GMAT Ninja 13-Week Study Plan (2024-25 ed.) Week 11

Question

GMAT Ninja’s 13-Week Study Plan Week 11 (~15 hours) Subscribe via E-mail | Join Study Plan Chat Group Welcome back for Week 11 of the study plan! You're amazing for making it this far, and you deserve another cookie.

Friendly warning: in these last three weeks, you'll finish the final few mba.com practice tests, and it’s time to think carefully about whether you're ready to exhaust them. By now, your scores should be reasonably close to your target. If they aren't, then you might want to consider pausing the study plan. These last few weeks are designed to polish your skills, not to overhaul them. So keep moving through the study plan (and especially the full practice tests) only if you're certain that you're 100% ready. This is a very unconventional debrief, and I guess it isn’t a debrief at all: it’s a letter from 24-year-old Amrita to her 22-year-old self . It’s short, and 100% worth reading. If you’re wondering what happened to Amrita in the end, here’s the little-noticed sequel to her original debrief . It all worked out.

It’s almost party time! Please start with this video before you do anything else this week: What to do in the two weeks before your GMAT exam (6 mins.) Week 11 practice tests 1. Full mba.com test #4. Remember: always practice like it’s test day, and keep honing your test-day reset routines if you need them.2. Do a “fake quant test” using GMATTM 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; select 21 Problem Solving questions. Choose a roughly even mix of medium and hard questions. Keep the "Unlimited" radio button selected (under "Duration"), and select "Exam Mode" (under "Mode"). Click the "Start Practice" button and work through the problems. Try to hide/ignore the timers at the top of the page (you won't have those on test day). The questions don’t randomize properly, unfortunately. But it will feel somewhat like an actual exam. 3. (Very optional) Do a “fake verbal test” using GMAT Official Practice Questions - Verbal available for purchase at mba.com. The setup is similar to the “fake quant test” described above, but with the following differences: Select 13 CR questions from the mba.com software, in “exam mode.” If your goal is 84V or above, select an even mix of medium and hard questions. If your goals are lower, select a roughly even mix of easy, medium, and hard questions. Select 10 RC questions – from 3 passages – from the OG or GMAT Verbal Guide or the LSAT. Do NOT use the mba.com software for these – you’ll get too few questions per passage. Set an external timer for 45 minutes. Yes, this is FAR from perfect, for all sorts of reasons. But at least these are official questions, in roughly the same quantity as the actual exam. 4. (Very optional) Do a “fake DI test” using GMAT Official Practice Questions - Data Insights available for purchase at mba.com. The setup is similar to the “fake quant test” described above, but with the following differences: Select 6 Data Sufficiency, 5 Graphical Interpretation, 5 Two-Part Analysis, and 4 Table Analysis questions, and use “exam mode.” Select a roughly even mix of easy, medium, and hard questions for this set. Set an external timer for 45 minutes. Yes, this is FAR from perfect. But at least these are official questions, in roughly the same quantity as the actual exam. This “fake test” won’t include MSR questions, because those do weird things to your timing. Warning: it can be tricky to interpret your “fake test” results, so please see our guidance in the next post in this thread when you’re finished. Friendly reminder: the quant section is thin in Weeks 10-13 -- just some mixed practice sets from the OGs, and that’s it. Again: you shouldn’t have any game-changing quant weaknesses at this point, but if you’re CERTAIN that you’ve missed something important, it’s OK to do some remedial studying in a specific area, but it shouldn’t take up that much of your time. And of course, the careless errors should be long gone. 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 11 quant homework I’m sure that you’ve already noticed, but these sets are getting tough, and they should feel hard at times. If you start to freak out, please check out the next post in this thread for guidance on how to interpret your results. 1. GMAT OG PS #226-250 2. GMAT Quant Review PS #151-175 3. (Optional) Only if you’re CERTAIN that it’s worthwhile: do extra sets of topic-based questions as needed. 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 suddenly worry about a specific quant topic in the final weeks of the plan, don’t overreact.Instead, ask yourself: does the data CONSISTENTLY say that this topic area is a problem, or did you have a flukey bad performance on a particular exam or practice set? If you think there’s a real problem, cool -- go do some extra homework or watch a video. But if you’re not sure, binging on a specific topic probably isn’t a great investment, especially if your quant scores are solid on the mba.com tests.If you truly do need help, these resources should have you covered: 1. If you need more practice on a specific topic, you can always create custom sets using the GMAT Club advanced search or forum quiz . Just don’t overdo it, please! It’s easy to get addicted and waste far too much time on these. 