580 second attempt !! .. Devastated :(

[jeevan.Gk]

I need some serious help. I finished my second attempt recently. I got 580(49,20) .. 1st attempt was 560(46,22).

This devastated me. I am completely down.. dont know what to do.. Can you pls share some thoughts with me.. Can you give me some advice.
Nothing from the point of convincing . Straght forward and honest opinion.

My prep scores after first attempt and before second attempt were

640(Gmatprep) (Q43 , V34)
680(Mgmat) (Q45, V36)
630(Gmatprep) (Q42, V34)
710(MGmat) (Q47, V40)
670(Gmatprep) (Q50, V32)
570(Gmatprep) (Q44, V25) This completely spoilt my confidence few days before the exam
700(Mgmat) (Q47,V36)One day before the exam.

But Real Gmat screwed me.. I felt I was not doing all that ok with math during the exam.. And verbal i was quite confidently marking the questions. I thot i would get better score in verbal than in math.. but it was totally different..

I feel i have nothing much to prepare conceptually . Cos my accuracy is really good when i am solving plane questions given in books..

what is that i need to do.. I feel i cant take up the exam again.. No point.
when i could do well in prep y couldnt i do there in exam .. If there was less difference i wouldnt have minded.. But verbal 20 is devastating.
Out of 7 to 8 preps taken, i scored above 30 in all preps (Except one 25)

pls give some straight forward opinions..

WHAT HAPPENED TILL DATE :
First attempt --
To tell about my back ground.. I am an I.T engineer from bangalore with fairly good quantitative skills .. I Agree that i was very weak in verbal before i started my preparation . When i took up diagnostic test bfor preparation (I was totally unaware how gmat is) I have scored 13 , 15 kind of scores in verbal.. but I really worked very very hard to improve my basics and scored around 24, 25 in verbal before first attempt.. I did score 30's occassionally but i knew they were lucky spikes. I dont really remember my practise scores. however maximum i got was 620. First attempt on october 4th 2008. 560 (Q46, V22) .. This depressed me.. But i knew there was lot to improve in my verbal. 22 was not too less than what i consistently scored on my practise test.

Second attempt --
I took a months off from GMAT books and started my journey towards second attempt.. I made up my mind I am not gonna book my dates until i score 700 . My schedules were tight at times and couldnt devote any time during such times.. I did prepare to my best with lot of big big breaks.. these breaks used to frustate me cos my dates were simply getting postponed. Atlast i got lot of free tiime in feb and did some serious preparation and booked the dates. I never took any test with essays except the last test (one day before the exam).. i took up All the exams with around 15 to 20 mins break between quant and verbal. My second attempt scores are given above..
Finally second attempt on March 10th -- 580(Q49, V20).

oops .. after so much of hard work and substantial improvement in my verbal practise scores i ended up scoring less than 1st attempt !! .. All i felt after the test was - god simply doesnt want me to do MBA

20V is too tooo bad than what i deserved.. i glared at the screen few mins
and wondered what the hell is happening !!.

DIAGNOSIS :

I seriously dont understand what could have went wrong on the test.. I did not time out , I did not panic (First few quant questions panicked me a lil but i could recover soon with educated guesses). Verbal went very smooth i felt.. Very few questions i felt i couldnt do and calmly skipped those questions.. Those questions were in the middle .. I had understood the game of Gmat very well (to skip those questions we are unable to do).. Stamina wise i wasnt too tired.. during my preparation i have taken few tests after exhaustive preparation . So stamina should be there. Silly mistakes !! ? then y dint it happen with quant ?? .. i am clue less what could have happened.. Unless i find out the reason no point heading towards next attempt.. the mistakes will repeat..

one strange thing that happened as test approached was i did badly in one of the Gmat prep . And My accuracy in RC came down suddenly.. It confused me.. RC was my strength and suddenly turned out my weakness at the end. The last test in which i got 36 verbal also had 50% mistakes in RC!.. In all my Mgmats i got 9/12 accuracy in RC except the last one.. yet i managed 700 in the last one!!.. luckily i had done well in SC... Generally Sc was my weakness..

SO can i blame that reason alone to my poor score..? i dont think so that wud have afffected my score soo badly. 20 is too low !! ..

I dont know ! ..

Thank you soo much for reading .. pls pls help me with your valuable inputs..

[jeevan.Gk]

Guys .. I know I have typed very big post.. But pls read and share your experiences.. pls guys..

