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Last minute GMAT crammer needs help!

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Last minute GMAT crammer needs help!

by oubliette » Fri Mar 28, 2008 8:51 am
I'll admit it: without a looming deadline, I'm lazy.

I have the GMAT scheduled for April 9th (10 days from now) and I haven't been exactly hitting the books.

I took the OG (11th Ed) diagnostic test yesterday and I scored "average" in both quant portions and "excellent" in the three verbal portions. (I'm a software engineer - go figure...)

Most of my mistakes were due to a total lack of knowledge about underused math concepts (either you remember what standard deviation or an isosceles triangle are, or you don't).

So... any hints?

Obviously I need to crank my studying of quant into high gear. I am going to start with the OG math review and then just focus on getting a ton of questions in of medium-high difficulty.

Does anyone think it's worth putting much time into verbal? Perhaps 20-25% of my time spent on the Kaplan 800 book's verbal portion?

Should I focus on building stamina by doing a lot of full tests? Realistically, I think I can get 2-3 full tests in.

Since I only have a few days left, should I be mostly working on the hardest quant problems, or do people think it's better to try to build up gradually and just try to do a lot of the mid-range stuff until I memorize the basic math again?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
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Go to this link

by ljposson » Fri Mar 28, 2008 11:21 am
https://www.manhattangmat.com/virtual-on ... ording.cfm

It's a free version of the first lesson. There are some great strategy tips.
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by oubliette » Fri Mar 28, 2008 1:16 pm
thank you!

Any other hints anyone?
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by mayonnai5e » Fri Mar 28, 2008 5:45 pm
You have very limited time. I should look at the beginners materials and make sure you understand all the question types, what to look for in each type, and how to solve each question of that type. Then a limited set of questions, preferrably a set from each difficulty level from the OG materials (e.g. 20 easy CR, 20 medium CR, 20 hard CR). That'll give you an introduction to the basics + exposure to each difficulty level. The problem with only doing the most difficult problems is that you may not understand how to solve the medium questions and if you cannot do this on the CAT you will never see the hard questions (the ones you studied so hard for!).

And try to do 1 or 2 cats just for exposure (preferrably the GMATPrep cats).

Good luck.
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by Stacey Koprince » Mon Mar 31, 2008 2:17 pm
Couple of things:

(1) You're unlikely to build much stamina in 10 days, so don't just take test after test - all you'll do is tire yourself out. Unfortunately, it's a bit late for that - but you can work that in if you take the test again.

(2) You ask how you should split your time relative to verbal and math - can you provide us with some info about what you're scoring now on full-length practice tests? (That diagnostic test in OG is... problematic, at best. A higher than typical proportion of the math is pretty obscure - compared to what typically shows up on the test.)

(3) Balance your quantity of study with quality of study. Just doing great masses of problems won't actually help you to improve all that much - yes, you'll get a little better, but it's important to really analyze what's going on in these problems so you understand both why and how you should tackle different problems in different ways and you can start to recognize when you should be using what approaches.

And, also - what mayonnai5e said. :)
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by rainbowpo » Thu Apr 24, 2008 6:49 pm
took the test? what about the score?
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