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Advice for final steps - At 640 Level

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Advice for final steps - At 640 Level

by rontej0226 » Mon Nov 11, 2013 3:53 am
Hello all -

I am seeking advice for my final two weeks of preparation. Below are my test scores. My goal is to score higher than a 650.

October 14 - Exam 1: 640 Q46 V33
October 26 - Exam 2: 640 Q40 V38
November 10 - Exam 3: 630 Q48 V28

Preliminary analysis: I believe that I had timing issues in my last practice exam, where I rushed many questions and stayed too long on others. For my final two weeks, I am planning to do timed drills from the OG guide for quant, sentence correction, and critical reasoning. I am also planning on reviewing my MGMAT flash cards and notes from class.

If you have any advice or can offer any insight into an approach I should be taking, please let me know. It will be much appreciated!! :)
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by rontej0226 » Mon Nov 11, 2013 4:11 am
Some more insight of my last practice test:

1. Most of the quant questions i got wrong were Data Sufficiency (Focus on data sufficiency for timed drill sets)
2. 6 SC, 4 CR, and 7 RC questions wrong (Figured I do timed drill sets and review my answers in my final two weeks)
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by Dan@VinciaPrep » Mon Nov 11, 2013 8:58 am
Hello!
One thing to make sure that you don't forget to do is review all of the questions that you did throughout all of your studies that gave you trouble. Many people review the questions they got wrong right doing the problem, but then neglect to do the questions again several weeks later which would show you if you've really learned from your mistakes or not.

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by [email protected] » Mon Nov 11, 2013 11:10 pm
Hi rontej0226,

With your scores on your practice CATs, you're essentially at your goal, but you just missed it by a "little bit." Go back, review your CATs and count up the number of "silly mistakes." Those silly mistakes represent your missing points. Put your energy into keeping the silly mistakes from happening and your score will improve. And yes, it really IS that simple.

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by rontej0226 » Sun Nov 24, 2013 8:04 am
Hi All -

I took the test yesterday and didn't achieve my goal. Please provide some advice as to what I should do now. I plan to retake the test in a month from now. I don't want to waste my time.

Score on Test:
550 Q32 (28% percentile) V34 (70%)

The math really felt easy to me and I had no issues with timing. As I was thinking about how it went wrong, I realized that I may have guessed too much and under-thought some of the questions.

Background:
1. Taken MGMAT Course and did all HW
2. Taken all 4 GMAT Prep tests and scored 640 each time (don't know how)
3. Have completed all OG Guide questions
4. Have completed all Gmatprep Question Pack 1.
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by Brent@GMATPrepNow » Sun Nov 24, 2013 8:38 am
I suggest that you keep taking practice tests and carefully analyze each of them to identify your area(s) of weakness. While analyzing your practice tests, there are four main areas of weakness you should 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 free GMAT time management video at https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gener ... es?id=1244. Then you should hone your test-taking skills by taking more practice tests.

Finally, if silly mistakes are hurting your score, then it's important that you identify and categorize these mistakes during your prep 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 for BTG: https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2012/09/ ... n-the-gmat

Cheers,
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by [email protected] » Sun Nov 24, 2013 4:47 pm
Hi rontej0226,

The type of score drop that you experienced is usually due to some significant difference in how you approached the GMAT vs. how you approached your practice CATs. You might not realize that the difference was significant though. If you could answer a few questions, then we should be able to figure out what happened:

1) Did you take the ENTIRE CAT (including the Essay and IR) on each of your practice CATs or did you skip sections?
2) What time of day did you take your CATs vs. the GMAT?
3) Was there anything different about Test Day? Any distractions?
4) How often do you take notes while answering questions? How often are you answering questions "in your head?"
5) How often do you "narrow it down to 2 and guess?"

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by rontej0226 » Mon Nov 25, 2013 4:17 am
Hi Rich,

Thanks for responding.

1) I did take each ENTIRE CAT
2) I usually took my CATs at around 8 AM (EXCEPTION WHERE I TOOK THE LAST ONE AFTER WORK)
3) Test day involved some traveling and I had all morning to get nervous about the test. I bombed the Integrated reasoning too. It's like my brain was off for half the test it seems.
4) I try to take notes for each quant question. I might have done mental calculation during some DS. My pen sucked, but I used multiple so I let that go.
5) This time, I don't think i narrowed down my choices enough in the quant. It felt as if I was guessing more and assuming that the GMAT was testing a similar strategy that I've seen in the OG Guide so I tried to create clever approaches, whereas in my CATs I usually work throughout the entire section, this didn't feel like it.

However, I was pretty nervous in the beginning. Then after I finished the quant (thinking I did well), I was focused for the verbal.

Should I go back to the OG Guide and try the second half of the questions? I read an article about level 2 learning and learning how to recognize. I might just try to redo each problem and really go in depth (what are they testing, what's my strategy, and how do I obtain the wrong answers).

I was also thinking (since I have a month at least now) of reviewing my sentence correction book one more time and do those problems. Then take, maybe, 1-2 CATs.
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by [email protected] » Mon Nov 25, 2013 2:28 pm
Hi rentej0226,

Based on the Scaled Scores, it looks like you really got killed in the Quant section. That type of score drop means that you made lots of silly mistakes. With your earlier scores (Q40 to Q48), you've shown that you can perform at a much higher level than you performed on your Official GMAT, but you didn't bring the same level of excellence this time around.

The good news is that Business Schools don't care if you retake the GMAT. Also, you've learned something from this experience about how your attitude can affect your performance. If you were performing well at 8am, then you should plan on taking your Official GMAT at that same time. As you practice for the next month, you should put your emphasis on taking notes, staying organized and doing good work ON THE PAD (not in your head.

It sounds like you just had a bad day; now you have to work hard to eliminate the silly mistakes so that this won't happen again on your next GMAT.

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by rontej0226 » Tue Nov 26, 2013 2:50 pm
Thank you all. I will be re-doing all the OG Guide Quant problems in an effort to solidify my strategies and capture all the content that I must know.
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by rontej0226 » Sat Jan 18, 2014 11:54 am
Hi all! thansk for your help! I got a 660 on the test!
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by Brent@GMATPrepNow » Sat Jan 18, 2014 11:58 am
Great work, rontej0226!

All the best on your journey.

Cheers,
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