[logitech]

Good news: Q46--->Q49

Not good news: V score.

First of all - You have to know something. Same thing happened to many people, including myself, during the GMAT race. You study harder and get a worse score! It does not make sense right ? Well actually it does..

1) HARDER vs SMARTER : Gyms are full of people wondering how come they are not in good shape after spending 7 days at gym!! Well "recovery" is key for the muscle growth. I realized that I was studying SO HARD that my brain did not have the time to recover and process all of the information I was loading.

2) VERBAL ILLUSION: This is what I discovered during my Verbal studies...After a while, we learn all of the verbal questions in OG materials and GMAT prep materials and we "even" start to score 35+ on our tests and we are so sure that we will do great this time! And that feeling in front of that scree and trying to understand how the hell you scored 20-25!!! I call this a verbal illusion! We really DO NOT process that information but just chew it couple of times and try to swallow it. We know that particular question but having hard time to apply to rules to a brand new question.

3) STAMINA & STRESS : Verbal catches you in your worst shape. You are tired after 2-3 hours, you are stressed and you know when you start Verbal section that no matter how you did in AWA and QUANT - if you fail here you will go down! And this feeling eats you up...And once you are pressed with time and that uneasy feeling climbs up to your throat - you loose your control in the game.


Well so what should you do ?

If you are planning to apply for R1 for 2010 - take a break from GMAT and work on your Verbal fundamental. Read & Read! Study Grammar and read more - Non GMAT stuff and come back to GMAT field again in 2-3 months and study again with a fresh mind and a positive mind set.

Good luck!

[kobel51]

Sorry mate. Sounds like a tough one to go through.

I agree with Logitech. Take a break and focus on verbal.

[Stacey Koprince]

I received a PM asking me to respond.

Logitech, nice post. Agree with everything you said.

Great job on the 49 quant. I know you're not happy about your verbal score, but do take the time to congratulate yourself on your quant performance.

What we need to try and do is figure out what went wrong on verbal. There are a couple of clues already in your posts, but I also have more questions for you.

The clues I noticed:
1) You usually didn't do the essays on practice tests. A lot of people think this won't make much of a difference but it actually can make a major difference. As logitech noted, your mental stamina is not the same when you have to spend an additional hour writing essays at the beginning. I know you felt like you were fine - that was probably the adrenaline of the situation. But your ability to concentrate and function at a very high level mentally was compromised.

--> You need to do the essays from now on - and take them as seriously as you do the real test.

2) You took a practice test the day before the real test. This is similar to running a practice marathon the day before the real marathon. You blow all of your energy the day before and you're left to jog along at a slower pace for the real race. Don't take a practice test within three days of the real test. And don't do more than 2 hours of very high-level review the day before (just reviewing your strategies and pacing plans for the different question types and sections of the test - not doing problems).

These two things combined made it more likely that you would struggle and make more careless mistakes as the test went on - and, of course, the verbal is the last portion of the test.

You told me in your PM that you took most of these tests in Jan and Feb, so they're still pretty recent. You had that one much lower score on GMATPrep. What was different about that test experience compared to all of the others? How was that experience similar to the official test?

What are your strengths and weaknesses on the verbal section? Not just CR, RC, and SC - tell us by individual grammar rule for SC or type of question for CR or type of question and passage for RC.

The accuracy drop for RC is somewhat concerning, but it might also be that you happened to get a lot of really hard RC questions - in which case, it's normal for your percentage correct to drop. What were the difficulty levels like? Also, you mentioned RC dropping on your MGMAT test, but that was a high score. What dropped on your last GMATPrep test? How was your timing on that test? Etc.

Chances are good that similar things went wrong on the official test, so let's figure out what those things were!

[jeevan.Gk]

First of all ,I Really want to thank you for reading this big post and for your valuable reply..

To answer your questions --

You told me in your PM that you took most of these tests in Jan and Feb, so they're still pretty recent. You had that one much lower score on GMATPrep. What was different about that test experience compared to all of the others? How was that experience similar to the official test?

