GMAT Strategy

Hello Everyone,

I have been a visitor of this forum for sometime now and am seeking advice on my gmat prep. Plus I am a big fan of MGMAT.

I started my GMAT journey last September. I work in Engg. in embedded s/w. Initially I tend to look to take GMAT very lightly thinking that I will be able to score atleast 650 with 2 to 3 months of study and from the experiences of my friends. But that wasnt the case with me and I learnt the hard way.

My first attempt with GMAT was in Oct 2006 and I got a shocking score of 440 (Q 35 V 17). I was probably expecting in the range of 500 to 520. I studied on and off after that and appeared for the test in last week of Sep with the score of 550 (Q40 V 26). I had improved but the score was not good enough for my target schools.

My study pattern so far has also not been consistent and although I appeared for my 2nd GMAT attempt after 1 year, the actual preparation might be about 3 to 4 months. Now in retrospect I felt that I should have worked a lot harder. But at times it was hard with my work schedule, and family. I thought I worked as much as I could but in the end it was not good enough.

I would really appreciate some advice on my study plans and approach for GMAT. Sorry this is a long post as this is debrief of my 1 year prep so far.

My preparations for 2nd time:

I think I have covered all the recommended material for GMAT.
I solved Kaplan Math Workbook (only once) and then went on to solving OG 11th Edition. I really stuggled with my Advance Quant questions and my verbal skills were horrible. I had maintained error logs as recommended by other members and identified my weak areas in Verbal and Quant.

I had problems with Tough Word Problems, advance Combinatorics, probability, Inequalites, Co-ordinate geometry and number properties.

In a span of about 5 to 6 months I managed to solve Quant MGMAT guides books, OG 11th Ed Quant problems and Verbal problems. I also refered to the CR bible in the mean time. I think it was a good reference. I took some notes from that book for strengthen, weaken and assumptions problems. My CR score varies, someday i get about 70 to 80% right but on other days it would be about 40% to 50%. I also refered to Kaplan Verbal workbook and followed the RC and CR strategies to attack the problems. I was just in the process of figuring out which technique would work best for me in RC and CR. After following the RC stategy from Kaplan book I improved on my RC but need to work on my speed. After refering to MGMAT SC guide I improved a lot on SC too (to about 50 to 60% from 20%).


At this point I was a little comfortable with tough Quant problems, but at the same time I would also get stuck in some of the tough ones. I would eventually manage to get those right but ofcourse not in timed conditions. I was ok with all the Quant concepts and needed to work on breadth of different problems. Just more practice. I also attempted 3 Kaplan test from the Kaplan CD's the scores for which were. I dont know the exact dates but I took them between March to beginning of May. I know I should have taken more test and should have been more regular with my studies.

Kaplan Test 1 520 (Quant 32 Verbal 23)
Kaplan Test 2 550 (Quant 32 Verbal 30)
Kaplan Test 3 520 (Quant 33 Veral 22)

Power Prep1 600 (Qaunt 46 Verbal 26)

The reason for higher power prep score is because most ofthe questions were from 11th Ed and I knew how to solve those.


So in the last 2 months I started with the DS and PS 1000 questions set which are very exhaustive. I struggled in some of tough questions but I managed to finish all problems once before my test. I didnt get a chance in the end to solve the questions I had wrong. I was also solving verbal questions from the SC1000, RC1000 and CR1000 (For CR its mostly from 11th Ed). I managed to get atleat 60 to 70% questions right in Verbal overall but in timed conditions I puke.

I also managed to go through 4 MGMAT practice test
1st -- July 28th 2007 Score 530 (Quant 41 Verbal 22)
2nd -- Aug 11th 2007 Score 580 (Quant 43, Verbal 27)
3rd -- Aug 18th 2007 Score 580 (Quant 40 Verbal 31)
4th -- Sep 1st 2007 Score 600 (Quant 41 Verbal 32)

15th Sep GMATPrep Test 1 600 (Quant 43 Verbal 31)
22nd Sep GMATPrep Test 2 630 (Quant 47 Verbal 32)

At this point I thought that I would atleast be able to get atleat 600 and by stroke of luck maybe even 630.

In the end I finshed up with a PowerPrep Test 3 days before the test with a score of 660 (Quant 49 Verbal 31).I just got 12 wrong in Verbal out of 41 and still only managed 31. I really dont know how they calculate this. Quant I was familiar with atleast 20 questions and thats why managed to score 49.

