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need tips (from a student)

by lunarpower » Wed Dec 17, 2008 11:57 pm
Hi Ron,

I'm a little bit stressed out about the GMAT right now, and I'm thinking that perhaps you -- as someone who has basically mastered the GMAT -- could give me some serious help here.

After half-heartedly studying the GMAT for a year (going over a 2006 Princeton Review book), I took the test in October only to get an underwhelming score of 660. I just know that I have the intellectual capacity to do better, but I've hit sort of a roadblock at this point, and I need some focused advice.

Since my October test, I have taken the liberty of purchasing and going through the Kaplan GMAT 800 book. I found that in the verbal sections of the book -- qualitative being where I need the most practice -- I can generally get to the point where I'm acing the practice problems, but that is not translating to the actual GMATPrep tests I've taken in the last week (I saved the 2 for this point, 12 days from the GMAT, knowing those are the best resources I'll have for accurately assessing my ability). I find myself consistently getting 8 or so problems wrong out of 41, and I'm always extremely rushed at the very end.

Most of the time, I'm getting problems wrong because I am not being thorough. Perhaps this is a biproduct of the fact that I'm an engineer and much of my day is filled with skimming technical documents, but I frequently find myself misreading problems, misreading passages, and constructing sentence correction sentences that bring tears to my eyes when I reread them.

I have my test currently scheduled for 12 days from now, and I would like to get my apps in by January, as I've heard that is helpful for schools with rolling admissions like Columbia (#1 with a bullet for me currently).

I know I've basically written you a book here, but I hope you find the time to read through this and are willing to take a few minutes to give me some advice.

Thank you,
[redacted]
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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Re: need tips (from a student)

by lunarpower » Thu Dec 18, 2008 12:13 am
After half-heartedly studying the GMAT for a year (going over a 2006 Princeton Review book),
first of all, good luck, and don't get discouraged. it is easy to be intimidated by the test, so stick in there and keep your head up.

question: are you studying this princeton review book BEFORE studying the official guides? if so, why?
the official guides should be your primary source. i'm not knocking 2nd tier sources such as the princeton review, but you should turn to such sources only after you've exhausted the primary sources (which should take a long, long, long time if done properly; read on).

no matter what you're studying, make sure that you study with the appropriate DEPTH, not just BREADTH. this is going to be difficult at first - there won't be that many connections to make when you're just digging back into the material after 'retirement' from academic study - but you should try to RELATE problems to each other in order to gain the maximum benefit from them.

for EVERY problem:
* don't concentrate on the solution to that actual problem, since you can be sure you aren't going to see that actual problem on the exam
* instead, try to find TAKEAWAYS from the problem, which you can then APPLY TO OTHER PROBLEMS. this is key - DO NOT LEAVE A PROBLEM until you have extracted at least one piece of information, whether a formula, a strategy, a trick/trap, etc., that you can apply to OTHER problems.
do not leave a problem until you can fill in the following sentence, meaningfully and nontrivially:
"if i see _____ ON ANOTHER PROBLEM, i should _____"
* notice the SIGNALS in the problem that dictate which strategy to use. if you miss the problem, then notice the strategy that's used in the book's solution (not always the best solution, in the case of the o.g., but better than nothing), and go back to see if there are any signals 'telling' you to use that strategy.
I took the test in October only to get an underwhelming score of 660. I just know that I have the intellectual capacity to do better, but I've hit sort of a roadblock at this point, and I need some focused advice.

