GMAT Ninja 13-Week Study Plan (2024-25 ed.) Week 7

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GMAT Ninja’s 13-Week Study Plan  
  Week 7 (~15 hours)  
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Welcome back for Week 7 of the study plan! If you have no idea what’s going on here, then you’ll want to start with  Week 1  instead.

You’ll hit the halfway mark in the study plan this week! If you’re happy with your progress so far, please take a evening off and celebrate, ideally with an amazing meal or at least a really great empanada or something.

Just remember that this is a marathon, not a sprint. So if you’re starting to feel overwhelmed – or if your progress is slower than you’d like – you can always pause the study plan, or at least stretch things out a bit.

You’re deep into your studies now, and it’s easy for unpleasant things (obsession, burnout, fatigue, panic) to start happening at this stage.

If you’re starting to feel “unbalanced”, I’d strongly recommend  this debrief from a test-taker who went from 470 (albeit on a non-official test) to 730 . I particularly like item #5 in the debrief: even if you aren’t spiritual at all, the advice about staying balanced is absolutely spot-on.  
   
Full, adaptive practice tests start next week. This week, we’ll get you warmed up with a glorious thing we call a “fake quant test”.

But first, here’s a short video that we recommend:

How to get the most out of official GMAT practice exams  (5 mins.)

Week 7 practice test assignments :

1. (Optional) Do the quant section ONLY of a non-official GMAT practice exam from GMAT Club or any other company.2. Do a “fake quant test” using GMAT Official Practice Questions - Quantitative available for purchase at mba.com. Here’s how to set it up:  
 Access the  GMAT Official Practice site , and locate the "GMAT Official Practice Questions - Quantitative" product. 
 Click the "Study" button -> "Practice Questions" in the left nav menu -> "Start New Session" button. 
 To start a session, select the "Choose the type, difficulty, and number of questions" radio button; click the checkbox to the left of the Problem Solving questions to select ALL remaining questions ( include easy, medium, and hard ). Keep the "Unlimited" radio button selected (under "Duration"), and select "Exam Mode" (under "Mode").  
 Click the "Start Practice" button.  Try to hide/ignore the timers at the top of the page  (you won't have those on test day). 
 After doing the assigned number of questions, click the "Pause" button at the top right -> "Pause Custom Practice" button in the popup -> "Submit and End Session" (red, scary button) to confirm. 
 The questions don’t randomize properly, unfortunately. But it will feel somewhat like an actual exam. 
 Don’t try to do this for verbal or DI yet. We’ll say more about that in Week 8.

The quant “fake test” can be hard to interpret, so please see our guidance in the next post in the thread when you’re finished. 
   
After Week 9, we’ll stop featuring specific quant topics, and focus solely on practice tests and OG-style sets. This week’s only new quant topic is statistics. Because statistics is a big deal on Data Insights (for obvious reasons), you’ll see quite a bit of it in the DI homework this week, too.

As always, pause the study plan if you’re SURE that you need extra time on specific topics.

How to approach quant homework

1.  Time each set, but don’t rush through . Do every set with  test-like intensity , but don’t impose an artificial time limit -- at least not yet.
2. When you’re finished, please do NOT review your errors at all just yet. On the day you do the homework, just input the results into your error log, and walk away.

Week 7 quant homework 
Again: please pick your battles thoughtfully! The OG and Quant Guide sets are generally the most valuable; don’t obsess over the topic-based stuff unless you’re SURE that you don’t have more urgent things (like verbal!) to work on.

1. (Optional) Watch  this video on statistics  (~1 hr.)
2. Do 15 statistics PS questions,  sub-555 difficulty  |  mixed difficulty 
3. GMAT Official Guide PS #126-150
4. GMAT Quant Review PS #101-125
5. (Optional) Only if you’re CERTAIN that it’s worthwhile: do extra sets of topic-based questions as needed (algebra, exponents, word problems, percents, ratios, rates, number properties, counting, sequences, overlapping sets, statistics, etc.).

What to do AFTER completing a quant homework set

1-3 days after completing the set, redo your errors from scratch. Try to “wash your brains” and pretend that you’ve never seen the questions before. 
 If you get most of the questions RIGHT the second time: you’re probably making careless errors, and fixing them needs to be your #1 priority. See below for some videos that might help. 
 If you miss a question twice, don’t overreact. Obsessively studying individual questions drains a TON of your study time – if you miss a particular question, you’ll probably never see anything quite like it again. So focus on GENERAL takeaways on how to improve -- don’t spend hours memorizing steps for individual questions. 
 For more on how to interpret your results, see the next post in this thread.

