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18 Nov 2024, 07:00
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GMAT Ninja’s 13-Week Study Plan
Week 2 (~15 hours)
Subscribe via E-mail | Study Plan Chat Group
Welcome back! If you have no idea what’s going on here, then you’ll want to start with Week 1 instead.
For the rest of you: it’s Week 2. You might already hate me. Here, have some homework!
Read this debrief by souvik101990, one of the legends of GMAT Club. He spent FOUR YEARS studying, and eventually scored a 760 (the equivalent of a 715 or 725 on the current GMAT). Yes, the GMAT can be hard.
In case you’re wondering: souvik101990 graduated from Ross and now works at a very large company, where he sometimes delivers advice directly to the c-suite execs. The dude’s epic hard work paid off.
You might also be entertained by this thread on the biggest GMAT and MBA application mistakes, featuring some great material by bb, AndrewN, and others.
In Week 2, we have two main goals for quant:
1. Address any major weaknesses in your command of the fundamentals of arithmetic, inequalities, and absolute values. Nothing fancy here: just the very basics for now.
2. Continue to ensure that you don’t make score-killing silly errors.
I know: still not sexy. But we’ll ramp up the difficulty at least a bit this week.
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. For more on how to analyze your results, check out the next post in this thread.
Be honest with yourself: did you make silly errors on quant in Week 1? If you’re not sure, go back through all of your sets and categorize your mistakes. Even if you make boneheaded errors on, say, 5-10% of questions, that’s WAY too much on an adaptive test like the GMAT.
In Week 2: if you’re plagued by sloppy errors, choose the sub-555 sets until you STOP MAKING CARELESS MISTAKES. If you’ve already stamped out the careless errors, you deserve a cookie; feel free to choose mixed difficulty on items #5-8. We’d recommend keeping a few easy ones in there for now though, so you don’t get complacent.
1. (Optional) If you need practice with basic inequalities: do the first 10 exercises on this worksheet. If you’re not efficiently getting 100% correct, please finish the entire worksheet.
2. (Optional) If you need practice with basic absolute values questions: do the first 10 exercises on this worksheet. If you’re NOT efficiently getting 100% correct, finish the entire worksheet.
3. GMAT Quant Guide (skinny little book) PS #1-25
4. Official Guide PS #26-50
5. Do 20 absolute values PS questions. Sub-555 level | Mixed difficulty
6. Do 20 inequalities PS questions. Sub-555 level | Mixed difficulty
7. (Optional) Do 20 arithmetic PS questions. Sub-555 level | Mixed difficulty
8. (Optional) Do 20 algebra PS questions. Sub-555 level | Mixed difficulty
9. (Optional) Only if you’re sure that you need the extra reps: do more sets from items #5-8
10. (Very, very optional) Quant section only from the GMAT Club tests or another NON-official source (save the mba.com exams for later!)
What to do AFTER completing a quant homework set
Need help with quant?
If you make careless errors or struggle on this week’s content, these resources might help:
1. If you’re making careless errors, this (probably very familiar) video on how to approach GMAT quant is essential viewing.
2. If you’re struggling with the fundamental content this week, check out this GMAT inequalities & absolute values video.
3. GMAT Club Math Book
4. Heroic quant threads from Bunuel: Ultimate GMAT Quant Megathread | Signature Question Collection | All You Need for Quant
In Weeks 2 and 3, we’ll try to ease your pain on specific RC topic areas, starting with science passages. Maybe they scare you, and maybe they don’t.
Either way: your process for RC shouldn’t change at all based on the passage type -- or your mood, or the weather, or what you had for breakfast (
), or anything else. The goal on RC is always to develop a 100% consistent approach to reading -- and that’s harder than it sounds. Stick with it!
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.
1. Do a full LSAT RC set (~25 questions, ~ 1 hr). Click here if you’re wondering why there are LSAT sets in a GMAT study plan.
2. Do the first ~25 questions from a recent edition of the OG. (The page 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.) These will feel MUCH easier than the LSAT.
