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Tips for improvement on common problem areas?

by Orion007 » Sun Dec 21, 2014 3:49 pm
Hi guys,

Just got back from taking my first official test and didn't quite get the score I wanted for the schools I'm looking into. Overall I got a 600 with 71 percentile for verbal 43 for quant. That disparity struck me as odd considering I'm a CPA.

However, I noticed some problems/issues on test day and I'm curious what the advice on them would be

1) Obliviously my quant needs to improve. But I knew this weeks ago but could still not improve it. My approach to improvement was to just do endless amounts of practice problems (through veritas) Is there a better strategy that just diving head first into practice problems and hoping repetition will cure all?

2) For quant, I found I struggled immensely with word problems. Just to understand what was going on I felt I had to read a prompt at least twice. I feel I wasted time here. I also struggled assigning variables to information in world problems. After wasting re-reading the problem and or failing the algebra variable assignment, I just had to guess.

3) Timing was an issues, I'd look up and realize half my time was gone but I wasn't half way done with questions. Is there a way to develop a good internal clock or good time management skills?

4) Mental fatigue. Staying in a prolonged period of concentration is quite exhausting for me (for all probably) I could feel myself mentally stumbling towards the finish line. Is there a way to improve this? To maintain the same level of alertness and aptitude that one start's the test with?

5) Frustration levels. Anyone have suggestions on controlling this. Going into this test one obviously wants to do well, so naturally I get frustrated when I think I've stumbled on the previous few questions. Does anything like mediation or other techniques work?

I'd like to get in the 690 range at least so hopefully I can improve.

I appreciate whatever advice you guys have.
Thanks!
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by [email protected] » Sun Dec 21, 2014 5:37 pm
Hi Orion007,

You're not the first to experience all of the things that you described, so you're not alone. These factors all stem from a common cause though - it's possible that you just haven't put in enough time to be "ready" for Test Day. If you can answer a few follow-up questions, then I"ll be happy to advise:

1) How long have you been studying?
2) What specific resources have you used?
3) How were you scoring on your practice CATs?
4) Did you take the ENTIRE practice CAT every time (including the Essay and IR sections)?
5) You described a pacing problem on Test Day. How many questions did you have to guess on at the end of each section just to finish? Did you leave any questions unanswered?
6) When are you planning to apply to Business School?

Thankfully, Business Schools don't care if you take the GMAT more than once, so doing so is not a big deal. Also, the GMAT is a predictable, standardized Exam, so you CAN train to CRUSH it. You just haven't gotten to that "level" yet.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
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by Orion007 » Sun Dec 21, 2014 8:31 pm
Hi Rich

Thanks for offering your guidance.

1) I took a one month veritas prep course (live classes). At the conclusion of the class, I continued studying a month and a half on my own.

2) I used the material provided to me by Veritas, which seems very extensive. I also took advantage of the free software offered by the official GMAT website.

3)Below, in chronological order, are the practice test I've taken. Test 5 and 7, denoted by the asterisk, were the practice test provided in the official free GmAt software. The rest are from Veritas (Quant, verbal, overall score)

Test1__ Test2__ Test3__ Test4__ Test5*_ Test6__ Test7*
Score_ Score_ Score_ Score_ Score_ Score_ Score_
35_____ 42_____ 41_____ 43_____ 29_____ 39_____ 36
37_____ 36_____ 38_____ 39_____ 31_____ 35_____ 34
590____ 640____ 650____ 670____ 500____ 610____ 580____

4) Only on the official practice exams and the first two did I take the entire exam.

5) At the end of quant, I think I needed to guess on about 4 questions, on verbal only one or two. Though, I felt like I took too much time in the beginning of each section and had to rush towards the end.

6)I wanted to apply this year to attend fall of next year.

Thanks.
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by MartyMurray » Sun Dec 21, 2014 9:46 pm
First thing that jumps out at me is the thing about frustration. In working with many people on many things I have found that even the degree to which they use of the word frustrated seems to correlate with their having problems in various areas.

So this is probably affecting you even within questions, and even when you are not aware that it is.

One thing you could do about this is work on not reacting negatively to anything in life. Reacting in a more zen way and more positively are habits you can cultivate constantly, even beyond times when you are working on the GMAT. To be clear, this is definitely NOT about repressing negative reactions. It's about seeing how unproductive they are and learning to react more positively at all levels of your being.

Conflict resolution is essentially the solution to all problems and the more clear this is to you, the more productive your reactions to all challenging situations will be.

