Tried hard many times but got confusing results, please help

[minhphuoc]

Hi,

I am totally disappointed about my performance so far. I used to be positive but now totally lost. Please help me.

I am not an English native speaker. Basically I tried hard but the result is confusing. Below is my preparation progress:

Since Aug 2011, after working thoroughly on OG 12 and Manhattan Gmat collection, from Number property to reading comprehension, I took first Gmat test on Dec 2011 and got 580 (Q43, V27).
I, then, tried to figure out what I need to do to improve my both skills on Verbal and Quantity. After surfing on forums such as beatthegmat.com, gmatclub.com, and so on, I found the helpful advice from Stance, Ron and other gurus that for every problem we should study it carefully why we solve it right or wrong to prevent same mistakes in future. I did apply this way to both verbal and quantity sections. In the morning, I solved problems 17 PS, 20DS and in the afternoon I did 15CR, 20SC and 2 passages. All of questions are from The Official Guide for GMAT Verbal and Quantitative Review 2nd Edition. And in the evening I reviewed all of the questions. I did so every day and took a trial test on every Sunday. And before I took an official test in Jan 2012, I got 610 on test 1 and 650 on test 2 on Gmatprep. However when I took the real one, I got 530 (Q46, V19)!!! I was so disappointed.

Again, I sat down and thought carefully what I should change in my methodology. I remember that I was still slow on math, leaving 7 questions for guessing and on verbal, around 10 questions. I thought my problems are: firstly, I made slow calculations and spent a lot of time on hard questions on math and secondly, I still cannot fill confident when doing CR and SC. I spent a lot of time reading the problems and tried to understand them. I also did not catch well the concept tested on SC. Therefore, this time, while solving OG 12 again, I record my progress, what concept tested in every question, and look for short cut on the forum to enhance my speed in math. For SC, in every question, in addition to my thinking, I try to look for other explanations on other forums such as manhattan.com, gmatclub.com, and so on to enrich my knowledge and determine what concept tested. By doing this, I really feel really confident in SC because I gradually fill up my knowledge gap in this field. For CR, as some gurus advise, I try to figure out as many as possible what patterns of reasoning frequently tested. For example, coincident vs causal, percent vs number, etc. And doing so also helps me to speed up my reading and thinking. I still commit to do 17 PS, 20DS, 15CR, 20SC and 1 passage in the morning and in the afternoon I reviewed them every day. Finally I took again test 1 of Gmatprep and got 720. Although this result might be inflated because I took it 3 times at least, I really feel confident for what I have done.

Thus, I took third official gmat in mid Mar 2012 and you know the result is 550 (Q42, V24)!!! Again I left 7 questions on math and 8 on verbal for guessing! I am really totally confused. What I should do to improve my speed and my skills? Please kindly help.

Thank you, guys.

Phuoc

[dav35]

first, and foremost... i would recommend that you revisit the basics rather than work on practice tests. you want to save that material until you are ready to develop your test taking strategies.

in terms of timing...

i suggest that you time yourself. do 10-20 OG problems at a time max. make sure that you complete them at a rate that is at or below the target for the GMAT. after a few weeks, your "internal clock" will let you know whether you have spent too much time on a single problem.

a large part of doing well on the GMAT is managing you time. you need to know when to move on. if you haven't arrived at your best guess within 2 minutes, then chances are you won't improve your odds with additional time.

after you solve the problems, check your answers (and the methods you employed) vs. the solutions. look for areas where you can reduce the number of computations and/or steps.

[minhphuoc]

Thank you, dav35,

first, and foremost... i would recommend that you revisit the basics rather than work on practice tests. you want to save that material until you are ready to develop your test taking strategies.

What do you mean by 'the basics'. I actually review concepts every time I made mistakes and look for new way to solve problems every time I get them slow. But I ... still slow. That is why I am confused. What else I should do? Please help me.

[dav35]

i would buy some verbal study material. i recommend buying MGMT SC and powerscore CR bible. read these books 1-2 times each.

this will help you better develop your understanding of the basics.

