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Help me... pleaseeeee, WHAT do I do??

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Help me... pleaseeeee, WHAT do I do??

by wiz9 » Tue Oct 02, 2012 10:58 pm
I took the GMAT today. I studied for about 5 weeks.

Week 1 - I went over verbal with the book "Princeton Verbal Workout" - 8 hours
Week 2 - some more verbal - maybe 8 hours

Math is my weak point as I have not seen it since high school and did not pay much attention at that point either.

I got a tutor and we got together almost daily for 90 min to 2 hours each day for week 3, 4, 5. There was massive progress in terms of my understanding, but transferring the understnading to multiple choice format was hard.

The book we used was NOVA MATH BIBLE.

Week 3 - covered a topic a day to brush up on my concepts, review etc. Chapter lesson followed by questions.

Week 4 - continued on strategy of a concept a day

I didn't have much time to put into it outside the tutoring.

Week 5 - we finished up with tutoring and started on math practice tests. I did 1 math test a day starting 6 days before the test and upped it 2 math tests a day 3 days before the test. I did not have time to re-do my mistakes.

I did a few verbal practice tests 2 days before the exam, but I was more concerned with quant.

My consistent practice scores for quant were 28, and verbal 46.

I NEED 600 for the school that I want. And I need 35 in quant.


TEST DAY SCORES:
quant: 28
verbal: 29
Score: 480

Notes about the day of the test: I found the math questions were a lot of the same stuff, not sure if its what I drew from the pool of luck, or if it is like that for everyone. A lot of absolute value, a lot of algebaric functions, not a lot of algebra. Not a lot of the variety I saw on the pracitce tests.

The legnth of the test did not really bug me, but I was anxious to see my score by the last third of the verbal and started rushing through the questions to finish.

I know I bombed the English for rushing, and guessing at SC. I was expecting to be coming out with 530 and only having to go back a 2nd time to up it 70 points.

I am completely demoralized with 480, and I am not sure if I will be able to achieve 600 in 1 month, or even 6 weeks from now. Though the goal is 1 month.

QUESTIONS TO YOU:
1. I am looking to book it for 1 month from now. Is this enough time??? Is this dooable?

2. In terms of # of correct questions, how far off am for getting what I need? I have no concept of just how badly I did or if a few more questions right would have made a difference.

3. How do I go about gaining 120 points??

4. IS what I am trying to do impossible?

5. I need 7 more on the QUANT, how do I do this???

6. Any tips to achieve this???


I have no idea what to do. Please help.
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by ivyctor2010 » Wed Oct 03, 2012 4:16 am
Hi,

It is clear that you have underestimated the GMAT verbal and done badly as a result. But don't be demoralized, you can improve your scores to 600+ within 5-6 weeks if you go by below strategy:

Verbal

1) Sentence Correction (SC) Practice: Read the GMAT® Official Guide (OG-12) for SC & understand the concepts through Answer Key. Re-do all questions, if possible. Please pay significant attention to idioms as questions on them are tricky but relatively easy. Modifiers also require significant worl.

Aim: Achieve accuracy greater than 85% in all practice sets.

Important Tip: Don't spend equal time on all types of SC questions. Practice all of them initially & identify your weak areas. Focus your efforts more on these for more robust & efficient preparation.

2) Reading Comprehension (RC) Practice: Practice from all possible sources as a lot of raw practice is required to ace RCs. Practice at least 30 RCs.

Aim: Read easier passage in 2-3 minutes & understand the basic gist of it. If the passage is really tough you can take up to 4 minutes. Do not rest until you achieve accuracy > 85 % in all practice sets.

Important Tip: I would advice against jumping to questions first & then looking for answers in the paragraph. Reading essay first makes answering "main point" & "summary of essay" questions seem like a cakewalk.

3) Critical Reasoning (CR) Practice: Critical reasoning Bible by PowerScore®, helps with all CR basics. Practice all GMAT® Official Guide (OG-12) questions alongside reading the Bible.

Aim: Achieve accuracy greater than 85% in all practice sets.

Quantitative

Quantitative Preparation: GMAT® Official Guide (OG-12) gives you a basic refresher on math concepts. Writing mocks from GMAT® Prep™ software will help you understand the types of questions.

Practice: Questions in GMAT® exam are trickier than in OG & GMAT® Prep™. Practicing some tough math problems will boost your preparation as difficulty level of questions is higher. Enough practice of these tough problems will get you into problem solving mind-set.
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by Brent@GMATPrepNow » Wed Oct 03, 2012 5:55 am
Hey Nic,

To improve in GMAT math, you must take the time to master each topic (e.g., percents, ratios, exponents, statistics, etc.)

For each topic, you must:
1) Learn the underlying concepts (rules, attributes, notation, etc.)
2) Learn GMAT-specific strategies related to that topic
3) Practice dozens of questions all related to that one topic.
4) Don't stop working on that topic until you have mastered it
Then move on to the next topic.