3. (Optional) Watch this LIVE video on how to approach RC science passages or this video featuring a guy with a sexier accent. (Skip this if you’re 100% confident on science passages, but if you’re afraid of other topics, the messages in the video might help a bit.)
4. (Optional) Do 3 science passages from older editions of the OGs; you can find some from OG 12 and the Verbal 2nd edition here.
4. (Optional) One additional LSAT RC set (~25 questions, ~ 1 hr)
What to do AFTER completing an RC homework set
Need help with RC?
If you struggled with the RC homework, here are some resources that might help:
This week, we’ll start to pick on some of the most fundamental CR question types: strengthen, weaken, and assumption questions.
Just as for RC, the core principle for CR is that your process shouldn’t change much based on the question type. Your goal is to become 100% consistent in how you read and comprehend CR passages -- and that’s much, much harder than it sounds.
How to approach CR homework
1. Watch this “CR 102” video that discusses tougher variants on strengthen, weaken, and assumption questions.
2. Do a set of 10-15 strengthen/weaken questions from older editions of the OGs; you can find some from OG 12 and the Verbal 2nd ed. here.
3. Do a full LSAT CR set (~25 questions, ~ 1 hr). Click here to understand why we assign LSAT sets in a GMAT study plan.
4. The first 25 CR questions in the OG. The page numbers will vary slightly depending on which edition you’re using.
5. (Optional) Do 10 assumption questions from older editions of the OGs; you can find some from OG 12 and the Verbal 2nd edition here.
6. (Optional) One additional LSAT CR set (~25 questions, ~ 1 hr)
What to do AFTER completing a CR homework set
Need help with CR?
If you struggled with the CR homework, here are some resources that might help:
We’re getting things started on Data Insights, but slowly.
Why are we moving slowly on DI? Two reasons:
1. There’s a very limited supply of high-quality, official DI practice questions. After all, DI is a relatively new thing.
2. Certain quant and verbal skills form a key foundation for Data Insights, too – so we’d like you to work on those before you burn through too many DI questions.
This week, we’ll get rolling with Data Sufficiency (DS), which accounts for 20-40% of all DI questions. Since many DS questions are quant-based, we’ll (roughly) align the DS assignments with the quant topics each week.
Don’t worry: we’ll start on the other four DI question types – featuring a delightful letter-salad of GI, TPA, TA, and MSR – soon enough. You’re excited, right?
How to approach Data Insights 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. For more on how to analyze your results, check out the next post in this thread.
1. Watch this video on how to approach GMAT DS questions (~1 hr)
2. Do the first 20 Data Sufficiency questions from your version of the OG.
3. (Optional) Do 25 arithmetic DS questions. Sub-555 level | Mixed difficulty
4. (Optional) Do 25 algebra DS questions. Sub-555 level | Mixed difficulty
What to do AFTER completing a Data Insights homework set
Here’s a video that explains what the study plan is and – more importantly – how best to use it. Make sure to watch the video BEFORE getting started.
Week 2 (~15 hours)
Subscribe via E-mail | Study Plan Chat Group
Welcome back! If you have no idea what’s going on here, then you’ll want to start with Week 1 instead.
For the rest of you: it’s Week 2. You might already hate me. Here, have some homework!
(A) Inspiration & Advice (optional)+
Read this debrief by souvik101990, one of the legends of GMAT Club. He spent FOUR YEARS studying, and eventually scored a 760 (the equivalent of a 715 or 725 on the current GMAT). Yes, the GMAT can be hard.
In case you’re wondering: souvik101990 graduated from Ross and now works at a very large company, where he sometimes delivers advice directly to the c-suite execs. The dude’s epic hard work paid off.
You might also be entertained by this thread on the biggest GMAT and MBA application mistakes, featuring some great material by bb, AndrewN, and others.
(B) Quant (~3-6 hrs.)+
In Week 2, we have two main goals for quant:
1. Address any major weaknesses in your command of the fundamentals of arithmetic, inequalities, and absolute values. Nothing fancy here: just the very basics for now.
