Written 8/25: Warning: As you can probably tell from this long thread I tend to say very little with many words, so read at your own risk. If you're cramming for the GMATs then it's more valuable to read the shorter debriefs My “quest” is over, and luckily I don't plan on engaging in another GMAT quest ever again. I received a Q49, V44 for a 760 and I'm not too bummed out about not hitting 800 .Thanks to everyone at gmatclub for their continuing support, the mods and creators of gmatclub tests, and special thanks to Avenusaur and gmanjesh for their valuable tips and sanity checks. I took my gmat this morning. I'll start with the test day debrief and follow with my study recommendations. I read a lot of debriefs from other people so I was able to get a lot of tips before test day. I know some people have trouble sleeping the night before or wake up really early on test date; luckily for me I slept like a baby and felt really good the morning of the test. I had planned on getting to the test center an hour earlier and grab brunch since my test was scheduled for noon. I ended up getting there there two hours early. I took the extra time to buy 2 bottles of 5-hour energy, 2 bananas, and water. At the diner, it only took me 15 minutes to eat. I had prepared for test very intensely for ~5 weeks, averaging about 6-8 hours a day. However, this past week I didn't really study much and the day before the test I hardly studied anything at all. I felt a bit rusty so I was determined to do some practice OG problems at the cafe. I think this is a fairly good way of getting your brain in gmat-mode prior to taking the test. After about 15 minutes though I got tired and went to the test center 1.5 hours early because I had read that people are often allowed to take tests early. At the test center (16th floor of Herald Square- NY) I was sort of annoyed that there was construction going on. The lady was very nice but unfortunately I could only start the test at 11:30, so I had to sit around and wait for an extra hour. The test center itself was going under construction and thus there were no bathrooms on the floor! What's worse is one had to take an elevator to either the 15th or 17th floor to use the restroom. There was staircase that said “Staircase under construction, only enter under emergencies.” I decided that having 8 minutes to wait for an elevators and use the bathroom constituted an emergency so I risked my life and used the staircase (which was clearly under construction but fine). During the wait room I also had to use the bathroom twice for some reason. I was a bit embarrassed that people would think I had an overactive bladder. Perhaps the most important tip I received came from the admin. As you all know, 8 minutes is a short time for a break. The admin told me to raise my hand and call the admin before clicking YES for the break. The reason for this is because sometimes it takes a while for the admin to come, and if he's standing there while you press YES you get the full 8 minutes. This came in handy because after the quant section I had a couple of minutes left and raised my hand for my break. Since I was in the corner it took him literally two minutes to come over. If I had opted to take the break and clicked yes I would have been screwed ¼ of my time. Definitely try to remember this during your test. The center came with earplugs and huge headphones to block out noise, which I used during the test. I started the AWA and felt that they were a lot more difficult than I had expected. I sort of struggled through the second one (take a side) because the prompt was so unclear but I wrote it anyway. I figure I should at least receive a 5.5 since I'm a native speaker and wasn't too worried. During the 8 minute break I ran up one floor and used the bathroom, ate a banana and swigged half a bottle of my 5 hour energy. I'm probably used up only 5 minutes of my break but I didn't care and wanted to start. I made sure to follow MGMAT's timing strategy of checking the problem number every 15 minutes. I think this strategy is much better than looking at the problem and then figuring out how much time is left. MGMAT recommends that when you have 60 minutes left, you should be on Q7 or V8, 45 minutes left, Q14 or V16, 30 minutes left, Q(14+7) or V(16+8)...etc. I think this strategy is optimal because it frames your mindset. It's not that you are running out of time, you just have more questions to do. If you look at the question