GMAT Strategy

Received a PM asking me to respond. Sorry I'm only getting back to you now - as you guessed, I'm getting a lot of PMs this time of year! I do respond to every PM I receive, but it might take a while.

You've got about 5 to 6 weeks before you want to take the test. You recently scored a 570 on a practice test. Was this an adaptive test? Did you take that test under official testing conditions? two essays at 30-min each, 8 min break, quant at 75m, 8 min break, verbal at 75m. Did you deviate from official conditions in any way? (Pause the test, take longer breaks than allowed, eat or drink during the test, skip the essays, etc.) If you did deviate, explain exactly how. Deviations can be minor but some deviations are important enough that they could result in an inflated test score - and that's something you need to know right away!

If we say that you did take an adaptive test under official testing conditions and got a 570, then you've got about 80 points to go to hit your target. That is possibly doable in 6 weeks but it is also possibly a bit too ambitious, depending upon your particular issues.

Your study plan talks a lot about the problems you are going to do, and it lists a TON of problems, but I don't see any mention of review and analysis. About 15% of your learning comes while you do problems, and about 85% comes from the extensive review and analysis you do afterwards. I spend anywhere from two to five times as long reviewing a problem as I spent doing that problem in the first place - and I have a lot of experience with exactly how to review. Students will likely take even longer at first while they learn how to review.

Read this article; it will give you an idea of the kinds of things you should be reviewing and analyzing *after* you finish doing a problem. If you aren't doing these things, then you are not learning most of what you could be learning. I would rather see you do 1/3 of the total number of problems but with extensive analysis of each of the problems that you do complete. Quantity is not more important than the quality of your study.

https://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/10/09 ... ce-problem

These articles demonstrate how to do the above analysis on five different practice problems:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/03/ ... c-question
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/01/ ... r-question
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/02/ ... e-question
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/01/ ... g-question
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/03/ ... y-question

You mentioned that you went through our 7 study guides; do you have the 2007 (or earlier) versions of the books? Just FYI - we're up to the 4th edition now (2007 is the 2nd edition) and there are 8 books now. I don't think you necessarily need to run out and buy a whole new set of books, but if you are really struggling with certain areas, then you may want to upgrade those particular books.

If you would like to get some more specific advice related to your strengths and weaknesses, then you can take an MGMAT practice test (you can sign up for one for free, if you haven't already), and then use the below article to analyze your results:

https://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/09/23 ... tice-tests

After you've done the analysis, you can come back and post it here, so that we can better help you to figure out how to spend your remaining time. That will also give us a better idea of whether 5-6 weeks may be enough or whether you may need to give yourself some additional time.

questions which seem tough or which i answer incorrectly, i highlight 'em. once i'm done with the section i go back to these questions, i try doing 'em again and whether i get the correct answer or not, i read the explanation and try to justify why each option is right or wrong. i also write alongside these questions what type of error i made. whether it was a careless, technical or conceptual error. also, i go through all the questions that i got right later to see why exactly a particular option is correct.

That's a great start. Add some things to that - the kinds of things described in those articles you went through. Do more with the ones you got right - on verbal, for example, can you explain exactly why each wrong one is wrong? Often that's how you find the right ("best") answer on verbal. Again on verbal, can you explain why someone would make the mistake of picking each wrong answer and why someone would make the mistake of eliminating the right answer? That will help you to avoid traps. Also, these things are easier to figure out on questions that you get right, and that will help you get better at doing this kind of analysis with the ones you get wrong!

You can do something similar with quant. What are the traps? What kinds of mistakes seem to be almost "built in" to the problem? Why do people fall for those traps and how can you spot and avoid them? And so on.

You may also want to take a look at this article; it talks more about how to learn from your own errors.
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/04/ ... our-errors

And thanks for the additional info on your application situation; that's useful to know.

Sorry I'm so late getting back to you. As you may have heard already, I'm only going to be writing articles from now on; I'm not going to be participating on the forums. I'm following up with people one last time, but going forward, please talk to Ron Purewal or Whit Garner, the two primary MGMAT instructors who answer questions here at BTG. Good luck!

I know it's been a few weeks, but I'm still going to reply to your last past. Ideally, you want to aim to finish a section with only 2 or 3 minutes left. 8 to 10 minutes means that you may be leaving some points on the table due to rushing. You also may have a situation in which you get nervous during the real test (as we all do!) and you slow down - and then you slow down too much because you don't really know what it should feel like to use 72/73 minutes.

Take a look again to see if you can find patterns - certain types where you consistently go too quickly, certain places where you could be more systematic with reading or writing out your work or checking your work or whatever. You clearly can't check / be more systematic on every single problem, but you may find certain places where it's worth it to take that time because you're more likely to make careless mistakes, for example.

You may still have more that you need to do with the OG questions, even though you've done them already. Have you been doing the kind of analysis that we discussed before? And, yes, you can also use the other OG books (besides OG12) or questions from other reputable sources (and Kaplan is a reputable source ). As you said, though, you don't want to burn out, and it's not about doing some huge quantity of questions. Use your results at this point to drive what you need to review, what you need to analyze, what you need to drill or practice. If there are "things here and there," then how are you going to not miss those things next time? What's going to help you to drill or to remember or whatever? Then do those things.