Need help with quant?

If you’re struggling at all on quant this week, these resources might help:

1. That lovely  statistics video from the homework list 
2. If quant topics from previous weeks are giving you trouble, whatever you need is probably in  this delicious playlist .
3. If you’re making careless errors,  this (probably very familiar) video on how to approach GMAT quant  is still essential viewing; if you’re feeling inefficient, the video on  Developing a Flexible Quant Mindset  is still a good fit.
4. GMAT Club Math Book 
5. Heroic quant threads from  Bunuel :  Ultimate GMAT Quant Megathread  |  Signature Question Collection  |  All You Need for Quant

Practice tests are about to play an increasingly dominant role in your life. This week, we’ll give you two GMAT RC sets, and then the RC workload will drop to make room for practice tests.

So this is a good time for some brutal honesty: are your RC results strong enough to get you to your target score in six more weeks? If not, you might consider pausing the study plan if you think you need extra RC work.

LSAT RC sets are still optional, but if you need an extra check on your progress -- or a good challenge -- it’s a good idea to do a set or two occasionally.

How to approach RC homework

1.  Time each set, but don’t rush through . Do every set with  test-like intensity , but don’t impose an artificial time limit -- at least not yet.
2. When you’re finished, please do NOT review your errors at all just yet. On the day you do the homework, just input the results into your error log, and walk away. (We’ll say more below about how to analyze your results.)

Week 7 RC homework 
 
1. Do the 3rd set of ~25 questions from a recent edition of the GMAT Verbal Guide (skinny little book). These will still feel easier than the LSAT. (The question numbers vary depending on which edition you’re using, and it’s OK to do a little bit more or less than 25 questions so that you don’t stop partway into a passage.)
2. Do the 4th set of ~25 questions from a recent edition of the OG
3. (Optional) One more LSAT RC set

What to do AFTER completing an RC homework set

Don’t obsess over the questions you missed.  You’re never going to see these passages again, and you don’t want to burn too much time reviewing them. 
 Instead, focus on general patterns. Did you miss a bunch of primary purpose questions? Inference questions? Did you get intimidated by certain types of passages (like humanities/culture/literature)? Did you panic? Run out of energy? Pay special attention to errors that surprised you – did you somehow make a silly mistake? 
 If you missed, say, three or more questions on a particular passage, you might consider redoing the entire passage (and its questions) from scratch. If you do better the second time, ask yourself: what should you have done differently the first time? 
 For more on how to interpret your RC results, see the next post in this thread.

Need help with RC?

The usual list of RC resources in case you need them:

A full GMAT RC video course  
  A ton of LIVE YouTube videos on all sorts of topics, including RC  
  All GMAT Ninja RC resources  
  More RC explanations than anybody should ever read  
  Beginner’s guide to RC again

This week, we’ll dive into fill-in-the-blank CR questions, but if you don’t need the extra practice (or the video), feel free to skip those tasks. If your general process on CR is rock-solid, you might not need to drill specific question types at all.

We’ll give you two official GMAT CR sets, but if the data says that you’re doing GREAT on CR relative to other GMAT question types, it’s OK to skip a set, and spend your time elsewhere.

LSATs are optional from now on, but they’re always great if you want a reality-check on how much you’ve improved from Week 1.

How to approach CR homework

1.  Time each set, but don’t rush through . Do every set with  test-like intensity , but don’t impose an artificial time limit -- at least not yet.
2. When you’re finished, please do NOT review your errors at all just yet. On the day you do the homework, just input the results into your error log, and walk away. (We’ll say more below about how to analyze your results.)

Week 7 CR homework 
 
1. (Optional) Watch  this video on fill-in-the-blank CR questions . Again, you don’t need much special sauce for these questions, so feel free to fast-forward liberally, or skip the video entirely.
2. (Optional) If you want extra reps with fill-in-the-blank CR questions, do a few extras from the LSAT or older editions of the OGs; you can find some from OG 12 and the Verbal 2nd edition  here , or from the LSAT  here .
3. Do the 4th set of 25 questions from a recent edition of the GMAT Verbal Guide (skinny little book). These will probably still feel easier than the LSAT. (The CR question numbers will vary slightly, depending on which edition you’re using.)
4. Do the 4th set of 25 questions from a recent edition of the GMAT OG.
5. (optional) One full LSAT CR set

What to do AFTER completing a CR homework set

1-3 days after completing the set, redo your errors from scratch. Do your best to “wash your brains” and pretend that you’ve never seen the questions before. 
 If you get most of the questions RIGHT the second time, that’s a sign that your overall CR process isn’t nearly as consistent as it needs to be, and fixing your process needs to be your #1 area of focus. See below for some videos that might help. 
 If you miss a question a second time, don’t overreact: obsessively studying individual questions can drain a TON of your study time – and it really isn’t very valuable on CR. So don’t spend hours memorizing the steps for individual questions. 
 For more on how to interpret your CR results, see the next post in this thread.

