This series of emails and PMs focuses on situations that many Test Takers face during their studies. The names of the original posters have been changed to protect their identities.<\/p>\n
Quantity Study vs. Quality Study<\/strong> I have been studying about 5 hours a day including weekends. Regardless of how much I practice I still forget concepts or find myself making silly mistakes because of the pressure for time.<\/p>\n I recently took a practice test and I scored so low that I immediately got discouraged and was positive I would not be able to pull through with even a decent score. I was not able to finish the test and left many questions blank.<\/p>\n After seeing that horrid score I have never felt so disheartened to go on. What am I supposed to do?<\/p>\n Bravo<\/p>\n Hi Bravo,<\/p>\n First off, studying 5 hours every day is probably too much. You might be too focused on doing \u2018lots\u2019 of studying instead of doing high-quality studying. Some people are not \"natural\" Test Takers, so it takes more time for them to train properly \u2013 that means more days (NOT more hours per day).<\/p>\n I suggest that you do a thorough review of this CAT and take a good look at the questions that you\u2019re getting wrong and WHY you\u2019re getting them wrong. If you're making LOTS of silly\/little mistakes, then it shouldn't take too much effort to get those points back. You'll have to change the way that you do things, work on your organization\/memory and improve your pacing, but the GMAT is a standardized test, so you CAN train in the best ways to beat it.<\/p>\n Stuck at V34<\/strong> I have been preparing for the GMAT for 2 months. Before I started my preparation, I gave GMAT Prep1 and scored 660. The practice test indicated that I needed to work on Verbal more than Quant. So I have been focusing all my time and energy on the verbal section. I have completed the OG & OG Supplement for SC & CR. I have also timed all questions while solving questions.<\/p>\n I have given 3 mocks to date and have been getting the exact same score on the verbal as well as the quant section. For quant I understand that since I have not been preparing, the score would tend to remain the same. However in the verbal section I expected my score to increase but it is stuck at 34 and I am at a loss of ideas as to how to improve.<\/p>\n I am really demotivated. Please help.<\/p>\n Delta<\/p>\n Hi Delta,<\/p>\n Many self-studiers do well on practice sets, quizzes, etc. but don't see huge improvement on CATs. The reason tends to be because they tend to perform differently \"psychologically\" under the overall timed conditions of a full CAT - meaning that you might \"forget your training\" and revert back to the way you've always done things.<\/p>\n With a Verbal 34, you're picking up most of the points that you're supposed to be getting and you likely don't have a \"weak spot\" per se. So the question is what ARE you getting wrong (and WHY are you getting those questions wrong)? At this level, while you still might be making some silly\/little mistakes, most of the questions that you get wrong will likely be because of rarer versions of standard grammar rules, some idiom\/usage issues and some Out Of Focus answers in CR and RC. If you can define those details, then you should be able to train to face them again.<\/p>\n You're not that far from 700+, but you might have to invest in some new study materials to teach you the content and tactics that you don\u2019t currently know.<\/p>\n How One Section Effects Another<\/strong> A friend of mine took the GRE and scored 165 at quant but a bad score at verbal. He started the test with the verbal section and then continued to the quant. Can an individual's bad performance on verbal affect the level of difficulty of the quant section? Is that why he scored so high on quant?<\/p>\n Foxtrot<\/p>\n Hi Foxtrot,<\/p>\n Verbal sections on the GRE and GMAT are independent of the Quant sections, and vice-versa. So NO - doing poorly on the Verbal section will NOT affect the Quant section (and vice-versa).<\/p>\n GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made, This series of emails and PMs focuses on situations that many Test Takers face during their studies. The names of the original posters have been changed to protect their identities.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":156,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,1,243,940],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gmat","category-uncategorized","category-blog","category-gmat-prep-gmat","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/156"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30064"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30121,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30064\/revisions\/30121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nHi Rich,<\/p>\n
\nRich,<\/p>\n
\nDear Rich,<\/p>\n
\nRich<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"