First Mock Test 310...

Question

I took a shorter mock quiz earlier in the morning for a 420. Again ending with a 410.
I just took the practice exam off of the GMAT's OG website and scored a low low 320. Yes, all those questions are a far better gauge than a 10 question quiz (off an app), but I'm still shocked.

I had initially figured to start a practice exam to see where I am before recklessly charging off to buying a course. I wanted to gauge where I am so I can draw up a study plan.
Well according to my test, I better go back to 8th grade! I graduated UG last May in accounting. My last math class was maybe sophomore year of college in stats. It involved very little of what I saw on the GMAT mock test. So let's go even further back. My last math class related to anything I saw today would put me roughly....in sophomore year of HS. Point is...I forgot everything

I was going to draw up a study plan but now I don't even know where to start let alone what books I need. I know I'll need the GMAT OG, but nothing else. Any tips?

---
The good thing I'd like to mention is. I'm already a year post grad UG. I'm in no rush to enter B-School and I have yet to schedule a test. I work a typical 8-5 and am already preparing to dedicate at least 6 evenings out of the week to study for this test.

I was going to draw up a study plan but now I don't even know where to start let alone what books I need. I know I'll need the GMAT OG, but nothing else. Any tips? --- The good thing I'd like to mention is. I'm already a year post grad UG. I'm in no rush to enter B-School and I have yet to schedule a test. I work a typical 8-5 and am already preparing to dedicate at least 6 evenings out of the week to study for this test.

Rubina11 · Answer

This post may help you check it out https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-study-p ... ml?fl=menu

kiran120680 · Answer

Need not to worry.. most of them will get almost same score in the first Mock. Try to complete basic and concepts first, then do the practise questions. all the best

hnbgurpthapliyal · Answer

Need not to worry. My first mock score was also similar and i improved a lot with time. Keep on practicing and follow GMAT Club.

akela · Answer

Hi  TeaclubEst2019 ,

Welcome to gmatclub!

For the textbooks, check out these threads:
 Best GMAT Math Books 2019 
 Best GMAT Verbal Books - 2019 Edition

Don't be disheartened, your score will improve if you study.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi TeaclubEst2019,

To start, choosing to study for the GMAT now - years before you'll "need" your Score - is a smart choice.

Many Test Takers are unhappy with their initial practice scores, but you really shouldn't be. That Score is just a measure of your skills right now - and you'll improve on that result over time as you learn more about the content, Tactics and little 'secrets' of the Exam. Have you had a chance to review that CAT/mock question-by-question yet? How many questions did you get wrong that you COULD have actually answered correctly (meaning that you made some type of little mistake when you tried to solve it the first time)? It's likely that you just don't know how to 'respond' to the overall Exam in an efficient way - and THAT lack of experience also cost you some points. This is all meant to say that the GMAT is a consistent, predictable Exam, so you CAN train to score at a higher level, but you have to commit to that training if you want to earn a much higher Score.

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 your timeline and your goals:

1) What is your goal score?
2) Do you have any ideas about which Schools you plan to apply to?
3) Going forward, how many hours do you think you can consistently study each week?

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

TeaclubEst2019 · Answer

Thank you. I think I saw a download on here about foundations of math that was similar to something I saw at the bookstore from mgmat. It looks useful and I will tackle that first.

TeaclubEst2019 · Answer

Thank you for your tips!
1) Well my initial score goal would have been 690-700 but that sounds farfetched now. BUT, I've seen a few success stories out there and it's keeping me motivated to strive for at least 650. 
2) Online Macc schools so that I can fulfill my required 150hrs to sit for the CPA. I can't sit still enough in class anyways. Online classes help me stay motivated, it's self-paced, and it's at home. Here I'm less distracted and I've done better studying on my own than in school. My schools so far need scores between 400-590.
3) Realistically, I work a 8-5 and so I'm willing to dedicate 10 hours on weekdays and 3-6 hours on the weekends.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi TeaclubEst2019,

I’m glad you reached out, and I’m happy to help. So since you scored a 320 on your practice exam, it’s clear that you lack the GMAT quant and verbal fundamentals you need for a high score right? Thus, moving forward you should follow a study plan that allows you to learn GMAT quant and verbal from the “ground up”. More specifically, a plan that allows you to individually learn each GMAT quant and verbal topic and then practice each topic until you’ve gained mastery. Let me expand on this idea further.