Need help with CR?

If you struggled with your CR homework sets this week, here are some resources that might help:

The video on fill-in-the-blank CR questions again  
  Beginners’ guide to CR  
  LIVE YouTube video on how to approach CR  or  a not-so-live video on how to approach CR  
  All GMAT Ninja CR resources on GMAT Club  
  More full CR explanations than anybody should ever read  
  A whole lot more LIVE YouTube videos on a wide variety of topics  
 CR “pitfalls” videos:  Missing the Heart of a CR Passage  |  Paraphrasing on CR  |  Obsessing over CR Question Types  |  Anticipating Correct CR Answers... Incorrectly  |  Falling in Love With Answer Choices  |  Irrelevant & Out of Scope Answers  |  CR Word-Matching  |  Rejecting Imperfect Answer Choice    
    
We’ll play with the final DI question type this week: Multi-Source Reasoning (MSR). These questions are pretty much the kitchen sink, combining bits of RC, CR, quant, graphs, and tables. Whee!

The usual disclaimer: you might be itchy to do more practice questions that we’re assigning here. But please keep in mind that there’s a very limited supply of official DI questions. We’ll carefully assign the official stuff to maximize its value, so please don’t race ahead -- we’ll get to everything in time.

Week 7 DI assignments:

1. (Optional, but recommended) Watch  this video on how to approach Multi-Source Reasoning questions 
2. (Optional) Watch  this video on statistics  (~1 hr.), which also appears in the quant homework list.
3. 9 Multi-Source Reasoning questions from the Official Guide online question bank on MBA.com. See below for instructions and a really important disclaimer.
4. Do the 4th set of 20 Data Sufficiency questions from your edition of the Official Guide.
5. Do the 3rd set of 20 Data Sufficiency questions from your version of the Data Insights Review (skinny little book).
6. 15 mixed questions from the GMAT Official Guide question bank on MBA.com – there are instructions for how to set this up below. Use all four non-DS question types, but please read the disclaimer below first. 
7. Do 15 statistics DS questions.  Sub-555 level  |  Mixed difficulty 
8. (Optional) Do 15 Graphs & Tables questions.  Sub-555 level  |  Mixed difficulty 
9. (Optional) Do 15 Two-Part Analysis questions.  Sub-555 level  |  Mixed difficulty

Instructions for DI practice sets on ( MBA.com )

Friendly warning : the MBA.com software doesn’t always work nicely with Multi-Source Reasoning questions. On the actual GMAT, you’ll always see three questions for each set of MSR tabs. But when you set up these practice sets, you might get only one question for each set of tabs, or you might get the full set of three questions.

Access the  GMAT Official Practice site at mba.com , and locate the "GMAT Official Guide 2024-2025" product (or whichever edition of the OG you’re using) 
 Click the "Study" button -> "Practice Questions" in the left navigation menu -> "Start New Session" button. 
 To start a session, select the "Choose the type, difficulty, and number of questions" radio button; click the checkbox to the left of the assigned question type(s) to select ALL remaining questions for that type. Keep the "Unlimited" radio button selected (under "Duration"), and select "Exam Mode" (under "Mode").  
  Week 7 MSR assignment : select easy & medium MSR questions only. And please stop after you’ve completed a total of 10 questions.  
  Week 7 mixed DI assignment : select easy & medium DI, GI, MSR, and TA questions only (no DS, please). And please stop after you’ve completed a total of 15 questions – we’ll save the rest for later.
 
 Click the "Start Practice" button.  Try to hide/ignore the timers at the top of the page , since you won't have those on test day. 
 After doing the assigned number of questions, click the "Pause" button at the top right -> "Pause Custom Practice" button in the popup -> "Submit and End Session" (red, scary button) to confirm.

