Need help - Demoralized!

[mayonnai5e]

I cannot seem to translate my improvements in my studies to CAT scores. I've been studying for months now and have noticed big improvements in my understanding of the question types, solutions and tricks/traps of the GMAT yet when I take the practice CATs my scores have not improved. My hit rate while studying is anywhere between 80-95% depending on the topic, but when I take the practice CATs my scores hardly break 550.

Here are my CATs:

PowerPrep 1 560 Q32 V34
PR 1 550 Q35 V31
GMATPrep 1 650 Q45 V34
PR 2 570 Q36 V33
PowerPrep 2 540 Q39 V25 <-- what happened to my verbal here!??

General CAT trends:
1) I never finish either section on time. When I first started, I randomly guessed on about 15-20 of each section. My timing has improved since then, but not by enough to complete either section (I have to guess on anywhere from 5 to 10 questions in each section now).
2) On questions that I randomly guess at the end, I get a large majority wrong.
3) Errors are fairly well distributed up until the point where I have to randomly guess; in other words, I get several correct in a row then get one or two wrong then get several correct in a row.
4) On quant, my focus is good and steady; however, when I get to verbal, I have much harder time focusing.
5) On SC types, the CAT nature of the test makes it very difficult for me to focus on the answer choices and reading each answer choices seems to take an extra large amount of focus. I have no problems on verbal problems when I study in paper format, but when I read on the computer it's just painful.

Here are the details of my study plan:
*Problem sets - each day of the week is assigned one type of problem (CR, RC, etc); I do 35 problems for that particular type from OG11 and then go over the solutions regardless of whether I get the question right or wrong. I do not time myself on practice problems.
*CATs - one CAT every Sunday.

Possible changes to study plan:
1) Start doing all practice problems timed.
2) Start doing Verbal sections of extra (i.e. junk) CATs for practice in a computerized format. I have 5 Veritas, 5 Arco, 5 800score.com CATs and according to this forum they are all junk. Why not use them for extra Verbal CAT practice?

I need help badly - these CAT scores are so demoralizing. =\

[aim-wsc]

check out the latest article of my blog.

https://jc-gmat.blocked

I'll add detailed reply once I get some time

[erdnah]

i think you're losing many points with the last questions you've to guess.
before starding quant for example, i write down the following on my scrap paper (thanks to mgmat):
60 - 8
45 - 15
30 - 23
15 - 31

this means, if i've 60 minutes left, i should be on question 8 or fast. if i've 45 minutes left, i should be on question 15 or fast and so on... the really hard thing comes to you, if you have for example 30 minutes left and you're on question 21. if i am in such a situation and i feel that the question on the screen is too hard for me or will require much time, i guess (if fast possible, strategically) and go on with the next on. i think this strategy is much better for the assessment as a whole.

of course, i use the same strategy in the verbal section.

[Prasanna]

My two cents on this:

General CAT trends:
1) I never finish either section on time. When I first started, I randomly guessed on about 15-20 of each section. My timing has improved since then, but not by enough to complete either section (I have to guess on anywhere from 5 to 10 questions in each section now).

Remember you cannot afford to leave any question unanswered and you have to give adequate respect to the difficult question. You should be conscious of the time that can be given for any question. If the quesiton is diff pl guess and move on. The other suggestion of having check points at say every 5 questions helps to guide you through. If you are stuck at too many questions, you may have to strengthen your fundamentals on certain areas.

2) On questions that I randomly guess at the end, I get a large majority wrong.

That happens, most of the questions are TRAPS and when you guess in a hurry you would most probably get them wrong. You would have to make a educated guess on the diff questions and this would again need better time management.


3) Errors are fairly well distributed up until the point where I have to randomly guess; in other words, I get several correct in a row then get one or two wrong then get several correct in a row.

The questions you get wrong on GMAT prep may be the questions from the next level of difficulty. Concentrate on the areas where you are weak.

4) On quant, my focus is good and steady; however, when I get to verbal, I have much harder time focusing.

This could be either because you are stressed out/tired or because you dont like verbal. If you are getting tired during the verbal section, you have to take many practice tests to build the concentration. Eating a good meal/breakfast may also help. If you dont like verbal, then you are my friend But remember you have to get through this for scoring well.