As far as learning more about this goes, I suspect that by doing an internet search on these topics you will find all kinds of useful information.

Myself, I barely even know the meaning of the word frustrated. Pretty simple, if it's not happening, there's only one thing to do. Keep at it.

Your mental exhaustion could also be related to this. If you tend to kick yourself along, beat yourself up over mistakes, worry about how things are going, and get frustrated when your level of performance does not match your goals, all of this will be taxing. It'll beat you up. You will be exhausted from the effort of it all.

So one thing you can do about the exhaustion is lighten up, be easier on yourself, have more fun on the test, playing it as if were a video game. Errors are like video game crashes. Right answers are ways to score video game points.

This test is but a game and you are learning to play it. Eventually you could score 800. You just need to develop your gaming skills some more.

As far as your gaming skills go, having CPA type skills can be helpful in many ways on this test. At the same time, quant is in many ways more of a logic game and more of a use of resources to find answers game, than it is a math game.

It is not clear to me what you are doing when practicing. For instance, are you just doing problem after problem, or are you analyzing problems from every angle to get a handle on what it takes to solve a type of problem whenever you see one? For instance, sometimes I will spend like 45 minutes on one problem, figuring out exactly how the moving parts work, and why a strategy for solving it makes sense. Then I find more problems similar to that one and do them until I am comfortable with and skilled in solving that type of problem.

If you were taking this approach, then you would go to the next type of problem, and repeat this process.

On the BellCurves site, they have thousands of quant problems categorized into dozens of categories. So you can focus on an area until you feel as if you have gotten it down. You can also search online for problems of a specific type. Maybe Veritas also enables you to do something like this on their site.

As far as timing goes, you could check the clock more often. I have actually done a mental exercise to be familiar with how many minutes I should have left when I have done a certain number of questions. On quant, 1 question - 73 minutes, 2 questions - 71 minutes, and so on. This way I am more prepared to do this on the test and will use up less time and energy doing so.

As far as the rereading goes, I think many or even most people need to reread the questions in many cases. Just make sure you are reading them in an organized way, and methodically figuring out what is going on as efficiently as possible. This is another skill area. One thing I have noticed myself doing is almost pointlessly, without much thought, rereading questions. This is definitely a waste of time and has been something I have been working to change.

So there's another example of seeing this as a game and figuring out what skills one can develop to become better at the game.

You are to a degree already doing this. You just have to do it more. Each change you make and each time you increase your level of some skill, your score will go up.

Maybe the general answer to all of your questions is yes. Yes, you can score higher, yes, you can develop time management skills, yes, you can be less fatigued, yes, you can use meditation, mindfulness or related techniques to optimize your psychological state, and yes you can rock this test.
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by manyaabroadtpr » Sun Dec 21, 2014 10:00 pm
Orion007 wrote:Hi guys,

Just got back from taking my first official test and didn't quite get the score I wanted for the schools I'm looking into. Overall I got a 600 with 71 percentile for verbal 43 for quant. That disparity struck me as odd considering I'm a CPA.

However, I noticed some problems/issues on test day and I'm curious what the advice on them would be

1) Obliviously my quant needs to improve. But I knew this weeks ago but could still not improve it. My approach to improvement was to just do endless amounts of practice problems (through veritas) Is there a better strategy that just diving head first into practice problems and hoping repetition will cure all?

2) For quant, I found I struggled immensely with word problems. Just to understand what was going on I felt I had to read a prompt at least twice. I feel I wasted time here. I also struggled assigning variables to information in world problems. After wasting re-reading the problem and or failing the algebra variable assignment, I just had to guess.

3) Timing was an issues, I'd look up and realize half my time was gone but I wasn't half way done with questions. Is there a way to develop a good internal clock or good time management skills?

4) Mental fatigue. Staying in a prolonged period of concentration is quite exhausting for me (for all probably) I could feel myself mentally stumbling towards the finish line. Is there a way to improve this? To maintain the same level of alertness and aptitude that one start's the test with?

5) Frustration levels. Anyone have suggestions on controlling this. Going into this test one obviously wants to do well, so naturally I get frustrated when I think I've stumbled on the previous few questions. Does anything like mediation or other techniques work?

I'd like to get in the 690 range at least so hopefully I can improve.

I appreciate whatever advice you guys have.
Thanks!
Hi,

Whenever it comes to practicing for GMAT, it is not only important to do a large number of questions but it is also important to create a strategy to identify patterns, find faster way of doing similar questions, figure out short cuts etc. So, while you are solving practice tests, make sure you go ahead to each and every question, spend double the amount of time in analyzing how you attempted the question and then figuring out a better, smarter and a faster way to do the same. This will also help you to understand some patterns on what kind of approach to adopt for similar kind of questions.

