3 month and still around 570 - 600, need help !!

Question

Hi Guys, I have recently joined the g! club, but i have been following posts and questions etc... from quite sometime now. And the reason for this post is that i really need help/direction from the guys who have gone through similar situation or who can understand mine right now and suggest me something. So thing is, I have been preparing for GMAT since late Aug. I took MGMAT online course, I was not overly impressed by there online course but yes i have to say their books are good. Below are my practice test scores and gmat scores. 1 CAT 520 Q34 V28 2 CAT 530 Q35 V28 3 CAT 620 Q41 V34 4 CAT 570 Q38 V30 Gmat prep 600 Q44 V28 Actual Gmat 570 Q34 V34

Clearly, there is something fundamentally wrong with my approach. Trust me when i say this i studied really really really hard for the gmat. I never have studied so much even for my degree final year. I am a Mechanical Engineer, studied in India and then UK. I have always thought i am alright at maths (if not a genius), but here are the results proving me wrong. Now with the score of 570, its clear that top b schools will just wink at my application. But I have not lost hope completely, i will try for III round but before i can do that i need to score in 700+. Right now i am absolutely blank as in what should i do, I have gone through OG13 and two more books of Verbal and Quant. I am able to manage my time in the test pretty well, finishing the exam 2 to 3 minutes before. Neither i panicked as such during or before the exam. My scores have been stagnant throughout and I am sure people must have gone through this. Any suggestions.......... My next exam is already booked (MGMAT always suggests to book II test as well) for 28 Dec, which i think will postpone to Jan timeframe, so essentially i will have around two months to get there. Thanks, Piiyush

piyushgaur · Answer

Not sure, should i post this at some other forum !!!

wfmd · Answer

It's hard to give any real good advice.

Manhattan stuff is pretty good, so if you studied that deeply enough, you should be able to get a better score. 
I used that primarily and then added some internet research on the basics.

I think it's really important to do a lot of basics first and then get used to GMAT question format. 
However, you did all the 6 exams by MGMAT, so you should have done a lot of sample questions....

To increase verbal score you should think about reading more English literature (especially newspaper articles and science articles...).

What's your intended score? The practice exams showed that it will be hard for you to cross the 600 border. Why did you took the exam anyway?

piyushgaur · Answer

Hi wfmd, Thanks for writing.

My intended score is 700. And the reason i ended up giving GMAT was that those last two practice scores which you see above were within one week of the exam, so i though i might as well give the test and if don't score better then i will kind of make a fresh start. which is what i think i am doing right now.

I have to say i am very motivated to see that you jumped from 580 to 690.

I will go through the basics again and i will only move to the next section when i am able to solve at least 90% of questions from the previous one. Don't know what else i could do with verbal though, they seem to be terribly stagnant. got your point on RC. I have picked up few recommendations from gmatclub study plan on reading material.

So in nutshell, i will go through the basics of gmat quant and verbal both, making sure i get the understanding of basics, strategies that i must follow and then practice OG 13 (once again) - keep error log/deeply observe why i got any question wrong. Anything else !!!!

Another pressure i have on my head (now) is that i am going to miss all the II round deadlines, leaving me with very limited chance on III round.

tx
Piiyush

Sydguy · Answer

Hey mate,

I found it difficult at the start too at was getting in the high 500s. In general I found that I skimmed over the basics and went to the hard questions early on. So I literally started again, I went through each of the MGMAT quant books and read the SC bible. I did all the questions in both books and kept an error log. I then did as many OG questions as I could. At this point I was able to identify a few weaknesses in quant and SC was still very difficult. I went back to the weak topics in MGMAT and re-did them and re read SC bible, and did some more OG questions and saw a drastic improvement.

With CR and RC, it was much different, I had trouble absorbing most resources so I tried my own thing. First was visualisation, where I imagined each sentence as a movie or a cartoon. In RC I realised that when the question points you to a specific part of the passage, the answer lies how it relates to the overall context, that means you may need to re-read the few sentences both before and after where you are directed. In CR, after I visualised the scenario, thereby understanding it better, I realised that every piece of information is there for a reason. I would usually come down to two answers and then try and find a piece of information in the scenario which would somehow impact one of the two selections I was left with.

Finally, I focused on ensuring the ones that I should get right, I do get right and trying to minimise silly mistakes, ie ensuring I answer the question asked, not what I think was asked.

I saw my marks steadily improve. Fundamentally I believe that it is all about making sure your base is strong and then building on that one step at a time. Then OG OG OG OG and GMATPrep questions. I found that nothing else could supplement the style of the OG and GMATPrep type questions, even the old written ones (except GMAT Club questions)

Good Luck!

notamaybe · Answer

Hi there
I am in the same situation, 12 yrs working, no recent experience with college maths or english exams I realized a change in approach is needed. 
eg:when you read the mgmat books, and do the problems at the end of the chapter,
you have to keep an error log and understand why you got a problem wrong and how to get it right the next time.
once you are all clear with MGMAT book problems go to the next level, OG problems or GMAT Club tests etc..
there again if you got wrong you have to keep an error log and understand why you got a problem wrong and how to get it right the next time.
so in the end, you learn from your mistakes.
i didnt do this the first time in my gmat and I got 650 and now practising as described above.

and with out understanding, why I commited a mistake how not to do it again, i dont plan to take the official test.
some where in forum i read, take the GMAT only when you hit bulls eye consistently in your practice otherwise you are wasting 250$.

hope this helps, good luck

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3 month and still around 570 - 600, need help !!

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