several people has asked me if it is possible to improve

Great Post. Let me try to hit the cealing.

Thnks for informative post.

It all boils down to holding your nerves (to avoid silly mistakes), good grasp of fundamentals and ability to apply them.

Sounds simple

quite helpful..thanks

indeed good suggestion

Very good original post. I was scoring 45-49 and on the real test i scored 45. In hindsight, instead of concentrating on hard questions, i should have been looking to reduce my silly mistakes which always cost me 6-8 questions. Ill try this approach when i give my exam a second time.

This is a great thread. I clearly have to study more. And visit more. I am certain I would just sweat this problem out. I am confident that I would get the right answer but not nearly as quickly. Gotta study it till I start seeing the strategies.

I realized last night while working on some data sufficiency questions that the math is only part of it. They are really partly logic or verbal. This is supposed to be my strong point. Now that I look at them differently-- the math is pretty easy then you do the separate logical analysis-- they make much more sense and actually seem easy.

it is generally safe to use the rational roots test on some of these large polynomials on gmat? its seems the fastest way to at least reduce the choices....

if applied to the question in this thread, you would easily deduce 3 for the first one and then check it, taking 10 seconds or so......

I found this topic again for the second or third time. I'm stuck in the position of scoring 44-48 on practice tests. I would like to score consistently 48-50! It seems this final push is very difficult. I'm going to try as someone suggested, and work the last 50 problems in OG (tomorrow hopefully).

I'm stuck in the 48-50 range. I guess "stuck" is a good thing here, but I'd like to push it up to 51.

I'm finding most of my mistakes appear on bad/complicated algebra. Things like 42/7 = 7 can really mess up a full equation and add 1-2 minutes to the question. Also not noticing words like "cannot" or "from the remainder of" or "x is an integer" can hurt a lot. Sometimes the GMAT answer choices don't agree with my flawed algebra, and I get the chance to go back and find my mistake, but if I rush through with a "trap" error that the test makers built into the answer, I'll likely get it wrong.

My advice would be to practice your algebra, and to hone your testing-numbers skills on DS. Most problems can be solved with a good understanding of algebra -- it's worth spending an extra amount of time on general math manipulations (square roots, fractions, quadratics) and setting up good equations rather than the specific comb/prob-type questions that might only come up once or twice.

It is funny that we are complaining about being "stuck" at a relatively decent score I would have killed to be at this score a few months ago.

You bring up a good topic… what to do when you have made a mistake. I did a problem earlier that used the compound interest formula and for some reason i did 11^2 = 111. Once you get to the answer choices and not seeing your answer is a really bad feeling. I went back and started from scratch and screwed up again (same mistake). I had so much time invested in the problem I checked everything and found my mistake. Of course, on a real test this is probably not practical. You then have to deal with the anxiety of wondering if you got the formula wrong, or whatever else went wrong. On a tougher problem, I usually look for any errors (of course they are always hard to find under a time constraint), and then just pick the answer closest to mine. On a simple problem that you know you should get, it is really hard to just guess and keep going.

wow an old thread but quite useful!!thanx a lot!!

thanks for the advice

great advice.. thanks

thanks for the post

Hey I am in the same club, I am using a painful error logging and error analysis approach this time. I am also maintaining a small notebook in which i write "what I learnt today" everyday. Probably about 90 page of notes in 3 months along with a track or errors which I usually make,such as assuming x square to be an integer helps a lot.
Also I make sure to read the logs once in 2-4 days mapping in my mind the question and the parameters again. I think this is a good way to improve ur score, rather than brainlessly practice questions from all sources.

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My example was assuming x to be an integer if x square is an integer.
There are few questions on this concept in gclub tests as well as an og ds question.

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