What to do AFTER completing a Data Insights homework set

1-3 days after completing the set, redo your errors from scratch. Try to “wash your brains” and pretend that you’ve never seen the questions before. 
 If you get most of the questions RIGHT the second time: you’re probably making careless errors, and fixing them needs to be your #1 priority. See below for some videos that might help. 
 If you miss a question twice, don’t overreact. Obsessively studying individual questions drains a TON of your study time – if you miss a particular question, you’ll probably never see anything quite like it again. So focus on GENERAL takeaways on how to improve -- don’t spend hours memorizing steps for individual questions. 
 For more on how to interpret your results, see the next post in this thread .

Need help with Data Insights?

1. If you’re struggling with the Multi-Source Reasoning questions, you could check out  this LIVE video on how to approach Multi-Source Reasoning questions  (also linked above), or  this one from a different GMAT Ninja tutor 
2. If you need help with DI in general, everything you need is probably in  this series of five DI videos (filmed LIVE) , or  this playlist of 10 delicious DI videos 
3. If you need help with specific quant topics, check out the quant section of the homework list for more resources.

GMATNinja · Answer

How to Interpret Your Week 7 Homework Results Please read this section each week if you’re serious about optimizing your study time. If you don’t read this, it will be harder to (A) choose your homework wisely, and (B) avoid wasting time reviewing things that don’t really matter. Some of this advice will be similar from week to week. But plenty of things will change, too. So if you’re panicking about a homework result – or if you’re tempted to spend a half-billion hours reviewing individual questions – please take a deep breath, and read through this post first. Benchmarks for the Week 7 quant “fake test” (using the official online question bank) : Medium quant questions : 80% is solid, 90% or above is excellent if your goal is an 80+ on quant. Hard quant questions : 50%+ is solid at this stage. No, really: you can miss a TON of hard questions on the GMAT and be in great shape. If you’re comfortably above 50%, congratulations. But if your goal is a Q80 or above, you don’t need to be THAT far above 50% on the hard questions, especially since we still have six weeks ahead of us. Careless error rate : < 3%. If you made one silly error, that’s... not great, but maybe it won’t hurt you too badly in the long run. More than that? You’ll definitely need to focus on getting your process right before it’s too late. Questions that took you 3+ minutes : < 3%. I know: it’s hard to let questions go. But keep fighting to “bail when you flail”, as our friend Mike likes to say . Benchmarks for the non-official quant test : Quant section score : I don’t care, and you shouldn’t either. Non-official tests aren’t necessarily very accurate. Instead, focus on the next two metrics... Careless error rate : < 3%. If you made one silly error, we can probably live with that, even if it’s not ideal. More than that? Grrrrrr... Questions that took you 3+ minutes : < 3%. Didn’t you hear our guy Mike telling you to “bail when you flail” ? What to do about your Week 7 practice test results : One more time: don’t overreact to non-official test scores! It's nearly impossible for practice tests to mimic the actual scoring of the GMAT, so the score itself doesn't matter much. If you’re making careless errors : As always, job #1 is to stamp them out. Check out the resource list in the study plan for help. If you spent 3+ minutes on too many questions : This is a question of discipline and mindset. Learn to let go! Remember: the test is designed to make you miss 20-50% of the questions, and most of you will do exactly that – even if you get a great score. So dump the perfectionism, and learn to let questions go. If you struggled on “medium” questions from the mba.com question bank : I’m still not a huge fan of reviewing every individual question, because it’s so time-consuming. But ask yourself: were these careless errors? If not: have you missed similar questions recently? If the answer is “yes”, then you might have uncovered a weakness that’s worth your attention. If you struggled on “hard” questions from the mba.com question bank : Friends, these are legitimately hard, and I can promise that they aren’t the #1 thing holding you back from the mid-600s or probably even a 705. So don’t waste too much time on these, unless you think you missed a question out of carelessness. Again: don’t spend a ton of time reviewing your mistakes. Reviewing individual questions can drain too much of your precious study time. If a question was hard or weird, then it isn’t