In need of advice... in mid-high 500's want to break 620!

[carolynyam]

I started with a diagnostic of 500 (29Q, 61V), and am now stuck in a range! My range varies from 560-580 (41-48Q, 51-62V) and I've taken 7 CATs. I'm very frustrated! I've been studying for almost 2 months now. My first CAT was 570, and I haven't improved since then! All of them are Kaplan CATs except 1 GMAT Prep which was 550!

I have 3 weeks left. I've tackled about the first 100 questions in OG for math and the first 50 for Verbal.

Should I stick with my range in OG and try to master those questions before I go to harder questions? I feel like I've been studying wrong!

Please help!

[jazzcat4u]

I feel ya...I'm stuck in the 500-600 range on my practice tests and its sucks considering the amount of time I've spent studying for the last 4 months...ive put in about 20-40 hours a week - ya I have some free time

I take my test in a week, I'm not shooting for 700 or anything (at least not anymore considering how heartbreaking my practice scores have been). At this point, I'll be happy with a 600 something.

Anyway, it seems like your verbal is ok, so I'll comment on math...if I were to do anything different about how I used my study time...I would probably focus on looking at a range of problems from easy to difficult and solving them within 2-3 minutes. Don't waste your time trying to solve a math problem if you can't do it within 2-3 minutes.

If you can't solve some math problems in the OG, give up and look at the explanation of those questions you can't figure out...you'll be surprised at how easy it was to solve it if you just knew what they were asking for in the first place...

I think one valuable piece of advice that doesn't seem to be emphasized, is really try to intepret what the questions are asking you and conceptually how can you tweak your fundamental knowledge of math to solve the problem.

Also, after exhausting the OG, exhaust the GMAT Prep software if you can. You'll start to memorize questions out of the OG, so you'll need to shock your system with a set of new questions.