2. If specific quant topics are giving you trouble, whatever you need is probably in this 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. Also, here’s a classic short video on GMAT time management . 4. GMAT Club Math Book 5. Heroic quant threads from Bunuel : Ultimate GMAT Quant Megathread | Signature Question Collection | All You Need for Quant We’re still just trying to keep you sharp, and that’s it. So there’s just one GMAT RC set again this week; optional LSAT sets are always useful if you want a challenge or an extra check on your progress. Honestly, if you’ve been consistently GREAT on RC, it’s cool to skip this week’s RC homework, and spend that time elsewhere. Just be careful: it can be remarkably easy to lose your RC mojo, so when in doubt, keep punching through these sets. 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 11 RC homework 1. Do the 6th set of ~25 questions from a recent edition of the OG. (The question numbers will 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. (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 You’ll hear this from us quite a bit in the final weeks, but the focus now should be on staying sharp on CR. That might mean doing a couple of sets, and it might mean doing nothing at all beyond the CR questions in your practice tests. If your CR results are consistently great, feel free to focus your energy elsewhere – but again, base your decisions on actual data, not just how you feel.LSAT sets are optional, but we still recommend them if you want the challenge of extra-hard language or a sanity-check on your progress over time.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 11 CR homework 1. Do any remaining CR questions from the GMAT Verbal Guide. (If you’re using a newer edition, you’ll have plenty of questions left; if you’re in a thinner, older edition, you’ll obviously have to stop once you run out of questions... and that might have happened already.) 2. (Optional) One more 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: 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 A 9-video Critical Reasoning playlist , focused on the underlying causes of CR errors Friendly reminder: the Data Insights section is thin in Weeks 11-13 -- just some mixed practice sets from the OGs, and that’s it. Again: you shouldn’t have any game-changing DI weaknesses at this point, but if you’re CERTAIN that you’ve missed something important, it’s OK to do some remedial studying in a specific area. And of course, the careless errors should be long gone. Week 11 DI assignments: 1. Do the 6th set of 20 Data Sufficiency questions from your edition of the Official Guide. (Depending on the edition you’re using, you might have fewer than 20 questions remaining. If that’s the case for you, just finish them all.) 2. 15 mixed questions (GI, TA, TPA, MSR) from the GMAT Official Guide question bank on MBA.com – see below for setup instructions. Use all four non-DS question types, but please read our usual MSR warning below. Select a roughly even mix of easy, medium, & hard questions if you can – but by now, you might be running low on the easier questions. 3. 15 mixed questions (GI, TA, TPA, MSR) from the Data Insights Review question bank on MBA.com – see below for setup instructions. Use all four non-DS question types, but please read our usual MSR warning below. Select a roughly even mix of easy, medium, & hard questions if you can – but by now, you might be running low on the easier questions. 4. Do 9 MSR questions from GMAT Official Practice Questions - Data Insights available for purchase at mba.com. See below for setup instructions, along with our usual warning about MSR questions. 5. (Optional) Only if you’re CERTAIN that it’s worthwhile: do extra sets of topic-based DI questions as needed from the GMAT Club question banks . 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 2024-25" or “GMAT Official Guide Data Insights Review 2024-25” – or whichever editions 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 11 OG assignment : select DI, GI, MSR, and TA only (no DS, please), and do a mix of easy, medium, and hard questions if you can. And please stop after you’ve completed a total of 15 questions – we’ll save the rest for later. Week 11 Data Insights Review assignment : select DI, GI, MSR, and TA only (no DS, please), and do a mix of easy, medium, and hard questions if you can. And please stop after you’ve completed a total of 15 questions – we’ll save the rest for later. Week 11 Online Practice Questions – Data Insights assignment : select ALL of the MSR questions, regardless of difficulty. Stop when you’ve completed 9 questions. 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 DI, everything you need is probably in this series of five DI videos (filmed LIVE) , or this playlist of 10 delicious DI videos 2. 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 11 Homework Results

Please read this section if you’re serious about optimizing your study time.

At this point, you’re deliciously close to the end, and your practice tests are doing most of the talking. Are you already hitting your target score, or are you within a few points of your goals? If so, great: you probably don’t need much help interpreting your results.

