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Am I ready to retake the GMAT?

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Am I ready to retake the GMAT?

by galak » Thu Jul 26, 2012 9:37 am
Here are my following scores.

7/1 550 (Q32, V33) gmatprep 1 (baseline)
1/7 640 (Q43, V35) gmatprep 1 retest
2/4 640 (Q44, V33) mgmat 1
3/10 650 (Q40, V39) mgmat 2
4/7 680 (Q44, V38) gmatprep2
4/26 620 (Q42, V34) gmatprep2 (retest on the new gmatprep 2.0 software)
4/30 590 (Q40, V31) real GMAT (had to pee in the middle of verbal)
7/14 670 (Q42, V39 IR 3.87) mgmat 3 (ran out of time on the last 2 verbal questions)
7/21 660 (Q42, V38, IR 3.73) mgmat 4 (74% on quant at Question 33, then i guessed on the last 4 and missed them all)
7/24 710 (Q47, V40, IR 4.57) mgmat 5 (79% on quant at Question 35, guessed the last two correctly, Q = 81%)

gmat scheduled 8/6

1) I am hit or miss with the Quant. Sometimes the mid level 70-85 percentile questions are doable and sometimes they aren't. Although when reviewing them after the test, I would say 75% of them are doable by me.

2) I generally run into Quant timing issues. I only leave about 4 mins to answer the last 4 questions. I am trying to work on guessing on questions that I am not sure about. (I did this a bit on the last mgmat test and it seemed to help)

3) On my last mgmat test, I got my highest verbal to date. I am a bit worried about this though.
a) I feel that the gmat verbal is a bit harder than the mgmat. is this true?
b) My gmat score tanked in my first real gmat test V31.

4) I am planning to take mgmat cat 6, this saturday, then retaking either gmatprep 1 or 2 next friday/saturday before I actually write for the test on Monday.

5) Do you think I am ready? What should I focus on?

6) When taking my last mgmat, I was in the 99% in verbal from question 7 to 12. When I missed question 13, I dropped to 94%. Then when I missed question 14, I dropped to 88%

Is this realistic? Should the drop not be as drastic since I answered 6 of those high difficulty questions in a row and was maintaining a 99%?
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by tutorphd » Thu Jul 26, 2012 3:44 pm
I've seen other students say that the MGMAT CAT verbal is way too easy compared to the real one.

Answering two very easy questions in a row may tank your score, especially in the first half of the test when the scoring algorithm is making up its mind about your level. I've seen that happening on GMATPrep too. It's the retarded nature of the adaptive tests, they think if you are really at such a high level, it is really improbable to get two easy questions wrong. Try to avoid making errors on easy questions, especially in a row, especially in the begining of the test.

To know your actual level, you have to do a test with GMATPrep which is a more reliable predictor than MGMAT tests.
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by mausam.deb » Thu Jul 26, 2012 6:23 pm
Dear galak,

First you need to set your target. I believe if you are targeting mid 600 score then MGMT 710 would be fine otherwise it would be wise to take some more time to study before sitting for the real one.

You can try other free tests by Manhattan, Veritas prep etc.

Thanks
Mausam
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by Dan@VinciaPrep » Thu Jul 26, 2012 8:10 pm
Hello Galak,

Readiness
First, a couple questions for you. How much review/work have you been doing in between tests? What has been your study method? Have you saved all of the work that you've done on past questions?

I think you are getting close, but I'm not sure that you're quite there yet. Generally, I tell students that they should get their target score three times on practice tests before they take the real test.

Do you have to take the test on Aug. 6th? If you can push it back a couple weeks I think you'd be doing yourself a service since a lot of people get really frustrated if they have to take the test a third time. I would use these extra couple weeks to review all of the questions that you've already gone through, find your specific problem areas ( parallelism on SC, rates on math etc... etc...), and then strengthen these areas. Then I would do another couple practice tests.

Timing
As for your timing, you need to learn to make educated guesses several times throughout the exam instead of just at the end of the exam. If you wait until the end to do all of your guessing your score will suffer more than it probably would if you had spread your guessing throughout the exam.

Verbal score
On the real test many people freak out and act differently than they did on the practice tests. For example, some students try to read faster or slower than they usually do on the practice tests and this hurts their reading comprehension. On the day of the test you should act in the exact same way as you did on your practice tests. As for the accuracy of the Manhattan exams- they're usually pretty good. However, students generally do about 20 points lower on the real exam than they did on their best Manhattan GMAT exam.