the biggest threat to your GMAT goals. So please don’t obsess over individual questions. Benchmarks for Your Week 7 Quant Results The first part is the same as in previous weeks: Count the errors that make you go "whoa, how the 🤬 did I miss THAT one?!?" No really: count them, for EVERY quant set you completed . Then divide that by the total number of questions to get your careless error rate. If your long-term goal is to get a Q80 or above, here are the metrics I’d like you to hit in Week 7: Careless error rate : < 2%. You’ve heard this before: the careless errors need to be gone, or almost gone. Statistics questions (#2 on the list) : 75% or above is probably excellent, but take the results with a grain of salt! These sets are random, and if you happened to see nasty, strange questions, 50-60% might be pretty good. The quality and difficulty of these questions varies HUGELY, so don’t overreact to your results. OG & Quant Guide sets (#3-4 on the list) : 80%+ correct is excellent, 70-80% is probably fine, since these are getting kinda hard. Just remember that WHAT you miss is more important on the GMAT than how many you missed. If you missed OG questions on the handful of topics that you haven't studied, that's totally cool -- you'll have time to learn those things. And again: the questions are getting harder. Speed : On the OG and topic-based sets, you're still in good shape if you’re reasonably close to 2 minutes per question. If you're slower than, say, 2:30 per question on average, it might be a sign that your skills are shaky, or that you're not choosing efficient solution paths. What Should You Do About Your Quant Weaknesses in Week 7? Our usual reminder: on an adaptive test, job #1 is to be accurate on the questions that you’re capable of getting right. If you’re accurate on the easier ones, you’ll get pounded by harder questions – and you’ll miss plenty of them. That’s normal and healthy and good. So don’t obsess over the hard questions that you’ve missed. They aren’t worth much of your precious time. If your careless error rate is too high : that’s bad. Do whatever you need to do to fix this. Do it now. Pause the study plan if you need to. Just fix the careless errors. If you struggled on the statistics questions (item #2) : If you missed really hard ones or oddball questions, please don’t waste your time reviewing them. If you got CRUSHED on easier questions, you might want to revisit this statistics video , but don’t overreact – this topic isn’t worth THAT much time. If you struggled on the OG or Quant Guide sets (items #3-4) : as usual, ask yourself WHY you struggled. If you’re at, say, 70% accuracy, that’s not ideal, but context matters: if your errors were on hard, strange, or unfamiliar questions, that’s fine. We still have a few topics coming in Week 8, so there’s time to improve. If you struggled on other topic-based sets (item #5) : again, concentrate on putting your errors into context, and look for broad patterns. If you made similar errors on several relatively easy questions, then you might want to revisit the quant books or videos. But if you missed hard or strange questions, who cares? If you got CRUSHED by ALL of the quant homework : if you’re nowhere close to the benchmarks on quant – and if your long-term goal is Q80 or above – then maybe you need to back away from the study plan, and invest some time in rebuilding your basic quant skills. If that’s the case for you, tag us in the thread, give us as much detail as you can about your situation, and we’ll try to help. How much time should you spend reviewing individual quant questions? Not much, please! Because it can take SOOOOOOO much time to review a question, it should be your absolute last resort. That’s why we want you to redo questions first – sometimes, you’ll see your mistake right away, and that’s the best way to learn. If you miss a question a second time, then maybe it’s a sign of an underlying issue. No, really: resist the temptation to obsess over individual questions . Instead, look for patterns in your errors – an error on one question might be a fluke (or a weird, hard, or badly written question), but if you miss several related questions, you have an opportunity to get a good ROI on your study time by addressing a general weakness via a video or articles or books. Benchmarks for Your Week 7 RC & CR Results OG & Verbal Guide RC & CR sets : if your goal is to hit the 90th percentile on GMAT verbal, 80% correct in under 2 minutes per question is good on this week’s sets, 90% is outstanding. These are getting harder now, so if you’re squirming, that’s cool. Random sets of fill-in-the-blank CR questions from the older OGs or LSAT : sorry, we can’t really give you a benchmark for these, since randomness plays a role. Maybe you saw tougher questions, and maybe not.