[lunarpower]

i received a private message regarding this thread.

my first, and most important, piece of advice to you at this point -- really, the only advice worth giving at this point -- is that you should completely walk away from this test for at least a couple of weeks.
from the sheer volume of study time you've described here, your brain is going to be literally, physiologically, burnt out -- that is, it will quite literally be unable to make the neuronal connections it needs to make for you to learn.

i'm also concerned by the general way in which you are approaching the verbal section. you have described attempts to memorize "patterns of reasoning" in the critical reasoning and reading comprehension sections, as though those sections could somehow be reduced to a set of rules that you could just commit to memory.
it is actually impossible -- not just hard, impossible -- to succeed at critical reasoning or reading comprehension by memorizing rules. that's actually the sole reason for the presence of these problems on the test: you can't solve them without thinking. you can't use formulas; you can't memorize a finite set of "patterns". instead, you need to have the right mentality, and you need to think critically about the situation in much the same way as would a real-life person presented personally with an unfamiliar situation.

--

in general, here's the advice i would give at this point:
* take a couple of weeks off. this really means off, as in "do zero hours of gmat preparation".
* after you take some time off and let your brain rejuvenate, do the following --
-- in the verbal section, you can follow advice similar to what i've given the following poster: https://www.beatthegmat.com/retaking-gma ... tml#464164
-- in the math section, start studying backup methods (such as number testing, backsolving, etc.) if you aren't sure what i'm referring to, you can check out the video dated 2/4/10 on this site: https://www.manhattangmat.com/thursdays-with-ron.cfm

good luck.

[minhphuoc]

Hi Ron,

Thank you very much for your response. I highly appreciate your detail guidance.

First, I totally agree with you that after 2 weeks doing nothing since the last time I took real Gmat, I feel refresh and my brain seems react pretty fast with a couple questions I just saw. I definitely adjust my timetable to allow more time to rest.

However, I would like to elaborate some points to have a better preparation. Please kindly help me out.

i'm also concerned by the general way in which you are approaching the verbal section. you have described attempts to memorize "patterns of reasoning" in the critical reasoning and reading comprehension sections, as though those sections could somehow be reduced to a set of rules that you could just commit to memory.
it is actually impossible -- not just hard, impossible -- to succeed at critical reasoning or reading comprehension by memorizing rules. that's actually the sole reason for the presence of these problems on the test: you can't solve them without thinking. you can't use formulas; you can't memorize a finite set of "patterns". instead, you need to have the right mentality, and you need to think critically about the situation in much the same way as would a real-life person presented personally with an unfamiliar situation.

The patterns I mentioned in my last preparation in CR originated from the discussion in this thread:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/cr-t61176.html and https://www.manhattangmat.com/strategy-s ... -logic.cfm . I find them very useful because they help me recognize the problem faster than before. Sometimes I remember you also recommend the general way to approach causal weaken question. For example, if X --> Y, then prove Y --> X or find Z, which cause X and Y. So, should I continue this way or else? Or do I miss something?

-- in the math section, start studying backup methods (such as number testing, backsolving, etc.) if you aren't sure what i'm referring to, you can check out the video dated 2/4/10 on this site: https://www.manhattangmat.com/thursdays-with-ron.cfm

I actually did as you said. This way really helps me speed up in some cases, especially remainder in division.

Please shed more light on the above-mentioned

Thank you, Ron
Phuoc

[lunarpower]

I find them very useful because they help me recognize the problem faster than before.[/i]

from the way you wrote this -- "recognize the problem (singular) faster than before" -- it seems like you're talking about revisiting problems that you've already worked.
if that's the case, then of course you're going to be able to recognize these "patterns" -- because you're looking at the same problems!

if this isn't what you meant, then please explain.

