GMAT Club PM Response Blast! FAQ Series 1
The first one in the series of PM responses that I had written that is probably helpful to the general public, addressing broad GMAT Strategies, and a few specific queries as well
Quote:
XXX this side. We had a chat in the gmat club chat room. I want some help in my preparation. I am preparing for gmat from very long time but i am not able to score better marks on mock tests. From past one month i am preparing full time. On 800Score tests i was scoring 680 and 700 ,but on manhattan my score just fell to 570. And because of this score i cancelled my exam which i book for 9th december
.
Please help me in mapping gaps in preparation and basic fundas.
In verbal, I have realized that under time pressure my mind gets puzzled up and i end up marking wrong answer.
whereas, In quant PS, i make many calculation and silly mistakes. But in DS i always get confused and i really dont know how to do a ds problem in 2 mins when the problem requires you to take smart numbers.
Please help me! i am desperately waiting for 740!
It will be great effort from your side if you can help me.
First off, why do you think you need a 740? Your aim is to get into a business school of your choice, not to achieve a high and mighty GMAT score. So look into those B School websites and figure out a realistic target score.
You are not expected to crack every GMAT problem in under 2 minutes. First get the concepts in place. How confident do you feel about the GMAT content? Have you done your basics such as the
MGMAT books?
For Quant: PS and DS, practicing and looking at
Bunuel solutions helps a LOT. So try them. But first make sure that you get your content in place. That could be anything ranging the syllabus from
MGMAT or Veritas books. Then take a practice test to check for weaknesses, and where you need working on.
You mentioned plugging in numbers and testing cases for DS. I think the best resource for them are the
videos by Ron Purewal. Check them out FOR SURE. Just search for DS videos: absolute gold mine.
800 score tests are pretty old. I would not consider them as accurate indicators. Take a GMAT Prep test for a more realistic experience.
bb wrote:
You need to stop partying and write that summit review ASAP
oops. Yes. Coming right up!
Quote:
I am new to the GMAT CLUB and this is the first message I've sent on this.
I downloaded your comprehensive GMAT PREP CR and find it as an awesome resource. Thank you so much for sorting out the material for all the members.
I have purchased both the GMAT PREP Exam Pack 1 and the GMAT PREP Question Pack 1.
I am afraid the questions on your Comprehensive GMAT PREP will include questions I might see during the tests that I will take on the GMAT PREP software. I do not want to see those questions ahead of time as it would inflate my test score. Therefore, I am wondering if your GMAT PREP Comprehensive document includes test questions from GMAT PREP as well or does it only include Question Pack questions and
OG Guides questions and does not include test questions.
Sorry for the confusing question, hope that makes sense. I will be looking forward to your response.
Thanks,
A lot of questions in the QP 1 were included in previous versions of GMAT Preps (as evidenced by our forum tags), so I wouldn't be surprised if some of the questions do end up in the collections. The PDFs contain most
official guide and GMAT Prep questions, so tread lightly if you are considering taking the GMAT Prep CAT as a score indicator.
Quote:
Hello Sir!
I am a GMAT aspirant but struggling with quants too. I am looking forward to have little guidance from you for my improvement in score. I would like to know if you heard/ solved 1800 jeff sackmans extreme challenger set of quants? in case if you can let me know.. i will be extreme grateful to you
thanks
It really depends on what sort of improvement you are aiming at. I would probably just follow Bunuel and do his sets. That should be enough for GMAT quant (assuming proper review methods are followed)
Quote:
Hi Souvik,
Sorry to disturb you but i needed a verbal expert to help me out.
I have been regularly writing
MGMAT and GMATPREP tests and scoring between 680 and 720 consistently with around 38-42 in Verbal.
I recently gave the GMAT twice and scored 640 and then 610 (Verbal dropped to 31-32). Quant was ok but when it came to verbal, i was just not able to understand the question. I really dont know why but it happened. I cant figure out if its stress or pressure or something else but i messed up twice and i want to do it right the 3rd time. That's why i reached out to you.
Would you please help me out with my problem. Any sort of advice would be highly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Well to be honest GMAT SC are just harder than
MGMAT stuffs. In my opinion,
MGMAT stuffs are very rules oriented and GMAT SCs are very "feel" and "meaning" oriented. I would STRONGLY suggest to look through the problems in the GMAT Prep SC document that I created. A lot of GMAT Prep SCs that you may not have discovered yet are perfectly in line with what you will find in the actual test.
For example the question on the thread that I made for SC. There are a lot of others like those, in line.