2. Continue to ensure that you don’t make score-killing silly errors.
I know: still not sexy. But we’ll ramp up the difficulty at least a bit this week.
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. For more on how to analyze your results, check out the next post in this thread.
Week 2 quant homework
Be honest with yourself: did you make silly errors on quant in Week 1? If you’re not sure, go back through all of your sets and categorize your mistakes. Even if you make boneheaded errors on, say, 5-10% of questions, that’s WAY too much on an adaptive test like the GMAT.
In Week 2: if you’re plagued by sloppy errors, choose the sub-555 sets until you STOP MAKING CARELESS MISTAKES. If you’ve already stamped out the careless errors, you deserve a cookie; feel free to choose mixed difficulty on items #5-8. We’d recommend keeping a few easy ones in there for now though, so you don’t get complacent.
1. (Optional) If you need practice with basic inequalities: do the first 10 exercises on this worksheet. If you’re not efficiently getting 100% correct, please finish the entire worksheet.
2. (Optional) If you need practice with basic absolute values questions: do the first 10 exercises on this worksheet. If you’re NOT efficiently getting 100% correct, finish the entire worksheet.
3. GMAT Quant Guide (skinny little book) PS #1-25
4. Official Guide PS #26-50
5. Do 20 absolute values PS questions. Sub-555 level | Mixed difficulty
6. Do 20 inequalities PS questions. Sub-555 level | Mixed difficulty
7. (Optional) Do 20 arithmetic PS questions. Sub-555 level | Mixed difficulty
8. (Optional) Do 20 algebra PS questions. Sub-555 level | Mixed difficulty
9. (Optional) Only if you’re sure that you need the extra reps: do more sets from items #5-8
10. (Very, very optional) Quant section only from the GMAT Club tests or another NON-official source (save the mba.com exams for later!)
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 make careless errors or struggle on this week’s content, these resources might help:
1. If you’re making careless errors, this (probably very familiar) video on how to approach GMAT quant is essential viewing.
2. If you’re struggling with the fundamental content this week, check out this GMAT inequalities & absolute values video.
3. GMAT Club Math Book
4. Heroic quant threads from Bunuel: Ultimate GMAT Quant Megathread | Signature Question Collection | All You Need for Quant
(C) Reading Comprehension (~2-4 hrs.)+
In Weeks 2 and 3, we’ll try to ease your pain on specific RC topic areas, starting with science passages. Maybe they scare you, and maybe they don’t.
Either way: your process for RC shouldn’t change at all based on the passage type -- or your mood, or the weather, or what you had for breakfast (
), or anything else. The goal on RC is always to develop a 100% consistent approach to reading -- and that’s harder than it sounds. Stick with it!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.
Week 2 RC homework
1. Do a full LSAT RC set (~25 questions, ~ 1 hr). Click here if you’re wondering why there are LSAT sets in a GMAT study plan.
2. Do the first ~25 questions from a recent edition of the OG. (The page 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.) These will feel MUCH easier than the LSAT.
3. (Optional) Watch this LIVE video on how to approach RC science passages or this video featuring a guy with a sexier accent. (Skip this if you’re 100% confident on science passages, but if you’re afraid of other topics, the messages in the video might help a bit.)
4. (Optional) Do 3 science passages from older editions of the OGs; you can find some from OG 12 and the Verbal 2nd edition here.
4. (Optional) One additional LSAT RC set (~25 questions, ~ 1 hr)
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? 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 three or more questions on a 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?
If you struggled with the RC homework, here are some resources that might help:
- Videos: How to approach RC | Another RC basics video | Dealing with RC science passages | Another video on dealing with RC science passages | How to identify different points of view on RC passages
- All GMAT Ninja RC resources
- More RC explanations than anybody should ever read
- Beginner’s guide to RC again
- A whole lot of YouTube videos on many topics, or an RC-specific video course
(D) Critical Reasoning (~2-4 hrs.)+
This week, we’ll start to pick on some of the most fundamental CR question types: strengthen, weaken, and assumption questions.
