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27 Jan 2025, 07:00
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GMAT Ninja’s 13-Week Study Plan
Week 12 (7-15 hours)
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Welcome back for Week 12 of the study plan! If you have no idea what’s going on here, then you’ll want to start with Week 1 instead.
By now, you have just two official practice tests left. If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably 100% ready to use them.
But please be honest with yourself: if you aren’t already within a few points of your target score, you might be better off saving those last two mba.com tests for later. Pause the study plan if you need to – there’s no shame in that at all.
If your scores are already where you want them to be, awesome! We’ll give you one last week of fairly intense practice, and then we’ll ease up in Week 13 so that you’re relaxed, rested, and focused on test day.
(A) Inspiration & Advice (optional)+
If you’re like most people, you’re probably starting to get butterflies in your stomach as test day approaches. That’s completely normal. After all, you’ve never gotten nervous about something you don’t care about, right? Your body is telling you that you care about the GMAT, and caring is definitely a good thing.
If you’re squirming as test day approaches, read these three articles by GMAT tutors – outstanding, experienced tutors, with scores of 780 or above – who struggled with test anxiety on their actual exams:
- This tutor obsessed over her sunglasses and spent NINE minutes on a single RC question
- This tutor had to physically push himself away from the computer in the middle of his test to calm himself down, and
- This tutor literally couldn’t sleep at all the night before his GMAT.
Bottom line: nerves are normal, and you’re not alone.
(B) Practice Tests & Test-Day Preparation (~4-5 hrs.)+
We probably don’t need to remind you that you’re close to your test day. If you’re starting to feel tense, you might want to start with this:
- 12-minute workout for mental clarity, created by Kyle Krancher, a brilliant, beloved personal trainer with a psychology degree.
Kyle created the workout specifically for time-crunched GMAT test-takers. I’d strongly recommend giving it a try if you can spare 12 minutes to release some tension.
Week 12 practice tests
- 1. Full mba.com test #5. 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 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; select 21 Problem Solving questions (including an 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.
- 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.
- 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 test won’t include MSR questions, but we’ll do those separately.
(C) Quant (~2-3 hrs.)+
It’s almost showtime, so the main focus should be on getting your body and mind rested for the big day.By now, you shouldn’t be worried about specific quant topics. A little bit of review can be OK, but if you’re compulsively cramming a bunch of quant knowledge in, something has gone wrong. Either you’re overreacting to your practice results, or you’re struggling with anxiety... or you managed to completely miss something earlier in the study process.In other words: at this stage, you’re just honing your execution, mindset, and time management. It’s good to keep practicing official questions, but don’t overdo it. 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.
1. Any remaining PS questions from the GMAT Quant Guide
2. (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. 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
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 12 quant homework
1. Any remaining PS questions from the GMAT Quant Guide
2. (Optional) Only if you’re CERTAIN that it’s worthwhile: do extra sets of topic-based questions as needed.
- 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.
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
(D) Reading Comprehension (~0-2 hrs.)+
It’s almost exam time, so go easy on the extra practice. Do enough questions to keep yourself sharp, and that’s it -- even if that means just doing a short little “mini-set” of whichever Verbal Guide RC questions you might have left. 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.)
1. Do any remaining questions from a recent edition of the Verbal Guide. Depending on the exact edition you’re using (and the choices you’ve made about where, exactly, to end your previous practice sets of ~25 questions), you might only have one or two passages left. That’s totally fine.
2. (Optional) One more LSAT RC set. Or just a passage or two from an LSAT set. Whatever you need to do to stay sharp and focused.
What to do AFTER completing an RC homework set
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 12 RC homework
1. Do any remaining questions from a recent edition of the Verbal Guide. Depending on the exact edition you’re using (and the choices you’ve made about where, exactly, to end your previous practice sets of ~25 questions), you might only have one or two passages left. That’s totally fine.
2. (Optional) One more LSAT RC set. Or just a passage or two from an LSAT set. Whatever you need to do to stay sharp and focused.
- 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.
(E) Critical Reasoning (~0-2 hrs.)+
Once again, your focus now should be on getting your mind right. If you want to do a few extra CR questions to stay sharp, awesome. If you don’t need them, that’s awesome, too. You’re doing plenty of CR on your practice tests now, anyway.LSAT CR questions are nice, but do you really need to cramp your brain on a full set of them? Do a few if you’d like to play with some nice, tough language. But you shouldn’t need (or want) too many at this stage. 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.)
1. Do the 7th set of 25 CR questions from the GMAT OG. (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. 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 12 CR homework
1. Do the 7th set of 25 CR questions from the GMAT OG. (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
- 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.
- 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
(F) Data Insights (~0-3 hrs.)+
As with all the other sections, there shouldn’t be much to do now for Data Insights. From here, it’s about getting your mind in the right place for test-day and keeping yourself sharp.Week 12 DI assignments:
1. Finish any remaining DS questions from the GMAT Official Guide
2. (Optional) Work through the Online Exclusive DS questions from the GMAT Official Guide question bank on MBA.com – there are instructions for how to set this up below.