Quote:
Hi. I am XXX from India and I just gave my GMAT on the 25th of September. I got a low score of 640 (Q 48 V 29). I was getting 720+ in my GMAT prep mocks and 780-790 in the repeated ones. I prepared form the
OG,
OG QUANT,
GMAT CLUB TESTS and even took external help. 29 in verbal is the lowest score that i ever got. I even purchased the MGAM SC and
powerscore CR books. My aim it to get a 740+ and i really someone to guide me. So please help me out and tell me how to improve on my verbal section. In the mocks the lowest that i got was a 34 and the highest was a 47. 29 just felt unbelievable. I got a 6 on the AWA hence, the language is not an issue for me.
As you can see you're not the only one. Inflated GMAT Prep scores are very common occurences. 780-790 in repeated CATs really do not mean anything. I would rethink my GMAT Strategy, cool off for a while, and get back with a new vigour. A V29 translates to significant gaps in verbal concepts.
This post may of some help in boosting the verbal scoreQuote:
Dear Souvik
I have been an avid follower of your posts on GMAT Club. I am taking the GMAT on the 9th of next Month and would like some advice.
My previous attempt was a dismal 640 (Q 47 V 33).
After the overdue routine of practice and intermittent mock tests, my analysis is as follows:
Manhattan Tests (regularly between 670 and 720)
Veritas Prep CAT's (scoring between 680 and 710 on 6 tests, one test left)
Kaplan CATs (scored a 700 (Q 50 V 37) ; I dont quite understand the algorithm though, I got 10 more correct answers in the 2 sections combined and ended up
with a 660 (Q49 V 34) , i guess its got to do with the performance of others on the same test)
GMAT Prep Tests (taken before , and no real need to discuss, too many repeats)
GMAT Exam Pack 1 - took Exam 3 for the second time (1 yr after my previous GMAT attempt- 740 (Q 49 V 41) , verbal had 2 repeats)
Analysis of my trend till now- Avoidance to delve deeper into the nuances of few chapters in quant (coordinate, P&C , probability, tougher sets questions etc.) and therefore getting them incorrect consistently
Verbal- SC is more or less fine (more than 80% accuracy in all mocks till now)
CR and RC is something that can make or break my verbal score (60 % accuracy on hard questions; (targetting more than 730, since as of now I have 3 years of full time work exp and have been recommended to get to a 730 to make it to the top 20 globally)
I just have the 404 Question Pack left and I am currently practicing medium and hard questions in verbal from GMAT Club (the consolidated question bank )
and question banks in quant (retired GMAT questions)
A few questions:
a) I am not able to determine whether my failure to get to a 740 as of now is owing to lack of stamina or lack of clarity in a few subjects
b) Should I start studying for 4 hours at a stretch to build stamina, or focus solely on concepts, practicing on my own pace (eg my average time to solve a CR question is around 2 mins 30 seconds)
c) How does one improve on weaknesses? (a process for example that guarantees accuracy)
d) Anything else you would like to recommend in terms of practice or tests??
Thanks a lot !
A. I think CR could be the potential differentiator. Remember that 80% accuracy is in SC will not fetch you a V42 score. You probably can only miss 1 or maximum 2 SC questions to score that high on verbal. 60% CR accuracy however can potentially bring your score to lower 30s. Question pack 1 is a great resource for CR. But just solving questions will not help. Make sure you follow a decent approach for CR questions.
Critical Reasoning can be a little more difficult to improve upon, but certain strategies do come in handy. I have my own views about prethinking. For strengthen and weaken, prethinking can be a great idea as strengthen and weaken questions test logic that is already there in your brain. For example when your dad used to say “you must have been the one who broke the glass windowpane while playing cricket”, you instantly used to reply “It was not me but the kid from the next block.” You were, in fact, weakening your dad’s conclusion. But, trying to find out assumptions in convoluted arguments can be extremely tedious and you should be careful in not wasting a lot of time. For inference/bold face questions let your common senses take the back seat and rely solely on the premises and facts in the argument.
B. Yes I think the 4 hour thing is a good idea. But not for studying, because your brain goes on a much stronger overdrive when solving questions for 4 hours in a timed environment. So I would build stamina drills based on questions and not studying. But it doesn't hurt to study for longer periods (not more than 4 hours for sure though)
C. Any sort of a guarantee would be justifying your inability to work really hard. So I really would ask you to work as hard and smart as you can.
Following this thread may help with verbal improvement.
D. Each practice test should be followed by an EXTENSIVE review, and I cannot stress on this enough.
For SC: make sure you have iron clad reasons to disprove the wrong answer choices.
For CR: I mentioned strategies above
For PS: Every single question should be attempted with an alternate approach with reasonable success.
For DS: Testing cases and plugging numbers till it becomes second nature (Ron's video linked above)
That's it folks. More PMs and more responses coming up next week
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