This test experience was really devastating which created a kind of fear in the corner of my mind. During my test i knew i wasnt doing well in math ,cos i had to skip few questions in the beginning. But thats ok, it has happened several times. In verbal strange part is I couldnt justify why those wrong questions were wrong . when i searched for those OE's in this forum i discovered few new idioms behind it and strange parallelism rules which i hadnt encountered in past. Alrite i made myself aware of it and went ahead reviewing. There were totally 18 mistakes for 25 verbal score , I found around 6 wrong answers in sequence in the beginning (5 to 10) I encountered two tone questions in RC where i went wrong in both, one was silly mistake and other was complex. I did not understand the words in the answer choice. vocab used was complex. So had skipped it.. I had to skip one easy CR question due to time constraint. overall i had commited around 3 to 4 silly mistakes and remaining were really like i jus couldnt justify . where-as other exams i was in a position to justify most wrong answers.

What are your strengths and weaknesses on the verbal section? Not just CR, RC, and SC - tell us by individual grammar rule for SC or type of question for CR or type of question and passage for RC.

In Sc i cant handle some complex parallelism and modifier questions.. And since i am not a native speaker i dont have natural grasp of idioms, but still i have made a note of around 20 to 25 idioms and can spot them quickly. Sc was my weakest part with usually around 60 percent accuracy on prep exams.

Cr , really fluctuates from exam to exam.. but it goes well in most of the preps. Most of my wrong answers will be due to wrong understanding.
I cant handle those questions with two people debating and asked to infer something on it. My avg accuracy in CR was around 70 to 75 percent on preps.

RC, I never follow read and comprehend strategy. I am a poor reader . So i have adopted kaplan strategy -- >to create a road map in first read and locate myself to appropriate chunk of passage where i will find my answer. I am not weak on any one type of question , But relatively i am stronger in specific type questions than other type of question. otherwise mistakes are proportionate across all types. My accuracy was 9 to 11 questions correct out of 14 questions (65 to 77% accuracy.)

On an average overall verbal accuracy was around 65 to 70 percent. (Around 11 to 14 mistakes in preps).

The accuracy drop for RC is somewhat concerning, but it might also be that you happened to get a lot of really hard RC questions - in which case, it's normal for your percentage correct to drop. What were the difficulty levels like? Also, you mentioned RC dropping on your MGMAT test, but that was a high score. What dropped on your last GMATPrep test? How was your timing on that test? Etc

I feel i deviated from authors line of thinking.. I always focus to keep myself on track with authors thinking.. it happened couple of times in past but i could recover fast and get myself on track. But my bad luck it happened again when exam approached..

[Stacey Koprince]

Okay, so your confidence might have been shaken a bit by that one test. If you had that in the back of your mind on your official test, that could cause additional stress, and additional stress leads to more mistakes.

This is easier said than done but: you know you can do this. You've done it on a lot of practice tests. Yes, you also know you can have a bad day - anybody can. But, most of the time, you have a good day and you do a good job. So if you start to feel too nervous and your confidence starts to drop, remind yourself that you can do a good job and you have solid evidence to support that belief!

On the practice test on which you had the lower score, you found about 6 wrong in a row at one point. That's definitely bad for your score. Were they all ones that were too hard for you or tested things that you didn't know? Or were some of those careless mistakes? If so, what were the specific reasons why you made careless mistakes on those ones? How was the timing on those questions? (I know this was GMATPrep, which doesn't record the time for you, but did you record it yourself?) Do you think any of the careless mistakes might have been due to rushing, maybe because you knew you spent a bit too much time on some others?

You mentioned having to skip one easy CR due to time constraints. Was that the last question and you ran out of time? Or was it in the middle somewhere and you just decided to skip it because you were behind? If the latter, how did you decide that that was the one you wanted to skip? You called it "easy" - did you think it was harder when you first saw it, so that's why you decided to skip, but then later decided it was easy when you looked at it fully?

Where did you spend too much time, by the way, such that you had to skip that one? Did spending that extra time elsewhere actually help you? Or did you have problems on which you spent too much time and got them wrong anyway? (Or were there ones on which you spent way too much time, even if you got them right?) Generally, it's a bad idea to spend more than 30 sec beyond the average time you're supposed to spend on a problem of that type. 1min+ beyond the average timeframe is generally considered "way too long."

I'm really happy to see that you know your strengths and weaknesses to the point that you can tell me the types of questions or grammar rules on which you struggle to be able to justify the wrong answers. That means you're really paying attention when you study.

This old post might also give you some more ideas about RC:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/verbal-strategy-t14035.html

I'm not familiar with Kaplan's method, but it sounds similar to what we teach: generate an outline by paragraph that tells you the main idea of each, but don't learn all the detail on that first read-through. Instead, use the outline to figure out which paragraph to go to when you get a specific question. Then, learn whatever you need to learn in order to answer the question.