5) On SC types, the CAT nature of the test makes it very difficult for me to focus on the answer choices and reading each answer choices seems to take an extra large amount of focus. I have no problems on verbal problems when I study in paper format, but when I read on the computer it's just painful.

Practice..Practice...Practice and do so always from a computer. Time your practice sessions too. At the later stage of the preparation, timing practice sessions may yield better results.


If I can be of any additional help, do reply to the post.

[mayonnai5e]

i think you're losing many points with the last questions you've to guess.
before starding quant for example, i write down the following on my scrap paper (thanks to mgmat):
60 - 8
45 - 15
30 - 23
15 - 31

this means, if i've 60 minutes left, i should be on question 8 or fast. if i've 45 minutes left, i should be on question 15 or fast and so on... the really hard thing comes to you, if you have for example 30 minutes left and you're on question 21. if i am in such a situation and i feel that the question on the screen is too hard for me or will require much time, i guess (if fast possible, strategically) and go on with the next on. i think this strategy is much better for the assessment as a whole.

of course, i use the same strategy in the verbal section.

Writing those numbers down is a great idea and definitely something I will start doing; do you have a similar setup for verbal? Or is it too difficult to find similar numbers due to the RC passages?

Added by Prasanna - I was able to set timelines for VA too. Yes there are RC questions but remember you can always adjust the timing on the run.

[mayonnai5e]

Remember you cannot afford to leave any question unanswered and you have to give adequate respect to the difficult question. You should be conscious of the time that can be given for any question. If the quesiton is diff pl guess and move on. The other suggestion of having check points at say every 5 questions helps to guide you through. If you are stuck at too many questions, you may have to strengthen your fundamentals on certain areas.

Yes, I plan to incorporate the milestone checkpoints mentioned above. That works fine for Q, but I'm not sure if V has a similar setup.

That happens, most of the questions are TRAPS and when you guess in a hurry you would most probably get them wrong. You would have to make a educated guess on the diff questions and this would again need better time management.

I haven't practiced very much in terms of educated guessing - do you have any tips on how I can practice this? My only idea is to use the extra cats and just breeze through each question very quickly (1 minute each question) to force myself into that mode.

The questions you get wrong on GMAT prep may be the questions from the next level of difficulty. Concentrate on the areas where you are weak.

You know what's disappointing? The veritas material that I have been studying uses a lot of the OG11 and PowerPrep questions and since the course is marketed as "advanced prep," I was lulled into a false sense of security because my hit rates were decent. However, I recently started doing the OG11 material and it turns out a lot of the questions they took from the OG11 are from the easy sections! To be fair, I've only completed half the course and perhaps the second half will get much harder, but that's still very disappointing.

The statistics that I've taken on my weak areas have been come from "easy" material so I plan on getting through about half of OG11 before I start taking new statistics where I am up against more challenging questions to get a more accurate picture of my weaknesses.

This could be either because you are stressed out/tired or because you dont like verbal. If you are getting tired during the verbal section, you have to take many practice tests to build the concentration. Eating a good meal/breakfast may also help. If you dont like verbal, then you are my friend But remember you have to get through this for scoring well.

I think I just need to work on my stamina more in order to address the fatigue/focus problem.

Practice..Practice...Practice and do so always from a computer. Time your practice sessions too. At the later stage of the preparation, timing practice sessions may yield better results.

Agreed. I will need to start doing large sections and large timed sections to get a more accurate picture of what my potential is under pressure.

If I can be of any additional help, do reply to the post.[/quote]

So my next questions are: What's the next step? How do I incorporate these suggestions in an organized, progressive manner that will really help me? I imagine that if I just switched from doing 35 problems with unlimited time and breaks every 10 questions (to read the solutions for the 10 just covered) to 40 problems timed with no breaks it would be quite a drastic change.

[Prasanna]

Yes, I plan to incorporate the milestone checkpoints mentioned above. That works fine for Q, but I'm not sure if V has a similar setup.


Reply: Yes it does. It worked for me. You will have to try out it for yourself.

