Have to retake the test but my scores are not improving.

[NERDYGAL12]

Hi everyone
I gave my Gmat after 10 days of study , i took time off work and studied for almost 10 hrs a day. I did Manhattan books , OG and Kaplan.Some how my scores were not improving ,i ended up having 610 on the test day with 6 in my essays.

I am not improving at all and i found the actual GMAT questions pretty tough . Please suggest any strategies, i plan to take it again in 4~5 months. This time i want to give myself enough time.

Please give me some real advise , i want to score 700+.

[Osirus@VeritasPrep]

You're going to need to drill. What I have found most helpful is drilling material I learn. What you may be doing is simply going over material and then not making an intentional effort to practice that material again. This will result in you forgetting the material, and its like you never learned it, or worse, you will remember going over it but not how to do it. You need to really focus on drilling material you know and focus on the concepts that are seen most frequently.

[NERDYGAL12]

You're going to need to drill. What I have found most helpful is drilling material I learn. What you may be doing is simply going over material and then not making an intentional effort to practice that material again. This will result in you forgetting the material, and its like you never learned it, or worse, you will remember going over it but not how to do it. You need to really focus on drilling material you know and focus on the concepts that are seen most frequently.

thanks for replying so quick , so what study materials do you think i should use? Is there a book which details the concepts which are tested most frequently on the GMAT?

[Osirus@VeritasPrep]

You're going to need to drill. What I have found most helpful is drilling material I learn. What you may be doing is simply going over material and then not making an intentional effort to practice that material again. This will result in you forgetting the material, and its like you never learned it, or worse, you will remember going over it but not how to do it. You need to really focus on drilling material you know and focus on the concepts that are seen most frequently.

thanks for replying so quick , so what study materials do you think i should use? Is there a book which details the concepts which are tested most frequently on the GMAT?

My Kaplan Premier book actually had a break down on the percentages of things that are tested, but I can tell you from experience their percentages were wrong.

The materials I used were the following:

MGMAT Number properties
MGMAT Fractions Decimals and Percents
MGMAT Equations Inequalities and Vics
MGMAT Word Translations
MGMAT Sentence Correction
Kaplan Premier
Powerscore Critical Reasoning Bible

[NERDYGAL12]

You're going to need to drill. What I have found most helpful is drilling material I learn. What you may be doing is simply going over material and then not making an intentional effort to practice that material again. This will result in you forgetting the material, and its like you never learned it, or worse, you will remember going over it but not how to do it. You need to really focus on drilling material you know and focus on the concepts that are seen most frequently.

thanks for replying so quick , so what study materials do you think i should use? Is there a book which details the concepts which are tested most frequently on the GMAT?

My Kaplan Premier book actually had a break down on the percentages of things that are tested, but I can tell you from experience their percentages were wrong.

The materials I used were the following:

MGMAT Number properties
MGMAT Fractions Decimals and Percents
MGMAT Equations Inequalities and Vics
MGMAT Word Translations
MGMAT Sentence Correction
Kaplan Premier
Powerscore Critical Reasoning Bible

Hey i am already using this stuff except for the CR book , guess i did not prepare for CR and RC. I found no matching questions from the Manhattan guides , not even the nearest ...Do you suggest taking any other courses?

[Osirus@VeritasPrep]

I recommend using LSAT material for Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension practice once you run out of material from the official guide. Other than that, the most important thing I'm discovering is just developing an approach. Attack the Reading Comp passages the same every time. Approach the CR questions the same each time. Everything should be consistent. Hope this helps.

[dmateer25]

Hi everyone
I gave my Gmat after 10 days of study , i took time off work and studied for almost 10 hrs a day. I did Manhattan books , OG and Kaplan.Some how my scores were not improving ,i ended up having 610 on the test day with 6 in my essays.

I am not improving at all and i found the actual GMAT questions pretty tough . Please suggest any strategies, i plan to take it again in 4~5 months. This time i want to give myself enough time.

Please give me some real advise , i want to score 700+.

Do you need to take the GMAT so soon to apply to programs this year? I feel the biggest problem for you is trying to study 10hrs a day. At some point during a 10 hr study, you are going to stop retaining information because it is just too much.

[NERDYGAL12]

Hi everyone
I gave my Gmat after 10 days of study , i took time off work and studied for almost 10 hrs a day. I did Manhattan books , OG and Kaplan.Some how my scores were not improving ,i ended up having 610 on the test day with 6 in my essays.

I am not improving at all and i found the actual GMAT questions pretty tough . Please suggest any strategies, i plan to take it again in 4~5 months. This time i want to give myself enough time.

Please give me some real advise , i want to score 700+.

Do you need to take the GMAT so soon to apply to programs this year? I feel the biggest problem for you is trying to study 10hrs a day. At some point during a 10 hr study, you are going to stop retaining information because it is just too much.