Did you at least feel confident and systematic in your approach? If so, you’re probably fine. Accuracy on (optional) LSAT CR & RC sets : 80% accuracy is still the goal if you’re trying to hit the 90th percentile on GMAT verbal; 70% accuracy is fine if you’re happy with an 80V. If you need a check on your progress, it’s a good idea to do an LSAT set occasionally, and compare it to your Week 1 results. Efficiency on LSAT CR & RC sets : 60 minutes or less is your long-run goal to have a shot at finishing the GMAT verbal section on time. Consistency on LSAT CR & RC sets : your errors and times should fall within a fairly narrow range across ALL of your LSAT sets. LSAT sets (~25 Qs each) do not vary much in difficulty, so if your errors or times fluctuate wildly, that’s a sign that you’re doing very different things at different times, and you might need to work on your approach to questions. What Should You Do About Your CR & RC Weaknesses in Week 7? Look for “careless” errors . As with everything on the GMAT, pay close attention to anything that seems to be an “unforced error.” Did you miss a ton of questions that felt easy to you, especially in the OG and Verbal Guide? If so, you might want to revisit the techniques in the videos and articles in the assignment lists. This is MUCH more important than getting better at harder questions. If your results are significantly better on RC than on CR : you might want to invest time in some extra CR sets or videos – we’ll provide some recommendations each week. If you’re better at CR than RC : When this happens, the most common reasons are that you’re obsessing over details when you read RC (and missing the “big picture” by doing so), or you’re struggling to stay focused through a long passage. Maybe you’ll want to err on the side of getting a bit of extra practice on RC in the coming weeks, and we’ll keep feeding you videos that might help, too. If you’re slow ( > 60 mins per LSAT set, > 2 minutes per OG or Verbal Guide question) : sadly, there are a ton of different reasons why your times might be high. At this stage, maybe you’re still learning new approaches, so you’re still figuring out how to integrate them into your process – if that’s the case, your times will come down. Maybe you’re not doing each set with test-like intensity. Maybe you need more coffee or more sleep. Maybe you’d be sharper at a different time of day. Maybe there’s inefficiency in your process – and if that’s the case, it’s likely that you’re still struggling to fully incorporate the techniques that you’ll see in the videos. It’s also possible that you’re a slow reader, and that’s a hard thing to fix. I wish I could tell you which of these things is happening – but you’ll have to figure that part out for yourself, unfortunately.

