Please suggest way forward

[Narendra.Bande]

Gents and Ladies,

I have attached the gmat progress chart. I have not progressed much. But I am not ready to give up untill 23 march actual GMAT. I am not sure how to practice ahead to reach target score of 600-630.

My practice till date:

When I practiced the OG 16 book once (like old school), I tried to complete a set of problems as 60 day plan in 2-3 hrs in a day but I did not try to finish every individual problem at 2 mins of less. I understood mistake only when i started using gmac.wiley.com online practice. I mistakenly opted for all options for practice session. All the Q and V are appearing together mixed. I did not make a right choice. But I have completed 137 questions out of 800.

Observations on gmat.wiley.com: Out of 137, I have 58 wrong and 78 correct. Maximum time the quant hard ones are right. But easy ones are wrong. Because I made silly mistakes or wrong anticipate or just rushed through as the easy answer can't be right. Also most of them I remembered without solving.

veritas practice test: I did not write the essay exactly - 0 preparation for essay. Dragged Essay mistakes in IR, confused in IR section. Result IR 3/12. Then I was anxious, time managed poorly, lost focus on couple instances while doing Q and V.

MGMAT 1st test: I did write the essay in relation to argument. But IR totally screwed 1/12. Recovered in 8 mins. My MGMAT Q and V can be seen in attachment.

I have two options:

1. Continue to answer 78 questions only on online gmat OG 16 from 10 to 16 march, on 18/03,20/03 and 21/03. take 2 more full test in between (1 kaplan on 17/03 and 1 GMAT prep 2 on 19/03). Final GMAT booked on 23/03/2016.

Or

2. Practice MGMAT 3 days as 12/03, 15/03, 20/03 and OG 16 online 78 for 10/03, 13/03, 15/03, 18/03 and 21/03. Take two full tests as planned kaplan and Gmat prep 2.

on 11/03 meeting with Manchester School at mumbai and 14/03 take a break for unscheduled event.

Any thoughts?

Regards,
Narendra Bande

[DavidG@VeritasPrep]

Gents and Ladies,

I have attached the gmat progress chart. I have not progressed much. But I am not ready to give up untill 23 march actual GMAT. I am not sure how to practice ahead to reach target score of 600-630.

My practice till date:

When I practiced the OG 16 book once (like old school), I tried to complete a set of problems as 60 day plan in 2-3 hrs in a day but I did not try to finish every individual problem at 2 mins of less. I understood mistake only when i started using gmac.wiley.com online practice. I mistakenly opted for all options for practice session. All the Q and V are appearing together mixed. I did not make a right choice. But I have completed 137 questions out of 800.

Observations on gmat.wiley.com: Out of 137, I have 58 wrong and 78 correct. Maximum time the quant hard ones are right. But easy ones are wrong. Because I made silly mistakes or wrong anticipate or just rushed through as the easy answer can't be right. Also most of them I remembered without solving.

veritas practice test: I did not write the essay exactly - 0 preparation for essay. Dragged Essay mistakes in IR, confused in IR section. Result IR 3/12. Then I was anxious, time managed poorly, lost focus on couple instances while doing Q and V.

MGMAT 1st test: I did write the essay in relation to argument. But IR totally screwed 1/12. Recovered in 8 mins. My MGMAT Q and V can be seen in attachment.

I have two options:

1. Continue to answer 78 questions only on online gmat OG 16 from 10 to 16 march, on 18/03,20/03 and 21/03. take 2 more full test in between (1 kaplan on 17/03 and 1 GMAT prep 2 on 19/03). Final GMAT booked on 23/03/2016.

Or

2. Practice MGMAT 3 days as 12/03, 15/03, 20/03 and OG 16 online 78 for 10/03, 13/03, 15/03, 18/03 and 21/03. Take two full tests as planned kaplan and Gmat prep 2.

on 11/03 meeting with Manchester School at mumbai and 14/03 take a break for unscheduled event.

Any thoughts?

Regards,
Narendra Bande

Your plan looks reasonable to me. Just make sure that you're fully dissecting your old problem sets and practice exams. When you're making post-exam notes, try to give yourself 3-4 concrete action steps that you can implement next time. Maybe you could have picked simple numbers when you saw variables in the answer choices. Maybe you spent too much time on hard questions and had to rush through questions you'd have answer correctly if you'd had more time. Maybe on Sentence Correction questions you were too focused on grammatical minutia and forgot to consider the logic and meaning of the answer choice you selected, etc. Refer to this list of adjustments every day until you've fully absorbed them. Then repeat the process after the next practice exam. And, of course, post any specific questions you have in the forums.

