Advice with timing and strategy

Question

Hello everyone,

I've been preparing for gmat for almost 3 months and today I took a test on the official site today and scored 690 (49Q 34V), and a Veritas prep exam couple of weeks ago where I scored 640 (44Q and 35V without finishing whole quant section).

I am not sure if these results are really accurate, and I am panicking because I need at least 690 to get admitted to a PhD. What are your experiences with comparing results from simulations with your real score on the test day?

I still have a month until my test and my weak spot are number properties, inequalities and abolutes, and I do well the probability, combinatorics and word problems (which are usually hardest of problems, but if I fail at easier which are usually DS number properties, I wont see these on my test) and on verbal in CR boldfaces and mimic the argument questions. I also have problem with staying awake during the reading comprehension, but when I focus hard enough it is no problem.

I have no idea what to do in next 1 month. Any suggestions how to improve my weaknesses? Any links to content which would help improving these concepts?

In addition, timing in my Verbal was awful. I had like 15 minutes left for 10 or 12 questions and there were 2 reading passages in those... I struggled with couple of CR in the beginning and it took a lot of my time. Still dont know how I had 35 in V. In contrast, on Veritas test I had no problem with time in Verbal section. What to do?

Princ · Answer

Veljkoc94

I would recommend taking the official GMAC mock test. Add tolerance of +/- 30 to its result for getting an approximation of your GMAT result.

For pacing strategy, check below link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWrUiBT83PQ

Veljkoc94 · Answer

Thanks. The one I scored 690 was from gmac site. One of those 2 free tests.

Posted from my mobile device

rohan2345 · Answer

Hi Veljkoc94, You can refer to the following thread https://gmatclub.com/forum/timing-strat ... 06035.html where timing strategies are discussed beautifully. I am sure you will find it very helpful. Hope this helps. All the best!

sahilbhatia21 · Answer

Veljkoc94 Prep score are the most authentic reflectors of your actual performance in comparison to other test companies. I would not advice you to rely on Veritas. I would suggest you to give Gmat Club Tests to improve your Quant and work on your weak areas side by side. One month seems good for you . And do not stop practicing your strengths. Try to solve as many official questions as possible and keep learning . All the best

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Veljkoc94,

Before I can offer you the specific advice that you’re looking for, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) What study materials have you used so far?
2) How have you scored on EACH of your CATs (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

Goals:
3) When you say that you "need" at least a 690, what does that mean exactly? Are you guaranteed an invite if you score a 690 (and how do you know that for sure?)? Would you still apply if you scored 680?
4) What Programs are you planning to apply to?
5) What application deadline are you facing?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

ssxdots · Answer

My experience is that GMAC practice exams are the most reflective of the actual exam. I wasn't confident of my scores so I bought an additional exam pack (Exam 3 and 4) for practice. My GMAC practice and exam scores are in the same range.

My timing for verbal is awful too. Always have lots of time left over during practices but I screwed up my timing on the actual exam and did not have enough time left.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Veljkoc94,

I’m glad you reached out, and I’m happy to help. First off, 690 on an official mock is great! Nice work. Regarding your other mock, you must remember that when you take practice tests from companies other than GMAC, you may find some variation in algorithms used and thus variations in your score. So, if you are concerned about the 640, then take another official practice exam to see how you do.

Regarding what to do in the next month, since you already have a great verbal and quant foundation, I recommend that you do a lot of focused practice to continue to expose and fix your remaining weaknesses. The overall process will be to learn all about how to answer question types with which you currently aren't very comfortable and do dozens of practice questions category by category, basically driving up your score point by point. When you do dozens of questions of the same type one after the other, you learn just what it takes to get questions of that type correct consistently. If you aren't getting close to 90 percent of questions of a certain type correct, go back and seek to better understand how that type of question works, and then do more questions of that type until you get to around at least 90 percent accuracy in your training. If you get 100 percent of some sets correct, even better.

For example, if you find that you are not strong in answering Number Properties questions, then carefully review the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer Number Properties questions and practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties: LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, remainders, etc. When you are working on learning to answer questions of a particular type, start off taking your time, and then seek to speed up as you get more comfortable answering questions of that type. As you do such practice, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get right. If you got a remainder question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not properly apply the remainder formula? Was there a concept you did not understand in the question? By carefully analyzing your mistakes, you will be able to efficiently fix your weaknesses and in turn improve your GMAT quant skills. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.

Each time you strengthen your understanding of a topic and your skill in answering questions of a particular type, you increase your odds of hitting your score goal. You know that there are types of questions that you are happy to see and types that you would rather not see, and types of questions that you take a long time to answer correctly. Learn to more effectively answer the types of questions that you would rather not see, and make them into your favorite types. Learn to correctly answer in two minutes or less questions that you currently take five minutes to answer. By finding, say, a dozen weaker quant areas and turning them into strong areas, you will make great progress toward hitting your quant score goal. If a dozen areas turn out not to be enough, strengthen some more areas.

You can work on verbal in a similar manner. Let’s say you are reviewing Critical Reasoning. Be sure that you practice a large number of Critical Reasoning questions: Strengthen and Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, find the Conclusion, Must be True, etc. As you go through the questions, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get correct. If you missed a Weaken question, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize what the question was asking? Did you skip over a key detail in an answer choice? Getting GMAT verbal questions right is a matter of what you know, what you see, and what you do. So, any time that you don't get one right, you can seek to identify what you had to know to get the right answer, what you had to see that you didn't see, and what you could have done differently to arrive at the correct answer.

So, work on accuracy and generally finding correct answers, work on specific weaker areas one by one to make them strong areas, and when you take a practice GMAT or the real thing, take all the time per question available to do your absolute best to get right answers consistently. The GMAT is essentially a game of seeing how many right answers you can get in the time allotted. Approach the test with that conception in mind, and focus intently on the question in front of you with one goal in mind: getting a CORRECT answer.

In order to follow the path described above, you may need some new quant and verbal materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the  best quant  and  verbal courses . You also may find my article with more information regarding
 how to score a 700+ on the GMAT  helpful.

Feel free to reach out with any further questions. Good luck!

salmino · Answer

I screwed up my timing on the actual exam and did not have enough time left.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi

During practice (and sometimes on Test Day) many Test Takers face pacing issues in the Quant section, the Verbal section or both - but it's important to remember that pacing problems do NOT exist on their own - they're the results of OTHER problems. Before we can discuss how you might 'fix' those issues, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How long have you studied?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) How have you scored on EACH of your CATs (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?
4) How did you score on the Official GMAT?

Goals:
5) What is your goal score?
6) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
7) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

You might also choose to purchase the Enhanced Score Report for your Official GMAT. While the ESR doesn’t provide a lot of information, there are usually a few data points that we can use to define what went wrong (and what you should work on to score higher). If you purchase the ESR, then I'll be happy to analyze it for you.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

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Advice with timing and strategy

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