Since my October test, I have taken the liberty of purchasing and going through the Kaplan GMAT 800 book. I found that in the verbal sections of the book -- qualitative being where I need the most practice -- I can generally get to the point where I'm acing the practice problems, but that is not translating to the actual GMATPrep tests I've taken in the last week (I saved the 2 for this point, 12 days from the GMAT, knowing those are the best resources I'll have for accurately assessing my ability). I find myself consistently getting 8 or so problems wrong out of 41, and I'm always extremely rushed at the very end.
question 1:
have you exhausted the official guides?
if not, then you should bury yourself in those - at the very least, the later problems.

question 2:
have you been practicing CONSISTENT TIME MANAGEMENT on EVERY SINGLE PRACTICE PROBLEM that you ever solve?

this is not an exaggeration.
you should NEVER solve a gmat-like problem untimed, EVER.
never.
ever.
if you do so, then you're undermining your efforts in two ways: (a) you're building poor time management habits, and (b) you're coming up with solutions that are, frankly, irrelevant to the official exam, because they take longer than you'll actually have.

the only things that you should ever do without a stopwatch are remedial exercises, such as the ones found in our strategy guides. if you're ever solving anything that is, or looks like, a gmat problem (i.e., has multiple choices or data-suff statements), then use a stopwatch. period.
no excuses.

if you "find yourself rushed at the end", i'd wager that the biggest reason is that you haven't been practicing time management with enough diligence or consistency.

at this point it may be too late to fix any bad time-management habits you may have built up. if it's a serious enough problem - i.e., you just can't stay within the timing guidelines, no matter how hard you try - then you should consider deferring your exam and practicing time management drills.
Most of the time, I'm getting problems wrong because I am not being thorough.
well, ok.

but if you're "not being thorough" AND you're feeling "rushed", then you've got some problems. if that's the case, then you may need to work on underlying issues such as distraction and attention. you may even have to take some sort of medicine and/or adjust your intake of such things as sugar and caffeine.
i mean, those 2 problems should be mutually exclusive: either you aren't being thorough, or you're running out of time. if you're a native speaker of english, then under no circumstances should both of them happen at the same time.
Perhaps this is a biproduct of the fact that I'm an engineer and much of my day is filled with skimming technical documents,
ironically, "skimming" is the optimal way to read most of the longer RC passages. you should not be reading these for detail, so, skimming large volumes of documents is actually the best preparation possible!

the problem, though, is that, in the event of a detail-oriented question, you have to GO BACK to the passage, and THEN read the relevant part(s) in EXTREME and MINUTE detail.
this may be the problem.
remember to be very, very, very, very, very literal when you read gmat passages. your engineering training should actually help you in this regard.
but I frequently find myself misreading problems, misreading passages, and constructing sentence correction sentences that bring tears to my eyes when I reread them.
please explain.
especially re: tears.

btw: if you're "constructing" SC sentences, then you're going about it all wrong. i'm not sure whether you mean that literally, but, if you do, then you've got the wrong strategy.
you should NOT construct your own answers to SC sentences.
no!
your job is not to be a writer, or even an editor. you should NOT generate "correct" answer choices from your own bosom; all you should do is COMPARE the constructions that already exist in the answer choices.
I have my test currently scheduled for 12 days from now, and I would like to get my apps in by January, as I've heard that is helpful for schools with rolling admissions like Columbia (#1 with a bullet for me currently).
you should post these concerns in the admissions section, where more knowledgeable heads will prevail. i know absolutely nothing whatsoever about b-school admissions.
I know I've basically written you a book here, but I hope you find the time to read through this and are willing to take a few minutes to give me some advice.
it is long, isn't it.
my my.
Last edited by lunarpower on Sat Dec 25, 2010 10:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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by iamcste » Thu Dec 18, 2008 4:34 am
Ron, we really appreciate your efforts !

We love you..
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by clubtwofour » Thu Dec 18, 2008 4:44 am
Ron, great advice. Way to break things down so clearly. Thanks.
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by mals24 » Thu Dec 18, 2008 4:46 am
Wow that advice was a masterpiece!!!