number and then try to determine how much time you have left, you may feel under pressure because of the clock ticking down. Small tricks such as (not like ) this were helpful to me. I ran into quant troubles very early (at #5 and #6) but I had expected this since many people wrote this in their debriefs. Quant was a bit weird in that the questions were either really easy or really hard with few hard manageable questions. I only received 1 combinatorics/probability question that was so easy I had to do it three times to make sure there wasn't a trick question involved. During the latter part of the test I received some brutal geometry questions that involved similar trapezoids (wth?) and regular octagons. I sort of had time management issues in that somehow I had 20 minutes left with 6 questions to go but then 8 questions left with 4 to go, after those two problems. I ended up fairly satisfied with quant and expecting a Q50. I ate my second banana and took my second swig of 5-hour energy. I had only planned on drinking half a bottle each break but since I had brought two bottles, I think I took the full bottle and downed the entire thing. After I used the bathroom I began to feel really jittery. Definitely not a good thing. The verbal questions were fairly straightforward. I ran into a couple difficult sentence corrections at the beginning and I extremely long question (comparable to LSAT) but most of the questions were okay. The last 3 verbal questions were CR and very difficult; I spent my last 12 questions trying to figure them out and I wasn't sure whether I got them. Also, during the section I received absolutely NO bold-faced questions. I had heard rumors that those questions were indicators of doing well so I was a bit scared that I screwed up verbal badly. I ended up finishing with about 3 minutes left. After the test was done I answered all the boring personal questions and before I clicked Report Score prayed that I would receive a 750+. I clicked and the screen showed a Q49 (87%) V44 (97%) - 760 (99%). A few fist pumps later I turned my head and saw the administrators smiling at me (didn't know they were watching). I received a couple of congratulations and exited the test center. After I left the test center I was a tiny bit disappointed by my Q49 (Avenusaur after all received a Q50 V44 which I hoped to match =) since I had successive Q51s, but I quickly shrugged that off since, well, a 760 definitely won't preclude me from any schools. Whew! Congrats on reading through this. On to my study strategy... Study Strategy I am a recent college grad and had a couple of months before I started work. I figured 3 months would be sufficient time to prepare. I started my log on 5/26 but somehow procrastinated for 2 full months, leaving me about 6 weeks to study. I was so angry that I let that happen that I determined to dedicate all my time to the GMAT. For the next 5 weeks I studied about ~6-8 hours every day. The last few days before the test I probably studied about 3-4 hours a day. I didn't study at all the day before. What works for me might not work for you, so take everything with a grain of salt. With that said, I don't think I could have studied for more than 5 weeks with that intensity anyway, so I was pretty happy with the study timeframe. I purchased the complete MGMAT books + OG guides on craigslist for $40, and bought the MGMAT online resources for $40. I also used several LSAT books, gmatclub tests...etc. Sentence Correction Materials Used : MGMAT SC- I went through this twice and really got the hang of it the second time. Brutal SC Doc- The first time I went through these I got really frustrated. I kept an error log and redid them a week before the test day and got most of them correct. Gmat-Sucecss Scs- Available online. They were very helpful but contain a lot of errors. They are good practice but make sure to google your answers to double check. GMATPrep SC question doc- From sterny's debrief, I found these a week before the test. I went through them in two days and I believe they helped tremendously. In my opinion, MGMAT SC is necessary to get a good quant score but definitely not sufficient. Once you get the basics, you need the GMATPrep SC doc to learn about the subtleties in the choices. Often times they'll be changes in meaning, ellipses, complex parallelisms- things that MGMAT SC don't cover. Critical Reasoning Materials used: Powerscore LSAT Logical Reasoning Bible- My friend recently