Road to 730+

January 24th (1 month in)

Today I took GMAT Club Diagnostic Test 1 and GMAT Math Test 25

32/45 on Diagnostic (80th percentile)
28/37 on M25 (75th percentile)

I finished the M25 with less than a minute to spare. I did not finish the Diagnostic (4 remaining Q's)

The Diagnostic was BRUTAL.

Any context for these scores? I'm aiming for a 49+ quant score.

Real time - January 25th.

After spending a considerable amount of time on quant and SC, I thought I'd give a full test another shot.

I took MGMAT CAT #2 today. Again I did the test untimed. My score was a 700.

TYPE SCORE ESTIMATED PERCENTILE RANK
Quantitative 51 99 %
Verbal 35 77 %
Total 700 93 %

I'm really building confidence in quant but I'm slipping in verbal. I think its time to realign my focus.

I scored 29/37 on quant. The ones I missed were very difficult. The chalenge now is answering these questions in under two minutes....

Verbal...what a meltdown. Whats frustrating is I have been focusing quite a bit on basic SC and I'm still missing easy problems. I now see that RC and CR need some work.

Interestingly, my verbal scores were better when I was relying exclusively on my "native ear" and have been falling since I have started relying on SC rules. Trust the process?

Nice posts abmyers! Good luck to you!
I have a question about your MGMAT CAT #2. How many did you miss in the verbal to get 35?

Thanks!

I missed 18 of 43.

5 of the ones I missed were 600-700 level, the rest 700+ level. Really disappointing.

Good job with your progress, if ur getting 50/51 quant in manhattan gmat your in great shape in that area. I think you should start taking the exams timed at this point, i think thats the next step in your improvement

Today, after spending the last week or so on SC, I took a timed test. MGAT3.

Quant 48 86%
(15 out of 22 PS)
(8 out of 15 DS)
Verbal 36 81%
(9 out of 14 CR)
(7 out of 12 RC)
(9 out of 15 SC)
Total 690 91%


I finished the verbal in time, but not the quant

I hope you're categorizing your mistakes in a bucket from previous MGMAT tests and practicing problems of specific types. e.g. if you find your incorrect questions are of parallelism, you will pick 30 problems testing parallelism concept. I did diagnostic last weekend, and bucketed my problems in Inference questions for CR and RC, meaning/Idioms questions for SC, and Word translations/DS for Quant. I'll practice on these topics, and try to reduce mistakes in these areas.

I'm just suggesting and will try to do the same thing this weekend after giving MGMAT1.

I'm also in the same boat and updating my progress here.
my-gmat-journey-108768.html

Thanks thats a good idea

That's an excellent suggestion; I realize I never followd this approach of bucketing into possible categories, one month into prep, I think this comes at the right time.

Posted from my mobile device

great improvement..

Since my last test, I did all of the problems in OG Quant review, and about 100 SC questions across OC Verbal Review and 1000 SC. I also went through MGMAT SC Guide one more time up to advances and I'm starting to peek at advanced now.

I also went through advanced in MGMAT Number Properties, which was awesome.

I spent some time, maybe an hour or so looking at the CR and RC guides but they were a snoozer.

Last night I took MGMAT CAT 4. Very surprising results. I took quant untimed, verbal timed.

Quant 48 (86%th)
Verbal 45 (99%th)
Total 750 (98%th)

Yes, I'm thrilled about the score, but surprised at how well I did on verbal and how poorly I did on quant.

My raw score on quant and verbal were significantly higher...

16/22 PS
9/15 DS
11/15 SC
10/14 CR
10/12 RC

I just did the MGMAT assessment report across the 4 tests and it looks like I need some work in word translations. I'll hit that book tonight.

Just took MGMAT 5. I'm jazzed. 760 overall!!

Quant 49 (90%th)
Verbal 45 (99%th)
Total 760 (99%th)

PS 18/22
DS 8/15
SC 13/15 <-work is paying off!
CR 11/14 <-improving here too
RC 9/12

If I can rely on these scores being somewhat accurate, its time to spend a day or two on AWA, get the general feel. A 5.5 would be fine for me. I'm native English so I should get the concept quickyl right? After some practice there, schedule the exam, then kill it

For AWA, check this out if you have not come across it already

how-to-get-6-0-awa-my-guide-64327.html

The chineseburned template is awesome for AWA :D

Well, because I wanted to be sure I could believe what MGMAT was telling me, I took GMATPrep 2 today.

48 Quant
44 Verbal
750 Overall

It didnt give me pecentages?

My thoughts.....first, +90 points in a little over 2 months! Second, wow, time pressure for the GMATPrep was intense. I fell behind in both quant and verbal, and on verbal I had to guess on two of the last three and didn't get my answer in for the last question. I rarely have worried about time on verbal, but it was an issue here. I think I also had to guess on two quant questions at the end. Some tricky SC questions where the correct answer was very awkward and a few CR questions that racked my brain. I'm hoping when its game time, I will be able to "move along" and won't have anxiety about clicking next on a problem I wasn't sure on.

In terms of problems I missed...

25/37 on quant...48 raw score. I missed A LOT and still got a 48.
Verbal....37/41! I missed two of the three guesses at the end, otherwise I only missed two. Not sure I can consistently repeat that kind of performance.

Plan from here.....go over mistakes on this one, adjust my knowledge in those areas, work on AWA and schedule the exam. Any last minute advice?

Good luck !

Don't worry about the number of problems that you missed. Instead, focus on the reason why you answered them incorrectly. Be particularly concerned about the problems which you could have answered correctly but somehow managed to mess it up

Last moment tips:
As you get closer to the Test Date, it becomes a game of nerves. You will start doubting your abilities
It happens to even the best of 'em... lol...

So have some sort of a mantra to repeat to yourself when you feel pangs of anxiety!

I used to say "**** it... I'm gonna do this! Yippie Ka YaY GMAT..."

(try putting one or two swear words in the phrase... It helps vent out the frustration But make sure you don't say it out loud... cause if you do, people might think you're a nutter!)