Hi community,
I decided to post so to structure my thoughts myself and also hear your feedback on my concerns. Initially, I wanted to sit for the exam tomorrow (on my birthday), but today decided to postpone for next Wednesday. So I have 1 week. My previous 2 GMAT scores
640 (Q44, V34) and 700 (Q42, V44). In my last attempt (November 2013), I continuously scored 730+, but psyched out on my Quant part, because I though I was running out of time (which I wasn't).
Goal is to improve to approx. 750 with a balanced Q and V mix.
My current situation: Yesterday I redid one of the GMATPrep exams and scored
750 (Q49, V42). This was my first CAT of this preparation cycle (have sat for the GMAT twice before). Besides the fact that I still haven't revised AWA and IR (previous scores of 5 and 7 respectively), yesterday I just did some stupid mistakes on an exam I have already done, though 7 months back.
I personally feel I have the following
weaknesses:
Quant: Clearly DS (yesterday all my Quant mistakes were from DS). In most of the cases those were stupid mistakes - e.g. I didn't read the question attentively or didn't read it to the end. Still, I also thing Number properties with absolute values and inequalities, Very hard Word problems, Hard overlapping sets and hard combinatorics are to certain extent weak spots.
Verbal: With Verbal, I think it's purely a question of concentration with me. SC is strong, CR and RC can get me in tricky questions, but mostly when I don't read the texts or answer choices carefully. Here as I'm not a native speaker, I sometimes just don't get the full meaning (lack vocabulary here and there), but that's hardly something I can change in 7 days. And my verbal results are recently 40+ which isn't bad.
Goal: I have 7 days, and I want to do at least 2-3 full CAT's, which will expect some preparation for AWA and IR. I will focus solely on GMAC CAT's (though have done them before my last attempt 7 months ago). As a CAT with revision consumes almost a full day, I have 4 days left to concentrate on improving Quant (that's where I need some more assurance).
Options:
- Focussing on GMATPrep and
OG, though I've mostly redone those questions at least once and know them by heart already
- Continue using my GMATPills, which have harder questions
- Use Bunuel's collections and other GC Verbal resources
- Use GC tests, especially for improving Quant
- Redo my bookmarks on GC, which have accumulated approx. 200 Quant and Verbal problems I have had wrong (from the daily GMAT question mail newsletter). Most of them are pretty hard.
Questions:
1. Regarding the listed Quant problem areas, do you think it makes sense concentrating too much on those or is it normal to have mistakes in them (on this level)?
2. How would you try to practice those the next 2-3 days before closing the preparation - Bunuel's collection for the above-mentioned problem areas or rather official
OG problems from
OG and GMATPrep (though easier)?
3. To what extent do you think just slowing down could make sense as well? Quite often I think, in the end I can't know everything. The question is to what extent the GMAT allows this kind of thinking and makes exactly this difference between a 700 score and 750-760.
Thanks for your help!