took the LSAT and let me borrow his LSAT LR book. Although I had the MGMAT CR book I didn't think it would sufficient. I also didn't want to spend money on the Powersccore GMAT CR Book. I must say that this guide was ESSENTIAL (I'd bet that the powerscore GMAT CR book is equally good). It breaks down every single type of question and gives you strategies that make every question seem clear. For example, the assumption negation technique tells you that you can double check your answers simply by negating the answer choice and seeing if that weakens the question. The evaluate the argument technique tells you that when faced with answer choices, assume it is true then assume it is false. If one strengthens the argument and the other weakens it, your answer choice is correct. Kaplan LSAT Mastery- I had to buy this book from Amazon because it's only available for Kaplan students who register for a full LSAT course. Basically it is a list of almost all the official LSAT questions broken down by type. After reading the Assumption section in the Powerscore LSAT bible, I would do the 100 or so Assumption questions in the LSAT Mastery bible. After reading strengthen/weaken, I would specifically target those questions. Because all the questions are specific and from an official source (LSAT), I thought this book was also invaluable. Reading Comprehension MGMAT RC Guide- I went through this first and really liked it. It definitely helped taking notes and identifying the structures. I started RC averaging about 3 wrong but after getting through the guide, I was still getting 1-2 wrong per section. Powerscore LSAT RC Guide- I went through this after and thought it was helpful but nothing groundbreaking. A lot of emphasis was put on diagramming (which of course is essential for the LSAT) but it was difficult to apply to the GMAT. However, I did learn 1 important tip- when doing a history passage or one with a lot of dates, draw a timeline of the events. There, I just saved you $60. Kaplan LSAT Mastery- I had trouble with hard science passages and did all the LSAT science passages (organized in the book). I also did all the social science passages. Again, I really liked this book and would advise any serious student to get it (though it may be difficult to find). Random LSAT Prep Tests- I did like 5 or 6 LSAT sections (each contained 27 questions/4 passages in 35 minutes). I don't think these were necessary but definitely helped. The most important part of RC is just to practice. I used to think it was hard to improve- you either get it or you don't- but honestly after a lot of repetition you learn to read things very carefully. Eventually I just realized that when doing local questions, I had to read word-by-word or else I would miss the information necessary to answer the question. After I realized I simply wasn't reading carefully enough, my RC scores shot up. Quant MGMAT guides- I read all the MGMAT guides and went through them. Number Properties was very helpful, as was Geometry. I think they were essential in improving. GMATClub tests- I got them for free after 200+ posts, which I managed to cram in several days (I'm a cheapo so I had registered for gmatclub 6 months beforehand to satisfy the 90-day requirement =P ). They really helped me concentrate on the details and I thought they were probably my best practice resource. A lot of info is given so I won't go too much in-depth. However, I felt that after doing the first 9 or so I got the hang of them. The following were my practice scores https://img39.imageshack.us/img39/6272/resultsu.jpg As you can see, not the prettiest of scores. I thought the specific-question types were very helpful as well. Sackmann Extreme Challenge & Data Sufficiency Sets- I thought they were a bit pricey at $25 per set, but if you get the Total Gmat Math (which I didn't) + Sets I think the price is reasonable. I thought the DS set was great in helping my DS. The Challenge Set emphasized way too much on probability and combinatorics (which were barely represented on my GMAT). That pretty much completes my materials. I also used OG11, Official Verbal Review, and Official Quant Review. Honestly I only completed the questions that MGMAT required, so I went over a lot of the sentence corrections in the guide. Since I didn't use MGMAT for CR, I didn't even do 1 official CR question (LSAT questions were more than sufficient). I think the OG books are helpful but slightly overrated. They tend to be too