But if you’re struggling a bit, please read through this post. Hopefully something here will help you make the right moves in the final weeks.

As always, if you’re worried about something that isn’t addressed in this thread, please post your questions/worries/doubts either here or in the Week 1 thread.

Practice Tests+

How to interpret your results on mba.com test #4

- How far are you from your target score overall? In theory, you’re about 2 weeks from your actual exam, so you should be really, really close to your goal. As a very very rough guideline, I’m worried if you still need to gain more than 20-30 points – but as always, it depends on what, exactly, is going wrong.
- No omitted questions, please! The current version of the GMAT penalizes you severely for omitted questions, so please answer absolutely everything, even if you’re guessing blindly at the end of a section.
- Remember that in the GMAT scoring system, 3 = 20. If you gain 3 “section points” – on any individual section or combination of sections – your total GMAT score will increase by 20 points. More on that in this short video, or here’s a nifty score calculator.
- How far are you from your target score on the quant, verbal, and DI sections? If you’re more than 2-3 points away from your target score on any individual section, you’re at risk of running out of time, and you might want to pause the study plan to work on your underlying skills. Just keep in mind that DI scores are 3-5 points lower than verbal and quant scores, on average – so set your score targets accordingly.
- How many careless errors did you make on quant and DI? If you made more than one silly error on quant or DI, then your main problem might be sloppiness – not necessarily a lack of skill. Even a small handful of silly mistakes can cost you 5+ points on a single section. So if this is a problem, fix it NOW.
- Do you notice any patterns in your quant errors? Are you disproportionately missing word translation questions? Annoying algebraic questions with very few words in them? Something else? One or two errors might mean nothing – for example, if you missed two hard, weird rate/work questions (but usually nail the easy ones), that’s cool, and you don’t have anything to worry about. But if you’re missing the same sort of thing repeatedly – especially if the questions seem to be on the easier side – then you’ll want to consider pausing the study plan to focus on your weaknesses.
- Count the number of errors you made on each verbal question type. If you see a dramatic imbalance, then you know exactly what to focus on. If your verbal errors are relatively balanced between CR and RC, the underlying weaknesses might take more time to fix.
- Do you notice any patterns in your DI errors? Are you disproportionately missing verbal-based DI questions? Getting freaked out by the mountain of information on MSR questions? Paralyzing when you see particularly weird graphs? Or do you see some other pattern? To be fair, DI is so multifaceted that it can be hard to spot patterns in your mistakes, but if you’re unhappy with your DI score, try to look beyond the question type, and figure out if anything tends to trigger most of your mistakes.
- Look for signs of stubbornness. If you’re spending more than 3 minutes on individual questions, you’ll need to learn to let go. Time is a scarce resource on the GMAT, and spending 3+ minutes isn’t efficient (other than on the first question of an RC passage or a Multi-Source Reasoning set).
- Is nervousness a factor? Is your mind going blank under the pressure of a practice test? Are you struggling to sleep the night before a practice test? If so, check out this beginner’s guide to test anxiety, this test anxiety quiz, or this YouTube playlist.
- Remember that the experience is totally different if you’re seeing repeated questions. You might not consciously recognize many questions, but I 100% promise that you’ll be faster and more accurate on questions you’ve seen before – and you’re MUCH less likely to struggle with time management as a result. We can’t know whether your score was inflated by 10 points or 50 points or 100 points, but tests with repeated questions are always at least somewhat inflated – and you’ll struggle more with timing on a brand-new test than you did on a familiar one.
Benchmarks for the Week 11 quant “fake test” (item #2)
- Medium quant questions: please hit 90%+ if your goal is a quant score in the 80s.
- Hard quant questions: 60% is still really good. No, really: you can miss a TON of hard questions on the GMAT and be in great shape. If you’re comfortably above 60%, congratulations. But you don’t need to be above 60% to have a great chance at an 80+ on quant.
- Careless error rate: < 2%. Maaaaaaybe we can shrug off a single careless error. More than that? Please pause the study plan, and 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 optional Week 11 verbal “fake test” (item #3):
- Sorry, the verbal “fake test” is FAR from ideal. But at least it gives you 23 official questions in 45 minutes. So take the benchmarks with a grain of salt.
- Medium CR questions: we’d like to see you at 90% on these if your goal is a 90th percentile score on GMAT verbal. Adjust accordingly if you’d be happy with an 80V or lower.
- Hard CR questions: 50% is good, 75%+ is AWESOME if your goal is to score in the 90th percentile. You can get beat up by the hard ones, and still be in great shape for a top verbal score. If your goals are more modest, 50% correct might be great on these.
- OG RC questions: 80% is a reasonable starting point, but it depends on exactly which questions you selected.
- CR questions that took 3+ minutes: none, please. No CR question is worth that much time. Learn to let go if you get stuck.
- Overall time management: it’s OK if it was kinda weird. The “fake test” is a clumsy approximation of an actual verbal section, so it’s fair to expect some timing oddities, within reason.
Benchmarks for the Week 11 Data Insights “fake test” (item #4):
- Remember: the Data Insights “fake test” is FAR from ideal. But at least it gives you 20 official questions in 45 minutes. Just be sure to take these benchmarks with a grain of salt, since this task isn’t quite like the real thing.
- Medium questions: 80% is good, 90%+ is excellent if your goal is DI80.
- Hard questions: 50% is good, 70%+ is AWESOME if your goal is DI80+. No, really: you can miss a TON of hard questions on the GMAT and be in great shape.
- DS questions that took 3+ minutes: none, please. No DS question is worth that much time. Learn to let go if you get stuck.
- GI, TA, or TPA questions that took 3:30+ minutes: none, please. No question is worth that much time. Learn to let go if you get stuck.
- Overall time management: it’s OK if it was kinda weird. This is a clumsy approximation of an actual DI section, so it’s fair to expect some timing oddities, within reason.
What to do about your Week 11 practice test results
- If you’re close to your goal on the mba.com test, please do something nice for yourself... even if you did something nice for yourself last week, too! Have lunch with a friend, go to a concert, or go hiking or skiing or roller skating. Celebrate your victories – doing so will help keep you fresh in the final weeks of your studies.
- If you’re a long way from your goal on the mba.com test, consider pausing the study plan. If you’re 20-30+ points away from your goals, you might want to take a break from the practice tests, and see if you can move the needle on your weaknesses before jumping back in.
- 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 30-50% 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 fan of reviewing individual questions in detail, 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 some attention.
- If you struggled on “hard” questions from the mba.com question bank: Hey, these are hard, and I can promise that they aren’t the #1 thing holding you back from a 645 or 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 individual questions. They 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.

