My Daily Preparation Blog

[gmat4babu]

I attempted my first GMATPrep this morning and decided to finish without completing it (after in 1st question on verbal)



AWA -
Argument Analysis went okay but I did well in Issue Analysis.

Took a 5 mins break

Quant -
My strategy was - try to get as many first few questions as I can. Did right on the first question in 1 mins and 30 seconds, although it was simple one, I was making sure I get that right. Second question was a table with several variables and had to calculate value of X & Y . I spent almost more than 5 mins in trying to answer. After that question I kept loosing time. My average in practicing OG was pretty good but looks like due to lack of online practice along with my stubbornness to get an answer right (being engineer and good high school math background, I always took Quant for granted) made me answer around 21 questions in 60 minutes (Average around 3 mins/ question). Then I tried next 3 to 4 questions to answer fast. When I had around 5 minutes left, I still had 6 or 7 questions pending and I started guessing randomly and ended up answering total 34 questions only.

Took a 5 mins break, checked work emails.

Verbal
First question was CR - Analyze Argument Structure. My brain won't read it. I figured I needed to stop, so decided to cancel the test.



I am planning to retake the GMAT Prep test tomorrow morning. I know it will inflate my scores little but want to train for stamina


BTW, I have scheduled my GMAT for 4th Feb (yep, not even 2 weeks :roll: ), I have finished my preparation on concepts, . Needs to practice, practice, practice...

I appreciate any comments, suggestions.

[mbaprocrastinator]

I am engineer too with a good quant background, however, I wouldn't trade a good score or the possibility to answer more questions for answering just one question right. I believe GMAT is a test for your acumen and not your ego. IMHO, let go of your ego of getting the answer right. If its a tough question that you need to answer just see if you can eliminate any of the answer choices right away. You stand a better chance of guessing the right answer once you have eliminated the wrong choices. More than concepts and formulae you also have to imbibe logic when answering both quant and verbal questions.

And when it comes to guessing, I have read in many prep books and elsewhere on this website that its good to guess throughout one section rather than cram all the guessing to the questions at the end. If you get all your guesses wrong your score will be pulled down more than if you spread your guessing throughout the section.

Practicing from books and with pen and paper is totally different from practicing with the GMATPrep. You will have to take the GMATPrep practice tests when you can spend 4 solid hours and stay away from taking these test while at work or in a place where you can get easily distracted. You are doing yourself an injustice by taking these tests while at work. You know all of this already, but if it helps you that someone has to drive it into your brain I'll be more than happy to do so

Good luck!

[gmat4babu]

I just finished GMAT Prep Test 1 and didn't do well with a score of 580 (Q 41, Verbal 28 ). I did very well in managing time and guessed where it was taking longer. Although I have to admit, I need to work on stamina, many errors in Quant were pure recklessness. I guess that's what GMAT is all about , balancing time & accuracy!!!

I am still hopeful that I will do well on 2/4

[beatthegmat]

Thanks for these update! Good luck!

[Stacey Koprince]

Don't take so much time! The penalty for leaving questions blank is -3 percentile points per question. So if you only answered 34 questions in quant, you left 3 blank, which means that whatever you were scoring when the time ran out, the algorithm just automatically deducted 9 percentile points from it!

One question is not worth a 9 percentile point drop (and, frankly, if you get sucked into spending 5+ minutes on one problem... the odds are not very good that you'll end up getting it right)!

Even if you'd guessed on those last three, if you had gotten them all wrong (fairly likely if you're making random guesses), that would result in about a 2 to 2.5 percentile point drop per questions, or about 6 to 7.5 percentile points total. That's better than a 9 point drop, but it's still not a good thing!

Acknowledge that the test is going to give you problems it can't do. It gives EVERYbody problems they can't do. Figure out which ones those are and drop them! (That is, make an educated guess and move on without spending more than your allotted time.)

[gmat4babu]

Thanks Eric & Stacey!

I took GMAT Prep2 this morning and scored 620 (Q49 & V26). While Quant score is pretty good, I am shocked to see Verbal Score. I have to admit that I was loosing stamina during verbal. But I am curious on what can cause the score to be so low ( I had 16 questions wrong in Verbal & 25 correct - Q#2,3,5,6,11,17....were wrong ), may be I had all sample questions correct?

I had scored 590 in first attempt GMAT Prep 1 and then I took it again and scored 720 (only couple of questions repeated from first attempt)

I figured that I need to build stamina. I am planning to take 2 PowerPrep on the weekend to build stamina.

I would appreciate any tip to boost my confidence for the actual tests on Monday morning. Does any one recommend retaking GMATPrep Test2 again?

[Stacey Koprince]

Do you mean that you're taking the test this Monday morning - in three days? If so, I wouldn't take any more tests. If you take a lot of tests right before the real thing, you won't be building stamina, unfortunately - you'll just be tiring yourself out right before the real thing. (I tell my students to take the final practice test 1 week before the real thing.)

Think of the test as a marathon - you don't run a practice marathon right before the real thing or you'll be too tired to perform well during the real marathon.

You asked what might cause a score to be "so low" - do you mean that the verbal score dropped a lot from your previous practice tests? If so, what had you been scoring? (And the 720 on the test on which you saw repeats has to be discounted b/c you did see some repeat questions, which not only boost your score b/c you get them right, but you can also do them much more quickly, which means you have more time to spend on other new questions as well.)

There are any number of reasons why a score might drop significantly - mismanaging your time and having to rush towards the end (resulting in more errors spaced closely together), making a higher than normal amount of careless mistakes due to fatigue or inattention, etc. The specific location of individual errors (earlier vs. later in the section) does not matter so much as (a) clusters of errors and (b) errors on lower-difficulty problems (which is tough to gauge b/c GMATPrep doesn't tell you the difficulty levels of the problems).

Go back over your most recent test and try to figure out what happened in the verbal section. Use that data to help you develop a better gameplan for Monday - there's where you get your confidence boost, because you know you won't be repeating the same test-taking and content errors you just made on this test!

[gmat4babu]

Thanks Stacey! I had scored 720 with Q49 & V40. Like I said, hardly couple of questions were repeated but I definitely managed my time better last time.

Today, I didn't manage my time well and ended up rushing and guessing several questions in a row. I have read your post that guessing need to be spread out but I guess under pressure in order to catch up I made that mistake.

Lastly, if not more tests, any other tip to develop stamina?

[Stacey Koprince]

I don't have a great answer for you in terms of developing stamina - basically, the best way to develop stamina is to practice entire tests under 4 hour timed conditions... but if you do that within a couple of days of the test, you run the serious risk of tiring yourself out.

I'm pretty strict about the "last test 5-7 days before" rule, but I know some of my fellow teachers say 3 days before is okay. Given that it's too late for you to practice stamina well in advance, you might try one more test tomorrow.

And, obviously, don't forget to bring food and drink with you to have on the breaks, eat meals that will give you good energy right before the test and the day before, etc.