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ak69er
- Junior | Next Rank: 30 Posts
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- Joined: Tue Feb 14, 2012 12:34 pm
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Alright, revolutionary may be too strong a word, but i wanted as many people's opinion on this as possible 
[in advance, apologies for the long post but do read on...may prove rewarding!]
Some context:
We keep hearing that initial questions are more important than the questions later on and after checking out various forums and articles I've come to believe that this is FALSE. Only those with this point of view need even read on as I base my trial strategy on this idea (i.e. All questions on GMAT be it Quant or Verbal are weighed equally, only differing based on their difficulty level, the way your score sways after a correct/incorrect answer notwithstanding).
The Strategy:
I find that in many practice tests, the accuracy with which I attempt and even comprehend Q's is significantly affected by the proportion of time i have remaining relative to my question position.
Say I'm on Q28 on Quant with 12 minutes to go (giving me 1min 12sec on avg. for the remaining 10 Q's) - Knowing that, would unnerve me as well as all but the most competent test takers and may eventually lead to either a series of guesses towards the end or worse, leaving a couple of Q's unanswered thus taking a severe toll on your score.
What i suggest then is THIS --> Start a section off with gusto, set extremely low time thresholds on the first 8-15 Q's (say shoot for 1min/Q in Quant and guessing and moving on if i hit 90secs at the most). What this does (at least for me) is it frees up more time per Q for the later Q's in the section and relieves the pressure which would otherwise creep in towards the end of a particularly challenging bout of Quants. To conclude this may not work for everyone, in fact it should ONLY work for those in similar circumstances as myself. But then, the rewards may outweigh the risk.
Personally, I've been hitting constant 700's (and one 690) on prep tests (both GMATprep and MGMAT) irrespective of the prep I've been doing over the last 7-8 weeks. I've tried this strategy on both the MGMAT and the GMATprep tests and seen my Quant score increase from a stagnant 47 to a 49 both times (once with and once without AWA). I'm yet to try it out properly for the Verbal section though.
The Concerns:
Since there is still a lot of smoke surrounding the GMAC scoring algorithm, I'm deeply concerned if such a tactic could backfire for some reason on the actual GMAT. Possible complications include the randomness of pretest/unscored Q's, whether creators of GMAT are in fact lying when they say all Q's are weighed equally (unlikely) and maybe for the simple fact that none of the practice tests help one decide if a strategy that worked on them are likely to work on the real deal.
Will be taking one more MGMAT before my scheduled GMAT appointment on Monday (26th Mar) to try out my strategy on both sections simultaneously. The results along with whatever anyone has to say here should help point me and possibly even future test takers in the right direction.
Cheers,
aK
[in advance, apologies for the long post but do read on...may prove rewarding!]Some context:
We keep hearing that initial questions are more important than the questions later on and after checking out various forums and articles I've come to believe that this is FALSE. Only those with this point of view need even read on as I base my trial strategy on this idea (i.e. All questions on GMAT be it Quant or Verbal are weighed equally, only differing based on their difficulty level, the way your score sways after a correct/incorrect answer notwithstanding).
The Strategy:
I find that in many practice tests, the accuracy with which I attempt and even comprehend Q's is significantly affected by the proportion of time i have remaining relative to my question position.
Say I'm on Q28 on Quant with 12 minutes to go (giving me 1min 12sec on avg. for the remaining 10 Q's) - Knowing that, would unnerve me as well as all but the most competent test takers and may eventually lead to either a series of guesses towards the end or worse, leaving a couple of Q's unanswered thus taking a severe toll on your score.
What i suggest then is THIS --> Start a section off with gusto, set extremely low time thresholds on the first 8-15 Q's (say shoot for 1min/Q in Quant and guessing and moving on if i hit 90secs at the most). What this does (at least for me) is it frees up more time per Q for the later Q's in the section and relieves the pressure which would otherwise creep in towards the end of a particularly challenging bout of Quants. To conclude this may not work for everyone, in fact it should ONLY work for those in similar circumstances as myself. But then, the rewards may outweigh the risk.
Personally, I've been hitting constant 700's (and one 690) on prep tests (both GMATprep and MGMAT) irrespective of the prep I've been doing over the last 7-8 weeks. I've tried this strategy on both the MGMAT and the GMATprep tests and seen my Quant score increase from a stagnant 47 to a 49 both times (once with and once without AWA). I'm yet to try it out properly for the Verbal section though.
The Concerns:
Since there is still a lot of smoke surrounding the GMAC scoring algorithm, I'm deeply concerned if such a tactic could backfire for some reason on the actual GMAT. Possible complications include the randomness of pretest/unscored Q's, whether creators of GMAT are in fact lying when they say all Q's are weighed equally (unlikely
) and maybe for the simple fact that none of the practice tests help one decide if a strategy that worked on them are likely to work on the real deal.Will be taking one more MGMAT before my scheduled GMAT appointment on Monday (26th Mar) to try out my strategy on both sections simultaneously. The results along with whatever anyone has to say here should help point me and possibly even future test takers in the right direction.
Cheers,
aK