If you’re getting impatient with your results : If you’re hitting our benchmarks, you’re doing GREAT, and you’re ready to get something close to an 84V. If you’re not quite hitting the CR/RC benchmarks yet, are you at least seeing some improvement? If so, you’re on track – keep at it! You can always pause the study plan if you need to. If you’re getting CRUSHED on CR & RC : well, I’m impressed that you’re still reading this in Week 7. It might be time to check out this video about the factors that can lead to GMAT verbal struggles . (It references an older version of the GMAT, but the punchlines are still very, very relevant.) If you think that your fundamental reading skills are an issue, this article and this one will give you some ideas for how to improve over time. You’ve now sampled all five DI question types. Are you having fun yet? If you’re struggling a little bit, that’s normal – since there’s a limited supply of official DI practice questions, a large chunk of the practice is still ahead of you, and there’s still time to improve. But if you’re getting absolutely roasted, you could consider spending some extra time with the DI videos in the resources list. Or just be patient – again, there’s still time to improve. Benchmarks for Your Week 7 Data Insights Results Before you do anything else: Count the errors that make you go "whoa, how the 🤬 did I miss THAT one?!?" No really: count them, for EVERY set you completed . Then divide that by the total number of questions to get your careless error rate. If your long-term goal is to score in the 80s on DI, here are the metrics I’d like you to hit in Week 7: Careless error rate : < 3%. You’ve heard this before: the careless errors need to be gone, or almost gone. Maybe you’re still getting used to MSR in particular, and that’s cool. But if you’re misreading questions or making silly miscalculations, that’s bad, and you’ll want to address those issues ASAP. OG MSR set (#3 on the list) : these are intimidating at first, so if you’re getting 6 out of 10 right, that’s probably OK at this stage. And of course, the times are almost meaningless – your 10 MSR questions might have been from 3 or 4 sets of tabs, or far more than that. So don’t worry TOO much about the times. OG & Data Insights Guide DS sets (#4-5 on the list) : these are getting harder as you move through the books, so I’d be happy with 80% accuracy here. As always, context matters: if you struggled with quant topics that you haven’t studied yet, that’s not a problem. OG mixed DI set (graphs, tables, TPA, MSR – #6 on the list) : again, any MSR questions you saw might have felt jarring, and even if you’re doing just easy and medium questions, the difficulty can vary quite a bit in practice. That said, I’d be happy to see something like 70-80% correct at this stage; if you’re already approaching 90% correct, you definitely deserve a cookie. Randomized batches of forum questions (#7-9 on the list) : 85-90% correct is good on the sub-555 questions, but if you did mixed difficulty sets, you’ll have to take the results with a grain of salt – especially since non-official GI, TA, & TPA questions vary enormously in quality. If you happened to see nasty, strange questions, 50-60% might be pretty good. Don’t overreact if the percentage wasn’t great, though. Speed for Data Sufficiency : On the OG and topic-based sets, you're in good shape if you’re reasonably close to 2 minutes per question. If you're slower than, say, 2:30 per question on average, it might be a sign that your basic skills are rusty, or that you're not choosing efficient paths forward. If this is still a problem, you might want to consider honing your DS technique, maybe with some help from the videos that appear in the resources lists. Speed for the non-DS Data Insights questions : Ignore your times on the MSR questions. For the other three question types (GI, TA, TPA), you're in good shape if you’re reasonably close to 2:30 minutes per question. If you're slower than, say, 3:00 minutes per question on average, it might be a sign that your basic skills are rusty, or that you're not choosing efficient paths forward. If that’s still a problem, you might consider spending some extra time with the videos in the resources list to see if those help at all. What Should You Do About Your Data Insights Weaknesses in Week 7? Our usual reminder: on an adaptive test, job #1 is to be spectacularly accurate on the questions that you’re capable of getting right. If you’re taking care of business on the easier ones, you’ll get pounded by harder questions – and you’ll miss plenty of them. Embrace the pain. In other words: don’t obsess over the hard stuff. It isn’t worth much of your precious time. Here’s what to do once you’ve analyzed your results: If your careless error rate is too high : address this problem ASAP. Nothing else matters until you do. Do whatever you need to do to fix this. Do it now. Check out the resource list in the study plan for help. If you struggled with Data Sufficiency : hm, that’s not great at this stage, since you’ve had plenty of DS practice. Ask yourself: is quant the underlying problem, or are you still struggling with the DS question format? Either way, the usual video playlists ( quant , DI ) might help a bit here. If you struggled with the Multi-Source Reasoning questions : honestly, I’m not too worried yet, since you’re just getting rolling with these. The key is to learn how to focus on the right information for each question, without obsessing over every little thing – and that takes time and practice. So please don’t panic if MSR was a little bit painful this week – it’ll get better. If you struggled on specific quant topics, such as statistics : don’t panic , please. It’s far too easy to overreact to a few errors, and study these problems until your eyeballs burst. Instead, try to put your struggles in context: did you miss particularly hard or strange versions of these questions? Were your errors careless? If so, you probably don’t need to do much studying, exactly. But if you missed basic questions because your foundations are shaky, then you might need to do some remedial studying, and it might even make sense to “pause” the study plan to do so – but don’t assume that you need to do this unless the data is very, very clear about your weaknesses. If you struggled with official GI, TA, or TPA questions : again, ask yourself WHY you struggled. If you’re struggling to hit 70% accuracy on these three question types, that’s not ideal at this stage. But context matters: careless errors are the apocalypse, obviously. If you’re struggling with your underlying quant or verbal skills, it might be time to address those head-on. And if you’re doing far worse on these three DI question types than on quant or verbal, it might be a sign that your approach to them is flawed – if that’s the case, extra time with the videos might be a good investment. If you got CRUSHED by ALL of the DI homework : if you’re nowhere close to the benchmarks on DI – and if your long-term goal is a score in the 80s – then maybe you need to back away from the study plan, and invest some time in rebuilding your basic skills. If that’s the case for you, tag us in the thread, give us as much detail as you can about your situation, and we’ll try to help. How much time should you spend reviewing individual questions? Not much, please! Because it can take SOOOOOOO much time to review a question, it should be your absolute last resort. That’s why we want you to redo questions first – sometimes, you’ll see your mistake right away, and that’s the best way to learn. If you miss a question a second time, then maybe it’s a sign of an underlying issue. No, really: resist the temptation to obsess over individual questions . Instead, look for patterns in your errors – an error on one question might be a fluke (or a weird, hard, or badly written question), but if you miss several related questions, you have an opportunity to get a good ROI on your study time by addressing a general weakness via a video or articles or books.