2. (Optional) Finish the remaining 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 if you’re going to do this set – but please read the disclaimer below first!
3. (Optional) Finish any remaining questions from the Data Insights Review question bank on MBA.com – there are instructions for how to set this up below. Use all four non-DS question types if you’re going to do this set – but please read the disclaimer below first.
4. (Optional) Only if you’re CERTAIN that it’s worthwhile: do extra sets of topic-based 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.
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.
1. Finish any remaining DS questions from the GMAT Official Guide
2. (Optional) Work through the Online Exclusive DS questions from the GMAT Official Guide question bank on MBA.com – there are instructions for how to set this up below.
2. (Optional) Finish the remaining 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 if you’re going to do this set – but please read the disclaimer below first!
3. (Optional) Finish any remaining questions from the Data Insights Review question bank on MBA.com – there are instructions for how to set this up below. Use all four non-DS question types if you’re going to do this set – but please read the disclaimer below first.
4. (Optional) Only if you’re CERTAIN that it’s worthwhile: do extra sets of topic-based questions as needed from the GMAT Club question banks.
- 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").
- (Optional) Week 12 OG online exclusive DS assignment: select DS only (no DI, GI, MSR, and TA, please), and do the small number of online exclusive DS questions. Please DO NOT do the other DS questions – you’ve seen those already.
- Week 12 OG & Data Insights Review assignments: select DI, GI, MSR, and TA only (no DS, please), and do... well, do whatever you have left. Odds are good that most of them will be hard, depending on choices you’ve made earlier in the process.
- 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.
- 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[/url].
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.
27 Jan 2025, 07:00
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How to Interpret Your Week 12 Homework Results
The end is near! Are you already hitting your target score, or are you within a few points of your goals? If so, awesome: you probably don’t need much help interpreting your results. Also, you probably deserve a cookie.
But if you’re struggling a bit, please keep reading this post. If you’ve followed the study plan, you only have ONE more mba.com practice test left – and it’s best to save it until you’re ready to get your target score. If you aren’t within a few points of your goal yet, please keep reading, and be prepared to pause the study plan.
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 #5
- How far are you from your target score overall? It’s almost showtime, and this is your next-to-last practice test. So nothing else really matters: is your score within 20 points of your goal?
- How many careless errors did you make? If this is a problem, fix it NOW. Don’t waste another practice test until you can do 100 questions in a row without making a careless error. (Non-careless errors are fine.)
- Do you notice any HUGE patterns in your quant errors? One or two errors often mean nothing – for example, if you missed two hard, weird probability questions (but usually nail the easy ones), then there’s nothing 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’re running out of time to fix your weaknesses.
- Count the number of errors you made on each verbal question type. If you still have a major weakness on a verbal question type, pause the study plan ASAP.
- Look for signs of stubbornness. If you’re spending more than 3 minutes on individual quant, CR, or DS questions, you’ll need to learn to let go. Time is a scarce resource on the GMAT, and spending 3+ minutes isn’t an efficient way to use it (unless you’re doing 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. Pause the study plan if you need extra time to get your mind right before test day.
- 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 12 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 12 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. Take the benchmarks with a grain of salt, though.
- 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 12 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 12 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 devastatingly handsome middle-aged GMAT tutor, visit the coolest tourist attraction near your home, or go play with a particularly fun dog. Celebrate your victories – doing so will help keep you fresh and focused.
- If you’re a long way from your goal on the mba.com test, consider pausing the study plan. If you’re 20+ points away from your goals, 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 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 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’ve probably 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 655 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 12 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 12:
- Careless error rate: < 2%. You’ve heard this before: the careless errors need to be gone, or almost gone.
- OG & Quant Guide sets (item #1): 80%+ correct is great, 70-80% is good. The questions are pretty darned 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 #2): 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 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 12?
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. Pause the study plan if you need to. Just fix the careless errors.
- If you struggled on the OG or Quant Guide sets (item #1): 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 aren’t 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 #2): 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 your last official practice test.
- 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 12 RC & CR Results
- OG & Verbal Guide RC & CR sets: if a 90th percentile score is your goal, 80% correct in under 2 minutes per question is great, 90% is outstanding. The remaining questions are the toughest ones in the book, so it’s not necessarily a problem if you’re under 80%, thanks to the increased difficulty.
- 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, please.
- 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 12?
- Look for “careless” errors. But you’re not making these anymore... um, right?
- If your results are significantly better on RC than on CR: you’ll need to address this ASAP. Pause the study plan if you need to.
- If you’re better at CR than RC: same as above. 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 CRUSHED on CR & RC: Hey, please don’t waste more practice exams – they’re a precious resource. Pause the study plan ASAP, and address whatever might be ailing your verbal results. Just be aware that it can take some time to improve, especially if underlying reading skills are the biggest issue.
Data Insights+
Benchmarks for Your Week 12 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 12:
- Careless error rate: < 2%. You’ve heard this before: the careless errors need to be gone, or almost gone.
- Official DS questions (#1-2 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 – #3-4 on the list): 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 in good shape.
- 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 12?
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 burn the last practice test.
- 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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