Sometimes I remember you also recommend the general way to approach causal weaken question. For example, if X --> Y, then prove Y --> X or find Z, which cause X and Y. So, should I continue this way or else? Or do I miss something?

i may occasionally come up with something that looks like that, but i always try to follow it up with one or more analogies or specific examples. the human brain is not a computer, and doesn't think very well in terms of x's and y's and so on; on the other hand, when it comes to thinking by analogy and recognizing similarities between situations WITHOUT formalizing them into "patterns", the brain is splendid. (this is why people, even people who are not particularly bright, have no trouble understanding common metaphorical expressions -- because the metaphor just makes sense. if the same things were translated into x's and y's, most people would simply be confused.)

hence the advice in the thread to which i linked. it doesn't really matter if you can give x/y/z "rules" -- but, if you can come up with analogies, then your brain is working in the right way.

--

the other thing that's never addressed by the "patterns" people is the fact that just recognizing patterns IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO SOLVE THE PROBLEMS.
this will be easiest to explain simply by giving an example. go to cr 109 in the 12th edition official guide.
the passage in this problem does fit one of the "patterns" described on your thread -- in particular, it's one of those "they assume that a plan will succeed as planned" passages -- but you can't solve the problem by making that identification.
to solve that problem, you have to interpret choice (a) in terms of common sense: if people are likely to be caught doing bad things, they will do those things less often. obviously you are not going to have memorized "people will be less likely to do things if they might get caught" as a PATTERN; you have to get it from your own experience of being a real-world human being. that's the point of these problems.

i've stated this in various places on this forum, but it's worth stating again: the reason critical reasoning is on this test is that it's, well, critical reasoning. it's actually impossible to score at the highest levels on this test by internalizing a bunch of "patterns"; you have to think. and memorizing too much stuff will inhibit your ability to think. (indeed, the entire point of memorizing anything, in any situation at all, ever, is to avoid having to think.)

[pemdas]

... and memorizing too much stuff will inhibit your ability to think. (indeed, the entire point of memorizing anything, in any situation at all, ever, is to avoid having to think.)

@Ron, after memorizing comes thinking. A lot of stuff must be memorized not to waste time and to avoid rethinking - like the ways/techniques for defining causal relationship or logical commands, etc. I agree we will need to think further after rote memorization and absorbing information. We still have to memorize some minimum stuff to avoid wasting time in exam. I just wanted to stress this out as your post in its ending sounded as *don't memorize* when in fact there's some valid reason to memorize too.

[arun@crackverbal]

Interesting conversation here. My $0.02 on this:

1. I think RC could be a bigger culprit here. 75mins for around 30 questions in Verbal is definitely the biggest problem you need to fix. What has been your timing for a 2-para passage with say 4 questions? If you are taking anything beyond 6-8 minutes you have a problem. My personal experience has been that students spend way too much time trying to read and understand the passage, when their main focus should be on answering the questions correctly. Also a classic mistake is not working on RC. As in this case - the importance you have attached to SC and CR is evident. RC should not be ignored.

2. As Ron pointed out CR is not a "bag of tricks". However you can be conscious of the standard distortions used by the GMAT such as Causation-Corelation. What is more important is your ability to pick up "structural" elements from questions. What are the traps that you are falling for? What did you think was wrong about the right answer choice, and what did you think was right about the wrong answer choice? If you were given a similar (obviously the same won't come) question on the real test - would you be able to solve it? Would you be able to solve it within 2 minutes? These are the questions you need to ask yourself while "internalizing" the problem.

3. Apart from OG - what other source did you use? My advice is to practice using tough GMATPrep questions (you can find a lot of them discussed here and on mgmat forums). The reason I am saying this is because at a 20-raw score level in Verbal the questions are a bit more direct. Apparently you seem to be comfortable doing that i.e. applying clear cut theory. However the ones above 40 raw score can be tricky. Tricky not because they test anyother concept but the closeness of the answer choices, complexity of the stimulus, subtlety of the concept tested etc.

Take more tests - will help for sure! Apart from GMATPrep try your hand at taking atleast 5-6 full-length tests - including the AWA and IR sections.

HTH,

Arun