Just as for RC, the core principle for CR is that your process shouldn’t change much based on the question type. Your goal is to become 100% consistent in how you read and comprehend CR passages -- and that’s much, much harder than it sounds.
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.
Week 2 CR homework
1. Watch this “CR 102” video that discusses tougher variants on strengthen, weaken, and assumption questions.
2. Do a set of 10-15 strengthen/weaken questions from older editions of the OGs; you can find some from OG 12 and the Verbal 2nd ed. here.
3. Do a full LSAT CR set (~25 questions, ~ 1 hr). Click here to understand why we assign LSAT sets in a GMAT study plan.
4. The first 25 CR questions in the OG. The page numbers will vary slightly depending on which edition you’re using.
5. (Optional) Do 10 assumption questions from older editions of the OGs; you can find some from OG 12 and the Verbal 2nd edition here.
6. (Optional) One additional LSAT CR set (~25 questions, ~ 1 hr)
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 the CR homework, here are some resources that might help:
(E) Data Insights (~3-4 hrs.)+
We’re getting things started on Data Insights, but slowly.
Why are we moving slowly on DI? Two reasons:
1. There’s a very limited supply of high-quality, official DI practice questions. After all, DI is a relatively new thing.
2. Certain quant and verbal skills form a key foundation for Data Insights, too – so we’d like you to work on those before you burn through too many DI questions.
This week, we’ll get rolling with Data Sufficiency (DS), which accounts for 20-40% of all DI questions. Since many DS questions are quant-based, we’ll (roughly) align the DS assignments with the quant topics each week.
Don’t worry: we’ll start on the other four DI question types – featuring a delightful letter-salad of GI, TPA, TA, and MSR – soon enough. You’re excited, right?
How to approach Data Insights 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. For more on how to analyze your results, check out the next post in this thread.
Week 2 Data Insights homework
1. Watch this video on how to approach GMAT DS questions (~1 hr)
2. Do the first 20 Data Sufficiency questions from your version of the OG.
3. (Optional) Do 25 arithmetic DS questions. Sub-555 level | Mixed difficulty
4. (Optional) Do 25 algebra DS questions. Sub-555 level | Mixed difficulty
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.
Week 2 Plan Video Preview
Here’s a video that explains what the study plan is and – more importantly – how best to use it. Make sure to watch the video BEFORE getting started.
18 Nov 2024, 07:00
Kudos
Bookmarks
How to Interpret Your Week 2 Homework Results
Please read this section each week if you’re serious about optimizing your study time. Our goal is to help you understand how good or bad your results are, so that you can (A) choose your homework wisely, and (B) avoid wasting time reviewing questions that don’t really matter.
Obviously, 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.
Practice Tests+
Most of you probably didn't do a practice test this week, and that's great. Generally speaking, your time is best spent elsewhere right now.
If you took a non-official quant test (from GMAT Club or another source):
- Hopefully it didn't replace something that you needed more than a quant practice test. It was listed as optional – and as always, we want you to use your time wisely.
- Don't overreact to the score. It's nearly impossible for non-official practice tests to mimic the actual scoring of the GMAT, so the score itself doesn't matter much.
- Count your careless errors. No, really: please count them. In the long run, you’ll need to completely eliminate those careless errors on quant – and nothing else matters much until you do.
- Count the number of questions that took 3+ minutes. In the long run, there should be none of these; this time management video might help a bit if you haven't already seen it.
- Don’t spend a ton of time reviewing every question you missed. We’ll say more about that in the quant section below.
Quant+
Benchmarks for Your Week 2 Quant 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 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 2:
- Careless error rate: < 5%. If you make careless errors on 5% of questions now, you’ll make far more under the pressure of the actual exam – maybe three times as many, which means that you’d make about 5 goofy errors on your actual test. And that will destroy your score. So please get this careless error rate down to 1-2% at most.
- Basic sets (#1-2 on the list): 100% accuracy, please, ideally in under 90 seconds per question on average. If you're not quite there, keep practicing.