Quant+

Benchmarks for Your Week 11 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 score in the 80s, here are the metrics I’d like you to hit in Week 11:

Careless error rate: < 2%. You’ve heard this before: the careless errors need to be gone, or almost gone.
OG & Quant Guide sets (items #1-2): 80%+ correct is great, 70-80% is good. The questions are tough now, so don’t worry AT ALL if your accuracy rate is flat or even dropping a bit.
Optional topic-based practice sets (item #3): as always, take these with a grain of salt. The quality and difficulty will vary quite a bit on these, so don’t freak out if you miss hard, weird, or badly written questions.
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 much slower than, say, 2:30 per question on average, it might be a sign that your skills are shaky, or that you're still not choosing efficient paths forward.

What Should You Do About Your Quant Weaknesses in Week 11?

Our usual reminder: on an adaptive test, job #1 is to be accurate on the questions that you’re capable of getting right. When the GMAT punches you in the head with harder questions, just smile and say “haha, you got me that time, GMAT!” No, really: please learn to enjoy that particular type of pain. Smile when you see impossibly hard questions on an adaptive test like the GMAT. Just nail the questions that are in your wheelhouse, and don’t lose sleep over the crazy hard stuff – especially on quant.

If your careless error rate is too high: that’s bad. Do whatever you need to do to fix this. Do it now. Better: do it yesterday, or a few weeks ago. Pause the study plan if you need to. Just fix the careless errors.
If you struggled on the OG or Quant Guide sets (items #1-2): as usual, ask yourself WHY you struggled. If you’re at, say, 70% accuracy, that’s not ideal, but context matters: I really don’t mind if you got beat up by hard or unusual questions. If you missed a cluster of similar questions – especially if they don’t appear to be terribly difficult – then invest time in those topics if necessary. But don’t overreact to individual questions, please.
If you struggled on optional topic-based sets (item #3): 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 absolutely DESTROYED by ALL of the quant homework: well, that shouldn’t be happening at this stage. But if it is, please pause the study plan ASAP, before you burn through all of the remaining practice tests.
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.

