Trying to Beat the GMAT...HELP!

[SShah]

Hello,

I have to rant this morning!

1) I work full time, I teach Internet Marketing at the local University, I already have my MBA, I am a Vice President for a local non-profit organization, and I am working on trying to get my PhD. This test is the only thing in my way. I think that it is a huge scam. I have spent a few months and many hours working on learning this exam.

2) Now that I have calmed down... I am taking Kaplan classes and find them to be semi-useful. I am also working out of the OG 11th ed. and I have been reviewing the GMAT Prep Practice tests.

3) I say Kaplan is semi-useful because there are a couple tricks that I learned that have helped a little bit, but we spend 3 hours each Sunday looking at problems from the book and the teacher just works through the answers instead of really helping with strategy. Has anyone else taken the Kaplan course and have you found it to be helpful?

For those that have taken the test what is most useful? The Kaplan CAT’s aren’t the same as the GMAT Prep tests. I am down to a little over a week before I take the actual test and I need to do well. I am going to work out of the OG book and the GMAT Prep tests to get a feel for actual exam. At this point I am irritated about Kaplan and I am not sure where to best spend my remaining time.

I see so many people doing well on the exam (reading posts on here) and I can’t seem to break a 500. This past Saturday I got 23 out of 37 questions correct on the Math and 21 of 41 correct on the Verbal on the GMAT Prep. By far this is the best that I have ever done on ANY of the 8 exams that I have taken (both Kaplan and GMAT Prep). I managed to get a 480 even though I got a lot of questions correct.

Talk to me guys! Let met know what you think or what I am missing!!!

[beatthegmat]

Thanks for the post--this community is always a safe place to rant!

One thing that may be missing from your prep is a systematic analysis of your errors. When I was preparing for the test myself, I kept spreadsheets of my performance for every practice test and problem set I took, and I diagnosed specific topic areas that gave me problems (example: sentence correction idioms). Once I found the areas that I needed help, I was able to tactically expend more resources or ask for help to strengthen these weak spots.

Take a look at the methodology outlined here: GMAT Practice Grid

Results won't come over night of course--keep practicing!

Good luck,

Eric

[VP_Jim]

To add to the above advice, there are a few other things:

1. The OG and GMAT Prep materials are great resources; these are the most representative test questions out there, and I definitely recommend working on these problems like you've said if you haven't already done so.

2. Remember that the GMAT is not scored solely based on the NUMBER of questions you answer correctly, but rather on the level of difficulty of questions that you get right. Even though you got quite a few questions correct on your practice exam, chances are you scored the way you did because those were the easier questions, and you didn't hit the harder problems.

3. What score are you looking to get in order to be competitive at the PhD programs you're applying to? Since you only have about a week left before you have to take the actual GMAT, you might want to think about rescheduling your test if you need a much higher score than what you're currently seeing (you are only charged $50 if you reschedule at least seven days before your exam; within seven days, you have to pay the full registration fee).

Good luck!

[SShah]

Thank you both for your help and ears! This test just gets to me. I will look at the error log and start to track what I am missing.

My schedule won't let me re-schedule the exam. I have some travel scheduled and I didn't want to take it 4-5 weeks after the Kaplan stuff because I didn't want to be too rusty.

I am going to keep working hard and try to ge to get to those harder questions to boost my score. I have a few schools in mind and they will need a 650+. I know that I can get to this score. I just need to see where I am going wrong.

[ggsol]

If there is one thing I have learned from the 2 to 3 months of intense studying and from this forum, that would be that no single prep course will be the key to success.

You must find your weeknesses and then buy the items that best address those weeknesses.

For instance -

MGMAT has an excellent book on Number Properties.

PR has a good math review with 4 or 5 worthwhile chapters. The ones I liked best are the one on Combinations, Avoiding Algebra (difficult problems with variables), Assorted Topics 1 and 2 and Data Sufficincy 2.

Power Score has a good reputation for its Critical Reasoning guide and Sentence Correction ( I just bought these so I cannot confirm that yet.


I would recommend to find those weaknesses and then read the various posts from people who have beaten the gmat as well as the Amazon reviews.

Good luck!