[MartyMurray]

Number one thing to change: When you do practice questions, don't totally ignore the time per question, but definitely do not worry about getting them done in two minutes each.

You need to learn to get RIGHT answers more consistently. So first learn that, without any time constraint to worry about. If you don't get a right answer to a question if you have unlimited time, I mean ten minutes, fifteen minutes, an hour even, per question, then you know that you need to get better at handling that type of question.

For some categorized quant questions that you could work on in a topic by topic fashion, you could go to the GMAT section here, https://bellcurves.com, and set up a practice account.

For verbal you seem to have plenty of questions left from the OG sets.

[[email protected]]

Hi Narendra.Bande,

What are the exact application deadlines for the Schools that you're interested in? I ask because with a March 23rd Test Date, you have less than 2 weeks of study time remaining. If you have the flexibility to push back your Test Date, then you might want to consider doing so - any additional time that you could put towards your studies could be helpful.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

[Narendra.Bande]

Thanks everyone for inputs. I reckoned that I did almost all mistakes as pointed.

I prepared and completed IELTS during studying for GMAT. Also essays for Imperial. So my attention was half divided. Too many thing same time.

Rich,

I am petroleum engineer and have 11 years work ex. I am targeting below unis as mostly are accepted by BP and Shell and all ask for more than 600. Plan is to go back to oil industry after MBA.

My application last dates are as follows:
1. Imperial College: 20 May (no scholarship)
2. University of Edinburgh April End
3. Manchester Business : 7 April 1st round
4. Cranfield: 24 April
5. Erasmus: 4 April till December.
6. Nanyang Tech: 31 March. (But I will drop this as I am not able to complete application if my GMAT is bombed)

As you are asking me to postpone GMAT, please tell me as how much time you think I would need to reach 600-650.

Regards,
Narendra Bande

[[email protected]]

Hi Narendra.Bande,

Back in January, you wrote that you had scored 400 on a CAT:

https://www.beatthegmat.com/3-months-stu ... tml#763505

Now it's 2 months later and you're still scoring at that same general level. This means that "your way" of approaching this process did not lead to the big improvements that you were looking for. Since your score goal is still 200+ points away, it's not practical to think that you can make up that difference in just a couple of weeks. If the minimal acceptable score is 600, then you'll likely need at least another 2-3 months of consistent, guided study to hit that level. You'll also probably need to invest in a GMAT Course of some type (either Guided Self-Study or instructor-led). While I know that all of that extra time will impact your application plans, you seem to understand that you need a 'high-enough' GMAT score for the Programs that you're interested in.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

[Narendra.Bande]

Today I did Kaplan free test. Results: Q 43% and V46%. How to translate this score.

[MartyMurray]

Today I did Kaplan free test. Results: Q 43% and V46%. How to translate this score.

You could use the chart here. https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/how-to-cal ... at-scores/

[[email protected]]

Hi Narendra.Bande,

What kind of 'test' was it? Was it a FULL-LENGTH CAT (with the Essay and IR sections) or something else? And were you given any other data about your performance (Overall Score, Scaled Scores) or just those two numbers? To that end, are those numbers 'percent correct' or "percentiles?"

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

[Narendra.Bande]

Sorry I did not explain. I did Kaplan full cat today. The score was shown as percent. Manhattan gives score in number not as percent. So I got confused.
I did miserable on IR. Only 3 correct out of 12.
Thanks Marty.

[Jennifer@Kaplan]

Hi Narendra.Bande,

On Kaplan CAT score reports, the section score should appear as a relatively large purple number, with the percentile given as a smaller gray number beside that score. You should also have received a score on the 200-800 scale that appears first. If your scores are not displaying properly, it is worth contacting customer support at 1-800-KAPTEST for assistance. You could also send me a screen shot of the score report by private message so I could see if I can provide further explanation or guidance.

Best,
Jennifer Kindy

[Narendra.Bande]

Hello everyone,

thanks for your help.

I did my GMAT rather bombed GMAT 400. :roll: :roll: Rich was right. But I could not spare more time and I had to take exam and move on.

So lets see. I am thinking of going back to work and may be online MBA.

Thanks and regards,
Narendra Bande

[[email protected]]

Hi Narendra.Bande,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day didn't go as well as hoped. What were your Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores?

While you're probably not happy about all of this, the good news is that all of those Business Schools are still going to be around, so you can always reapply at a later date. Thus, the potential to earn an MBA is never truly over. Of course, you will have to restudy for the GMAT, but you've learned a lot about this process that you can use to your advantage, so you can hone a better overall plan next time.

You should take some time off from studying for now, but if you'd like to put together a new plan sometime this year, then you can feel free to contact me directly.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich