Warmup before second Attempt From a 590 to ???

Hi mrsmarthi..
I am yet another fan of the Economist..
If you have some budget spare INR 1200 for 3 months..they have a subscription offer going on at their website...I was also lazy when it came to reading..and reading for me is not about novels and stories..that sounds boring to me because there is no value addition to my skills...hence I decided to subscribe and I can see the differnence right away...read as many articles as possible even if they dont interest you..dont be very specific about vocab, just get the context and summarize..thats enough for RCs Also, being in touch with world news will help you for your interviews too!

Hi Economist,

Yeah I keep hearing that one of the best ways to improve "Actice reading skill for RC" is to read "The economist". I am planning to have a glance of these journals in my library.....If I borrow them from the library the fine else I may subscribe for the 3 month period. I have gone thru the Economist subscription page but I wanted to wait until I see whether I can get it from local library.

Thank you for the suggestion.

One can read the articles online as well. Its not the quantity but quality that matters

Cheers!

OK today I have taken my first MGMAT Cat Exam 1. The score is still not that good. But with the last one week's preparation, the score is probably what I deserve.

Total = 44 Quant & 32 Verbal.

Problem Solving - 14 correct & 8 wrong. (64%)
Data Sufficiency 5 Correct & 10 wrong (33%)

Sentence Correction 12 correct & 3 wrong (80%)
Critical Reasoning 07 correct & 7 wrong (50%)
Reading Comprehension 4 Correct & 8 wrong(33%)

Clearly I am happy that my SC is improving(infact I am brushing up ONLY SC topics from the last one week. So I expected an increase in my SC which I can see - I am off by atleast 10% from my final score.)

CR - remained the same at 50 % neither increasing or decreasing. But that is ok. I am yet to start on understanding the rules for various CR questions. Until then I might be ok to accept this score.

RC - whole of yesterday, I was practicing ONLY RC thinking that atleast I will go thru the concepts of RC before attempting this Mock exam. But I see there is a drop in my score - nearly 17% while I was expecting the other way round. Need to do a self review on this and understand why I made the mistakes. (I was assuming that I under stood the passage and was picking the ans choice very confidently. But obviously it was not the case)

PS and DS are real horrible. I was very confident and happy with my attempt in Quant until I saw that score. I was not expecting that low score in quant(mainly with those many number of mistakes). I always think that quant is the strongest area be it PS or DS. So I definitely will have to brush my skills on Quant to keep my pace going. I hope I will pick my skills in quant as time goes by. For now I am not too worries about my quant score.

I will update this message further, once I do my self review of all the questions. Let me see how many of them are careless and how many are concept errors.

By the way if any body is reading this message, can you say how close is MGMAT Verbal to actual GMAT Verbal. I feel MGMAT verbal is much easier that Actual GMAT Verbal. (Because I was able to attpempt the SC with not much difficulty and also RC were pretty easy(even though my RC score way too less). I just don't want to feel overconfident with my preparation considering the MGMAT scores.

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Self review - Observations -

PS - 6/8 mistakes are careless calculations.
DS - 6/10 mistakes are careless calculations.

Rest of them are the ones that I could not get the solution. Need to understand how the problem can be solved in 2 min tme frame.

SC - 2/3 mistakes are careless.

I definitely can't afford to have ANY careless mistakes. . Infact for me there were around 10 min time by the time I completed quant. So I think I rather double check my ans if I am well with in my timelimit.

I am yet to do my CR and RC self review......

So far I completed Pronouns and Modifiers from MGMAT SC. Feeling better now. But I am still lagging behind my original plan of completing Verbs and Comparisions chapters. But that is ok. I really do not want to rush thru these chapters because they are my biggest weaknesses. I definitely need to get the hold of the concepts.

Yesterday I received my OG 10 officical guide that I ordered thru Amazon. Probably I will first go thru OG 12 for SC questions once I am done with MGMAT chapters. Then will hop on to OG 10 and OG 11.

Probably for today I will attempt some 40 questions from OG 12 and go thru each of the solutions. I am planning to religiously practice as many SC questions as possible for the next 10 days since this is one area where we can easily improve to atlesat 90% accuracy and also gain some time that can be utilized for CR / RC. In fact I can notice this change happening from the last couple of days.

I am waiting for my turn to update the JallenMorris thread

700-clubbers-add-your-name-to-the-list-64636.html

@I also have started Economist-the print edition( of Asia pacific)- audio file comes free online.and its simply awesome.
@yes I will post more RC regularly

Looking pretty good. Tackling SCs first is probably the best way to go and it's definitely the hardest part of Verbal for most people. Looks like you're getting them under control

Ok.....so far, for the week end, I made a considerable progress.......Completed OG 12 SC Q from 1 to 80 questions (40 each per attempt) and got around 17 of them wrong. Most of the questions that are wrong are from Verbs and Comparisions. There might be some careless mistakes also. But I would not want to go thru the official explanation until I make one more attempt of the incorrect questions. I am planning to do this once I am done with the Verbs and Comparisions chapters of SC.

Even after this, if I make the mistake, then I will go thru the explanation to find out where the hint is provided to pick up the correct ans. So far my SC is going good. Timing is not an issue. Most of the questions have an avg of 1 min or so(which is good). But the accuracy % is around little over 80%. I am targetting for accuracy % to be more than 90%. MGMAT SC is really helping me a lot in SC questions. No other book can replace this book to know the concepts - not even OGs.

Self review is sometimes real boring. But that is where you learn your mistakes. Hum....need to spend some more time on going thru the wrong ans and find out why I made them wrong.

Wow....today I started reading Powerscore CR bible. As I am reading thru the chapters, I am reallying enjoying them. I hope I will have the same level of joy in attempting the CR questions.

One thing that I did notice for this round of preparation - the way I read the material.

During my first attempt preparation, I was reading all the needed books just as matter of self satisfaction - "Yeah I am done with OG, OG review, SC, Prower scrore CR.....Now I know I can get 700"

But I am not realizing that I am NOT grasping the points that I read to my heart. If this is not happening there is no point in reading Sc Bible of GMAT OG bible - your GMAT level will still remain where it is currently. (This is exactly what I have done)

Now for the second attempt, I am not concentrating on too many materials. I realised that quanlity is more imporatant and quantity(Quality and Qantity - sounds very rhymic, but from the preparation point of view they really make a huge difference) . Realizing this, I started off reading MGMAT SC. Wow....I learnt so many points and now my SC accuracy % is in 80. I don't think I was ever in 80% accuracy, what ever be the questions that I attempted.

Planning to take my second MGMAT exam this coming weekend. But before that I am planning to complete MGMAT pending chapters - Comparisons and Verbs, and try to complete CR Imp chapters - Must be true, Assumptions, Strengthen, Weaken and Resolve the Paradox.

My target for the second CAT is to have atleast 85% accuracy in SC and 60 - 70% or more in CR. Still not fully concetrating on RC.Overall, I am targetting for atleast 35 in Verbal. Hope to see atleast 47 in Quant. Even otherwise, I am bothered for Quant. Let me see how this is going to work.

mrsmarthi ,
you write really good ... I can see you acing your essays

goodluck and keep sharing your experiences/thoughts/insights ..

+1 for ya ..for no reason

ugimba,

Thank you for the pleasant words. infact logging my preparation is really helping me a lot. When ever I go thru this thread, I find where I am lagging and how I am progressing. Also I do get valuable suggestions or inpirations from fellow members. So I would like to continue updating this thread until I fight my GMAT exam(Hopefully with in 3 months from now) Atleast this way, I will keep up with my spirit of taking revenge on GMAT.

All the very best for your preparation.
Remember Rome was not built in one day. So work hard and I am sure your will reach your goal.

I am planning to take the test in Nov. We'll see how it goes.

This is my view.
CR questions in the powerscore bible are lengthier and at times more complex than GMAT. Other views welcome.

I really hope this is true.

Anyhow coming back to my preparation, I made a good progress on PowerScore CR Bible. Completed 2 fundamental topics, Must Be True(MBT), Main Point(MP) and Weaken(W) chapters. Still need to do Strength and Assumptions and Resolve the Paradox chapters from CR and Verbs & Comparisions chapters from MGMAT Sc before I take my MGMAT Cat this coming week end.

If I see a considerable improvement in my verbal(i.e if I hit a raw score of 40 in verbal) then I might prepone my exam to some time next month(Oct) itself. The more I prolong, the more I am going to build pressure. Definitely not beyond November. (See how my greediness is increasing. 10 days back I was hoping to see a raw score of atleast 30 in my verbal. And now I wanted to have my raw score as atleast 40....... Desire to achieve higher can never stop I guess)

When I read couple of debriefs, stating that verbal is not easy to gain the points, I used to believe it. Simple reason - No interest in Verbal at all. No interest ==> No improvement. But now when I am showing interest, I really am enjoying my preparation with verbal. Isn't it funny. Some(such as Bipolarbear) suggested that when ever we need to go thru the boring topic, just feel for ourself and add a "WOW factor"......"Wow what an interesting topic" and automatically, the topic doesn't sound that boring. It may sound funny but it is exactly what I feel. Pardon me if this makes you think that I crazy / stupid.

My opinion is that GMAT Exam is all about mind game - GMAT Preparation is also sort of mind game(If you think you are weak in a a topic, then you can never be strong in that topic......) Got to go back to my CR reading.........Wow going to start my preparation on Strengthen and Assumptions chapters.

Yes, gmat is more of a mind game after a certain point. Confidence drives the show.

Speaking of which, i would rely more on gmatprep scores over MGMAT scores for gauging my performance levels (atleast as far as V goes)

I guess the questions in latter half of OG are tougher. I also had a below avg hit rate in the latter half of OG 12.

Can anyone confirm this observation that the the latter half of OG SC questions are difficult ? I know this is a fact for Quant but verbal is subjective

Interesting to note that OG 12 has removed the phrase "in order of difficulty" which GMAC introduced first time in OG11(11th edition).
for example, check last Q of OG12 @ SC section ..its related to IDIOM(dated at is CORRECT)
Can we conclude "its the toughest of SC"
definitely not, IMO
others may pls comment