Thanks Ron for your effort. I usually never used to understand what people meant when they spoke about studying each question qualitatively. This quote has made it crystal clear. :)
for EVERY problem:
* don't concentrate on the solution to that actual problem, since you can be sure you aren't going to see that actual problem on the exam
* instead, try to find TAKEAWAYS from the problem, which you can then APPLY TO OTHER PROBLEMS. this is key - DO NOT LEAVE A PROBLEM until you have extracted at least one piece of information, whether a formula, a strategy, a trick/trap, etc., that you can apply to OTHER problems.
do not leave a problem until you can fill in the following sentence, meaningfully and nontrivially:
"if i see _____ ON ANOTHER PROBLEM, i should _____"
* notice the SIGNALS in the problem that dictate which strategy to use. if you miss the problem, then notice the strategy that's used in the book's solution (not always the best solution, in the case of the o.g., but better than nothing), and go back to see if there are any signals 'telling' you to use that strategy.
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by the_sauce » Tue Dec 30, 2008 3:52 pm
Hey, I'm the redacted OP. I finished my test last Monday and would like to post some follow up to Ron's lengthy, useful post.

What worked well:

-Time every problem using a stopwatch
Even though I was only able to use this method for a week before the test, it paid dividends as I completed both the verbal and quantitative entirely. During the live test, I wrote down the clock value before every single problem, so that I could budget my time accordingly, depending on my pace.

-Take practice tests in entirety as a study method
I spent the last 2 weeks before the test running through the ETS paper tests and by doing so, significantly improved my score. The format is slightly different, there are some new problems on the computerized test that are not reflected, but the jist of the reasoning is unchanged. Over the course of a week, I saw my # wrong on the verbal sections go from 8 to 6 to 4 to 3. After enough practice, you begin to build a sixth sense for how they construct GMAT problems, particularly the CR problems.


-Kaplan's GMAT 800
Not a primary source, as Ron stated, but hey, it was a great help. Good book. The bulk of the content is difficult retired GMAT problems. I don't know what the OG contains, it may very well be an excellent complement/substitute, but it would have taken sifting through 10+ practice tests to get the volume of difficult problems contained in GMAT 800.

...

Oh yeah, and in just 2 months of studying, I went from a 660 to a 740.

Hope this is helpful to someone, best of luck to all.
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by lunarpower » Wed Dec 31, 2008 4:49 am
the_sauce wrote:Hey, I'm the redacted OP. I finished my test last Monday and would like to post some follow up to Ron's lengthy, useful post.

What worked well:

-Time every problem using a stopwatch
Even though I was only able to use this method for a week before the test, it paid dividends as I completed both the verbal and quantitative entirely. During the live test, I wrote down the clock value before every single problem, so that I could budget my time accordingly, depending on my pace.

-Take practice tests in entirety as a study method
I spent the last 2 weeks before the test running through the ETS paper tests and by doing so, significantly improved my score. The format is slightly different, there are some new problems on the computerized test that are not reflected, but the jist of the reasoning is unchanged. Over the course of a week, I saw my # wrong on the verbal sections go from 8 to 6 to 4 to 3. After enough practice, you begin to build a sixth sense for how they construct GMAT problems, particularly the CR problems.


-Kaplan's GMAT 800
Not a primary source, as Ron stated, but hey, it was a great help. Good book. The bulk of the content is difficult retired GMAT problems. I don't know what the OG contains, it may very well be an excellent complement/substitute, but it would have taken sifting through 10+ practice tests to get the volume of difficult problems contained in GMAT 800.

...

Oh yeah, and in just 2 months of studying, I went from a 660 to a 740.

Hope this is helpful to someone, best of luck to all.
congratulations!

the only thing here that doesn't seem like such a good idea is to write down the "clock value" (which i'm assuming refers to the time remaining) before EVERY problem.
if you do that, you're going to spend a non-negligible amount of time writing down "clock value" after "clock value" after "clock value". if you're a 740-level scorer, then that may be all fine and good, but 500-600ish scorers really don't want to do this: the time that you take writing down all those clock values will subtract 2-3 minutes, or even more, from the time you can actually use to solve problems.

i'm glad the strategies worked for you overall.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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by target_gmat2012 » Wed May 18, 2011 5:35 pm
Thanks Ron!
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