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I'm having difficulty moving beyond the Q44 score as the last three CAT's I have taken have been Q44, Q44, and Q44 (this is in the past 2-weeks). I am targeting a Q Score of 46-47 and I am 19 days out from my exam. After reading Bunuel's re-post about moving beyond the Q44, I put into practice almost all of the advice (roughly 1 week ago). I am targeting areas that are difficult for me such as Word Problems and and focusing not really on performing a ton of questions, but spending time with the concepts and reasons why I am getting them wrong. I feel confident during practice; however, when it comes to the test I can't seem to answer any questions in the 700-800 level, I literally have look at the questions and can't even begin to solve them so I do some haphazard calculations - ultimately guessing and move on. Even worse, when I take GMATClub tests I can't a single question right in the 600-700 level. What am I doing wrong? I study approximately 3 hrs of Quant per day and spend 1/3 of that time PS and about 2/3 reviewing my error logs and notes. Are there other strategies I can employ? Edit: Using MGMT CATs
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Re: Moving Beyond Q44 [#permalink]
31 Dec 2012, 09:38
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Hi, Even my quant score was stagnant at 44-45 for sometime, then I changed my strategy a bit and listed out topics where my confidence and accuracy was high, topics were i would correctly answer the question in 2+ mins and topics where my accuracy was low. I started polishing the concepts of the topics where I thought I needed more work (some new formula, shorter ways to get to the answer etc) . Rather than solving the questions straight away I tried to plug in numbers, substitute answer choices and back solve etc. This helped me a great deal. While taking the test, instead of wasting time on solving a question for 3-4 mins now I started guessing and moving on in 2 or less minutes (mostly questions on which my accuracy was low), this gave me some more time on questions I was confident about but were calculation intensive. This can easily help you boost ur score by 2-3 points. Hope this helps us
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Re: Moving Beyond Q44 [#permalink]
01 Jan 2013, 04:42
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I've also been in your shoes. The first time i took a CAT i scored a Q 43 (or 44) and was depressed because this was at the back end of an intense 2.5 month self prep concentrating mainly on quant (around 75% of time was alloted to quant). I then began a series of self checks, and found that i was doing badly on on certain areas and certain types of questions. A month of hard concentrated prep using official questions ( OG Quant, and OG13) as a base and then moving on to harder sources ( Veritas prep advanced word problem, and DS book , MGMAT Advanced Quant) i found my overall test score improved. I have gotten 45 , 47 and 47 on my last three CAT's and this is about a month after the first CAT, It is certainly doable in 15-20 days.
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Re: Moving Beyond Q44 [#permalink]
01 Jan 2013, 08:21
vomhorizon wrote: I've also been in your shoes. The first time i took a CAT i scored a Q 43 (or 44) and was depressed because this was at the back end of an intense 2.5 month self prep concentrating mainly on quant (around 75% of time was alloted to quant). I then began a series of self checks, and found that i was doing badly on on certain areas and certain types of questions. A month of hard concentrated prep using official questions ( OG Quant, and OG13) as a base and then moving on to harder sources ( Veritas prep advanced word problem, and DS book , MGMAT Advanced Quant) i found my overall test score improved. I have gotten 45 , 47 and 47 on my last three CAT's and this is about a month after the first CAT, It is certainly doable in 15-20 days. During your month of focused prep which sounds remarkably like what I'm doing now, did you focus on the concepts or the process of doing the problems? I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on how to do some of the problems that I have trouble w/ and do well on anything between 500-650 level and then just fall apart on the 650+ level questions (I'm gauging the levels using the MGMT Assessments feature after each CAT). At this point should I start thinking about strategy and back solving as the poster above mentioned, or keep plugging away at concept etc.? I mean, I know the concepts don't change they're just complicated w/ tricks and traps, but sometimes I can't even begin to solve the problem. Opportunity cost is an issue since I'm so close to the exam. Enjoyed the signature BTW, I'm a huge fan of Eric Thomas as well.
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Re: Moving Beyond Q44 [#permalink]
01 Jan 2013, 08:44
Quote: did you focus on the concepts or the process of doing the problems? I only re read the strategy books for concepts in areas where i needed review (Such as SOLIDS etc). I concentrated mainly on looking at strategy for tackling question types and reviewing solutions to the questions that i found challenging (even those that i got right). My problem was that i was fretting too much about the advanced 700+ questions and those were taking a lot of my time ( Perhaps 80% of my practice questions could be clubbed in the 700 level category (or beyond) ). I had a good strategy to tackle the real tough questions but was not getting enough practice for the medium level questions and therefore was not doing well on them. I could say that my main error was in making CARELESS mistakes especially in WORD PROBLEMS. For this i targetted my practice by finishing the Advanced Word problem book by Veritas (despite of the cover, it is essentially a 650 level book ( except a few questions that are 700 level)... I spent a good 10 - 15 days going over answering strategies from the Advanced Quant book (not concentrating so much on the question sets but the strategy). I do not feel i learned much more concept than i knew when i was getting 43 but i had a clearly defined strategy to solve each sub type. Now that i look at the way i answer questions, i see a clear coherent approach that is consistant and NEAT as compared to the haphazard way of answering questions (that I was using earlier)..I have also now become better in reading the questions and getting an idea as to which approach would be quickest and would give me the best chance to get it right.
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Re: Moving Beyond Q44 [#permalink]
01 Jan 2013, 20:31
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hey, Just forgot to mention, the back solving, plugging in numbers, pattern recognition ,etc strategies are mentioned in MGMT advanced quant book, if you have that great because it covers all that and in case you don't have one you can watch Ron from mgmt explain those in the video lessons (links below). His video series is really good. Just took a gmat prep mock yesterday and got a Q 49 just by bailing on the right questions, and employing these strategies. Hope they work for you too. GL http://vimeo.com/11330152http://vimeo.com/39703039http://vimeo.com/48398779also you may refer this article several-people-has-asked-me-if-it-is-possible-to-improve-40820.html
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Re: Moving Beyond Q44 [#permalink]
02 Jan 2013, 03:42
dentobizz wrote: hey, Just forgot to mention, the back solving, plugging in numbers, pattern recognition ,etc strategies are mentioned in MGMT advanced quant book, if you have that great because it covers all that and in case you don't have one you can watch Ron from mgmt explain those in the video lessons (links below). His video series is really good. Just took a gmat prep mock yesterday and got a Q 49 just by bailing on the right questions, and employing these strategies. Hope they work for you too. GL http://vimeo.com/11330152http://vimeo.com/39703039http://vimeo.com/48398779also you may refer this article several-people-has-asked-me-if-it-is-possible-to-improve-40820.htmlThanks. Definitely helpful.
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Re: Moving Beyond Q44
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02 Jan 2013, 03:42
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