can't do better in quant... :(((

Question

I have been preparing for the last 2 months intensively (around 8 hours a day with breaks) and still have 3 weeks to go. (exam is scheduled for jan 15). When I tried the diagnostic here - quant was low (38%), while verbal - 98%. So i put extra stress on my quant and kept on my verbal. I used my chance to try some GMAT club CATs today, since they are free , and again - my quant is super low

. I really don't know what to do. I finished Manhattan GMAT - all books, OG, Kaplan - and done tons of tests on quant. Still i am a loser. (yesterday I started GMAT club math book - hope it helps) Can anyone tell me what to do? What am i doing wrong? I feel devastated and if things are going like that i will have to postpone my exam for another couple of months. But question is - whether anything in my quant is going to improve during these months, coz i have already put out all my strength.

nelz007 · Answer

GMAT club quant tests are pretty tough. They should be used in the last stage of your preperation. you can try other free CAT's over here.

what was your accuracy on OG problems - DS / PS?

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ozodam81 · Answer

in OG tests, on average i made 1 mistake in 15-16 PS tests vs. average 1 mistake in 10-12 DS test, but again my brains RELAX when they do OG tests especially after GMAT club tests. I feel myself absolutely dumb every time i get GMAT club test quant results (ranging from Q32 to Q36).

govols · Answer

I ran into this today too. I scored 740 (46Q/45V) on the GMATPrep software about two weeks ago. I'll admit that I've had problems with Quant - not big ones but I miss more questions on it than the verbal. (I missed a lot fewer questions in verbal so I thought it was weird the score was lower, I'm sure someone's going to tell me it's something with the algorithm).

Went to take these tests today and my head's spinning from doing so terribly on them. Like incredibly, incredibly bad. Like I might not get accepted to bartending school bad. Even my verbal, which I normally don't miss much on was low. Should I be worried?

GMATNinja · Answer

I agree with nelz007: the GMAT Club tests are great practice, but they're pretty tough. I also think that the results of any test besides GMATPrep need to be taken with a grain of salt. The GMAT Club tests contain plenty of very tasty questions, but it's incredibly difficult for anybody to perfectly copy the GMAT question style and scoring algorithm. Whenever you do tests from any non-official source, focus on learning as much as you can from your mistakes. The score may or may not be accurate, and you should be careful not to let the scores mess with your head.

Ozodam81, I have no idea if you have a "real quant problem" or if the GMAT Club tests are simply disproportionately hard for you, but I would be careful not to overreact to your scores. If your GMATPrep results are good, than you might be on track. Just learn as much as you can from the GMAT Club tests, and don't let the score ruin your day. I hope this helps!

Cwary, you get kudos just for the bartending school reference. Good stuff. And sure, you probably need to keep working hard on quant, but if you can get a 740/46/45 on GMATPrep, you don't have too much to worry about.

In terms of the scoring algorithm, it's often true that you can miss far fewer questions on the verbal, and still get a crappier score than on the quant section. Oddly enough, the quant and verbal scales aren't really comparable. I would argue that a 45V is an AMAZING score, and a 45Q is simply solid. You could miss as many as 20 questions and get a 45Q (as long as you're avoiding careless errors and missing only the tougher questions), but a 45V is only possible if you get almost every question right.

I hope this helps!

ozodam81 · Answer

thanx GMATNinja. I'll be concentrating in doing old and new versions of GMATprep, Manhattan tests and other CATs, leaving gmatclub quant tests for the last week of preparation. cwary - good luck.

Merry Christmas.

dabral · Answer

I agree with gmatninja as far as giving weight to non-official GMAT tests. Here I believe are the reasons why almost all of the official GMAT questions are of significantly higher quality than non-official GMAT questions(okay GMAT test writers also make rare mistakes, they are humans after all):

1) The questions are written by some very bright people and it is a team of people. Each question is thoroughly checked for ambiguity, language, and style.

2) The use of experimental questions during the actual GMAT exam helps the test writers to further eliminate questions that contain any form of ambiguity. For example, if significantly more men than women get a particular question right, they eliminate it. The stressed test takers are their free guinea pigs!

3) The test writers spend a lot of time generating "distractors" which are wrong answer choices that lure test takers. This is a standard technique for multiple choice questions for generating difficult questions. The American Math Competitions also employ this strategy, this is another exam that has an extremely high quality of questions, perhaps better than GMAT in my opinion, but I digress.

4) The GMAT has a very specific set of guidelines of how questions are structured, I have a sense of what that is, unfortunately I cannot explain it in words(okay I can try but that would be a long post). It is almost as if they have a set of binders in their office that categorizes all of the ways they test specific ideas and how they want writers to write new questions. You can only develop a sense of this style if you use your precious time exclusively on official GMAT questions. This is why if you spend all your time on non-official GMAT questions, then there is typical adjustment shock.

5) At least on the quant, I know that many questions are structured in a way(especially the difficult ones), where on first reading one tends to go in the opposite direction of where one actually needs to go. It happens to me often. This is an intentional design of these questions, and it is natural for most of us to do that, however what matters is how quickly you can detect the correct path.

In a nut shell, majority of the non-official GMAT questions aren't able to live up to the above set of requirements and you often see people flouting these norms in the following ways:
1) Tedious and complicated algebra.
2) Questions out of scope: example an ellipse question I saw in some GMAT iphone App. 
3) Poorly written long question stems that are full of ambiguities.

The only way I have seen non-GMAT questions overcome this is by literally copying an official GMAT question and just changing the numbers slightly. This is done to different degrees of sophistication. Some companies have literally copied the official GMAT questions and changed the name of people or the numbers. Others are a bit more sophisticated. But I think this is okay because GMAT test writers themselves lift questions from other sources, I have seen instances from AMC, and a recent question I had on the exam that was straight from a GRE Math subject test.

In a nutshell, stick to Official GMAT questions and Official GMAT practice tests, unless you have exhausted them all.

Dabral

nelz007 · Answer

Great post Dabral! There is so much official material you will never be able to exhaust all of it, most of us preparing for the exams are working full time jobs and studying from different sources won't help the cause. OG 13, Quant review, Gmat prep pack 1 along with the Gmat prep software should be sufficient for your preparation. You just have to make sure you learn from your mistakes and have strong foundations!

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can't do better in quant... :(((

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