In order to improve timing as well, one has to strategically plan the approach. Next time when you take a mock test, time it for 2 hours. After the test, spend 4-5 hours in analyzing each and every question and after 2 days, attempt the same test again. Now, time it for only 1 hour. See if you can challenge yourself even further. Do this consistently and we are hopeful you will not only improve your timing but your scores as well.

Now comes the most critical aspect of preparing for GMAT. How to stay motivated throughout the duration of your preparation? Have you been studying along or have joined a coaching center? If you have been doing it all alone so far, we would seriously advice you to either join an institute or a study group or have a mentor with whom you can speak on a weekly basis and evaluate your performance and the progress. Second thing that you should do is to write your goal on a piece of paper and stick it right in front of your study table or your bed. Keep looking at it daily.

Let us know if you have any further queries and we would be happy to guide. Wish you all the best and do keep us updated on your progress.

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by [email protected] » Mon Dec 22, 2014 12:44 pm
Hi Orion007,

The extra information that you've provided is quite useful in that we can now define why you're scoring at your current level and what you'll likely need to do to improve. First, we have to discuss the "shortfalls" in your original approach:

1) Completing a full Course in one month AND retaining what you had learned would be tough for many Test Takers. You were probably given way too much to think about in a short period of time and you compensated by implementing some of it, but ignoring the rest. During the 1.5 months of self-study, you found your own ways to deal with the questions and likely only implemented some of what you had learned.

2) The only real way to measure your potential performance on Test Day is to take FULL-length CATs (with the Essay and IR sections). Skipping sections, or doing anything else that would be considered unrealistic, usually leads to an "inflated" score result. Your highest 2 CAT scores were on CATs that fall into this category. Your remaining scores essentially predict an Official Score that is right around 600 (the score that you earned).

3) The pacing problems you've described aren't actually that bad, but they're not problems in-and-of themselves. They're the result of how you're approaching questions - by changing your approach (learning, practicing and mastering new tactics), you should be able to fix your pacing issues.

Since your original plan was to apply to start school in Fall, 2015, will you be able to make Round 2 deadlines or are you looking at Round 3 now?

Have you scheduled your next Official GMAT (and if so, then when is it?)?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
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by Orion007 » Mon Dec 22, 2014 7:24 pm
Marty Murray wrote:First thing that jumps out at me is the thing about frustration. In working with many people on many things I have found that even the degree to which they use of the word frustrated seems to correlate with their having problems in various areas.

So this is probably affecting you even within questions, and even when you are not aware that it is.

One thing you could do about this is work on not reacting negatively to anything in life. Reacting in a more zen way and more positively are habits you can cultivate constantly, even beyond times when you are working on the GMAT. To be clear, this is definitely NOT about repressing negative reactions. It's about seeing how unproductive they are and learning to react more positively at all levels of your being.

Conflict resolution is essentially the solution to all problems and the more clear this is to you, the more productive your reactions to all challenging situations will be.

As far as learning more about this goes, I suspect that by doing an internet search on these topics you will find all kinds of useful information.

Myself, I barely even know the meaning of the word frustrated. Pretty simple, if it's not happening, there's only one thing to do. Keep at it.

Your mental exhaustion could also be related to this. If you tend to kick yourself along, beat yourself up over mistakes, worry about how things are going, and get frustrated when your level of performance does not match your goals, all of this will be taxing. It'll beat you up. You will be exhausted from the effort of it all.

So one thing you can do about the exhaustion is lighten up, be easier on yourself, have more fun on the test, playing it as if were a video game. Errors are like video game crashes. Right answers are ways to score video game points.

This test is but a game and you are learning to play it. Eventually you could score 800. You just need to develop your gaming skills some more.

As far as your gaming skills go, having CPA type skills can be helpful in many ways on this test. At the same time, quant is in many ways more of a logic game and more of a use of resources to find answers game, than it is a math game.

It is not clear to me what you are doing when practicing. For instance, are you just doing problem after problem, or are you analyzing problems from every angle to get a handle on what it takes to solve a type of problem whenever you see one? For instance, sometimes I will spend like 45 minutes on one problem, figuring out exactly how the moving parts work, and why a strategy for solving it makes sense. Then I find more problems similar to that one and do them until I am comfortable with and skilled in solving that type of problem.