In addition to learning the core concepts and GMAT-specific strategies, be sure to work on your endurance and test-taking skills (e.g., time management) by taking several practice tests.

If you're interested, we have a free GMAT time management video at https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gener ... es?id=1244

Cheers,
Brent
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by wiz9 » Wed Oct 03, 2012 7:41 am
When you say practice from all possible sources what do you mean??? All different book manufacturers?

Are all book makes equal??

MY main concern the first time out was that the books I was using would not reprsent the real thing.

Where can I AFFORDBLY get a good amount of practice questions for all my practicing?
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by wiz9 » Wed Oct 03, 2012 7:43 am
ALSO as a guide for myself, how much time should I be putting into studying to go up 120 points in 4 to 5 weeks??

How much time a day??
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by GMAT Kolaveri » Wed Oct 03, 2012 8:16 am
1. I am looking to book it for 1 month from now. Is this enough time??? Is this dooable?

Definitely YES!
You must master each individual topic/concept and practice questions from that topic. You must review your mistakes at the end of each study session and redo the problems a second time. Practicing more and more will not help master the concept. But redoing and reviewing the problems will definitely help you grasp the topics tested on GMAT.
I suggest you to make use of GROCKIT.com for topic-wise practice.

2. In terms of # of correct questions, how far off am for getting what I need? I have no concept of just how badly I did or if a few more questions right would have made a difference.

Do not worry about your past performance.

3. How do I go about gaining 120 points??
You need to fine tune your strategy.

4. IS what I am trying to do impossible?
No. It is definitely possible.

5. I need 7 more on the QUANT, how do I do this???
Use MGMAT guides for quant concepts and Grockit for practice.

6. Any tips to achieve this???
This is a very broad question. In general you have to take up full length tests(including AWA and IR, so that you reach quant exactly after 1hr ) and review your mistakes.

Do not think about your past performance. Start taking up tests and find out which types of questions trouble you. On a high level you can analyze what is your accuracy in Problem solving, Data sufficiency in Quant, whats your accuracy in SC, CR and RC. More detailed analysis of your test results will help you determine which types of DS questions (whether YES/no type or Value question), which types of CR ( strengthen, weaken, assumption, conclusion) questions trouble you. You can work on those weak areas and comfortably increase your points by more than 120.
Regards and Thanks,
Vinoth@GMAT Kolaveri
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by ivyctor2010 » Wed Oct 03, 2012 9:10 am
By all possible sources I meant, the books you can lay your hands onto in the limited time you have. For RC atleast do not think if you are matching the real stuff or not. Real stuff will have a mix-match of easy, tricky and tough passages and that is what you should also aim to include in your practice. Books you can consider:

1) OG 12
2) Veritas Prep Reading Comprehension

These two might prove a good practice source as they have a lot of practice problems. RC I believe is more about practice than about fundamentals. So the a book which is a "Reading Comprehension GMAT Strategy Guide may not prove useful for you at this stage, as it focuses less on practice problems and more on concepts.

Time management is crucial. So i suggest putting in 6 hours each day atleast. Practice in 4 different sets of 1.5 hours each as follows:

1) Practice a set of 30 questions and give them 45 minutes. After that spend around 45 minutes studying the answers, understanding your mistakes and identifying problem areas. This whole set of 1.5 hours should be repeated thrice a day with any 3 of CR, RC, SC and Quant. A total of 4.5 hours spent
2) Keep aside 1.5 hours for understanding concepts in SC, CR and Quant.

Hope that answers your questions.
wiz9 wrote:When you say practice from all possible sources what do you mean??? All different book manufacturers?

Are all book makes equal??

MY main concern the first time out was that the books I was using would not reprsent the real thing.

Where can I AFFORDBLY get a good amount of practice questions for all my practicing?
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by Brent@GMATPrepNow » Wed Oct 03, 2012 9:22 am
wiz9 wrote: Where can I AFFORDABLY get a good amount of practice questions for all my practicing?
The least expensive resource is right here (Beat the GMAT)
With over 300,000 posts, you can be certain that pretty much every possible GMAT question has been posted in the forums (numerous times :-) ). Plus you'll typically find many useful approaches to each question.

Cheers,
Brent
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by wiz9 » Wed Oct 03, 2012 10:14 am
Thanks for the help.

I would like to do sets of 30 questions, but have no idea where to find them.

sets of 30 questions x 3 a day would be 90 questions a day x 30 days it is about 3000 questions.

I simply have no idea where to find this quantity of practice. That is why I started doing practice tests from the books.

Brent you say to use the forums, but do people post practice questions?? Because all I see is people frekaing out like me asking questions about their personal GMAT problems, not actual problem sets with answers that I can print and work on.

I would like to design my study schedule today so I can get started, I really want to achieve 600 so bad, it just seems so out of reach.... mostly because of the quant. The verbal still does not daunt me that much.
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by shreerajp99 » Fri Oct 05, 2012 4:45 am
I suggest you to purchase GMATPREP question pack for $25.
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