Seeking Advice with 1 Month to go

[AlexGrimard]

Hello all,

Looking for your advice on where to focus my studying with 1 month until my test day (Dec 2) as a result of my first 3 Manhattan CAT results:

CAT 1 - (39Q 33V) 590
CAT 2 - (37Q 36V) 600 (left 3 Q questions unanswered)
CAT 3 - (39Q 33V) 590

Looking at just the overall quant and verbal scores it's obvious to me that I should be reviewing verbal. But when I look at the details of my scoring, this is where I start to get confused on where I will get the most out of my remaining study time as it looks as though I am averaging a higher difficulty in Verbal but my test scores reflect a lower score than my quant:

Question Format Avg Diff Correct Avg Diff Incorrect
Problem Solving 620 660
Data Sufficiency 630 670

Sentence Correction 650 720
Critical Reasoning 670 730
Reading Comprehension 670 700

Any advice would be greatly appreciated and thanks so much!

[[email protected]]

Hi AlexGrimard,

Before I can offer you the specific advice that you're looking for, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How long have you studied?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) When you took these CATs, did you take the FULL CAT (with the Essay and IR sections)?

Goals:
4) What is your goal score?
5) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
6) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

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

[Brent@GMATPrepNow]

Hello all,

Looking for your advice on where to focus my studying with 1 month until my test day (Dec 2) as a result of my first 3 Manhattan CAT results:

CAT 1 - (39Q 33V) 590
CAT 2 - (37Q 36V) 600 (left 3 Q questions unanswered)
CAT 3 - (39Q 33V) 590

Looking at just the overall quant and verbal scores it's obvious to me that I should be reviewing verbal.

Your two RAW scores (from 0 to 60) can't be compared this way.
Your average RAW Quant score (from 0 to 60) is about 38, and your average RAW Verbal score is 34
A Quant score of 38 is in the 36th percentile
A Verbal score of 34 is in the 71st percentile

So, if I were you, I'd probably focus more on increasing your quant score.

Since you've already taken some practice tests, I suggest that you go back and use them to identify areas of weakness.

While CAREFULLY analyzing your practice tests, there are four main types of weakness to watch out for:
1. specific Quant skills/concepts (e.g., algebra, standard deviation, etc.)
2. specific Verbal skills/concepts (e.g., verb tenses, assumption CR questions, etc.)
3. test-taking skills (time management, endurance, anxiety etc.)
4. silly mistakes

For the first two weaknesses, the fix is pretty straightforward. Learn the concept/skill and find some practice questions to strengthen that weakness. To focus on one topic at a time, you can use BTG's tagging feature to isolate one concept. For example, here are all of the questions tagged as statistics questions: https://www.beatthegmat.com/forums/tags/ ... statistics
See the left side of that linked page for more tag options.

If your test-taking skills are holding you back, then you need to work on these. For example, we have a GMAT time management video at https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gener ... video/1244

Finally, if silly mistakes are hurting your score, then it's important that you identify and categorize these mistakes so that, during tests, you can easily spot situations in which you're prone to making errors. I write about this and other strategies in the following article: https://www.gmatprepnow.com/articles/avo ... teaks-gmat

Cheers,
Brent

[ceilidh.erickson]

I agree with Brent - don't obsess over the specifics of difficulty level. The major issue is that your score hasn't gone up! I'll disagree with Brent ever-so-slightly, though: with 3 weeks left, I wouldn't tell you to focus primarily on quant or primarily on verbal. You need to gain points wherever you can gain them! First, assess where there are gaps in your content knowledge, then think about whether you've been using good process (quant or verbal). The overall score matters way more than the raw scores.

Here is some advice about why your score isn't going up, and what to do about it:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/gmat-verbal- ... tml#801224
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... t-wrong-2/
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... -going-up/
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... re-part-1/
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... re-i-want/
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... re-i-want/