If you were taking this approach, then you would go to the next type of problem, and repeat this process.

On the BellCurves site, they have thousands of quant problems categorized into dozens of categories. So you can focus on an area until you feel as if you have gotten it down. You can also search online for problems of a specific type. Maybe Veritas also enables you to do something like this on their site.

As far as timing goes, you could check the clock more often. I have actually done a mental exercise to be familiar with how many minutes I should have left when I have done a certain number of questions. On quant, 1 question - 73 minutes, 2 questions - 71 minutes, and so on. This way I am more prepared to do this on the test and will use up less time and energy doing so.

As far as the rereading goes, I think many or even most people need to reread the questions in many cases. Just make sure you are reading them in an organized way, and methodically figuring out what is going on as efficiently as possible. This is another skill area. One thing I have noticed myself doing is almost pointlessly, without much thought, rereading questions. This is definitely a waste of time and has been something I have been working to change.

So there's another example of seeing this as a game and figuring out what skills one can develop to become better at the game.

You are to a degree already doing this. You just have to do it more. Each change you make and each time you increase your level of some skill, your score will go up.

Maybe the general answer to all of your questions is yes. Yes, you can score higher, yes, you can develop time management skills, yes, you can be less fatigued, yes, you can use meditation, mindfulness or related techniques to optimize your psychological state, and yes you can rock this test.

Hi Marty

Thanks for your response.

To answer your question regarding how I practice, I am trying to do something similar to what you
described.

I'll pick a list of questions (usually in quant area) and go through them once on a timed basis, keeping in mind that I should be solving them in about 2 minutes. If I can't get a question in 2 min or so, I make as intelligent a guess as I can.

Once I've finished that section, I'll go back and review each question I got wrong, or guessed right on. This is when I really try to dissect a problem and see how I can get it right. There is where I've done my own version of starring at a problem for 20 minutes. What I haven't done is immediately looked for similar problems and attempt to apply the skills I learned by dissecting the previous problem.

Hope this gives a little more clarity into what I'm doing.
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by Orion007 » Mon Dec 22, 2014 7:33 pm
[email protected] wrote:Hi Orion007,

The extra information that you've provided is quite useful in that we can now define why you're scoring at your current level and what you'll likely need to do to improve. First, we have to discuss the "shortfalls" in your original approach:

1) Completing a full Course in one month AND retaining what you had learned would be tough for many Test Takers. You were probably given way too much to think about in a short period of time and you compensated by implementing some of it, but ignoring the rest. During the 1.5 months of self-study, you found your own ways to deal with the questions and likely only implemented some of what you had learned.

2) The only real way to measure your potential performance on Test Day is to take FULL-length CATs (with the Essay and IR sections). Skipping sections, or doing anything else that would be considered unrealistic, usually leads to an "inflated" score result. Your highest 2 CAT scores were on CATs that fall into this category. Your remaining scores essentially predict an Official Score that is right around 600 (the score that you earned).

3) The pacing problems you've described aren't actually that bad, but they're not problems in-and-of themselves. They're the result of how you're approaching questions - by changing your approach (learning, practicing and mastering new tactics), you should be able to fix your pacing issues.

Since your original plan was to apply to start school in Fall, 2015, will you be able to make Round 2 deadlines or are you looking at Round 3 now?

Have you scheduled your next Official GMAT (and if so, then when is it?)?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
Thanks for the response Rich

I may be able to make round 2 deadlines (depends on how much time I need to up my GMAT score), I can definitely make round 3 though.

How long do you think I would need to study to get my score to improve? I know an exact answer is impossible but if you have a ball park figure that be great.

What tactics would you suggest for dealing with word problems in quant? Any math type problem, whether is geometry, algebra or probability, in word problem format can throw me off. Should I write as I read, for example?

Thanks.
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by [email protected] » Mon Dec 22, 2014 9:10 pm
Hi Orion007,

I've sent you a private message with some suggestions.

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by manyaabroadtpr » Mon Dec 29, 2014 11:38 pm
Orion007 wrote:
What tactics would you suggest for dealing with word problems in quant? Any math type problem, whether is geometry, algebra or probability, in word problem format can throw me off. Should I write as I read, for example?

Thanks.
Hi Orion007,

The best tactic is to follow bite sized pieces and put down the key information on the note pad . This means read the sentence in parts, as much as you can comprehend at a time, work out only that much on the note pad then read the next piece and so on.

Hope this helps. Do let us know if you would have any further queries.Wish you the best.
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