easy for those looking for 750+ and one can definitely get by without them. Aside from these sources, I also did a lot of verbal and quant questions in gmatclub forums. The verbal questions helped a lot and the quant questions were pretty challenging. Perhaps the biggest resource I haven't focused on is Google. For all the official SC and most of the official CR questions, you can paste the first few words in quotes and you'll be presented links to explanations. By far the most helpful responses were Ron and Stacey's on the mgmat forums. For the GMATPrep SC document, I learned a LOT from their posts. Don't expect to get your questions answered if you post them on the forum however because the instructors generally only answer questions from course students, and even then they don't get answered in a timely manner. I read through Chineseburned and OG11's AWA guides and did one full CAT (MGMAT #6) with AWA. I used MGMAT and GMATPrep CATs. They're pretty self-explanatory. 5/26 - 690 - Q44 V39 - MGMAT1 (didn't really study until 7/15 after this ) 7/17 - ??? - Q48 V?? - MGMAT2 7/25 - 680- Q47 V36 - MGMAT3 8/1 - 720 - Q49 V39 - GMATPrep1 8/7 - 760 - Q50 V42 - GMATPrep 2, closest approximation 8/12- 740 - Q50 V41- MGMAT4 8/13 - 720- Q48 V40 - MGMAT5 8/17 - 770- Q49 V46- GMATPrep1 Retake 8/19 - 780- Q51 V45- MGMAT6 8/21 - 780- Q51 V46- GMATPrep2 Retake 8/25 - 760- Q49 V44- Official GMAT Whew! I think that about covers it. I definitely typed more than I wanted to but hopefully you found some of this information helpful. I found that keeping a diary kept me motivated and focused for much of my preparations and I encourage you to start one if you need support. Ask away if you have any questions and good luck on your test! =========================================================================================== Hey all, I am a recent college grad and am planning on taking the GMAT during the summer before work starts. My tentative test date is July 31, which is 2 months away. The only roadblocks are that I will be away for an entire week in a couple of weeks and then another 2 weeks early July (all vacation plans), so I won't have a good 3 weeks to study. However, that still leaves me a good 5 weeks to prepare, and during these weeks I plan on studying every day! I will take my first diagnostic in a couple of hours. I'm pretty cocky about my intelligence so I imagine scoring 750+ on the final test is manageable as long as I put in the work. Of course, my real goal is 800, and although I probably won't achieve it, I don't rule it out. I was mathematics minor in college, so I don't imagine the quant section being too much of a problem. Verbal on the other hand will be a monster... I'm a poor college grad at the moment, but I looked on Craigslist several weeks ago and was able to get all 8 Manhattan GMAT books + 3 official GMAT guides for $40, in like new condition. To improve my reading comprehension, I will try to read The Economist every day for 1 hour. Since I purchased the MGMAT texts second hand (they were part of a course), I don't have any access to the CATs, so currently I don't have any sample tests. I plan on purchasing the 8 MGMAT CAT tests as they seem like a good deal. I'll definitely be using gmatclub for help and might purchase the gmatclub tests (though there seems to be fewer verbal sections, which is what I want to focus on). Anyway, I'm mainly using this thread as a log to keep me motivated. Any tips + suggestions will be useful. I'll try to come up with a nice schedule and stick to it. And so the quest begins... Summary of CATs taken: 5/26 - 690 - Q44 V39 - MGMAT1 (didn't study until 7/15 after this ) 7/17 - ??? - Q48 V?? - MGMAT2 7/25 - 680- Q47 V36 - MGMAT3 8/1 - 720 - Q49 V39 - GMATPrep1 8/7 - 760 - Q50 V42 - GMATPrep 2 8/12- 740 - Q50 V41- MGMAT4 8/13 - 720- Q48 V40 - MGMAT5 8/17 - 770- Q49 V46- GMATPrep1 Retake 8/19 - 780- Q51 V45- MGMAT6 8/21 - 780- Q51 V46- GMATPrep2 Retake Summary of gmatclub tests Date Test Correct Total % Correct Mean time Percentile 7/18 m01 31 37 84% 83.4548 sec 84% 7/19 m02 33 37 89% 93.8058 sec 90% 7/20 m03 30 37 81% 111.1665 sec 80% (mean time getting longer... errr burnout haha) 7/21 m04 33 37 89% 107.7445 sec 91% 7/22 m05 29 36 81% 122.0276 sec 82% (thought this one was pretty challenging) 7/23 m06 24 33 73% 136.3358 sec 53% (blah... didn't finish) 7/27 m07 28 37 76% 121.3407 sec 66% 7/29 m08 20 34 59% 124.5703 sec 39% 7/30 m09 24 37 65% 95.5053 sec 34% Test Date: 8/25