- OG & Quant Guide sets (#3-4 on the list): 85-90% correct is excellent, 80% is probably good. Just remember that WHAT you miss is more important on the GMAT than how many you missed: careless errors are apocalyptic. If you missed OG questions on topics that you haven't studied, that's totally cool -- you'll have time to learn those things.
- Topic-specific sets (#5-9 on the list): 85-90% correct is good on the sub-555 questions, but if you missed weird, hard, or gimmicky questions, less than 80% might be fine. If you did mixed-difficulty sets, please don’t overreact to the overall percentage correct – 50-60% might be pretty good, depending on which questions happened to appear. The bottom line: these questions can vary ENORMOUSLY in quality and difficulty, so take the results with a huge grain of salt.
- Speed: 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 -- and you'll be able to improve those things over time.
What Should You Do About Your Quant Weaknesses in Week 2?
First, the usual bit of context: you can miss 20-50% of the quant questions on the GMAT and still get an excellent score. The goal of an adaptive exam is to find the level of question at which you get roughly 40-50% of the questions wrong. So even if you score in the 80s on quant, you might miss a TON of questions – that’s just how the GMAT works. What matters is WHICH questions you miss – not just how many you miss.
Also, if you make careless mistakes on easier questions, the GMAT will eat you for breakfast. You probably already know that from watching this short video on time management though, right?
The punchline: when you study, please pick your battles wisely. If you’re painstakingly reviewing every single question you missed, you’re probably missing the point.
Yes, you’ll want to look for signs that your foundations are shaky, and you’ll also need to eliminate careless errors. But if you’re getting abused by hard or obscure questions? That’s cool. Don’t waste too much of your precious study time on that stuff.
Here’s some guidance on what to do once you’ve analyzed your results:
- If your careless error rate is too high: address this problem ASAP. Nothing else matters on quant until you do. Check out the resource list in the study plan for help.
- If you struggled on specific topics (algebra, arithmetic, absolute values, etc.), 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 Quant Guide sets: don’t panic. Again: ask yourself WHY you struggled. If you’re at, say, 70-80% accuracy, that’s not ideal right now. But context matters: if most of those errors are on topics you’ve never really studied, you’re in great shape, since you have plenty of time to learn those in the next 11 weeks.
- 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 a score in the 80s – 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.
Verbal+
First, another unpleasant truth: LSAT sets are HARD. If you’re not in pain, you’re probably not doing it right.
Improving on RC and CR is usually a slow, agonizing process. Don’t get discouraged – keep fighting to read a little bit more sharply, every time you do a set. Keep fighting to be more consistent in how you approach sets. For most test-takers, improving on CR and RC is the hardest thing to accomplish, because there are no formulas or “tricks” that can help.
So please be patient with yourself, and be nice to yourself. Be proud when your results tick upwards a little bit, and don’t beat yourself up when you have a bad set. Slow, steady progress is beautiful. Even when it really hurts.
Benchmarks for Your Week 2 Verbal Results
- Accuracy on LSAT CR & RC sets: if your goal is the 90th percentile or above on verbal, we eventually want to see 80% accuracy on LSAT CR and RC. That’s your long-run goal, though – and it’s OK if you’re not quite there in Week 2. If you’re happy with something like an 80V, 70% accuracy on LSAT sets is probably fine.
- Efficiency on LSAT CR & RC sets: in the long run, you’ll need to complete full LSAT sets in under 60 minutes to have a shot at finishing the GMAT verbal section on time. If you’re in the 60-70 minute range right now, that’s still OK – you have time to become more efficient and energetic in your approach. If you’re slower than that, we might be worried. More on that below.
- 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 that’s not cool. You’ll certainly struggle more on some passages than others, but the results on the full sets of ~25 questions should be pretty stable.
- GMAT OG & Verbal Guide RC & CR questions: we can’t give you a benchmark, because it just depends on the difficulty level of the questions that you happened to do. All I can say is that you’ll want to look for HUGE patterns in your mistakes: are science passages freaking you out? Are you overwhelmingly missing a certain question type? If the patterns are CLEAR, they’re worth addressing, but don’t overreact to a question or two.