If you are learning about Number Properties, you should develop as much conceptual knowledge about Number Properties as possible. In other words, your goal will be to completely understand properties of factorials, perfect squares, quadratic patterns, LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, and remainders, to name a few concepts. After carefully reviewing the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer Number Properties questions, practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties. 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. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.

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. 
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, types that you would rather not see, and types 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.

Follow a similar routine for verbal. For example, let’s say you start by learning about Critical Reasoning. Your first goal is to fully master the individual topics: Strengthen the Argument, Weaken The Argument, Resolve the Paradox, etc. As you learn about each question type, do focused practice, so that you can track your skill in answering each type. If, for example, you get a weakening question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize the specific question type? Were you doing too much analysis in your head? Did you skip over a keyword in an answer choice? You must thoroughly analyze your mistakes and seek to turn weaknesses into strengths by focusing on the question types you dread seeing and the questions you take a long time to answer correctly.

When practicing Reading Comprehension, you need to develop a reading strategy that is both efficient and thorough. Reading too fast and not understanding what you have read are equally as harmful as reading too slow and using up too much time. When attacking Reading Comprehension passages, you must have one clear goal in mind: to understand the context of what you are reading. However, you must do so efficiently, so you need to avoid getting bogged down in the details of each paragraph and instead focus on understanding the main point of each paragraph. That being said, do not fall into the trap of thinking that you can just read the intro and the conclusion and thereby comprehend the main idea of a paragraph. As you read a paragraph, consider how the context of the paragraph relates to previous paragraphs, so you can continue developing your overall understanding of the passage. Furthermore, as you practice Reading Comprehension, focus on the exact types of questions with which you struggle: Find the Main Idea, Inference, Author’s Tone, etc. As with Critical Reasoning, analyze your incorrect Reading Comprehension answers to better determine why you tend to get a particular question type wrong, and then improve upon your weaknesses. Keep in mind that GMAT Reading Comprehension passages are not meant to be easy to read. So, to better prepare yourself to analyze such passages, read magazines with similar content and style, such as The Economist, Scientific American, and Smithsonian. 
 
Sentence Correction is a bit of a different animal compared to Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning. There are three aspects to getting correct answers to GMAT Sentence Correction questions: what you know, such as grammar rules, what you see, such as violations of grammar rules and the logic of sentence structure, and what you do, such as carefully considering each answer choice in the context of the non-underlined portion of the sentence. To drive up your Sentence Correction score, you likely will have to work on all three of those aspects. 
Regarding what you know, first and foremost, you MUST know your grammar rules. Let's be clear, though: GMAT Sentence Correction is not really a test of knowledge of grammar rules. The reason for learning the grammar rules is so that you can determine what sentences convey and whether sentences are well-constructed. In fact, in many cases, incorrect answers to Sentence Correction questions are grammatically flawless. Thus, often your task is to use your knowledge of grammar rules to determine which answer choice creates the most logical sentence meaning and structure.
 
This determination of whether sentences are well-constructed and logical is the second aspect of finding correct answers to Sentence Correction questions, what you see. To develop this skill, you probably have to slow way down. You won't develop this skill by spending less than two minutes per question. For a while, anyway, you have to spend time with each question, maybe even ten or fifteen minutes on one question sometimes, analyzing every answer choice until you see the details that you have to see in order to choose the correct answer. As you go through the answer choices, consider the meaning conveyed by each version of the sentence. Does the meaning make sense? Even if you can tell what the version is SUPPOSED to convey, does the version really convey that meaning? Is there a verb to go with the subject? Do all pronouns clearly refer to nouns? By slowing way down and looking for these details, you learn to see what you have to see in order to clearly understand which answer to a Sentence Correction question is correct.
 