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760 -Q49, V44- My GMAT Progress Diary

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Hussain15

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19 Jul 2009, 21:22

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I am looking forward for your test result, this will be a test case for my understanding.

I wish I were a person without a job and no family issues, but...... Any how, best of luck!!! Waiting for your gmat experience share thread!!!

whatthehell

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20 Jul 2009, 10:10

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Hey hey, this is a pretty good thread. I am also planning on taking GMAT around the same time (~ Aug 20th, 09). The best I've scored so far is 660 (6 weeks ago) in the GMAT Prep. Since then, I have started focusing more on theory and fundamentals. I am hoping to take another CAT this weekend. Perhaps, a MGMAT CAT. I am taking an entire week off to give me a full 10 days of non-stop GMAT. Let see how it works out. I do plan to hit 700+ at least 2 times in a row so that I feel confident that I am capable of scoring at least that much on 'd-day'.

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20 Jul 2009, 20:37

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Thanks for the encouragement guys. Good luck to those of you who are taking it in the next month or so. Feel free to start your own thread and we can be online study buddies! :-D

I post every night at around 11pm. Why do I do this? It's because my goal is to take 1 gmatclub every day. I absolutely hate these tests. Sometimes the wording of the question is so bad that I cringe at the thought of answering something written by (possibly) a ten year old. Sometimes I just get really annoyed at my inability to answer the question. Most of all I hate data sufficiency because it tortures my mind and makes me think of the billion possibilities. Or it might be that I forget how to find something that I'll never need to know in real life (e.g. is 43! divisible by 3?).

Sooo... due to my hating math, I always postpone doing the gmatclub test until I'm about to go to bed. I generally procrastinate during the day dreading the awful hour where I'm tortured through the quant section. It's not that I find the section extraordinary challenging or that I can't do the problems, it's just extremely extremely annoying. Enough ranting I guess :evil:

Today when I started late at night on the math my brain was so tired and by question 5 I wanted to kill myself. I didn't learn as well as I could have but I did learn two important lessons:

1) Stop taking the test before you sleep and take it in the morning or early afternoon!
2) It was my second consecutive night getting the last two wrong in the quant section with minutes to spare, so I need to take my time to check through the last several questions instead of trying to rush through to finish it.

A bit disappointed at my results, but I know I shouldn't be results oriented. Though, at the end of the test I felt like gmatclub had violated me (like mentally raped... i was bitter :cry:

)

Test Correct Total % Correct Mean time Percentile
m03 30 37 81% 111.1665 sec 80%

As to the other goals, I did well on mgmat word translations question bank and am getting better at combinatorics/probability. I also did 10 passages of OG11 reading comprehension (51 questions) and got 7 wrong. Not as well as I'd hoped and I'm not even sure if I'm improving. One passage I managed -3/7 so I clearly didn't understand what I was reading well enough.

I read through the MGMAT RC guide two days ago before focusing on RC psets. I really liked the simple strategy of summarizing the passage and creating a headline list. I think their RC guide would benefit everyone, especially if you were like me and were simply passively reading the passage. However, RC is definitely the hardest to improve, and I think their guide falls short when approaching difficult passages or questions. Their strategy is very basic but doesn't go into deeper strategies on how to attack specific questions (e.g. their inference strategy is "Infer as little as possible" ... one line is all they have!).

Generally when I do an RC question the answer either jumps out at me, but in the cases where I'm debating between 2 options it would be nice to have a specific method of attacking the question. I wonder if the Powerscore LSAT RC guide mentions anything on that. Maybe if I have time I'll flip through it.

I think it's getting quite difficult to improve on RC just by doing OG sets (generally hit or miss). To improve RC I'll just read The Economist more at night and begin to attempt harder RC passages from LSAT. Basically it's like working out. If you're trying to build muscle and you generally lift 20lb dumbbells, you're not going to get bigger just by lifting those. You gotta go for the 30lb dumbbells, get out of your comfort zone, and get used to heavier weights. Then the 20lbers will seem like a breeze.