If 4~5 Months is too early , then what do u think would be a realistic goal? I am in no hurry to go to a B-school.

[money9111]

yeah the GMAT is not a test that you can study for 100 hours in a 10 day period and expect to do well. the law of diminishing marginal returns is a kicker... you simply cannot retain all of that information even though you may be reading it. the key to beating the gmat is to not do hundreds and hundreds of problems because you won't see problems or questions like that on the test.

peruse the boards here and you'll begin to pick up a strategy that works for you. 4-5 months is plenty of time to establish and stick to a routine in order to get a great score (whatever a great score is to you).

what is your target score?
why did you cram all of your studying in to such little time?
which books did you study from?

by answering these questions we may be able to steer you in the right direction.

words of wisdom though - BECOME A STUDENT OF THE PROCESS!

[NERDYGAL12]

yeah the GMAT is not a test that you can study for 100 hours in a 10 day period and expect to do well. the law of diminishing marginal returns is a kicker... you simply cannot retain all of that information even though you may be reading it. the key to beating the gmat is to not do hundreds and hundreds of problems because you won't see problems or questions like that on the test.

peruse the boards here and you'll begin to pick up a strategy that works for you. 4-5 months is plenty of time to establish and stick to a routine in order to get a great score (whatever a great score is to you).

what is your target score?
why did you cram all of your studying in to such little time?
which books did you study from?

by answering these questions we may be able to steer you in the right direction.

words of wisdom though - BECOME A STUDENT OF THE PROCESS!

Thanks for your inputs , these are the answers to your questions
what is your target score? 700+
why did you cram all of your studying in to such little time? I am working full time and do not have much time after coming back from work.Though i want to change this and start studying at least an hour a day.
which books did you study from? OG , Manhattan and Kaplan premier.

[money9111]

Ok so with a 700 you're in it with a lot of us here aiming for a similar score... WELCOME TO THE CLUB! haha

I can understand the FT job portion as I'm in the same boat... which is one reason I'm taking a prep class... but you can ask more about that if you'd like to know...

If you have 4-5 months to study... add to your arsenal of books the PowerScore CR Bible... it's actually better than MGMATs. take your time when going through all study material... the goal is to understand the reasons why the answers are as such... which will make solving them much easier.

remember you will only see those upper level 700-800 questions if you can unequivocally answer the lower level questions correctly... if you're good at geometry and bad at exponents.... well then study those exponents and become even better at them then you are with geometry... because you will never see those hard geometry problems if you cant do the easy exponent ones...

i don't want to type too much now... but im sure other people will have some more insight to offer

[Brian@VeritasPrep]

Hey, Nerdygal:

A few thoughts on what you wrote - actually, I don't think 4-5 months is too soon at all, and I'd suggest aiming for something more like 2-3, with an option to add on a few more weeks as they're specifically necessary. 4-5 months is a pretty nebulous amount of time...think about what you were doing 5 months ago in early September - that's just a long time ago. By now, most people have given up on their New Year's resolutions already...pledges that were made 4 months before that are that much tougher to keep.

I'd aim for maybe 12 weeks out, and plan to register for your test along that schedule in 6 weeks. If, at that point, you're behind the schedule you've set for yourself, then plan on moving it back by 2-3 weeks, but have a specific plan for what to do with that time. Otherwise, just "having more time" will often lead directly to procrastination.

When you do study, keep this in mind - the GMAT is much, much more about "how you think" than "what you know". Try to spend your study time more on problem solving than skill building. The more you can ask yourself "why?", the better you'll be:

-Why did you make the mistake that you did?
-Why did you like the wrong answer choice?
-Why did the problem require you to use that equation?
-Why does the algebraic rule hold true?
-etc.

If you hold yourself accountable for deeper understanding of the GMAT concepts and, more importantly, of your own thought process, you'll still pick up the skills, but even more so you'll pick up on how the test is structured to beat you, and how you can accordingly be prepared. I'd even say this - if you blank on a rule or equation when you're going through a problem, don't look it up unless you absolutely have to. Instead, try to derive the rule yourself - if you prove the rule to yourself, you'll remember it much better than if you just look it up and plug the numbers in. The more you focus on "how you think" than "what you know", the quicker your score should improve.

[akuma]

From my personal experience.

I started prepping for the GMAT late last November and I have already begun to forget some concepts that I learned during the last couple months. I'm taking the GMAT on March 6, meaning that I'll have prepped for the exam for roughly 3.5 months (averaging about 2-3 hrs/day). What can you and I take away from this? MAKING FLASHCARDS!

[money9111]

Flashcards = Phenomenal... as soon as I began studying I started making flashcards... now tthat I have officially started studying for the GMAT I'm grateful that I made notecards.