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Stuck for months on 650 (42 Q - 38 V) - Please help!

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Stuck for months on 650 (42 Q - 38 V) - Please help!

by ec41tp » Thu Sep 01, 2016 4:51 pm
To all my fellow GMAT takers and masters!

I have been dedicating a large part of my spare time over the last few months preparing for the GMAT. I have done over 200 hours of studying since the beginning of May and my score is pretty much at the exact same place as it was when I first decided to study for the exam.

Image

As you can see from the table above results are largely unchanged in the 650 house, with a relatively strong verbal and mediocre quant score.

My study strategy has been as follows:

Material used: Manhattan GMAT Workbooks
Optimus Prep full website access with 6 CAT exams and around 4000 question bank.
Optimus Prep private tutor for over 10 hour lessons.
Optimus Prep, I have done all classes and homework associated. Which is over 100 hours.
Official guide 3 sample CAT exams.

I spend 1 hour a day during weekdays doing questions and watching the lessons (focused around 85% of my time in the quantitative part). The weekend I spend around 10 to 15 hours working on questions and going through some of my week spots. I work long hours during the week so it is hard to dedicate any more time to the exam than I already have. It has been 3 months of dedication and I am not seeing the results.

I would like to have a clear plan of attack for the next 2 months so I can get at least 710 on my GMAT. I know it is easier said than done, but I am prepared to put the work if I have the right road map. I need to know what material to use, if I need to identify my weeknesses in the smallest detail. If the help of a tutor would improve my score (remember I have already spent a considerable amount with a tutor). How many hours I need to spend a week, so by mid November I am consistently scoring above 700 in prep tests.

I thank you all for sharing such amazing instructions and stories. This journey has so far been much easier with all the discussions and testimonies on the forum!

Kind Regards,

Thales
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by MartyMurray » Mon Sep 05, 2016 8:29 pm
Hi Thales.

Increasing your score by 50 - 100 points in two months does not seem to be such a big deal for you at this point. You are already familiar with the types of things that appear in GMAT questions. Now you just have to get better at getting right answers.

You said that your score didn't really change from when you started preparing, and while to a degree that's true, one can discern an upward trend. So something you have been doing has been working.

At the same time something about what you have been doing has not been working.

Let's figure out what that is, starting by getting the answers to some questions.

- How much time do you spend per question when you are doing practice questions? Do you do the questions timed or untimed?

- What's your approach generally when you initially don't know how to find the answer to a question?

- Please provide some more detail regarding what you do when you work on weak areas.

- How many of the 4000 questions in that bank have you answered?

- Did you actually use the Official Guide or did you mean that you used official tests?

- What do you think are the two most important things for scoring high on GMAT quant?

From reading what you said, I have some ideas already. At the same time, with the answers to these questions, I will be in a better position to help you to achieve, or exceed, your target score.
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by MartyMurray » Mon Sep 05, 2016 9:18 pm
You might get some insights from this post.

https://www.beatthegmat.com/how-to-score ... tml#780876
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by ec41tp » Tue Sep 06, 2016 5:41 am
Hi Marty,

Thanks for spending the time reading my questions. Below are the answers to your questions.

1- How much time do you spend per question when you are doing practice questions? Do you do the questions timed or untimed?

* I always do questions on a timed manner, but I try to time the whole test together, so if I have 37 practice questions for a specific area I will time 75 minutes limit. If I notice I spent too much time in a question I guess and move forwards.

2- What's your approach generally when you initially don't know how to find the answer to a question?

* If I can't find the answer I normally guess, then when I finish answering all questions I go back and check the correct solution.

3- Please provide some more detail regarding what you do when you work on weak areas.

* I tend to go over the theory or some video class (Optimus Prep) and then do a number of time questions subsequently.

4- How many of the 4000 questions in that bank have you answered?

* I have done about 2/3s of the questions I had originally. I have added quite a few to the bank over the past few days from a few different sources, so I have at least 6000 questions now.

5- Did you actually use the Official Guide or did you mean that you used official tests?

* I used the official guide only for problem solving as I felt it would help me get to grips with the questions. I answered all PS questions in the OG 2016. I must admit I am know much stronger in the PS then DS.

6- What do you think are the two most important things for scoring high on GMAT quant?

* Not entirely sure. But from my experience it has been figuring out quickly what the question wants and how to address the problem.


I want to change to way I practice and learn, but am not too sure how to go about it.

Regards,

Thales
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by MartyMurray » Tue Sep 06, 2016 6:47 am
ec41tp wrote:Hi Marty,

I want to change to way I practice and learn, but am not too sure how to go about it.

Regards,

Thales
Hi Thales.

If you follow the link I posted in the post above, you will see that the answers to your questions tend to match exactly what I said NOT TO DO in order to increase your GMAT score.

Maybe most importantly, while many test prep professionals say that doing questions on a timed basis is the best way to prepare, the truth is that doing practice questions on a timed basis is, for the most part, AN INSANE WASTE OF TIME.

Why?

Because what a person has to learn in order to score high on the GMAT is how to work his way to answers, through confusion, lack of understanding, negative thoughts and whatever else he might go through in the process of getting to an answer, and if in doing practice questions you guess and move on after two minutes, you don't give yourself the opportunity to learn to get to get through all of those things and find answers.

