Stuck in Math

[JoeMary]

Hi everybody, my name is Joe and I have two opportunities more to beat the gmat.

So, after spending 75USD on the enhanced reports I realized I did a big mistake. I though my quant score on my 2nd gmat exam in the 82 percentile... while that was my verbal score. I think the reason is that for math, I usually had the answers correct during practice or committed easy mistakes.

So far these are my scores of the actual exam.
1. 690, V37 Q47
2. 660, V37 Q44
3. 660, V40 Q42


My 4 official gmatprep exams range are in order> 700, 740, 690, 730.

Next time I will sit will be on Oct 31 and I already asked for a week off prior to the exam in my job. Any advice how should I better prepare? I feel I know almost everything and I need a good day and dont do stupid mistakes.

BTW, on the last exam I was in the 36th percentile in PS and 86th in DS.

Additional info,

Studies:
1. I sat for the exams on June 27th, August 12th and September 12th. Between the 2 & 3 exam I read my scores incorrectly, I thought my Q score was 80+ and for some reason (nervousness) I lagged in verbal. After buying the enhanced reports and seeing I was wrong now its clear I need to step up my math work.

2. First exam, Official Guide and Magoosh, Second Exam Official and Magoosh (more Magoosh as I ran out of questions from the official exam). Third exam, magoosh (re did questions) and the gmatprep packs.

Thank you!!

[MartyMurray]

Hi Joe.

First off, most of the questions in the OG are easier than the ones a person sees when the person is scoring above 700 on the GMAT. So probably part of the reason for your making "careless error" is that on the exam you are seeing questions that are a little trickier than the ones with which you are practicing.

Also, repeating practice questions is of limited value, because while repeating questions does give you some review of what getting answers takes, it does not provide practice in a key aspect of GMAT success, skill in on coming up with a way to get the answer to an unfamiliar question.

Meanwhile, your PS performance indicates that the way you get to answers, possibly answers to questions in key PS arithmetic categories, could be better.

So the answer for you, is likely to go through quant questions category by category and tighten up what you understand about and how you get to answers in each category before moving onto the next category.

Are you great at every time getting right answers to rate questions? If not, work on a variety of rate questions until you can do them flawlessly pretty much every time. Same thing for mixture questions, overlapping sets, combinations, triangles and other category that you are not a total expert in.

And here's a key thing. In practice, don't be satisfied when you know how to get an answer. Only be satisfied by right answers. Get accustomed to doing what you have to in order to get right answers, and if that means slowing down in practice and taking ten minutes per question at first, then do that. You have to get used to using tight processes, catching yourself before you make a silly error and generally doing what it takes to get to the right answer.

For more insight into how to consistently get right answers to quant questions, you could check out this post.

https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/careless-m ... gmat-math/

To access thousands of categorized quant questions you could sign up for a free practice account here. https://bellcurves.com The explanations on that site are not always that great, but there are many great tricky PS questions in the question bank.

Meanwhile, continue working on verbal, learning to more consistently get right answers to verbal questions as well. A key question for verbal, and for quant too, is "What do I have to notice in order to get this one right?"

[Matt@VeritasPrep]

Also, beware of free GMAT content online. The questions tend to be either copies of old (retired) official GMAT problems, strange problems that have little to do with the problems you'll see on the GMAT, or easy, routine problems that high scorers are unlikely to encounter.

You get what you pay for - be sure to use the best prep materials you can!

[ceilidh.erickson]

First of all, you're still misinterpreting your scores. The percentiles are by nature relative to other test takers, and do not reflect your raw ability level. In recent years, quant scores have been going up (and percentiles going down) while verbal scores have been going down (and percentiles going up). More on that here: https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... mat-score/

You quant scores *ARE* actually higher than your verbal scores, so it would be a mistake to think that you only need to focus on quant now (just as it was a mistake to think that you only needed to focus on verbal before).

Most schools want to see an overall score that's as high as possible, because that's what matters to their rankings. The breakdown between quant and verbal doesn't matter much... unless they have reason to doubt your ability in one or the other. Non-native English speakers might be expected to hit a certain threshold on the verbal (perhaps 37+ for top schools), and people who haven't taken rigorous quantitative classes in undergrad might be expected to hit a certain threshold on quant (usually a 45+ for top schools).

That said, the disparity between your GMATPrep CATs and the actual exam might indicate one of the following:

- taking CATs under non-test-like conditions: skipping the essay, taking extra breaks, hitting the pause button, taking it at different times of day, etc. Try to take all practice tests under the exam same conditions that you'd take the real thing.

- test anxiety. If you think this is an issue, there are lots of helpful resources on this forum.

- blood sugar. Most people snack while they're taking practice tests, but often forget to bring snacks to the real test. Your brain needs fuel! Make sure you eat something during every break.

As Marty said, low PS and high DS (we can trust the percentiles generally with a disparity like that) indicates that you're probably making a lot of careless mistakes. Make sure to TRACK YOUR WORK to figure out what those mistakes are: https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... -studying/

And here's more to improve PS: https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... -pen-down/

[JoeMary]

Thank you all for the replies. I took the test again and to my surprise I managed to get a 740. I am in the process of applying to the universities now.

Best,
joe

[ceilidh.erickson]

CONGRATULATIONS!!! Fantastic score!! Good luck with the application process.