Going back to my last post, I suspect that the skipped essays on practice tests coupled with the practice test the day before the real thing combined to bring down your mental stamina in a big way on the real test day. This is just a hunch, of course - there's no way we can tell for sure. But just one of those things would be a potential warning sign. Both of them...

At the same time, I do also think there are some things that you can do to tweak your performance during the test - that's why I asked a bunch of questions up above about the details of that test on which your score dropped. A lot of it hinges on timing, and that test was a GMATPrep test, so if you didn't record the per-question timing yourself while taking it, then see whether you can answer those timing questions via data from some of your MGMAT practice tests. (In particular, see if you can find another string of 6+ wrong.)

Also, if you take more GMATPrep tests, record the timing yourself as you take the test. Buy a stopwatch with lap capability (this allows you to record a time interval without stopping the overall watch). Press the "lap" button every time you answer a question, and then put all of the data on a spreadsheet when you're done. Add data for right and wrong answers and then also label according to question type and content area (to the best of your ability). And then see where you're spending too much and too little time, where you're getting things right and wrong (by question type, content area, AND timing!), etc. (Basically the kind of analysis you get on our tests - you can't do it all yourself for GMATPrep, but you can do a lot.)

[jeevan.Gk]

n the practice test on which you had the lower score, you found about 6 wrong in a row at one point. That's definitely bad for your score. Were they all ones that were too hard for you or tested things that you didn't know? Or were some of those careless mistakes? If so, what were the specific reasons why you made careless mistakes on those ones? How was the timing on those questions? (I know this was GMATPrep, which doesn't record the time for you, but did you record it yourself?) Do you think any of the careless mistakes might have been due to rushing, maybe because you knew you spent a bit too much time on some others?

I dont say all the 6 questions were tough. But all the 6 questions were easy while doing but later answers couldnt be justified for 3 questions .. One CR and 2 SC's. Yes, Around 3 questions were doable and i could justify the answers. These questions wud have definitely made big difference.. I went through the prep again now and concluded this..
Since these questions were in the beginning i dint rush thru those.. i gave ample time to all of em.. no too much also..

You mentioned having to skip one easy CR due to time constraints. Was that the last question and you ran out of time? Or was it in the middle somewhere and you just decided to skip it because you were behind? If the latter, how did you decide that that was the one you wanted to skip? You called it "easy" - did you think it was harder when you first saw it, so that's why you decided to skip, but then later decided it was easy when you looked at it fully?

This question was 40th.. due to time constraint. Jus arrived at the answer at first read in a hurry. dint bother to recheck . . if time permitted this could have been correct.

Final punchline is, this prep should not had been as bad as it went. but we are never perfect.. My conclusion is , My performance is very volatile. it was in a range of 570 to 710 . I need to shift this band to atleast 650 to 750 range. And later narrow it down as much as possible..

If i ve to start my preparation towards next attempt, I dont have any resources for fresh RC's . i have completed both OG's, kaplan-800, kaplan verbal. MGmat cats. Could you suggest me some resources for that. till date i have went thru Manhattan Sc guide available online.. this time i will buy full and latest version of it . I have few fresh C.R questions
left in 1000 cr's. I want to get away with Gmat as soon as possible. But i wil work hard to my best capability with patience. What do you advice regarding this.

Next major question is regarding preps. I will explore Gmat official prep by retaking it again n again. just to see all the questions inside it.. But I also need to take some fresh preps without any repeats..
Which preps u advice ?..

please write your final diagnosis.. you can ask as many questions as u want.. I am very eager to hear my faults.

[Stacey Koprince]

Okay, you mentioned several questions you thought you knew how to do and you didn't rush because they were at the beginning, but you made mistakes. WHY did you make those mistakes? As specifically as possible, articulate what you misread, what you misunderstood, what rules you didn't follow, what trap you fell into - whatever, but articulate very carefully why you made those mistakes. If you don't know why, then you're likely to repeat those mistakes in the future.

Which brings me to my second point: don't just rush off in search of new material if you have not been studying the original material in the way you should have been studying. You actually need to get better at HOW you study. For instance, on any problems you got wrong before, did you take the time to articulate why you got things wrong? And then figure out what good habits to implement or what bad habits to change to minimize the chances of repeating those errors in future? And then do what it takes to implement those good habits or change those bad habits?