CR & RC+

Benchmarks for Your Week 11 RC & CR Results

OG & Verbal Guide RC & CR sets: if your goal is a 90th percentile verbal score, 80% correct in 2 minutes per question is great, 90% is outstanding. (Adjust accordingly if your goals are more modest.) These are getting hard now, so it’s not necessarily a disaster if you’re under 80%, thanks to the increased difficulty. And these should probably hurt your brain a bit. Or more than a bit. Embrace the pain, friends.
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 goal if you want to finish 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 11?

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... and you might want to do so ASAP, because time is getting short. Pause the study plan if you need to.
If you’re better at CR than RC: same as above. If you haven’t already addressed this, it’s probably past time to do so. Pause the study plan if you need to.
If you’re slow ( > 60 mins per LSAT set, > 2 minutes per OG or Verbal Guide question): by now, you should have standardized your approach to RC and CR questions; if you haven’t, then you probably need to do so ASAP. If your process is spot-on already, maybe you’re slow because of “non-academic” issues: fatigue, distraction, anxiety, the time of day that you’re doing sets, barking dogs outside your window, low blood sugar, a lack of sleep, or a lack of intensity. It’s also possible that you’re a slow reader, and that’s always 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... and you’ll need to do so ASAP. Again, pause the study plan if you need to.
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, keep at it! If your results have plateaued – and you’re not happy with those results – then it might be time to pause the study plan and invest some time in figuring out what, exactly, is going wrong.
If you’re getting CRUSHED on CR & RC: well, I’m very impressed that you’re still reading this in Week 11, but time is running out, and it’s probably time to either pause the study plan, or adjust your goals on verbal. If you’re getting demolished, you’ll definitely want to check out this video about the factors that can lead to GMAT verbal struggles – it references a previous version of the GMAT, but the punchlines still hold.

Data Insights+

Benchmarks for Your Week 11 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, here are the metrics I’d like you to hit in Week 11:

Careless error rate: < 2%. You’ve heard this before: the careless errors need to be gone, or almost gone.

Official DS set (#1 on the list): these are getting harder as you move through the books, so I’d be pretty thrilled with 80% accuracy here. As always, context matters: if you struggled with a few weird questions, that’s not a big deal.

Mixed mba.com sets (GI, TA, TPA, MSR – #2-3 on the list): Now that you’re mixing easy, medium, and hard questions – and probably seeing more of the hardest ones – it’s trickier to provide a one-size-fits-all benchmark. On easy questions, we’d like to see perfection, or something close to it; 80% on the medium questions and 50% on the hard questions is really good. If you’re beating those numbers, you’re on track.

MSR set from the Online Practice Questions (#4 on the list): This set is brief and random, so I don’t think it makes sense to pin you to a benchmark. Just ask yourself this: are you getting more comfortable spotting the right information, without getting bogged down in the things you don’t need? Are you generally doing well on the easy and medium questions? If so, you’re on track.

Randomized batches of forum questions (#5 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, and 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 Multi-Source Reasoning: On DI, you’ll have an average of 2:15 per question. It’s OK if you’re a bit slower on MSR on test day, but you don’t want to be TOO much slower. So in the long run, you’ll want to average somewhere around 7-9 minutes per set of 3 MSR questions. Of course, you may or may not see 3 questions per MSR “tab set” on mba.com practice sets, so adjust your expectations accordingly – something like 3-5 minutes on the first question is probably OK, and ideally 2 minutes per less on any subsequent questions. If you’re close to these speeds right now, that’s great.

Speed for GI, TA, & TPA questions: You're in good shape if you’re 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 11?

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 a specific DI question type: whatever you need is probably in this playlist.
If you struggled on a specific quant-based topic: don’t panic. 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 on the OG or Data Insights Guide sets: As usual, ask yourself WHY you struggled. If you’re at, say, 70% accuracy, that doesn’t sound ideal right now, and careless errors need to be fixed immediately. But if you got a bunch of weird, hard, or obscure questions, then maybe 70% is totally fine.
If you got CRUSHED by ALL of the homework: Well, if it’s just because the questions are getting super-hard, that’s cool. If you’re getting crushed by easy ones, that’s not cool – and it’s probably time to pause the study plan before you waste the final practice tests.
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.

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GMAT Ninja 13-Week Study Plan (2024-25 ed.) Week 11

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