I haven't practiced very much in terms of educated guessing - do you have any tips on how I can practice this? My only idea is to use the extra cats and just breeze through each question very quickly (1 minute each question) to force myself into that mode.

Reply: Well you need to guess on the questions that are very difficult and you cannot solve them in around 3-4 min. If you are fundamentals are strong, you can identify the questions you need to guess on the exam. I would not recommend your idea of forcing yourself to guess in practice. In practice your objective should be accuracy and hence spend time on each question and understand why you are going wrong. Remember you cannot score more by guessing. Guessing is just to avoid those difficult questions which will take valuable time away. If you are guessing in say more than 2-3 questions in a test it indicates that you need to get back to the basics.


You know what's disappointing? The veritas material that I have been studying uses a lot of the OG11 and PowerPrep questions and since the course is marketed as "advanced prep," I was lulled into a false sense of security because my hit rates were decent. However, I recently started doing the OG11 material and it turns out a lot of the questions they took from the OG11 are from the easy sections! To be fair, I've only completed half the course and perhaps the second half will get much harder, but that's still very disappointing.

The statistics that I've taken on my weak areas have been come from "easy" material so I plan on getting through about half of OG11 before I start taking new statistics where I am up against more challenging questions to get a more accurate picture of my weaknesses.


Reply - I have not used Veritas and hence I cannot comment. The 3 OGs are mandatory and they should ideally be the starting point. Once you are done with this, you can use Kaplan/Manhattan?Princeton. For mock exams I would recommend Manhattan.

So my next questions are: What's the next step? How do I incorporate these suggestions in an organized, progressive manner that will really help me? I imagine that if I just switched from doing 35 problems with unlimited time and breaks every 10 questions (to read the solutions for the 10 just covered) to 40 problems timed with no breaks it would be quite a drastic change.

Reply - hmmmm...You would be the best judge on how to incorporate these. If I were you I would work on taking full length tests regularly

I hope my replies are helpful

[Stacey Koprince]

Great advice, Prasanna.

Generally, I find most people will have to make an educated guess on 5-10 questions in each section - and, ideally, zero random guesses.

General process:
I spend one minute trying to do the problem normally. If I'm not on track by then, I have to switch to educated guessing, because if I don't know what I'm doing by the half-way mark, I'm not going to figure it out AND do it when I only have 1 minute left now.

Some ways to narrow down answer choices in math:
- logic (eg, I can figure out at least that the answer should be positive and two of the answer choices are negative)
- estimation (eg, I can figure out at least that the answer needs to be bigger than 10 and some of the choices are smaller than that)
- test-taking knowledge (eg, I can find an answer choice by using only some of the information in the problem, but I know math problems NEVER give extraneous info - that is, everything is necessary - so if I can get to an answer by using only partial info, then that answer is very likely a trap)

On verbal, it's all about process of elimination, so when you study, you should be able to articulate exactly why each of the four wrong answers is wrong on EVERY verbal question you do. You're not done studying until you can do this. Then, when you're struggling with a particular question, you can switch to finding (and eliminating) wrong answers.

[mayonnai5e]

thanks for all the great tips everyone!

[mayonnai5e]

Great advice, Prasanna.

Generally, I find most people will have to make an educated guess on 5-10 questions in each section - and, ideally, zero random guesses.

General process:
I spend one minute trying to do the problem normally. If I'm not on track by then, I have to switch to educated guessing, because if I don't know what I'm doing by the half-way mark, I'm not going to figure it out AND do it when I only have 1 minute left now.

Some ways to narrow down answer choices in math:
- logic (eg, I can figure out at least that the answer should be positive and two of the answer choices are negative)
- estimation (eg, I can figure out at least that the answer needs to be bigger than 10 and some of the choices are smaller than that)
- test-taking knowledge (eg, I can find an answer choice by using only some of the information in the problem, but I know math problems NEVER give extraneous info - that is, everything is necessary - so if I can get to an answer by using only partial info, then that answer is very likely a trap)

On verbal, it's all about process of elimination, so when you study, you should be able to articulate exactly why each of the four wrong answers is wrong on EVERY verbal question you do. You're not done studying until you can do this. Then, when you're struggling with a particular question, you can switch to finding (and eliminating) wrong answers.

