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GMAT Part Deux

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GMAT Part Deux

by drhomler » Wed Jul 04, 2007 3:55 pm
Im back

I have a question for those of you who are taking the test for the second time around, and for resident experts. What is the strategy you are employing for your second attempt?

I have a general idea about my weaknesses, so I guess I will start by trying a fundamental approach to learning good methods for those issues. I never used the Kaplan800 book so I will go after that to the best of my ability. What should I do with the OG? I did every quant and SC question. This time aorund I plan to study CR and RC for that added boost i the verbal, but my biggest goal is to get my quant over 80% which I have done on some practice tests. Ive read posts here where people have done the OG questions 6-7 times, does that make sense, anyone think that has any value?

Some ideas please as I enter the gauntlet one more time. I give this mission 6 weeks.
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my strategy

by plodder_81 » Wed Jul 04, 2007 9:02 pm
Well here is my take ,

Quant: I would say the last 50 questions on OG 11 are really good. I plan to revisit them and understand the concepts used .
I think for quant the additional tough questions from this site's GMAT resources should be fine.

Verbal: Revisit the entire SC questions from OG 11and explanations using Manhattan SC till my test scores (mock tests) improve.

For RC and CR . OG11 and Kaplan 800 are just fine.

-plodder_81
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by beatthegmat » Wed Jul 04, 2007 10:01 pm
What's your target score? 700+?
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by drhomler » Thu Jul 05, 2007 4:54 am
Eric,

I am targeting 700+, I think my upper boundary in quant is a 48 raw score and in verbal a 42 raw score. I think on my best day those would be what I could hope for. Basically I know I can do it in the verbal if the stars align and I keep my concentration, my SC has improved quite a bit so a little fine tuning there should bump it up and in CR and RC I havent ever practiced those so I think I could get a little help there. My biggest issue is quant and I know I dont always click with coordinate planes, I still have trouble on some of those number line, pos neg DS questions. I really thought on the real thing last week I should have gotten a 45 or 46 raw score. I was told a 700 or 720 would help my profile out alot so that is what I am trying to do.

Plodder thanks for the suggestions: Do you find solid detailed explanations in the 1000DS type files? My biggest concern on those is are the answers accurate? I feel like the 1000SC was questionable at times. I will use Kaplan800 for sure, in fact I thin kthat is where I will start-hope to finish it this weekend and take a practice Kaplan CAT on Sunday.
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by givemeanid » Thu Jul 05, 2007 5:13 am
drhomler, I have been reading your posts for a little while and I think you have fairly solid grasp of fundamentals. It shows through in your explanations (I am of the belief that if you don't understand it yourself, you cannot explain it all too well).

I would suggest focusing on a few key areas that you can identify to be your weak spots instead of looking to go through the material 6-7 times. Quality over quantity at this point since you have slogged a fair amount for your prep anyway. Have faith in yourself too. That is the biggest key.

One more thing I have found helpful is to make flash cards with entire problem/solutions (cram it on to that 3x5 index card) that you were absolutely stumped on OR that took you quite a bit to crack through the first time (>4 min is my benchmark). Since I am in New York, I use my 45 minute commute to flip through these over and over. Maybe, you can use it some similar way. The idea is to make sure you are exposed more often to the stuff that gives you a tough time.
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Reg 1000DS

by plodder_81 » Thu Jul 05, 2007 9:14 am
drhomler,

I haven't used 1000DS at all . I thought OG11 and kap 800 were sufficient for DS . I think it did work out on the exam since I had 49Q in GMAT. I have avoided 1000SC since my SC is really weak and I didn't want to lose any of the concepts learnt from OG 11 to be smudged by questions without proper explanations.

I think it is higly pertinent for a good performance in SC to really have the explanation on lines of OG. Each answer not only shows the right way to do it but also 4 wrong ways of approaching it . That makes lot of difference.

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by Stacey Koprince » Sat Jul 07, 2007 6:28 pm
I don't like the 1000 source questions - I've found mistakes and a number of generally poor questions that don't mimic the real thing. I like our materials of course and also think that you can get good practice material from Princeton Review and Kaplan.

It's unlikely that you have extracted everything from OG that you could but remember that it is not about the quantity of questions you do or the number of times you do them - doing OG 6-7 times just indicates that you aren't studying the right way.

Anytime you do a question, you should be spending 5-10 minutes, sometimes longer, going over the explanation, reviewing the question, the right answer, the wrong answers, etc. Figure out more efficient ways to do the problem. Spot the tricks and trap answers and articulate to yourself why they are tricks and traps. Ask yourself how you'd make an educated guess if you couldn't do the problem. Figure out why you made any mistakes you made. Make connections between different problems so you can use your previously-built knowledge to recognize parts of a problem instead of having to solve the whole thing from scratch - I saw something similar to this before and I remember that this was the way I had to approach that one, so I'll try the same approach on this one. That kind of thing. End by asking yourself how you'd teach it to someone else.

There are questions I teach in class on which there is so much detail and depth to learn from that I can spend 15+ minutes showing my students how to deconstruct it and put it back together. That's the best way to learn this stuff.
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