Doing lots of new problems is not necessarily the answer to improving your performance. Deeply analyzing the best available problems is the answer. Besides the wrong-answer analysis above, you also want to ask yourself things like: if I were to see another problem that tests this same grammar rule or this same chain of reasoning, what would that look like? What would it have in common with this problem, even though it's a different problem, with different words talking about a different topic? For any problem you study, you aren't going to see that actual problem on the test, right? But you are going to see problems that test similar things. So what are you going to learn from the problem sitting in front of you right now that will allow you to recognize a similar problem in future? And once you recognize that similar problem, how are you going to use what you learned on this one to tackle the future, similar problem? How will what you're learning right now actually help you get the right answer in the most efficient way on that future, different-but-similar problem?

Third, you mentioned studying the "manhattan sc guide available online." Our guide has never been available in electronic / digital format, so you weren't studying from the Manhattan GMAT SC guide. There are other companies with the word "Manhattan" in their name; I suspect you were using something they made available online.

Bottom line: at this point, your focus needs to be on how you study (whether you're studying actual rules / formulas, techniques for different question types, pacing strategies, educated guessing strategies, whatever). Part of your score volatility is likely due to some timing issues and part of it is likely due to errors in technique and foundational knowledge. You'll certainly want to do some new questions, but you don't need all new questions in order to study those things. To a large extent, it doesn't matter whether you've seen the problem before. What matters is whether you studied what you needed to study to extract everything you can out of that question.

You can get about 300 new OG questions by buying OG12 (just published recently); the book contains about 900 questions total but about 600 were in OG11. You can also get some new quant questions from GMAT Focus (www.gmatfocus.com). Finally, you can also get some older official questions from the paper tests, available at www.mba.com.

You can still take both GMATPrep and MGMAT CATs as long as you follow a few guidelines to minimize the chance of artificially inflating your score via question repeats. First, anytime you see a problem that you remember (and this means: I know the answer or I'm pretty sure I remember the answer, not just "hmm, this looks familiar..."), immediately look at the timer and make yourself sit there for the full length of time for that question type. This way, you don't artificially give yourself more time than you should have. Second, think about whether you got this problem right the last time. If you did, get it right again this time. If you didn't, get it wrong again. If you *completely honestly* think that you would get it right this time around if it were a new question (even though you got it wrong last time) because you've studied that area and improved, or because you've made a huge effort to fix the type of careless error that you made last time, then get it right this time.

[mousymouse]

Please list and name ALL the resources that you been using. 1 thing is very clear ur maths is fine time to really boost ur verbal.

[rajibgmat]

Hi jeevan.Gk,

I just finished your debrief and kind of analyzing whether you wrote it or I wrote it. Funny thing is, I have the same kind of experience which you went through.

First attempt 590 ( Q49 V23)

with lots of preparation........for almost 6 month

Second attempt 570 (Q46 V23) ...funny Is'nt it ?

Anyways, I dont want to remember what I went through and how GMAT has made me cribby and shattered my confidence, but what I did was took almost 3 months break from Dec to March and now I am back to race again. I am doing the following things :-

1) Started reading Wall Street Journal
2) Started reading Wren and Martin

What I have realized that all the Verbal elements ( SC, RC and CR) are interrelated and the key to master them is improve your reading. Sounds very basic, but very difficult. Needs consistent practise. Reading should be done with the aim to comprehend the passage and do analysis about the passage. Read a passage and ask yourself questions. What you read, what you made out and what is the obvious assumptions or flaws in the statement. I am sounding like preacher, sorry need to stop.

Dude we will fight and not give up the battle till we have no $$ in the bank.
All the best to you.

[jeevan.Gk]

Hi stacey,

I will definitely keep these key points in mind during my preperation..
Now i have a question to you. Its almost 1 month break , Should i start right away now.. Or should i give myself some more break just reading journals to improve my reading. will it really improve my fundamental foundation by doing soo.. I anyhow dont read and comprehend during the test. when this is the case how does reading aid my performance.

My plan for next attempt is :

I will first concentrate on OG10 and OG11 completely. Will try to figure out the patterns and concepts used so that i will be able to recognise those patterns in many questions i encounter .

I will give lot of preps with essays. and will give it only during the time slot i am gonna take up my test.

