You can't study with
the official guide - it has no knowledge or information. The review section it does have is a joke!
Get decent books and get into gear. Don't waste your time with
OG. It is just a bunch of questions.
holdem wrote:
My questions:
- Based on the information given, what do you think about my chances to reach my 660 within the next around 4 weeks?
If you need 100-200 points, your chances with your current setup are close to zero.
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- In which way should I continue to practice? Currently I am concentrating on just one area per day. What do you think? Should I mix the topics? (Didn’t find a lot information about this)
It does not matter. Take notes and review your progress every day when you start (review what you did yesterday, what you had a hard time with)
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- Do you think it is necessary (not helpful, because I know it would be
) to take a course?
Generally no but based on your prep strategy yes
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- What would you recommend regarding the work-life balance? I am currently still working part-time which forces me to work all day long (either on the Gmat or my projects). I also do at least around 2 hours of sport every week. Currently I am not sure if I am exhausted, or if I can handle it. From my consulting experience I am used to hard work, so basically I am feeling healthy but I also recognized some problems with a lot of tension in my jawbone muscles and situations in which I am not able to speak as clear as I am used to
That's probably stress causing some of the jaw issues. Once you get better materials, and feel more confident with the GMAT that should go away
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- How did you handle the panic factor during the exam? Of course practice, but what else? Even without any knowledge about my time I was working like the devil hounded me (I really got a lot of trouble with it). I think there are some strategies, like missing on question immediately, but how did you get back on the track?
You take one question at a time. Isolate them. LIke a ship or a submarine - if there is a fire in section 4, there is peace and quiet in section 30. Make sure you time every single question you do with practice - that
OG book you fancy so much. Get a timer.
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- How did you time your RC study? I know there are recommendations like 6 minutes for 3 questions, 2 minutes for 30 lines and so on, but what about a 30 lines and 9 questions?
Usually there is a certain formula you want to fit into - e.g. 3 mins for short, 4 mins for medium and 5 mins for a long passage and then 30 secs per question. You want to time yourself on both the reading and the individual questions.
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- Related to the RC question: bb calculated his time as to safe 40 minutes for RC. How the hell is that possible? All the time I looked at the watch I just got panic :D.
Different for different folks... I can't remember that i had 40 mins for RC. Maybe. It really depends on your RC, SC, and CR skills. My RC sucked so I had a choice of getting really fast on SC/CR or getting better on RC, I chose to get really fast with SC and CR. I calculated I needed 30-45 secs per SC and 1-1:30 per CR or something like that. The rest of the time would be allocated to RC. Remember that on the test nothing goes as planned. Your first question may be uber hard (being an experimental for example) or something else may happen - try to think and plan what you will do in those cases. Will you move on in a certain amount of time. How will you handle paralysis, etc. Most of all you need to be calm and focused on the "battlefield". The test center will have plenty of other distractions - people typing next to you, clicking, AC noise, people coming in and out, proctor walking around and seating people.... there will be a lot of things going on. Just saying..
Sorry for the amount of text, I also know there is a lot of information on the internet about how to tackle some of this problems but I feel that I just need some personal guidline, not one of the general approaches which differ a lot sometimes. Maybe I should also reschould my exam?
With kind regards,
holdem[/quote]
Good Luck!!!
If you
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