Practice tests or Problem sets - Suggestions needed.

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Guys I have time till 3rd week of october. As of now I have MGMAT and GMATPrep tests. Took 3 of MGMAT tests already and scoring around 650s. In the three tests I found around 150 600 - 800 level Quant and Verbal questions. I am off from work now so having the entire day to utilize for GMAT. Planning to study for 4 to 6 hours a day. I have already finished OG 12 and I find MGMAT questions to be bit harder compared to OG when it reaches above 700 level. I had this practice of solving 20 DS, 20 PS, 15 CR, SC and 2/3 RC passages on weekends earlier. I take 2.5 hours to solve and 3 to 4 hours to review. Instead of repeating OG problem sets. I thought of making use of the test questions taking untimed/timed tests without essays. It will come to the same pattern of 2.5 hours for solving. But reviewing Practice tests takes more time. Is it advisable to follow the above approach - repeat tests too often like 2/3 tests a week and extract as much tough questions as possible from the tests and learn/review/solve or go with the usual stuff of taking a test 10 days once finding the weak areas and solve problems/review ??? Experts please suggest.
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by sam2304 » Thu Sep 15, 2011 9:10 am
Guys appreciate your help. Suggest some ideas :( Considering my mock tests, my scores are 46 - 49 in quants, which has been improving a lot, but constantly getting 29/30 in verbal with majority of mistakes in RC. I have been solving 3 RCs a day regularly from then on. Apart from that I couldn't get down to one particular area in one particular section as the scores are evenly split in all other sections with a bit of timing issues/careless errors.
Guys I have time till 3rd week of october. As of now I have MGMAT and GMATPrep tests. Took 3 of MGMAT tests already and scoring around 650s. In the three tests I found around 150 600 - 800 level Quant and Verbal questions. I am off from work now so having the entire day to utilize for GMAT. Planning to study for 4 to 6 hours a day. I have already finished OG 12 and I find MGMAT questions to be bit harder compared to OG when it reaches above 700 level. I had this practice of solving 20 DS, 20 PS, 15 CR, SC and 2/3 RC passages on weekends earlier. I take 2.5 hours to solve and 3 to 4 hours to review. Instead of repeating OG problem sets. I thought of making use of the test questions taking untimed/timed tests without essays. It will come to the same pattern of 2.5 hours for solving. But reviewing Practice tests takes more time. Is it advisable to follow the above approach - repeat tests too often like 2/3 tests a week and extract as much tough questions as possible from the tests and learn/review/solve or go with the usual stuff of taking a test 10 days once finding the weak areas and solve problems/review ??? Experts please suggest.
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by akhilsuhag » Fri Sep 16, 2011 12:14 am
I would personally want to stick to 1 test a week. If you want advanced prep get a Kaplan 800 or the MGMAT advanced quant (since you are done with the OG).

I really don't think so many tests would help. You are correct in analyzing each and every test and keep at it. This requires time and effort and three tests a week will tend to confuse your review and it won't be that effective.

I hope I make a little sense!!
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by akhilsuhag » Fri Sep 16, 2011 12:18 am
You can similarly get more verbal material. But you need better understanding on verbal I believe. Do check e-gmat.com, it is CR and SC. RC they say is all practise, their is 99RC's and other stuff. I haven't used it so I can't really recommend. But you do need time with verbal and 3 tests a week would certainly not help.

Get strategy books for verbal, only practice won't help. Personally I touched 40 using knewton, but MGMAT is just as good. Get those books. I really improved my RC using strategies and techniques and now get around 1/2 incorrect. So keep at it.

All the best!!
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by sam2304 » Fri Sep 16, 2011 4:46 am
Thanks a lot akhil for those suggestions. In every test i attempted so far i got 12 RC questions and got 8 - 10 wrong questions, sometimes one whole RC goes wrong. I detest RC personally :( but somehow i have to improve and doing so. CR and SC i feel confident but in the mocks am not able to reach the 700 - 800 level questions because of continuous mistakes in RC which pulls back to square one. CR i go wrong in find the conclusion, bold face, flaw in the reasoning. SC i have problem with idioms and tense form. Will check out the e-gmat site as well. Thanks for the info.

Coming to quants - i read in one of the posts that some of the advanced mgmat questions are appearing in MGMAT mocks and thats the reason i thought may be if i repeat the tests i can extract a lot and get good questions. Reviewing them might improve the content though mock tests generally take more time compared to my usual review schedule.
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by akhilsuhag » Fri Sep 16, 2011 9:01 am
their is also a gmatprep document circulating. Go thru that after you have exhausted your GMATpreps. GMATprep has some great questions!!

It makes sense in quant that you want to extract good questions. But you need work with RC and the verbal part of the mock will go waste. That is why I think it won't help and that is why I suggested advanced books. The advanced MGMAT book has decent reviews.

e-gmat won't help you with RC though. You will need other material, RC can be improved don't listen to anyone who says otherwise. RC is a longer CR (sort of) that is how I treat it. If you do CR well, you can very well improve RC. So just work at it, you will make progress!!
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by sam2304 » Fri Sep 16, 2011 9:19 am
You are right dude. I forgot about the verbal part getting wasted :( Without improving RC i couldn't gauge myself well on verbal part as RC is pulling my scores down very badly. And probably thats where i should concentrate more to reach 700+ as am already getting 48+ in quant. But its easier for me to push my quant by few more points. I have the MGMAT guides and the 198 gmat prep docs. Saving it for later as i haven't taken gmatprep yet. Will take the gmat prep soon and better start off with the 198 docs instead of taking more mocks. Following the note taking strategy for RC takes more time as of now, but no big deal will improve timing with practice.
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by akhilsuhag » Sat Sep 17, 2011 3:57 am
Hey,

The other thing is as soon as you improve on RC you will start getting difficult SC and CR. So that will help you gauge your real performance.

I wish you all the luck for your preparation. Hopefully I have been of some help.

Take Care.
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