On my test day AWA was a breeze. Then back to my Maths section. The first question was of Inequalities, and fractions. I was nervous and took about 4 mins to solve it and it the end I came to 2 choices but had to guess out ofthe 2 to move on. I think I had that incorrect. The next one was easier than that and managed fine. In the middle I had so many problems where I did came down to about 2 choices and then had to guess. At about 25 I got a an 3 dimensional overlapping sets problem (Venn diagrams) and I was not able to do that. Not because I didnt know the concept but because of sheer time pressure. I scrwed up a combinatorics too and my answer didnt match the one in the answer choices. Again guessed and moved ahead. But at this point I didnt loose my cool, and tried to focus on the next questions. In the end I managed to guess at least 15 problems out of 37.

At this point I knew I had screwed it up but wanted to finish Verbal with a positive attitude. Most of the questions I had were Easy to Medium difficulty (that is according to my standards) and I had to guess on last 3 questions as I was out of time. Went through all the 10 screens in about 5 secs and clicked to Report my scores and there it was 550.

I was dissapointed by then though it was 110 points improvement than my last attempt.

I seriously need advice for my GMAT prep as I dont want to give up now. I want to atleast get 650 to have a decent shot at Admissions to my target schools (which are top 20). Is it recommended to solve OG11th Edition again even though you're familiar with most of the problems.

I have stayed away from GMAT after that except for today while writing this post. But will have to start my prep soon. I was hoping to appear after 2 months.

Also I do hope to regularly participate in the discussions on this forum.

Thanks in advance for your help.

- Abhi

I would like to point out couple of things on your post.

- Since you had lot of time between the attempts, probably you had lost focus. But around this time you have given yourself 2 months and this sounds good. I have felt that if you give yourself too much time, you might start forgetting what you had learned.

- From your post I get an indication that you need to concentrate on certain areas to improve accuracy. I guess you have that list with you. You should minimize guessing on the exam. Ideally you should restrict guessing to max 2-3 questions on the exam in each section. Hence you should focus on concepts and aim for accuracy in your prep.

- Another problem you have identified and that you need to work on is consistency. When you are not consistent, you need to do a root cause analysis to find the reason behind it. It could be any reason, you could have hit problems in areas you are weak. You need to fix the issues.

I am sure you will get guidance from experts on this forum.

Just from a quick read through your debrief, it sounds like part of the problem is that you are focusing, at least partially, on the wrong things. As many people have stated on this forum, it is the quality of your studies that matters more than the quantity. It appears that you have finished a LARGE amount of material.

I studied for about 10 months - 7 of which were very leisurely and 3 months of intense prep. In those 3 months, I was able to complete about 500 problems in the Veritas material and the OG11 book.

I have the following books which I never did a single problem of:
Kaplan Verbal workbook
Kaplan Math workbook
PR Verbal workbook
5 Veritas books

The following are books that I only completed half of:
Kaplan 800
Kaplan GMAT 2006

The following are books that I completed less than 30, yes 30, problems of:
OG Verbal Review
OG Quant Review

The following are books that I was actually able to complete from end to end over a 10 month period:
PR GMAT 2007 (completed over 7 months leisurely)
PR Math workbook (completed over 7 months leisurely)
OG11 (completed over 3 months of intense study)
5 Veritas books (completed over 3 months of intense study)

As you can see, I had TONS of material, but only finished a small percentage of it. I focused on quality instead of quantity. On one of my previous blog posts, I mentioned that I spent 6 minutes on average reviewing any given quant question. That is 3 times the amount of time given to actually solving the question on the real exam.

My suggestion is to compile a GIGANTIC list of all the material you've missed and methodically go through each one. Start with the material you missed at the beginning of your studies because those are likely the easier ones (I'm assuming you've gotten progressively better so the later errors are more difficult than the earlier ones).

I will be posting more information about Math lessons learned later tonight. Please check my blog post again later for more details.

Thanks for your advice Prasanna and mayonnai5e.

Prasanna, you're right that in my GMAT prep I had lost focus in the beginning. I must admit that it was last 2 months that I studied a little regularly.

mayonnai5e, I also agree that its quality and not quantity that matters. This time I am focussing on quality rather than quantity.

My problem has also been timing on the CAT and in my gameplan I need to include a lot of CAT's.

This is my plan of action. Feel free to point me out any improvements I might need.

- Identify my weak areas in Quant by topic. Review all the concepts in the area and refer to Manhattan guides for those topics. Solve practice problems and see the accuracy and verify that I have understood all the underlying concepts.

- For verbal, I will devote each day to review CR, SC, RC. Identify the sub-areas where I am really weak and address those.

- Practice test to gauge my progress.

I am familiar with most of the OG 11th Quant problems. I wanted to know whether its a good idea going through that again. Will it be a true indicator of my quant skills (cause I will know how to approach those problems).