I'll put RC on the backburner for now; maybe attempt a couple of passages every other day. I should focus on SC next and keep doing some quant work. Furthermore, I'm beginning to feel a bit burnt out. I'm average 4 good hours of studying per day though I probably spend 6 hours trying to study (2 hours of goofing off, reading gmatclub posts, talking on gchat). Though it's only the 4th day or something, I gotta start studying smarter, not harder.

Goals for tomorrow:

gmatclub test m04 (attempt before dinner!)
mgmat number properties test bank (been giving me a bit of trouble)
start MGMAT SC (get through first five chapters)

long post, but i like typing things and tend to ramble a lot when i'm listening to relaxing music on my headphones. :-D

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20 Jul 2009, 21:01

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Here's my take on RC: take whatever works for you and leave the rest

I've tried strategies for reading RC passages, but I found that they took just as much time and I had less understanding of the passage. I'm not a great (or fast) reader, but my memory is pretty good. My method is simple - I read the entire passage, but I pay close attention for important details. I don't mean the useless rambling details between commas - I briefly skim over those. The details that are important to me are sentences that express the authors mood, position, or purpose for writing the passage. Once I've mentally established the Main Idea, Attitude, and Purpose (as Knewton calls it), I move onto the questions. It probably takes me 2-2.5 mins to read a long passage and 30-60 seconds to read each question. I currently miss about 0-1 RC questions per test.

The key for correcting my errors had very little to do with "strategies." What improved my accuracy was understanding the question types. To cite another Knewton example, they propose that when you search for an inference question, you should ask yourself: "What MUST be true?" Most wrong inference answers will be plausible and may very well be true in the world you know, but the correct answer must be supported by evidence in the passage.

Example
Passage: "The pig will only eat red food."
Inference: "The pig will not eat a green apple."

Anyhow, I think the summary of my advice is that you study the question types your missing. If you're consistently missing the same question type, that's the issue you need to correct.
Don't forget: Every wrong answer choice will have at least one word that kills it. The wrong answer choice might be out of scope or too extreme. Out of scope answer choices can be very common on Main Idea questions.

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20 Jul 2009, 21:44

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Thanks for the advice Avernusaur. I'll try that next time!

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21 Jul 2009, 07:42

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Avernusaur ,

Good example on Inference.

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21 Jul 2009, 19:45

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I failed at accomplishing my goals today, but that's okay =). I didn't manage to get thorough the first 5 chapter of SC. There are a lot of OG11 and verbal problems at the end of each chapter, so it took a lot longer than expected. Nevertheless, I read three good chapters and think this book is excellent. I like the way the book is structured for it makes it very easy to identify your weaknesses. On the mood tense chapter I got a good number wrong but I aced the subject-verb chapter, so I know what types of problems I should focus on. Definitely learned a lot of new things from the book.

I took the gmatclub test right after I woke up (i.e. 10:30am haha!), and scored better.

Test Correct Total % Correct Mean time Percentile
m04 33 37 89% 107.7445 sec 91%

I definitely think I'm learning some quicker strategies, so as much as I hate doing the tests I know they're helping.
I did well in the number properties question bank, getting -3 out of 25.
I think I took it a bit easier today on prep since since the last few days have been really intense. Nevertheless I think I spent a good 3 hours studying. I think 3-4 hours is a good pace, anything more and my brain will fry.

I think I'm going to aim for an MGMAT CAT#3 for Friday or Saturday. I was disappointed with CAT#2 since the verbal section crashed and I basically wasted an entire verbal section (blame MGMAT). However since my first 690 I've definitely improved on quant, slightly improved on RC and am making improvements on SC. Hopefully within the next two days I can finish mgmat sc and become proficient. I still haven't touched CR and I'm going to devote the majority of my time to it. I'm still saving GMATprep for when I get closer to the test date.

Goals for Tomorrow:

m05 :cry:

mgmat sc chapters 4-6
review quant mistakes over the past several days
at least 30 minutes of the economist

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22 Jul 2009, 19:28

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Took m05 this morning. I didn't do so well but I'm pretty happy about it since I genuinely found this test to be more difficult than the others. I haven't looked over the answers yet but I plan to within the next couple of days. Since I still have a bit over a month I'd much rather see many quant mistakes now than later.

