oh wells! no one cares

Wawatan,

Sorry you felt like nobody cared! I'm happy to try to help you trouble shoot what is going on with your score. As far as I can tell, it could be a couple things.

1) Are you running out of time? Some people plateau because they can't get more than X questions done in the time allotted.

2) Are you missing questions once they get to a certain difficulty level? If so, you may be missing a deeper understanding of one or more concepts.

3) Are you missing a certain type of question? If so, spend more time focusing on this section of your prep materials.

4) Are you having test anxiety issues? These could cause careless errors that prevent your score from getting to where it should be.

To diagnose your problem, you need to dissect your math score further. Figure out what TYPE of problem you are missing, and at what difficultly level. Then you can focus your studying accordingly.

Hope that helps,

Tatiana

Having studied for hours and not seeing any significant improvements suggest you may be studying long, but maybe not studying effectively. Can you tell us how you are studying with more detail: timed? untimed? how many questions per session? how much time do you spend reviewing solutions? which solutions do you cover? do you keep an error log? how about a lessons learned log?

hey guys,
ok, i figured out what i'm weak at. i'm weak at word problems and number properties on data sufficiency. the latter one is easier for me to improve, but the word problems is a whole different story! certain word problems are very easy to solve but others aren't. when it comes to percentages and ratios mixed in one word problem, I can not think! Instead, I just get a huge headache. How do I even practice these problems? Is there a book out there that teaches me step by step how to put equations together or how to solve math word problems piece by piece.

For example this problem for data sufficiency:

a truck and a station wagon are traveling at different constant rates on a straight road. If the truck is now 2 miles ahead of the station wagon, how many minutes from now will the truck be 5 miles ahead?

1) The truck is traveling at 70 mph, and the station wagon is traveling at 65 mph

2) 1 hour ago the truck was 3 miles behind the station wagon.

(I got the answer from someone on this forum...so don't worry about solving it for me)


WHAT THE HELL? the equation doesn't naturally pop in my head. i've practiced so much with distance and rate formulas but when they give me this variation i'm screwed. how did you guys approach algebra problems like these? did you get a book?

that word problem above is just an example. i struggle with percentage word problems, ratio problems with variables instead of numbers, endless....
please don't suggest manhattan gmat. i already have their books.

i just need to score a 650...please help with math!

I believe MGMAT has a Word Problems book that may be exactly what you're looking for. That is the only book I know of for that topic. As for your inability to connect word problems with equations, you can do what I did - as soon as you read the problem and see some relative terms, immediately write down the equation that has terms that match.

In the example you provided, you see the following words: traveling, rates, road, 2 miles, minutes. You can tell this is some type of Rate, Distance, Time question and thus you should write down: D = R * T. Fill in the blank as you go.

Good luck.

I would strongly suggest getting the MGMAT word translation guide. But, don't stop there. Get an old Algebra book at a library and practice as many word problems as possible. Don't get obsessed with this though (as I did) because it is still better to practice with word problems written for the GMAT. Practice all of the OG word problems from the orange and purple books. Then, go back and try to solve again the problems that you got wrong. Then, go back to all of the problems and read the OG approach to solving them. Give each one at least two reads.

As for careless mistakes, I just saw how much that is a pain in the ass. Do not be overconfident on any questions. I went into my practice CAT with waaaaayyy too much confidence where I decided that problems just bowed to my ABILITY to solve them rather than to my actually solving them. I decided that the following approach might work for me next weekend:

1. Read each problem quickly the first time and then re-read the important parts; for example, pay attention to whether it is asking for the amount used or the amount left after a certain amount has been used, whether it is asking for minutes, seconds, hours, ... etc.

2. While solving a problem, check your math. When you are in a rush you, at least I, tend to make stupid mistakes. For example, I solved 2 + 1/2 as 3/2 because I was too focused on getting the final answer, whereas the result is, of course, 5/2.

3. Realize that you might not get to all of the problems because of the time issue. Do not let it get you down. It is certainly true that you can get the first 3 questions wrong and still get a decent score. HOWEVER, it is not true that if you get 10 questions wrong on the first half of the test and then get only 2 wrong on the second, you will come out with a decent score. I believe that it is very important to minimize mistakes (at least this has been my experience) on the first 20 questions. Do not blow the last questions. But if you guess the last 5 and get them all wrong, you will still end up with a great score as long as you only got a few questions wrong here and there throughout the exam. Yes yes, I know it is more complicated than that, but I think it is more rewarding to be careful on the first half of the test. You can afford getting the last questions wrong and coming down from 680 to 670, versus not being careful enough on the earlier questions and ending up with a 620, even though you score the last 15 correctly.

This advice is more to myself than to you, wawatan, but I hope you find it useful.

thanks for the advice! AleksandrM, can you tell me which algebra book you used? what is the title and author? i'm going to do more practice so I can get the problems right. i agree with your advice. Must be careful on the first 15 questions b/c that is how the algorithm determines your score and then it will be easier to get a higher score at the end. thanks !

wawatan,

I used a book called "College Algebra and Trigonometry: Basics Through Precalculus" by John J. Schiller and Marie A. Wurster. It's published by ImageTec Publishing Systems. I don't know if you would be able to get a hold of it because I believe it was published specifically for the Temple University math department. However here is the ISBN 1-932864-93-8. If you cannot find this book, any Algebra book will do. Most of these texts have pretty similar problems and can be solved using same methods. Having said that, I know that "College Algebra" by Robert Blitzer is loved by a lot of studetns and professors. Good luck.

AleksandrM, I just wanted to say thanks for the insightful, well thoughtout posts!

No problem, guys. I have gained a lot of insights from this site and it is only fair to contribute however I can.

Also, in reference to what I said about getting problems right and wrong at the beginning and at the end of a section. Look at this guy's post:

"Hi
Today I gave my first CAT from the GMATPrep. Here is my score:
Quants: 45
Verbal: 23
Score: 570

Score Review: Quants
20 correct, 17 incorrect. After the test I used the practice grid to review and understand my weak points. I can see that I got 9 questions in DS wrong."

I took a CAT today, and got a 33 on quant with 17 incorrect. Given they were stupid mistakes and I knew how to solve almost all of the problems I got wrong, BUT, I got 12 of those wrong on the first 24 questions, which is what killed my score. Just wanted to show that you can score in the 40s and still get so many questions wrong.