660...AGAIN!!!

[ens137]

I just took the GMAT for my second try. Want a 700!!!!
In June I score a 660-35v/45q...yesterday I got a 660-40v/39q

On my gmat practice exams my q scores in time(april to aug) order were
42,43,44,45,45

So basically I feel that the first 6 or 7 questions went great then I tried to solve a few problems that were well beyond my level. I ended up wasting ALOT of time on 2 or 3 questions then I had to scramble and got thrown off my game.

I need advice on how to get my Q up by being more proficient with my time. IDEAS??????

Thanks

[Stacey Koprince]

It sounds like you already know what your issue is: you can't get so sucked into one or a few questions that it costs you time (and points) towards the end.

Part of this is just psychological: you've got to get yourself to let go.

Part of this is practice. Here are some ideas:

Know how long 1 min is without looking at the clock. You can train yourself to do this by buying a stopwatch with lap capability. Do a set of problems. Turn the stopwatch over (so you can't see the time) but know which button is the lap button. Every time you think 1 min has gone by, push the button. When you're done, review the data and see how good you are. Chances are you'll consistently skew one way or the other (most people skew too high). Keep training yourself until you can get pretty consistently within 15 seconds on either side (that is, 45sec to 1min15sec).

Now, if you don't know what you're doing by the 1 min mark, then it's extremely unlikely that you're going to both figure out what to do AND have time to do it during the second minute. You've already used up half your time and you're not on track. At that point, you need to move on to making an educated guess.

So, next, you also need to study how to make educated guesses. "Educated guessing" is just a fancy term for "find some wrong answers and eliminate them." Often, when we don't know the right way to do something, we still know the wrong way to do it! Or we can estimate or use logic to get rid of some choices. Etc. The way in which you make an educated guess is specific to both question type (DS, PS) and content area (rates & work, probability, inequalities, geometry). And you actually need to study how to make educated guesses - you aren't going to figure out how to make them during the test itself. It's easiest to study how to make educated guesses on problems that are right in your range - not too easy and not too hard for you. Learn the process on these ones that you understand, and apply that process to problems of the same type when you can't do the actual math.

Finally, of course, you can get faster at the actual math itself. When studying problems, look for shortcuts (again, by both question type and content area). Know how to recognize those shortcuts - how are you going to know that you can use this shortcut again on a new problem in the future? During the real test, you have to recognize shortcuts, not figure them out from scratch; by the time you've figured them out from scratch, you've used up the time you would've saved by using the shortcut! Once again, it's easier to study shortcuts on problems that are right in your range right now. Find them and study how to recognize them from problems you can do, and then apply those lessons to problems of the same type that are taking you too long.

Good luck!

[lunarpower]

I just took the GMAT for my second try. Want a 700!!!!
In June I score a 660-35v/45q...yesterday I got a 660-40v/39q

On my gmat practice exams my q scores in time(april to aug) order were
42,43,44,45,45

So basically I feel that the first 6 or 7 questions went great then I tried to solve a few problems that were well beyond my level. I ended up wasting ALOT of time on 2 or 3 questions then I had to scramble and got thrown off my game.

I need advice on how to get my Q up by being more proficient with my time. IDEAS??????

Thanks

stacey's advice, in the post above, is solid: you must internalize the stopwatch and develop a gut feeling of the length of one minute (and two minutes).

on top of that advice, what follows is a bit more practical. you have to have a completely different mentality toward solving problems than you probably do at the moment.

specifically, if you're like most gmat test takers (and most MBA students, who are, of course, essentially the same population), you're probably a hard-driving, type-A but also a careful thinker. those two character traits will combine to produce the following attitude toward problem solving:

TYPICAL GMAT TEST TAKER'S QUANT APPROACH:
"i don't want to start working on this problem until i can tell more or less exactly how the solution is going to proceed. i want to try to see my way through the problem like a chessmaster, four or five 'moves' in advance."

no, no, no. this attitude will KILL you on the quant section.
this sort of forbearance is great for making actual business decisions, on which millions of dollars, not to mention the lives of companies (and their clients), rest. however, on the gmat, this approach is guaranteed to produce exactly one result: you'll use way more time, and accomplish way less, than you need to.

here's the right way to approach the problems.

