OG 12 DS problems 100+ Brutal. Anyone else think so?

sonnco,
I'm glad you posted this . I was toooooo embarrassed to write a post on it but this happens with me too especially in the quant. I don't remember this happening in the Verbal section. Incidently, I did the Quant section from the Quant review OG(green) and found that the last 50 or so were hard there too.

bmillan, does this mean we need to review all our Quant strategies over again? I'm not sure what you did. But, I'm really struggling on the last few questions of OG too.

Haha couldn't agree more, I stopped 30 problems short of finishing DS from OG 12, gave a prep test, started working with MGMAT quant guides, all becoz OG was beginning to get scary, I will attack it again, let's see how it goes!

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Interesting post. I have been looking all over for brutal problems. I had almost dismissed the OG ed 12.

I have been working from Kaplan 800 and i do come back from time to time to the OG. Now i will take it on full steam and report back. If i do badly atleast i learn something from it!

One pointer is to go back to the question after 2-3 weeks and see if you can solve it. if u cannot then you still dont know the concept.

This works especially well with manhattan gmat cos some questions are just so damn hard! yet i have found MGMAT scores to be inline with the real deal

First thing to do is review the questions that you answered and try to find any patterns or weaknesses. For me, there were so many that I had to start all over. This is what I did:

1. MGMAT math series - I re-read all five books. This time I skipped the end-of-chapter questions, though. Those problems distracted me and took up too much time.
2. Jeff Sackmann - I practiced with all 1,800 math problems from this GMAT guru. I started with the most basic and gradually built myself up.
3. OG material - The OG Quant (rematch) and the OG 12 for math. By the time I attempted these questions, my accuracy and timing improved dramatically.
4. GMATClub tests - I saved these for last, for the most part. These were hard as hell, but definitely worth the effort.

As you can see, my new strategy was a bit extreme. But that's what I needed to do in order to perform well on the test. Others will probably not need to do so much. Also, one major mistake I made was avoid math. I knew this was my weakness, so I avoided it for awhile. Once the truth confronted me, though, I practiced and studied the quant as much as possible. So whenever you identify a weakness, ATTACK IT! You will lose and suffer at first, but overtime your skills will improve. Eventually, you will overcome these obstacles and this will show on the test.

Another mistake was being too passive about my studies. The end-of-chapter questions didn't help me at all. I knew this very early, but did them anyway. This only consumed time and frustrated me. The lesson here is to DO WHAT WORKS FOR YOU. If something truly doesn't help you, then discard it.

yeah mahn

It is brutal!!!!

I agree! My accuracy dropped from +90 to about 40 when I hit these questions

Damn it!

bmillan, thanks for ur post.
I have also started re-reading the MGMAT guides and I still have 3 more quant guides to go . Let's see if my accuracy improves. My test is in 3 weeks . So need to really speed up there.

No problem, heygirl! If you just read the text, then the five math books can be finished in less than two weeks. But read quickly. And if you must skip one book during this re-reading period, then Word Translations can go. I always found that the best way to learn word problems is to do them.

I completely agree with you. For word problems, it is best to practice after reviewing concepts. If I leave out the WT book then I have just 2 to go .

MGMAT has all the key theorems and main points in bold. It may suffice to look at those alone- especially in number properties and geometry.

Also, making flash cards out of these is probably a good idea.

Here is a tip:

For any quadrilateral with fixed perimeter, a square will have the largest area.

Corollary: For quadrilaterals with a fixed perimeter, the square will have the smallest perimeter.

Word problems in kaplan 800 are very similar to some of the hard ones on MGMAT practice test. Combination of VICs with work/speed problems are a killer