GMAT Strategy

I received a PM asking me to reply.

People do often think our quant section is more challenging than GMATPrep or the real test. We don't include experimental questions in our test, so if you are a higher-scoring student, you never get any mini "mental breaks" when you get an easier experimental question in that section.

Use that experience to make sure that you don't make the most crucial error on test day: spending too much time early on and then having to guess on a bunch of questions at the end. If you got 4+ questions wrong in a row, the per question penalty averages around 2 to 2.5 percentile points per question, so that's a really fast way to kill your score at the end of a section.

(Also, go back and take a look at all of the quant questions on which you spend more than 3 minutes. Did you get them all right? Or most of them, at least? If you're spending that much time on those, you're guaranteeing yourself others wrong at the end, so you might as well be sure you're getting those 3+ min questions right... right? Except that's not how it worked, did it? You probably got a lot of them wrong anyway... because you don't spend that kind of time unless it's a really hard problem and you're struggling...)

Nice job on your verbal improvement. I agree with the comments above that you need to make sure you're applying your grammar rules during the test and not just relying on your ear. Why do you think you weren't able to do this on the real test? Nerves? That would suggest that you didn't really learn the rules well enough - you doubted your knowledge, so you fell back on your ear, and then you fell into a bunch of traps.

Most common grammar topics: parallelism, modifiers, sub-verb, verb tense. Pronouns are also worth your review time because there are easy "markers" (eg, spot a pronoun in the underline, go check a couple of things, voila).

Also, I love that you plan to analyze your past work - remember that analysis does not equal reading through explanations and redoing problems. Analysis answers these questions:
- (the obvious things: did I know the grammar rules, did I understand the argument / passage, did I know what the question was asking, etc.)
- Am I comfortable with other strategies that would have worked, at least partially? How should I have made an educated guess?
- Do I understand every trap and trick that the writer built into the question, including wrong answers? If I got it wrong, WHY did I get it wrong?
- What could I do to minimize the chance of making that error (or those errors) again?  How will I make whatever that is a habit so that I really do minimize chances of making the same error again?
- Specifically why is each wrong answer wrong (regardless of what I chose)?
- Which wrong answer is the most tempting and why is it so tempting? Why would someone pick it?
- How can I recognize that the tempting wrong answer is still wrong anyway so I can eliminate it?
- Why might someone be tempted to eliminate the right answer? Why does the right answer actually look wrong, in a way?

Either say the answers to the above questions aloud or write them out - but be able to articulate them well enough that you feel you could convince someone else. (Or study with someone else - and actually convince / teach each other.)

Finally, you don't mention using a particular source for CR and RC study - that is, something that teaches you about how to read CR and RC passages, the different kinds of questions you can be asked, how to answer those different kinds of questions, etc. Are you using something for this?

Love your summary of your RC process. I agree that, if you really get the main points, half your work is done, even on the detailed questions. Couple of things:
- if you're struggling with science passages, spend some time reading at www.sciam.com (Scientific American). These articles aren't written exactly like the GMAT, obviously, but they do give you exposure to a variety of science topics (and then maybe you'll get a topic that you've read about before - that would be great!) and it will give you practice reading and understanding science material.

- you MUST be analyzing the wrong answer choices and understand exactly WHY every wrong answer is wrong; literally, be able to point to a word and say, "This word makes the choice wrong because it..." (eg, because it is an extreme word, but the passage only says "some" not "all"; because it says that such-and-such is not good, but the passage says that it IS good (in other words, that's the opposite of what the right answer should say); because it talks about the environmental movement in general, and not specifically carbon emissions, which is what the passage is about (in other words, it's too broad / it's out of scope); because it does not actually address the question given, even though the information in the choice is actually in the passage (eg, the passage does say Abe Lincoln was tall, but the question asks why he was assassinated - and it wasn't because he was tall!); and so on.

- then, you could make flashcards about the different kinds of wrong answers they give you, and which types you tend to pick, and use that reasoning when you hit harder / more tempting answers. Oh, I tend to fall into the trap of thinking that, just because it's mentioned in the passage, it must be right, instead of making sure it answers this question. I have to watch out for that next time.

- Also analyze the way in which they present the information to you on any passages for which that info was confusing. On this one, I didn't get the main point right. Why? Oh, they didn't actually say what the main point was until the last paragraph, and I picked something in the first paragraph as the main point. Okay, now I know that they may not give me the main point until the end, so I shouldn't just pick something at the beginning because I think it should be at the beginning. Or, on CR, they gave me two future claims, and the first one was actually the overall conclusion but I picked the second one. I may have done that because it showed up later in the passage, so now I have to remember that the conclusion could come anywhere.

