting an internal compass, once you get lost, it's very hard to get reoriented and find your way.

mayonnai5e, thank you for your informative response.

Yes, I do consider my biggest weakness to be time management. During practice, I would overthink and overanalyze each problem. Even though this resulted in hit rates in the high 80s, i'm sure it was a big mistake, and a definite time-killer. As you would guess, I experienced difficulty during my actual exam, because i felt rushed. This morning I bought a stopwatch, and am gonna time myself from now on. I will try to do all q's in under 2mins.

One last thing, I feel i've overdone OG q's so much, that I already have a lot of the answers memorized, so it would feel like cheating if I did them again. Where can I find fresh q's that are very similar to actual GMAT q's? I haven't bought OG V, but will do so. I've heard MGMAT books are not too good (based on reviews from amazon.com), would you recommend trying them out?

thanks again.

To be honest, the only solid materials I used for Q were OG Q, OG11, Kaplan 800 so you've already exhausted the materials I went through. You can look to the math forums for some difficult questions, but for practice sets you'll probably need a book with a decent amount of problems to work on. MGMAT books are the only things that come to mind - perhaps some other users can suggest a good quant book.