Hey folks, just got done with my second GMAT earlier today and thought I would write a debrief since I feel like a lot of Americans may be in my situation (strong Verbal, weak Quant).
Books & materials used: Exam PAL,
GMAT Club Tests (Quant Only), Manhattan Online CAT's
First practice score ever was around a 600. Maybe 38Q 38V or so? Can't remember and either way I didn't save the info.
Since I realized I was going to need a significant amount of work (haven't taken a math class since sophomore year of HS), I purchased the
Manhattan books and Online CAT materials.
I went through the books and quickly progressed until I was averaging around a 700 or so, with a Q44, and V44 split.
One regret is the pace on which I pushed through the quant material!!!! I was in such a rush to get to the 700 mark that I ignored true understanding of the base concepts in favor of a quick brush up. This came to bite me later as I realized that I was struggling to break the Q44 barrier. I would have a sporadic 47/48 on the
Manhattan Prep CAT, but then be right back down to 42-44.
I took my first GMAT in Feb, and scored a Q44 V42 710 as expected. 42-45 have traditionally been my average verbal scores w/o any studying past skimming the Manhattan SC guide (I skipped CR and RC).
I decided to refocus back in on Quant and ignore verbal as I had a relatively solid score w/o any effort. I felt Quant was by far my larger opportunity so I decided to change my strategy.
I purchased Exam Pal because I read that it was good at developing your ability to think about problems in different ways. They focus on three approaches: Precise (good for exact calculations), Alternative (plug in variables as an assumption), and Logic (theory based approach).
While this self study course forced me to approach problems in multiple ways and recognize what type of problem requires which approach, I did feel the arithmetic component was rather lacking. For example answers may be drastically different, so it would be easy to see which was correct even if you didn't necessarily find the correct answer. I wish I had started with this originally as it would have been a great overview of basic concepts as well as introduced me to the mental dexterity required to approach problems in the most efficient way. If I was scoring below a 45 avg, I would highly recommend using this program.
I then pivoted to
Manhattan Prep CAT Tests (I would only do quant). These are absolutely the best to force you to pay attention and to do arithmetic quickly and accurately. I had terrible timing issues on these tests. The best I ever did on a
Manhattan Prep CAT quant section was a 48 I believe. I would be running out of time on EVERY single test. By the end of my studying I finally felt comfortable on the timing but would still make a few stupid errors on these. I didn't feel the real GMAT questions reflect the Manhattan style at all. Manhattan is not as challenging conceptually, but the problem solving questions were absolutely brutal in the length of calculations required.
After using
Manhattan Prep Cats to the point I recognized the questions, I decided to purchase the GMAT Club Quant tests. This is a shameless plug, but I absolutely LOVED these CATS. As far as I am concerned there is literally no other resource that will test you quite like these. They take the concepts needed for a solid quant score, and stretch the application to the limit. I don't think these question banks are always indicative of real GMAT questions, but they test and force you to master a lot of the concepts required to achieve a high quant score.
My one frustration with
GMAT club tests is the actual scoring system itself. I scored a 50 on one test with 11 wrong and scored a 46 or something with like 5 wrong. I would throw the scores out of the window personally, but they are great practice for the concepts you may see on the GMAT.
In my opinion each of these three programs emphasize different skills that are all required to score a top Quant score. ExamPal will teach you how to recognize what approach each type of problem will require to solve most efficiently.
Manhattan Prep will teach you that 2589234 * 5 = 12946170 should be able to be done in 2.3 seconds flat. BTW that is a joke but the principle remains, Manhattan will teach you how to move quickly and accurately through arithmetic.
GMAT Club tests will force you to learn concepts in and out for creative solution.
Now to the TEST today.
I start with Verbal:
I must have screwed up because at about question 8 I was receiving the easiest questions I have ever received. In a panic I began to triple check everything, and ended up running out of time at about question 32. I had 4 Questions left with appx 3 minutes. I guessed on the last 2 questions. This was the worst that verbal has EVER felt for me.
Ended up with a 40 Verbal.
Quant:
I honestly had no idea that I was doing very well until I got two very tricky probability questions, paired with a 2.5 paragraph long work rate data sufficiency question. This was about the midpoint of the test and I was way ahead of schedule (thanks Manhattan lol). I was able to spend about 3-4 minutes on the 2.5 paragraph problem, and about 1.5 minutes on each of the probability problems.
After the midpoint challenge, everything went back to normal difficulty so I figured that the test compensated for a wrong answer.
Quant score shown: 51 (still not trusting this until later this week when my official / ESR comes in)
IR:
8
I'll update this once my scores are official and perhaps post my ESR. Frankly I have no idea how I got a 51 on Quant, nor am I sure how I received a 40 on Verbal. I average 49 with a sporadic 50 on GMAT official Practice Quant. I average 44 with a sporadic 47-49 on Verbal GMAT official practice.
Not sure if I am going to retake yet. I keep going back and forth to tell you the truth. On one hand, I average a 750 on the GMAT official practice exams, so I am not far off. I am just so frustrated that I got significantly lower in verbal than my usual. Of course I can also argue I got very lucky on quant this go around.
Either way, hope this debrief helps someone who needs help with Quant!
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Updated on: 27 Aug 2020, 15:30
ESR.pdf [521.62 KiB] 