For the wrong answer stuff, do the exact same thing for CR - but just notice that the types of wrong answers can be different. For instance, an extreme word is almost always wrong on RC, but that's not true for CR. An extreme word can easily show up in a right answer - eg, if they ask you to find an assumption. Well, the arguments are all pretty flawed, right? So the author may very well make a bad assumption that assumes something is always the case.

The reason I like to read the question stem first on CR - two reasons actually:
1) I can identify the type of question, and that's helpful as I'm going through because I can be thinking, "Oh, I'm going to have to draw a conclusion" or "Oh, I'm going to have to strengthen this" as I read.
2) When they give info about the argument in the question, the vast majority of the time, that information is about the conclusion of the argument. So, boom, I have the conclusion, or clues about it, before I even read the argument! That makes it much easier for me to find the conclusion in the argument itself. When you see info about the argument in the question stem, don't necessarily try to understand it all. Just realize: this is most likely about the conclusion, so pay attention when I see the argument talking about this same thing, and then ask myself "Does it make sense that this is the conclusion?"

SC process:

1) Read the original sentence all the way to the end
2) If you spotted a problem (or even thought something didn't sound right), go back and examine that thing
3a) If that thing is an error, cross off answer A. Then vertically scan the other answers in the same location and cross off any that repeat the same error you found with the original sentence.
3b) If that thing is not an error, or you're not sure, go to step 5
(Do not read the answer choices horizontally - scan them vertically)
4) If you noticed a second problem in the original sentence, repeats steps 2 and 3; if not, go to step 5
5) Scan the remaining answer choices vertically at the beginning and end of each answer choice (first word or two, last word or two); there's always at least one difference (or 'split') right at the beginning and one difference (split) right at the end. The exact nature of the difference should give you an idea about what is being tested (eg, a has/have split indicates sing/plural; an entire dependent clause moved from the beginning to the end indicated modifiers)
6) If you know how to deal with either of the splits, do so. Once you identify the error, cross off all choices that repeat that error.
7) If you don't know how to deal with those splits, or if you deal with them but still have choices left, then start doing a vertical scan of any remaining answer choices and find any other splits in the middle of the choices. Deal with the ones that you know; ignore the ones that you don't.
8) After you've dealt with everything that you know, if you have two choices left, look at each once more, including reading through the entire choice horizontally - then pick something and keep going. If you have more than two choices left, then don't do the horizontal, etc, stuff - just guess and keep going.

The key is being able to recognize what's being tested based upon the specific splits that you see among the answer choices. Make sure you explicitly study: what do these different splits mean? What specific grammar rule should I think of when I see a split like this?

RC: most common question types are main idea, specific detail "according to the passage" types, and inference types. So practice those, including analyzing the wrong answers, and don't worry as much about the more minor types. These questions are not in order of difficulty in OG, so just make sure to do a mix of different topic areas (science, social science, business).

CR: most common question types are find the assumption, weaken, strengthen, and draw a conclusion; again practice these the most. Don't concentrate just on the hardest ones - if you make too many mistakes with the medium ones, you'll never lift yourself to the hardest ones. Concentrate instead on the 4 major types.

Quant: if you have our 5 quant books, then you can go through and find all of those concepts / shortcuts in the relevant chapters. I'm not sure whether you've been using those books, but that's where we've put all of that stuff!

If possible, take time off the week before the test, not the 3 days before the test. You actually should not do much study during the final few days - there's not that much you can learn at that point, and you risk tiring yourself out right before the big day. (I even tell my students not to review for more than 2 hours the day before - and even then, only high level stuff, like timing strategies, major question type strategies, etc.) If you can change the schedule, take a couple of days off a week before to take and review your final practice test. Then, maybe take the day off before your test, though think about what you're going to do all day long instead... because you should not be cramming all day. For people with high-stress jobs, I do recommend they take that day off and then volunteer, spend time with family, go to the movies or do something else relaxing. For people whose jobs are more low-key and enjoyable, they don't necessarily need to do that.

you're welcome - good luck! I think that could be a good use of some of your tests. It's still important to do a practice once a week in the 2-3 weeks leading up to the official test because you have to practice stamina, too, but if you have "extra" tests, then you can do some as practice sections instead of full tests.