This is the first time I've read about an organized, structured way to guess and move on when you reach hard problems. I've usually reach the 1 minute mark, but feel like with just a little more time I can figure it out. But what you're saying is that at that point, I should just guess intelligently. Thanks for the tip!

[Stacey Koprince]

You're welcome! And, just FYI, I only gave a few examples above, but there are all kinds of ways to make educated guesses - figuring those out should be part of your study plan.

Also wanted to add that it's easiest to find more ways to make educated guesses by studying problems that you already know how to do. If you don't understand a question, it's really hard to learn HOW to make an educated guess using that problem. Learn on the ones you can do and apply your knowledge to the ones you can't do!

[mayonnai5e]

Stacy, I have a question. For the Q portion, I can easily determine which questions would be too time-consuming to solve. However, I've had problems trying to make that same determination in the verbal section. Do you have any tips on how to quickly assess whether a particular V question will take too much time or not?

FYI, I don't seem to have too many problems with CR, but RC and SC are taking too much time.

[Stacey Koprince]

Always give yourself a shot on any question. About halfway into whatever time limit you want to have for that question, you should feel like you are on track and know exactly what you're doing - it's just a matter of finishing off that question. If you don't feel this way, you're in trouble, and you need to spend the remaining time figuring out how to make an educated guess before you move on.

For everything but SC, the halfway mark is 1 min. For SC, the halfway mark would be 45 sec but that's kind of annoying since we can't have a watch. For SC, instead, I just know that I should be able to eliminate at least one answer choice within 30 seconds. If I can't, that's a problem and I need to start thinking about educated guessing.

The above means you have to figure out how long a minute is without looking at a watch or clock - you just have to know. And then you have to be very disciplined about moving to educated guessing mode when you are NOT on track at the 1-min mark.

For long RC passages, you should be spending no more than 3 minutes on the first read-through and for short passages you should be spending no more than 2 minutes. Remember that the first read-through is NOT to get all of the detail - you should only be getting the high level message of the entire passage and the topic sentences / purpose of each paragraph. You should also note any "switchbacks" or changes in direction / meaning.

[persevering]

"Always give yourself a shot on any question."
Why is it necessary to answer every question? In intend to leave out questions on purpose.

May I offer a different strategy ?
Divide the test into 7 mini-tests.
For the verbal check the clock every 11 minutes.

Verbal
Time
Remains : Question #
________________
75 : Q1
64 : Q7
53 : Q13
42 : Q19
31 : Q25
20 : Q31
9 : Q37
______________

You are required to do 6 questions every 11 minutes. If you cannot, randomly guess. But you MUST move on to the next set of 6 when the 11 minutes are up.

(Except for the last one where you do 5 questions in 9 mins and there is nowhere to go.)

This way you leave out a maximum of 7 question throughout the test - spread evenly. You rush towards the end of every 11 mins. Skip a question if necessary. You will NEVER get more than 2 wrong in a row because you have budgeted your time well.

What's the verbal score for this person according to the GMAT CAT algorithm??
He leaves out 7 questions evenly, has a hit rate of 80% or above on the rest. He does not try to answer every question. He does his best on the questions he attempts -- works very carefully. How will the CAT score this guy?

Please help. I am getting quite stressed about this.

[Stacey Koprince]

"Always give yourself a shot on any question."
Why is it necessary to answer every question? In intend to leave out questions on purpose.

"Give yourself a shot" does not mean "spend as much time as you need" or even "spend full time." It means just try it - but be willing to pull the plug on any question if it's not working - quickly.

You can't know whether you should do something or whether you should skip it until you get into it a little bit. So you should be willing to spend 30-60 sec on every problem - but if it's not happening, admit it, make an educated guess, and move on.

And, as much as possible, avoid the RANDOM guess position. Make EDUCATED guesses - improve your odds. See my post upthread for ideas.

FYI: only people scoring 770+ have an 80%+ hit rate. Most people will get roughly half the questions right, half wrong, regardless of final score. You might sneak up to 60-70% if you score in the 700s.