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by galak » Fri Jul 27, 2012 12:03 am
thanks for everyone's feedback so far.
First, a couple questions for you. How much review/work have you been doing in between tests? What has been your study method? Have you saved all of the work that you've done on past questions?
Between each practice test, I review all the problems once again to see if I understood how to solve it. Generally, I can solve approx. 80% of my missed problems with time.

I started studying last July. I have gone through the following
MGMAT books twice (first time through advanced, second time skipping)
OG12 and both supplemental books twice. (I have a complete timing/answer choice for these)
Aristotle SC prep guide + supplemental 100 Question bank
Powerscore Critical Reasoning Bible.
Do you have to take the test on Aug. 6th?
I signed up for it, but definitely can push it back. However, I feel I am at my prime right now and I am afraid that with a few more weeks of studying I might lose focus.

Here is the breakdown of my last 3 MGMAT Cat tests, right click to view full image
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by Dan@VinciaPrep » Fri Jul 27, 2012 7:19 am
After looking at your results a couple things stick out

First- you're spending too long on the SC questions. This is where you really need to perfect your skills so that you can save time for the RC and CR questions. Generally, you want to do SC questions in about 1 min. and 10 sec. on average. Luckily, this area can be improved faster than the other verbal sections if you study the grammar rules and do a lot of practice questions

Second- make sure to only spend more than 2 minutes on a math question if you're ahead of schedule. If you see that you're falling behind during the test you need to keep an eye out for a good question to make a fast educated guess. Spending 4 or 5 minutes on one question (you had a percents question that took 5 min.) is almost never a good idea unless you're way ahead of schedule.

Also- if you missed a math question you need to redo that math question a week or two later to make sure that you've learned from your mistake. If you get it wrong a second time you need to do it another time a week later. Reviewing you mistakes until they no longer are problematic is crucial to your success. Have you been keeping track of your mistakes and what you should do to improve on similar questions?

Finally, if you don't think that you're going to be able to stay focused for another two weeks after Aug. 6th go ahead and take the test on Aug. 6th. However, most people do better when they have a bit of extra time to study and to let the material really sink in. Just make sure you do a couple practice tests in the last 10 days of your studying.

Cheers!
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by galak » Fri Jul 27, 2012 9:47 am
Thanks for the advice Daniel.
Have you been keeping track of your mistakes and what you should do to improve on similar questions?
Not specifically. I tend to just review everything I get wrong but have not focused on particular areas. I guess this is bad of me. I really don't know how I can actually improve on my weaknesses. I think some areas of concern I have is, combination/probability, mixtures, rates and absolute values in DS questions. What would your recommendation be? I forgot to mentioned I went through all of the GMATPrep question pack 1 during my preparation as well.

Do You think I should go back and revisit all the questions I had done in my previous MGMAT Cats 1 - 2?

Thanks
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by Dan@VinciaPrep » Fri Jul 27, 2012 9:36 pm
You should definitely go back and look at all of the questions that you did in your previous tests.

To improve your weaknesses you mainly just have to just redo the questions that you've missed until you really understand the methodology and do more questions that are of the same type. That is, you should do more problems that use mixture, rate, probability and any other problem areas that you discover upon reanalyzing your past questions. You could probably just search this site for specific problems related to these topic areas. You may also want to re-read the Manhattan GMAT sections that talk about these areas.

Again- it is crucial to work on your weaknesses and to really master the questions that you've done wrong. If you just work on random questions at the end of your studies you're not being as efficient at improving yourself as you could be. Doing questions that you already know how to do isn't going to help your score much (except if you're going too slow on these questions in which case it will be useful to redo these questions).

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by galak » Fri Jul 27, 2012 10:10 pm
Thanks for your reply.

Okay, I guess my plan now is to take another cat tomorrow (maybe mgmat cat 6, or gmatprep cat 2. Then review as many problems as I can in my problem areas from all the MGMAT Cats. I also play on buying 3 Gmatfocus exams to do during the week. Then cap off my week with doing 1 final Cat before my official test. If I don't score well in my CATs or my diagnostic, then I will push the test out a few weeks.
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by Dan@VinciaPrep » Fri Jul 27, 2012 10:45 pm
Ok, but keep in mind that if you don't change your test date 7 days before your test you'll most likely have to pay the full price to move your test
Last edited by Dan@VinciaPrep on Sat Jul 28, 2012 8:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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by galak » Sat Jul 28, 2012 9:22 am
Thanks! I didn't know that
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