I have seen people who were stuck and discouraged make their scores soar by simply going from doing practice questions on a timed basis to taking as much time as necessary to get practice questions right.

You have to stop reading solutions and start learning to fight your way to right answers.

Here's an example. A while back I was working with someone who figured that were he just to understand the explanations to enough questions he would score high on the GMAT. He would call me at 2 AM and ask me for explanations to complex questions, and I would have a good time figuring out the answers to and explaining how to find the answers to the most difficult questions he could find. Guess what though. His score barely went up. He wasn't learning to find answers. He was just watching me, and everyone else, doing it.

Don't make the same mistake.

From now on, when you do practice questions, take all the time you need in order to get the answers. If you want to score 700+, then you have to be able to get the right answers to most questions, at least on an untimed basis. If you aren't getting them on an untimed basis, you won't get them on a timed basis.

Step 1: Learn basically how to get answers. (I think you have done this already.)

Step 2: Learn to get right answers most of the time, untimed.

Step 3: Get to a point such that you can get right answers most of the time on a timed basis.

You have to go through Step 2 to get to Step 3.

I can tell you this too. After having spent years correctly, and incorrectly, answering thousands of GMAT practice questions and having scored 800 on the test, I still can look at a new question and, initially at least, have almost no idea how to find the answer. I have a rule though, a rule that I rarely break. I am not allowed to look at an explanation to a question until AFTER I have figured out the answer. Why? Because I know that what the test is testing is not my knowledge of explanations, but rather my skill in coming up with ways to find answers.

While you still may have things to learn from explanations, to a large degree you are done with explanations, and if you take a figure out the answer whatever it takes in however long it takes attitude in practice, I suspect your score will go right up.

Working that way may not be everything that you have to do in order to hit your score goal, but it may be, and even if it's not quite everything, it's going to make a huge difference.
Marty Murray
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by Knitgeek » Tue Sep 06, 2016 7:00 am
As someone who took Marty's advice a couple month back... It's good advice and it works!

I went from a 500 baseline test and what struggling with my quant prep, low and behold I was practicing everything timed. Within a week and half of going to untimed practice where I was actually teaching myself how to reason through the GMAT problems and tada! My practice CAT score was up to 650! (I did a bunch of concept review between as well, my quant concepts were really rusty).

Yes worry about the timer but worry about it a bit later on down the road. Get used to the types of problems you will be facing and generally by the time you get back to the timer you will see a boost in your time management skills automatically (so to speak. The boost in efficiency is from being familiar with what you are facing off against).

Good luck! :)
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by MartyMurray » Tue Sep 06, 2016 7:05 am
ec41tp wrote:5- Did you actually use the Official Guide or did you mean that you used official tests?

* I used the official guide only for problem solving as I felt it would help me get to grips with the questions. I answered all PS questions in the OG 2016. I must admit I am know much stronger in the PS then DS.
So clearly, one way to increase your score is to do all of the DS questions in the OG, and do them UNTIMED, shooting for a hit rate of close to 100%.

If you don't know how to get to the answer to a question, have no clue at all, then rather than look at the explanation to that question, go watch a video on how to answer such a question or use some other resource to find out how to get the answer to such a question and then go back to the question and use the knowledge that you have gained to figure out the answer.

Working that way is the way to train to totally wreck GMAT quant.

Meanwhile, by doing verbal questions untimed and shooting for a close to 100% hit rate you will drive up your verbal score. Do not discount verbal. You could drive your quant score to say 46 and then drive your verbal score to 45, for instance, for a total score of around 740, which would be pretty cool.

Given where your scores have been hovering, you should be able to drive quant to 46 - 49 without too much trouble and verbal to 40 - 46, for a total score somewhere between 700 and 770 inclusive.

Make it so.
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by MartyMurray » Tue Sep 06, 2016 7:08 am
Knitgeek wrote:As someone who took Marty's advice a couple month back... It's good advice and it works!

I went from a 500 baseline test and what struggling with my quant prep, low and behold I was practicing everything timed. Within a week and half of going to untimed practice where I was actually teaching myself how to reason through the GMAT problems and tada! My practice CAT score was up to 650! (I did a bunch of concept review between as well, my quant concepts were really rusty).

Yes worry about the timer but worry about it a bit later on down the road. Get used to the types of problems you will be facing and generally by the time you get back to the timer you will see a boost in your time management skills automatically (so to speak. The boost in efficiency is from being familiar with what you are facing off against).

Good luck! :)
There you have it!!!!

That's so cool.
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by Bara » Fri Sep 09, 2016 4:02 pm
I'm loving this post and the responses: you're getting GREAT advice. I have one thing to add.

Taking a test requires one to shift between being proactive and pensive. Thoughtfully or critically thinking how to go about going through questions especially the ones that seem unsolvable.

I often tell our students to pick a bunch of questions, and put in the answers, then come up with the ways one gets to said answers. I don't have them read explanations, much for the same reasons that are written about prior, but rather, to see the two end points, then fill in the blanks. Then, to figure out after those are filled in, if there is an even easier quicker way TO go through the information.

Once you go through this exercise, especially with the question types that cause the most consternation, you'll find that you're lubricating your mind by having it think in new ways, not getting stressed (because you already 'know' the end point')....etc.

Let me know how that goes should you decide to try it!

Best,
Bara Sapir, MA, CHt, CNLP
Founder/CEO City Test Prep
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