DS Stategies

[mriiidula]

I have one month to go for my exam and I'm freaking out about DS. Problem solving is not bad, but I'm barely able to answer any DS question correctly, unless its ridiculously easy. What can I do? Can someone share a list of strategies to tackle such questions?

[knight247]

Hey Mridula,
About DS...Well, there are way too many strategies to maybe just put down into one post. Some of the options you have is to rigorously find sources like this site and go thru them as thoroughly as possible. And practice practice practice. If you're willing to invest a little maybe you could purchase the veritas prep DS book which is what I did. And no, I'm not an employee of veritas.lol. Now, u said ur pretty decent with your quant. Keeping that in mind, the veritas book will cover most of ur concerns with DS and help you bridge the gap between ur math knowledge and applying that knowledge to the DS section. In my case I had zero knowledge in quant before I started and that book did wonders for me so you can imagine how much of help it would be to u. Again, I'm not a veritas employee. It cost about Rs.1100 and you can have it home delivered from flipkart or infibeam.

Sorry if my post wasn't of much help.

P.S. Nice blog...Makes for an interesting read. And guess ur not in India, so you'll have to look elsewhere for those books. Cheers.

[Brent@GMATPrepNow]

I have one month to go for my exam and I'm freaking out about DS. Problem solving is not bad, but I'm barely able to answer any DS question correctly, unless its ridiculously easy. What can I do? Can someone share a list of strategies to tackle such questions?

If you're looking for DS strategies, I created 105 minutes of free videos on the subject (at https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gmat-data-sufficiency)

It's important to point out that everyone struggles with DS questions at first. It makes sense since DS questions are unique to the GMAT, so you wouldn't have seen anything like this in the past.
Given the unfamiliarity with DS questions, I see a lot of students ignore them (hoping, I suppose, that they will go away ). For example, I have given students homework consisting of PS and DS questions, and when we meet the next day, I'm told "I managed to do all of the PS questions, but I didn't have time for the DS questions."

In my opinion, DS questions are what separate the big scores from the average scores on the quant section. So, while studying quants, spend much more time on DS than PS.

Cheers,
Brent

[mriiidula]

Hello knight247,

Thanks for your reply. I liked how you kept clarifying that you're not a VeritasPrep representative I have their RC book and I think its great, so I'm definitely a fan. I wasn't aware of any DS book that they had, since it's not on the reviews on this site.

But yea, I will most certainly look through other forums and websites. Thanks again, and if you come across any websites/videos/information regarding DS, please do share

And regarding my blog, ha. I haven't been on there for a while, too scared

[mriiidula]

Cheers Brent! I'm going to check them out right now. Fingers crossed it works for me!