Test Correct Total % Correct Mean time Percentile
m05 29 36 81% 122.0276 sec 82%

I was able to do chapters 4-6 of MGMAT SC. I didn't realize how difficult some of the SC questions are. The tiniest little things can change the meaning of a sentence completely. I'm keeping an error log of all my mistakes so after I finish my first run through, my second time will just focus on my mistakes. (yes, after having just reviewed SC, i realize my last sentence was "grammatically" incorrect... sue me

)

I still haven't read the economist (been slacking off on that). I'll read it right before I go to bed.

Tomorrow I'll keep learning and reviewing. On Friday I don't plan on learning any more material but will go over all the mistakes I've made in the past few weeks again. Saturday morning I'll write MGMAT CAT #3 so hopefully there will be a decent improvement.

Plans for tomorrow:

review m05
take m06
MGMAT SC chap 7-9
economist 30 minutes

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22 Jul 2009, 20:39

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"The tiniest little things can change the meaning of a sentence completely"

very true.

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23 Jul 2009, 17:33

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I've studied for about a week and I really think I've started to burnout. Didn't think it would happen so soon, but I start to lose focus after 15 minutes or so. Not good...

I did gmat m06 today. Did pretty poorly as I didnt' finish on time. I realize I'm stubborn and think to myself that I can make up the time despite spending so much on one problem but usually what ends up happening is that I get the question wrong anyway and waste 8 minutes in the process. I spent over 30 minutes today on just 5 questions and ended up guessing on the last 7 since I ran out of time (heck I didn't even have time to guess on all of them

).

Test Correct Total % Correct Mean time Percentile
m06 24 33 73% 136.3358 sec 53%

I finished the mgmat sc book and completed ALL the sc questions in both OG11 and official verbal. I feel pretty solid on SC except for the occasional error which I still find tricky.

Tomorrow I'm going to take a break from gmatclub tests since I need one. I plan on doing a full CAT on Saturday, so tomorrow I'll be reviewing all the quant and verbal questions I've gotten wrong in the past week.

Goal for tomorrow:

Review wrong problems
Keep reading the economist

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24 Jul 2009, 03:18

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good post and an inspring one too

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24 Jul 2009, 18:02

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Took it pretty easy today. Reviewed some SC mistakes and most of my quant mistakes. Ready to take CAT 3 tomorrow.

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24 Jul 2009, 19:05

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bipolarbear

Took it pretty easy today. Reviewed some SC mistakes and most of my quant mistakes. Ready to take CAT 3 tomorrow.

This is important. Don't forget to take easy days every now and then. Just be sure you don't take easy weeks

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bipolarbear I was in a similar situation as you with the MGMATs and took the test recently. I hope this helps: gmat-710-q47-v41-what-worked-and-what-didn-t-81055.html

If you find the time, go through the materials in the verbal and math sections of the forum sooner rather than later. Those strategies definitely raised my score, but also slowed me down because it takes some time to turn everything into habit. I found out that front-loading studying and focusing on intensive testing near the end helps speed you up and reduces stress during the test. Also I recently found out that Q:47 is actually 78th percentile in math and was told that the top programs like either balanced V and Q scores or at least both scores above the 80th percentile.

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25 Jul 2009, 09:24

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Wow what a crappy day. I woke up this morning nice and early, ate breakfast, and sat for my practice exam. I had pretty high expectations given that I thought I had certainly improved on quant and felt that my RC skills and SC skills were much better. Well, not exactly...