Most importantly , I will spend less hours in preparation than before. I will make sure my mind is always calm and fresh. I will go out and enjoy my social life asusual. This is most challenging. Depends on how hectic my schedules turn out to be in office.

New resources i would want to concentrate on will be Manhattan SC guide and OG12.

And regarding my RC, do you suggest me to shift to Read and comprehend strategy. Or is it good to stick to current roadmap strategy

Let me know your feedback .. thank you..


And Rajib , thanks for your response. Its high time we start anlayzing and act with a different perception.
I have a question to u

What I have realized that all the Verbal elements ( SC, RC and CR) are interrelated and the key to master them is improve your reading. Sounds very basic, but very difficult. Needs consistent practise. Reading should be done with the aim to comprehend the passage and do analysis about the passage. Read a passage and ask yourself questions. What you read, what you made out and what is the obvious assumptions or flaws in the statement. I am sounding like preacher, sorry need to stop.

Do you feel any improvement thru reading. I agree it will definitely help RC. But how is that helping your SC and CR. And i also feel improving our reading skills is not something we gain in short term. It develops over time if you have that passion for reading. Any how i may be wrong. Since I have recieved this suggestion from couple of em i will follow this as well. I will read journals during my office hours in breaks and other leisure time. I will do all possible things . This time i jus wanna make gmat to salute me. Do or die..

Thank u all..

[Stacey Koprince]

You're right that it takes a long time to improve simply by reading things from good sources - but that is also great preparation for business school in general, and it can help some over the long term for the GMAT. So I would continue to do that, but you're going to have to do more than that for the GMAT.

Other comments:

"Its almost 1 month break , Should i start right away now."

That depends upon you. Do you feel ready to dive back into it? Are you eager to beat the test? Or are you dreading the study? Also, when do you need the score - what are your deadlines? If you don't want to start and you can afford to wait based on your deadlines, then wait a little longer. But if you feel ready to start and/or you need to start based on your deadlines, then get going!

"I will give lot of preps with essays."

No more than once a week, and ideally more like every 2-3 weeks. You want to do a LOT of studying before you take a new test. You want to do enough to make a difference, even a small one, so that you can see that you're making progress. (And just taking tests one after another - that doesn't help you make much progress. All the studying you do in between tests based upon your strengths and weaknesses from your last test - that's where you make progress.)

Re: RC, I'm not entirely sure what Kaplan's strategy is (the one that you're using), but here's what I do (pasted from one of my replies above): "generate an outline by paragraph that tells you the main idea of each, but don't learn all the detail on that first read-through. Instead, use the outline to figure out which paragraph to go to when you get a specific question. Then, learn whatever you need to learn in order to answer the question. "

So I'm guessing that's similar to a technique called "roadmap" strategy, but as I said, I don't know for sure because I don't know Kaplan's technique.

It is still important to comprehend whatever you are reading, of course. The key is just that if you see a hard detail that you aren't comprehending, you can ignore it for now. Then, IF you get a question about it, you can try to learn it. (Or guess.)

[jeevan.Gk]

Stacey,

Thank you very much for your feed back. I would like to know some resources for RC . I have finished All RC's from 10th and 11th OG. I have also finished from 1000 RC's . Can you advice me some good resources where i get fresh quality passages..

[Stacey Koprince]

You can start with OG12; not all of the passages are new, but some are. You can also use the passages twice, essentially. On the real test, we get either 3 or 4 questions. The passages printed in the books include all of the questions written for that passage - often 6 or more. So split the questions. The first time you do the passage, do only half of the questions. then, in a few weeks or a month, swing back around and do the passage again with the other half of the questions.

This actually mimics the test better, too, because the more questions you answer in a row, the bigger advantage you have (because you've learned things on earlier questions that you can use on the later questions). But on the real test, you don't have the advantage of having answered 5 other questions when you get to the 6th. So don't give yourself that advantage when you're practicing either!

Also, you should go back and redo OG10 and OG11. You haven't learned everything you could have learned from those structures and questions. You actually need to intensively analyze the ones you've already done and figure out what kind of information is presented and how it's structured, how the questions are constructed (including making a right answer less tempting and a wrong answer more tempting), etc, as I mentioned in an earlier post above.

You can also buy some of the old paper tests at mba.com for more passages, but two things: (1) don't take those as full tests, just use the problems as practice problems, and (2) do the same thing I described above for OG12 (do only half of the questions at once).