OPTIMAL GMAT QUANT APPROACH:
have an INSTANT OPENER for every question, and then react to whatever happens from there.
by 'instant opener' i mean that, on EVERY problem, your hand should be moving, working on the problem, within at most 10-15 seconds after you finish reading the problem.
the thing with gmat problems is that they're very versatile; in most cases, just about any opener you can use will work, and most quant problems are more straightforward than you might think once you've opened them successfully.
so this means that the principal challenge in studying quant problems lies in associating PROBLEM TYPES with OPENERS.
along with that challenge comes the concomitant challenge of letting yourself start a problem that you don't know how to finish. that sort of attitude is anathema in the business world - no one in their right mind would write a business plan for only the first two phases of a business, for instance - but it's a must for quant success.

here's what you should be able to do, then:
* go through the quant problems in the o.g. at a rate of 100-150 per hour.
* for each problem, try to name an OPENER within ten seconds of the time you finish reading the problem.
- example 1: you see an overlapping sets problem with two sets. opener: "aha, i'm going to make a two-set matrix grid."
- example 2: you see a rate-time-distance problem. opener: "aha, i'm going to make an RTD chart, and let THIS relationship (pointing to one of the relationships in the problem) define my variable."
- example 3: you see a problem with a ratio of 4:5. opener: "ok, i'm going to let this quantity be 4x, and let that quantity be 5x."

if you can produce these sorts of openers for EVERY problem within 10-15 seconds, you are going to be in really good shape for the exam. if there are any problems for which you can't produce such openers, and you're just stuck there staring at them, go back and study those problems - AND SIMILAR PROBLEMS - until you can generate reliable openers.

go for it.

[ens137]

This is great. I appreciate you input. I will try to incorporate your suggestions into my studies over the next few weeks and repost the results. Thank you very much.

E

[emrahercan]

Great advice lunar power. What would you recommend for verbal question ?

Regards../EE

I just took the GMAT for my second try. Want a 700!!!!
In June I score a 660-35v/45q...yesterday I got a 660-40v/39q

On my gmat practice exams my q scores in time(april to aug) order were
42,43,44,45,45

So basically I feel that the first 6 or 7 questions went great then I tried to solve a few problems that were well beyond my level. I ended up wasting ALOT of time on 2 or 3 questions then I had to scramble and got thrown off my game.

I need advice on how to get my Q up by being more proficient with my time. IDEAS??????

Thanks

stacey's advice, in the post above, is solid: you must internalize the stopwatch and develop a gut feeling of the length of one minute (and two minutes).

on top of that advice, what follows is a bit more practical. you have to have a completely different mentality toward solving problems than you probably do at the moment.

specifically, if you're like most gmat test takers (and most MBA students, who are, of course, essentially the same population), you're probably a hard-driving, type-A but also a careful thinker. those two character traits will combine to produce the following attitude toward problem solving:

TYPICAL GMAT TEST TAKER'S QUANT APPROACH:
"i don't want to start working on this problem until i can tell more or less exactly how the solution is going to proceed. i want to try to see my way through the problem like a chessmaster, four or five 'moves' in advance."

no, no, no. this attitude will KILL you on the quant section.
this sort of forbearance is great for making actual business decisions, on which millions of dollars, not to mention the lives of companies (and their clients), rest. however, on the gmat, this approach is guaranteed to produce exactly one result: you'll use way more time, and accomplish way less, than you need to.

here's the right way to approach the problems.

OPTIMAL GMAT QUANT APPROACH:
have an INSTANT OPENER for every question, and then react to whatever happens from there.
by 'instant opener' i mean that, on EVERY problem, your hand should be moving, working on the problem, within at most 10-15 seconds after you finish reading the problem.
the thing with gmat problems is that they're very versatile; in most cases, just about any opener you can use will work, and most quant problems are more straightforward than you might think once you've opened them successfully.
so this means that the principal challenge in studying quant problems lies in associating PROBLEM TYPES with OPENERS.
along with that challenge comes the concomitant challenge of letting yourself start a problem that you don't know how to finish. that sort of attitude is anathema in the business world - no one in their right mind would write a business plan for only the first two phases of a business, for instance - but it's a must for quant success.

here's what you should be able to do, then:
* go through the quant problems in the o.g. at a rate of 100-150 per hour.
* for each problem, try to name an OPENER within ten seconds of the time you finish reading the problem.
- example 1: you see an overlapping sets problem with two sets. opener: "aha, i'm going to make a two-set matrix grid."
- example 2: you see a rate-time-distance problem. opener: "aha, i'm going to make an RTD chart, and let THIS relationship (pointing to one of the relationships in the problem) define my variable."
- example 3: you see a problem with a ratio of 4:5. opener: "ok, i'm going to let this quantity be 4x, and let that quantity be 5x."

if you can produce these sorts of openers for EVERY problem within 10-15 seconds, you are going to be in really good shape for the exam. if there are any problems for which you can't produce such openers, and you're just stuck there staring at them, go back and study those problems - AND SIMILAR PROBLEMS - until you can generate reliable openers.

go for it.