I am also aware with most of the CR and RC questions in OG11th Ed.

Thanks once again for your suggestions.

I have identified my weak areas in Quant based on the last MGMAT test prep and my real GMAT test which I took on Oct 12th.

There are a lot of areas which needs attention some more some less. The list goes as

- Overlapping sets (I got 3-dimensional problem wrong on the real GMAT)
- Probability (Is there any good material on probability and Combinatorics I
dont quite follow the MGMAT method. I think its a little
confusing.)
- Percent (Interest problems)
- Statistics (unable to figure out the hidden trap)
- Co-ordinate Geometry
- Combinatorics (Again appreciate any recommended material on this)
- Inequalities (The first problem I got on real GMAT was inequality and fractions. I eliminate 3 answer choices and made an educated guess on this one)
- Geometry Polygons
- Rates and work
- Number properties - consecutive integers
- Geometry Trapezoid and Traingles combine)
- Decimals and Exponential equations.

I am planning to devote 1 day for each of these topics (about 2 hours) and make an error logs on the mistake i do and the lesson learnt. Wish I would have done that in my previous attempt.

Have to work on my verbal weaknesses too.

Just wanted to make sure you knew that verbal weighs more heavily on your score on quant so it may be more beneficial to focus on verbal and raise that portion since it seems like your verbal ranges anywhere from low 20s to low 30s. If you are a non-native English speaker, quant may be easier to raise though.

For overlapping 3 dimension sets, memorize the following formula:

A + B + C - ab - ac - bc - 2*abc = Total

where:
A, B, and C are the groups
ab, ac, bc are the overlaps where members belong in two of the groups
abc is the overlap where members belong in all three groups

I saw a 3 dimension set problem on my GMAT, applied the formula and laughed to myself when I clicked next/confirm within 60 seconds.

Thanks mayonnai5e for the formula. I will note that in my list. I am currently doing Verbal. Started with RC but I will make verbal my priority. I am confident I will be able to raise my quant to atleast another 5 to 8 points.

If I can get Verbal in range of 35 to 40 I will be happy. This time I am quite keen to follow your method for the error logs and lesson learnt. I am also planning on making Flash cards as I go along.

abhi75 wrote:Thanks mayonnai5e for the formula. I will note that in my list. I am currently doing Verbal. Started with RC but I will make verbal my priority. I am confident I will be able to raise my quant to atleast another 5 to 8 points.

If I can get Verbal in range of 35 to 40 I will be happy. This time I am quite keen to follow your method for the error logs and lesson learnt. I am also planning on making Flash cards as I go along.

Sounds like a good plan. Remember, do not be afraid to change your plan/adjust your strategy as you move forward. I'm not sure if you have downloaded the flashcards Eric has made, but you can find them on the resource wiki of this forum.

P.S. "keen to" should be "keen on"

Hi Mayonnai5e,

For overlapping 3 dimension sets, memorize the following formula:

A + B + C - ab - ac - bc - 2*abc = Total

where:
A, B, and C are the groups
ab, ac, bc are the overlaps where members belong in two of the groups
abc is the overlap where members belong in all three groups

This is only applicable if you account for abc while getting ab i.e you will have to take ab-abc to get the overlaps for ab. Simarly with ac and bc.

You may have assumed this while providing the formula but I just wanted to mention this cause someone can just plug in values and get the wrong answer.

Thanks.

Abhi,

I've been able to improve my verbal score significantly by doing the following. I would recommend you try the same. I was consistently scoring in the mid 600's...i just raised my last 2 practice test scores to 690 and 720 by improving my verbal techniques and adjusting my pacing on the quant section. (i have to admit that i did score a 610 as well recently, but I don't count that one since i took the test hungover and left two questions on the verbal section blank.)

first of all, remember that starting a verbal section after a grueling 75 minutes of quant is awful. you feel exhausted, mentally drained, dehydrated, etc. RC and CR can become challenging and unless you're a naturally fast reader, you will probably have to spend more time reading and rereading the passages to get the gist. so what did i do? i figured out ways to speed up my reading. here are a couple of tips.

