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Need help building an effective strategy

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Need help building an effective strategy

by dadzhias100 » Sat Oct 24, 2015 6:54 am
Hi all! Firstly, I would like to thank everybody that contributes to this forum. The posts here have really helped in getting me started.

I have about 2 months before my test date and really need to kick my preparation into overdrive. The problem I'm facing is I really can't figure out a proper plan of attack. I don't feel as though I've made enough of an improvement in the 3 weeks I've prepared thus far and any tips or plans would be appreciated.

My baseline on the gmatprep test 1 was a 610. scoring 41q 33v. I was definitely disappointed in my quant, but I suppose thats to be expected after being 10 years removed from high school. I followed the free gmatprep video lessons for quant and solved all of the associated OG quant questions over the last 3 weeks. I did feel that I had a better grasp on certain areas after the refresher, but clearly not enough. I was following the free 60 day study guide and retook the gmatprep test 1 after completing all of the math modules. My quant improved to 44 and v stayed the same at 33 (no verbal review yet).

My question is, how can I effectively manage my time and what methods of preparation will help yield improvement? I feel like the explanations in the OG are very basic and the problems that I have issues with, I continue to have issues with. My areas of struggle continue to be weaker areas. I have logged my answers in the gmatprepnow improvement chart. I've reviewed all of my flagged and incorrect answers and was able to hit at a much higher percentage the second time around. However, my quant score only picked up to 44.

My goal is to break 700 and I do believe it is possible. I know that once I tackle verbal review, I should be able to find at least few points there. I just don't know what resources or methods will help me get my quant up to at least a 47-48. Its disheartening because I was a very strong math student in high school scoring 770 on the sat2 IC and over 700 on sat1 math. Now I am looking at 60%ile +/- on quant.

To note, my obvious areas of struggle are word problems, probability, and powers & roots. I am devoting more time to those questions, but I'm not having that eureka moment :). I want to thank you in advance for any replies or help! It is much appreciated!
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by [email protected] » Sat Oct 24, 2015 11:10 am
Hi dadzhias100,

To start, a 610 is a strong baseline CAT score (the average score on the Official GMAT hovers around 540-550 most years). There are some things worth knowing as you continue to study though. First, you should take the FULL CAT each time (including the Essay and IR sections). Second, re-taking a CAT that you've already taken almost always leads to an 'inflated' score result (so you can't assume that the retake score is accurate). Third, many Test Takers spend 3 months (or more) on their studies before they hit their respective 'peak' scores, so it's likely going to take some additional time and effort on your part to hit your score goals

Your score goal seems reasonable given everything that you've described. One of the 'keys' to raising a Quant Scaled Score is to realize that the Quant section of the GMAT is NOT a 'math test.' While you will do lots of basic math throughout the section, most of the questions can be beaten with Tactics, pattern-match, logic/estimation, etc.

1) Do you know which Business Schools you plan to apply to?
2) How many hours do you think that you can study during an average week?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
Contact Rich at [email protected]
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by MartyMurray » Mon Oct 26, 2015 9:36 am
Hi dadzhias100.

It's a little tough to tell, but from the sound of it you are not diving deeply enough into your weaker quant areas. Also, it's likely that hidden behind your obviously weak quant areas are other areas of quant that you may understand pretty well but which at the same time can be the basis of questions which you actually are not super adept at handling.

Put it this way. Often when people come to me they have a target score in mind and a list of a few things they feel that they need to work on to achieve that score. Then when we get to work, it often becomes apparent that those "few things" maybe three quant topics, are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what they could actually get more adept at.

Think about it. You feel that you mostly need to work on word problems, probability, and powers & roots. At the same time, if you were to see a fairly complex problem involving overlapping sets, how fast would you be able to get to the answer? What about a tricky problem involving absolute value? Those things, overlapping sets and absolute value, are not conceptually complex, but getting in two minutes an answer to a question involving one of them can be challenging if you have not developed certain skills.

As Rich alluded to, the GMAT is unlike a math test such as the SAT2, which is mostly testing to see how much you know about math. The GMAT in a way assumes that you know the math concepts and is testing to see how good you are at handling tricky questions that involve them. So maybe the question you need to be asking yourself as you go along is not whether you get the math but how good you are at getting to answers.

As far as increasing your quant score goes, working on GMAT quant topic by topic and doing practice questions in each topic as you learn about it is pretty much guaranteed to result in a score increase. Each topic is good for maybe a half point, VERY roughly. In other words, to get your score from 42 - 44 to 48 - 50, maybe you need to work on and become more expert in 12 topic areas. While that's just a rough estimate, let's face it. You develop significantly better understanding of and adeptness in handling of 12 GMAT quant topic areas and your score is going to be significantly higher.

Does that sound like something you can do it two months? Six topics per month? 1.5 per week? That seems pretty reasonable doesn't it, but you have to work at it consistently to get the results you are seeking. Meanwhile, getting to your goal may take working on only six topics total, or fifteen. You have to see as you go along.

One thing is that in order to achieve what I am talking about, you have to REALLY develop depth of understanding and skill in handling the questions, and that may not come from doing the limited number of questions that are in the Official Guide. You have to make sure you really get the concepts underlying the question types and you have to do pretty many practice questions to develop skill in getting right answers.

One good resource for learning how to handle the question types is these forums. You can search on probability, for instance, and find many approaches for handling probability questions.

One good source of practice quant questions is the BellCurves question bank, which you can access by going to the GMAT section of https://bellcurves.com and setting up a practice account.

By the way, if that 44 score is accurate, though, as Rich pointed out, it may not be, then achieving that score was actually a decent move from 41. Work the same amount more, and theoretically you will be another 3 points higher at 47. No mystery there.

Better take a different practice test next time though, and keep taking one every week or two to get a sense of where you stand and what you can work on or change to score higher.

Keep in mind that if you wanted to spend the required time, you could hit any score on this test up to 800. The thing is to get to your actual goal as efficiently as possible.

By the way, once you start working on verbal, a key thing you need to do is play it like the reasoning game that it is. Way too often people study for GMAT verbal as if it were some kind of English test and thus waste a lot of time preparing in a way that's not really effective. GMAT verbal, much like GMAT quant, is mostly a test of vision and reasoning skills. The other day someone asked me "What is this question testing???" I guess he though I was going to reply that it was testing some concept. My reply was, "Your vision."

You have every reason to be confident that in a couple of months you will hit your goal. Just keep working toward it consistently and efficiently.
Marty Murray
Perfect Scoring Tutor With Over a Decade of Experience
MartyMurrayCoaching.com
Contact me at [email protected] for a free consultation.
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