There is only one correct answer to any Sentence Correction question, there are clear reasons why that choice is correct and the others are not, and none of those reasons are that the correct version simply "sounds right." In fact, the correct version often sounds a little off at first. That correct answers may sound a little off is not surprising. If the correct answers were always the ones that sounded right, then most people most of the time would get Sentence Correction questions correct, without really knowing why the wrong answers were wrong and the correct answers were correct. So, you have to go beyond choosing what "sounds right" and learn to clearly see the logical reasons why one choice is better than all of the others.
 
As for the third aspect of getting Sentence Correction questions correct, what you do, the main thing you have to do is be very careful. You have to make sure that you are truly considering the structures of sentences and the meanings conveyed rather than allowing yourself to be tricked into choosing trap answers that sound right but don't convey logical meanings. You also have to make sure that you put some real energy into finding the correct answers. Finding the correct answer to a Sentence Correction question may take bouncing from choice to choice until you start to see the differences that make all choices wrong except for one. Often, when you first look at the choices, only one or two seem obviously incorrect. Getting the right answers takes a certain work ethic. You have to take the time to see the differences between answers and to figure out the precise reasons that one choice is correct.
 
To improve what you do when you answer Sentence Correction questions, seek to become aware of how you are going about answering them. Are you being careful and looking for logic and details, or are you quickly eliminating choices that sound a little off, and then choosing the best of the rest? If you choose an incorrect answer, consider what you did to arrive at that answer and what you could do differently to arrive at correct answers more consistently. Furthermore, see how many questions you can get correct in a row as you practice. If you break your streak by missing one, consider what you could do differently to extend your streak.

As with your Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension regimens, after learning a particular Sentence Correction topic, engage in focused practice with 30 questions or more that involve that topic. As your skills improve, you w(ill want to practice with questions that test you on skills from multiple Sentence Correction topics.

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 it helpful to read the following article about  The Phases of Preparing for the GMAT .

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

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi TeaclubEst2019,

The additional information that you've provided is quite useful - and it will help to define what you'll need to work on during various phases of your studies. To start, if the Schools that you're interested in don't actually require a 650+, then you don't "need" that type of result. We can still work towards that Score (and potentially even higher), but it's important to remember your REAL Goal: to get into your first-choice School - so you need a strong-enough Score (along with the proper OVERALL Profile) to make that happen. There's a big difference between raising a 310 to a 600 and raising a 310 to a 700, so you could potentially save some time, money and aggravation simply by properly defining that the type of Score that will make you at attractive candidate at each School you're thinking about applying to.

You also appear to have the proper attitude about this whole process - you're willing to do the work and commit the time and effort. To be clear, you'll have to make some big improvements to how you handle BOTH the Quant and Verbal sections and that will require a lot of work (the work is actually fairly straight-forward though).

While the Quant section of the GMAT is NOT a 'math test', every GMATer needs certain math knowledge and skills to properly deal with that section. If you're concerned about your current skills in those areas, then you might want to focus on your math abilities before you jump in to your GMAT studies. For free math practice and help, I recommend that you set up an account at Khan Academy (www.khanacademy.org). The site is completely free and makes the learning a bit more fun and 'game-like' (as opposed to the dry academic approach taken by most books). While the site is vast, you should limit your studies to basic Arithmetic, Algebra and Geometry. After spending a little time re-building those skills, you can start your GMAT studies.

1) Are you looking to start your GMAT studies sometime soon (for example, in May or June)?

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

TeaclubEst2019 · Answer

1) I am looking into online Macc programs so that I can work full time and study at my own pace. Many of these grad schools offer more than just Spring/Fall start dates. I am not in so much of a rush for school that would cause me to rush through studying for GMAT. I was thinking on a 4-5 month study (maybe a whole half month to month just on the verbal/grammar and math foundations)

I have looked into Khan and Khan actually got me through HS and college (thank god for technology). Math was always harder for me, but ironically every entrance exam I've ever taken had a better math score than the lang/verbal scores.

I've taken a look at some math foundations book as well, just over the weekend. Learned a few tips and tricks I was never taught in school (Manhattan prep had a note that if the digits add up is divisible by 3, the whole large number is divisible, etc.)

I will definitely take a look at all the resources you have mentioned on here, thank you.

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