SCORE & OVERVIEW OF RESULTS
TYPE SCORE ESTIMATED PERCENTILE RANK
Quantitative 47 81 %
Verbal 36 81 %
Total 680 90 %

I was really disappointed and a bit depressed after taking this test. First of all, I can't believed I scored so low on verbal. I'm a native English speaker and I received As in all the literature and writing classes I took at my ivy league university. It's not like I have some special problem with grammar or anything, but I scored a 36, and as the saying goes, it is what it is. :cry:

One thing I definitely found for sure was that I have a timing problem on my quant section. I had previously been tricking myself into thinking that running out of time was just a rare occurrence but now I know for sure that's not the case. I had finished well within time on both my first two MGMAT CATs and the first several gmatclub challenges but in the last few sessions I've been struggling to finish. Today I was forced to guess on my last 7 questions and constantly felt pressure during the second half of the section. I really need to learn how to control my time, because even though I was aware I needed to rush, I wanted to finish the problem anyway.

After going over my assessment report, I realized that I get most of the difficult questions wrong. It's actually very clear with verbal that I breeze through the easy questions and completely zone out on the more difficult ones.

I reviewed some of the problems. I'm not too concerned with RC since two of the mistakes were careless ones. For SC, I guess I just don't read the sentences as closely as I should. I need to start working on harder SC questions since I've exhausted the OG and Verbal guides. Maybe it's time to get kaplan 800. I suck at CR but I havent' studied that section yet so half the time I don't know what I'm doing, but still, my score sucks

.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to improve on my verbal? I'm getting all the hard ones wrong and the easier ones right, so is it just a matter of doing more problems?

Sigh... definitely not the best feeling right now. I have exactly 1 month before test date and I'm starting to worry that I will run out of time. I'm not even thinking of an 800 right now, just trying to score above 750, and even that seems to be unlikely. I had previously given myself 3 months but procrastinated until I only had 5 weeks left. Now I only have 4 weeks left and have many, many problems. The next couple of weeks are not going to be fun.

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25 Jul 2009, 12:00

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Don't be too discouraged by difficulty or timing issues with MGMAT CATs. Both the Quant and the Verbal take significantly longer on a MGMAT CAT compared to a GMATPrep. When I take MGMAT CATs, I simply pause the clock if I run out of time and make a note of how long I had to pause it. However, I'm primarily interested in seeing how high I can get my scores on MGMAT CAT within a reasonable amount of time.

It does look like CR is your weakest area. Go over your results to identify specific question types that are giving you trouble. If it's only 1-2 question types, master those and try again. Q47-48, especially if you're guessing at the end, is a very safe score for you right now. Based on your GMATClub tests, you're probably in the 49-50 range. If you want to increase your overall score, you'll get the greatest returns on mastering the verbal section. RC deserves some practice time too, but you'll get a lot of RC practice through CR and SC.

It's not a bad idea to take one of your GMATPreps soon if you want to see where you really are. Don't worry about the repeats.

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26 Jul 2009, 16:28

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bipolarbear

mgmat sc chapters 4-6
review quant mistakes over the past several days
at least 30 minutes of the economist

What is this number properties bank that you are referring to? (see bolded and underlined portion) Is that a GMATclub test? If so, what number?

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26 Jul 2009, 16:45

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Franklin

bipolarbear

mgmat sc chapters 4-6
review quant mistakes over the past several days
at least 30 minutes of the economist

What is this number properties bank that you are referring to? (see bolded and underlined portion) Is that a GMATclub test? If so, what number?

I believe he's referring to the MGMAT Number Properties Question Bank. The book comes with free access, but you can also buy access on their website for $5.

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26 Jul 2009, 17:21

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Avernusaur

Franklin

bipolarbear

mgmat sc chapters 4-6
review quant mistakes over the past several days
at least 30 minutes of the economist

What is this number properties bank that you are referring to? (see bolded and underlined portion) Is that a GMATclub test? If so, what number?

I believe he's referring to the MGMAT Number Properties Question Bank. The book comes with free access, but you can also buy access on their website for $5.

Thank you!

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26 Jul 2009, 18:47

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bipolarbear

don't get discouraged by any score you get on Manhattan GMAT CAT's. They are useful for practice......do not use them as a gauge on your score. I found them totally off.

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