overclockedboi · Answer

GMAT Official Guide: softcopy or hardcopy, which one do you recommend?

Ashish136 · Answer

Hi  GMATNinja  , other experts.
I am preparing for GMAT for quite sometime.
I have a subscription for lawhub and I have given lsat 101,104,105. 
I am able to get above 80% correct in all sections and my timing is also less than 60 minutes for each.

I have given some official GMAT mock test. I am not able to complete verbal section on time. I am not able to do around 4 questions in the end. Although I am still getting around 84 verbal.
I am not able to figure out why i am taking more time in gmat although i am able to complete lsat on time(<60).
Can you guide me on how to proceed.
Is Lsat sets after "lsat prep test 100" are easier than the one before?

GMATNinja · Answer

Either one is totally fine! Whichever you prefer -- it's mostly a matter of personal taste.

Hm, that's interesting,  Ashish136 ! I'm thrilled to see the overall accuracy -- 80% on the LSAT is great, and 84V is wonderful, too. So a lot of things are obviously going well for you. You deserve a cookie.

I'm a little bit surprised by the timing issues, though. A few potential theories:

1. Maybe you're behaving differently on a timed GMAT exam than on LSAT practice sets. It's possible that you're trying to "read more carefully" (or just "better"), and you're burning a bunch of time in the process. Or maybe you're getting a bit nervous on practice exams. Either of those things could slow you down quite a bit, and explain the timing discrepancy.
2. This is pretty rare, but sometimes we meet folks who have an easier time with the LSAT than the GMAT, for one reason or another. I'm a little bit skeptical in your case, just because the overall results look pretty similar on both (80% on the LSAT would roughly correlate to an 84V on the GMAT). But it's possible that you've become accustomed to the LSAT's style, and you're whipping through LSAT questions a bit faster than I'd expect. If that's the case, more GMAT practice should help, in theory. 
3. Maybe I'm full of crap, and < 60 minutes on the LSAT isn't actually quick enough to finish GMAT verbal sections on time.

Do any of those feel right to you? All joking aside, I'm open to #3 being part of the picture here -- our own students' experience suggests otherwise, but that's a fairly small sample size.

I hope that helps a bit!

yc168 · Answer

Came across a post on reddit the other day about LSAT questions vs. GMAT questions:

Those who have tried LSAT CR questions and GMAT CR questions, do you feel LSAT questions are easier?

A few interesting perspectives were offered in that thread. Just to share with those interested in using LSAT for GMAT prep.

BatrickPatemann · Answer

I just wrapped up another optional non-official quant exam from the GMAT Club tests and, once again, landed on a discouraging 79Q. This has been the story since Week 3—I've done several of these tests and can’t seem to push past 80.

Now I’m wondering: should I be worried at this stage? Should my score already be higher? Part of me is thinking about hitting pause on my current study plan and maybe switching gears, I've heard pretty wild things about TTP for people struggling with quant. All this before I dive into the official material lined up for the next few weeks.

I ask this since question difficulty has gone up just recently (this week we are still doing some medium difficulty OG questions and sub555 sets, so maybe I haven't seen any improvement just yet because I happened to have this 79Q level before and will improve surely after this last weeks work?

What really throws me off is the inconsistency: I can hit 90th percentile on topics like sets and statistics, but then drop to the 20th percentile on others. I’ve tried fixing this by practicing more problem sets and digging through forum discussions these past couple of weeks, but the needle hasn’t moved much.
So... is this normal, or is it a red flag? Thanks in advance  GMATNinja

GMATNinja · Answer

Sorry to hear that you haven't been thrilled with your results,  BatrickPatemann !

The biggest thing that jumps out at me: I wouldn't panic based on the results of a  non-official  quant test just yet. It's incredibly difficult for creators of non-official tests to mimic the actual exam's style and scoring -- so don't take that number too literally. That's why the interpretation guidance emphasizes your time management (anything over 3 minutes on quant is a problem, since that time is probably better spent elsewhere) and any "unforced" errors.

So as you look at the GMAT Club (or any other non-official test), ask yourself: are you missing questions that should be fairly easy for you? If so, that's where you need to focus your attention. On an adaptive test like the GMAT, one or two boneheaded errors can cause a huge drop in your score -- and if you think you should be above 80, a sloppy mistake or two might be the entire difference.

When you say that you're at the 90th percentile in some topics but the 20th in others, are you basing that on data from the practice exams? If so, I would be very careful with that data, particularly from non-official exams. Even if you're taking official tests, those topic-based metrics are calculated based on a very small sample of questions -- and it may or may not be picking up on something that's important. It's very possible that the inconsistency is just a reflection of sloppy mistakes -- again, one of two of those will tank your topic subscores in a hurry.

That said, if you really have major imbalances in your skills, you'll want to address them ASAP. If your skills are really at the 20th percentile in some topic areas, that's a disaster on the GMAT, because you risk missing some very easy questions -- and those always do more damage than missing harder ones.

Tl;dr: don't worry too much about those numbers, but if you're making careless errors (and/or mismanaging your time), address that problem ASAP. If the subscores really do reflect major imbalances in your skills -- particularly if those imbalances mimic your performance on the homework -- then you'll want to spend extra time on your weak areas before you go too much farther. But it's very possible that your  performance  is inconsistent -- not your skills, exactly.

I hope that helps a bit, and have fun studying!

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