- Read 1 or 2 science articles from the ny times.com. you can register for free online. i found that these articles are written in a similar structure to the passages in RC. try to read them quickly and remember what you read. it takes 15 minutes a day. most of the time, the answer to the RC question is right in the passage. but in order to get the question right you must first understand the passage, right? and being able to read it quickly and efficiently will not only help you answer the RC questions correctly, but it will give you more time on the verbal section as well.
- for CR i use a website called www.litesee.com. they have a bunch of timed practice quizzes. no explanations to the answers are provided, but it helped improve my pacing tremendously.
- for your quant i would recommend purchasing the MGMAT word translations book. it seems as if most of the quant stuff you are weak in will be explained in this book.
- as for my quant pacing...i am pretty stubborn when it comes to math so i would try hard to answer difficult questions and quickly answer easy ones. what i found was that i was: 1) losing time for questions near the end, 2) still getting the difficult questions incorrect, 3) making careless mistakes on the easy questions. you need to find your balance.....just make sure you avoid careless errors and learn to avoid the difficult questions that will take up too much time. my advice is to do the best you can on each question.....but look at the test from a whole. getting one question wrong won't affect your overall score by much, but spending a whole lot of time on a question and then having to guess on the last few will impact your score.

Thanks gmat8000 for your tips. I know I did to improve my verbal significantly to get a decent overall score.

Your advice about reading is really good and I will definitely try that. Regarding quant, I already have a MGMAT guide books and I have finish overlapping sets. I try to spend one day on each of the topics in Word Translation and try to solve problems from the OG for that topics. In 2 weeks time I want to start CAT and I am thinking of starting with MGMAT CAT's.

Your scores are very encouraging and I wish you good luck.

abhi75 wrote:Hi Mayonnai5e,

For overlapping 3 dimension sets, memorize the following formula:

A + B + C - ab - ac - bc - 2*abc = Total

where:
A, B, and C are the groups
ab, ac, bc are the overlaps where members belong in two of the groups
abc is the overlap where members belong in all three groups

This is only applicable if you account for abc while getting ab i.e you will have to take ab-abc to get the overlaps for ab. Simarly with ac and bc.

You may have assumed this while providing the formula but I just wanted to mention this cause someone can just plug in values and get the wrong answer.

Thanks.

Yes, you're right, but the test-taker should be paying attention to the overlap between ab and abc. I saw a question like this during my practice (where there was an overlap between ab and abc) and I just drew out the Venn diagram and it became very clear that ab was 1 and abc was 5 which allowed me to apply the formula afterwards.

I don't want to cause confusion but just to emphasize that you need to pay careful attention to the overlaps, consider the following example:

Question:
Workers are grouped by their areas of expertise, and are placed on at least one team. 20 are on the marketing team, 30 are on the sales team, and 40 are on the Vision team. 5 workers are on both marketing and sales teams, 6 are on both sales and vision teams, 9 are on both marketing and vision teams, and 4 are on all 3 teams. How many workers are there in total?

Solution:
From the information provided:
M=20, S=30, V=40, MS=5, VS=6, MV=9, and MSV=4

Draw the Venn Diagram and note that MS includes workers from V, VS includes workers from M, and MV includes workers from S.

If you want to use Mayonnai5e's formula you need to consider overlaps between MS and MSV, VS and MSV, & MV and MSV. In other words, make sure that MS is exclusively marketing and sales (call it MSx), VS is exclusively vision and sales (call it VSx), and MV is exclusively markering and vision (call it MVx). So Mayonnai5e's formula becomes:

Total = M + V + S - MSx - VSx - MVx - 2MSV

So back to the Venn diagram. And work from inside out. You get: MSx=MS-MSV=5-4=1, VSx=VS-VSX=6-4=2, and MVx=MV-MSV=9-4=5

Now apply Mayonnai5e's formula:
Total = M + V + S - MSx - VSx - MVx - 2MSV
= 20 + 40 + 30 - 1 - 2 - 5 - 2*4
= 90 - 16
= 74

Alternatively, if all the numbers with overlap are provided as in this case, you could apply the following formula:
Total = M + V + S - MS - VS - MV + MSV

without worrying about overlap between MS and MSV, VS and MSV, and MV and MSV.

Visualize this: By subtracting MS you are accounting for overlap between M and S, by subtracting VS you are accounting for an overlap between V and S. So far so good. BUT finally when subtracting MV you are double-counting the overlap MVS. It's like you are cutting a piece of common overlap between the 3 sets. Hence you need to add it back.

Thus Total = 20 + 40 + 30 - 5 - 6 - 9 + 4
= 90 - 20 + 4
= 74

If I have caused confusion, please forget what I said. And I appologize.

Thats a good point. Thanks. I now tend to follow the MGMAT method of starting from innermost overlap (who are all the 3 teams) and then work with overlap of 2 teams and then the remaining ones on the single team. In the end I add all the values.

Lately I have been doing a lot of calculation mistake. Once I get the equations and all the number I tend to take calc lightly and end up making mistakes.

Any ideas on how to reduce these silly calculations mistakes.

I do the same. Practise, practise, practise ...