What Should You Do About Your Verbal Weaknesses in Week 2?
- Don’t panic. CR and RC progress can be slow. Take a long view: are you seeing ANY improvement in your average accuracy and times from Week 1 until now? If so, great – even if that improvement is small.
- Look for “careless” errors. As with everything on the GMAT, pay close attention to anything that seemed to be an “unforced error.” Did you miss a ton of questions that felt easy to you? If so, you might want to revisit the techniques in the videos and articles in the assignment list.
- If your results are significantly better on RC than on CR: that’s not a bad thing! There’s no reason why you can’t bring your CR results to the level of your RC, but something is funky in your approach to CR. In the coming weeks, you might want to invest time in some extra CR sets or videos – we’ll provide recommendations each week.
- If you’re better at CR than RC: again, this isn’t a bad thing! You can bring your RC up to the level of your CR. 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.
- If you’re slow ( > 60 mins per LSAT set): well, I wish that I could tell you exactly what’s happening, but 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 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: hey, it’s Week 2. If you’re above 80% on your LSAT sets, you’re doing GREAT. If you’re in the 60-80% range, you might already be in great shape, depending on your goals – and you still have plenty of time to improve.
- If you’re getting CRUSHED on CR & RC: my heart hurts for you, because that’s a terrible feeling. If your goal is something like a 80V, 60% on your LSAT sets might not be too bad at this stage – even if you feel terrible as you suffer through those sets. But if you have ambitious goals (84V+) and you’re truly struggling to understand the passages, it’s possible that you need to spend some time working on your fundamental reading skills before returning to GMAT-specific verbal prep. This article and this one will give you some ideas for how to improve your reading precision over time.
Data Insights+
This week, we kept the DI homework lean, and focused exclusively on Data Sufficiency, with an emphasis on DS questions that align with certain quant topics.
So for now, all of this will sound a bit like the guidance we offered for the quant section. Don’t worry: all of this will evolve once we get to the other four DI question types (GI, TPA, TA, MSR, LSD, FBI, EIEIO, etc.).
Benchmarks for Your Week 2 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 Data Sufficiency 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 2:
- Careless error rate: < 5%. If you make careless errors on 5% of questions now, you’ll make far more under the pressure of the actual exam – maybe three times as many. And that will destroy your score. So please get this careless error rate down to 1-2% at most.
- OG & Data Insights Guide sets (#2 on the list): 85-90% correct is excellent, 80% is probably good. Just remember that WHAT you miss is more important on the GMAT than how many you missed: careless errors are apocalyptic. If you missed OG questions on topics that you haven't studied, that's totally cool -- you'll have time to learn those things.
- Randomized batches of forum questions (#3-4 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. 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: 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 -- and you'll be able to improve those things over time.
What Should You Do About Your Data Insights Weaknesses in Week 2?
Our usual reminder: you can miss plenty of hard DS questions, and get an excellent score, but if you make careless mistakes on easier questions, the GMAT will eat you for breakfast.
So when you study, please pick your battles wisely. If you’re painstakingly reviewing every single question you missed, you’re probably missing the point.
Yes, you’ll want to look for signs that your overall approach to DS questions is shaky, or that your quant foundations need strengthening. But if you’re getting abused by hard or obscure questions? That’s cool. Don’t waste too much of your precious study time on that stuff.
Here’s some guidance on what to do once you’ve analyzed your results:
- If your careless error rate is too high: address this problem ASAP. Nothing else matters on quant until you do. Check out the resource lists in the study plan for help.
- If you struggled with the overall process for answering a Data Sufficiency question: check out this LIVE video on the DS process or this (not-so-live) DS video.
- If you struggled on specific topics: (algebra, arithmetic, etc.), don’t panic. It’s far too easy to overreact to a few errors, and study these problems until your corneas crack. 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: don’t panic. Again: ask yourself WHY you struggled. If you’re at, say, 70-80% accuracy, that’s not ideal right now. But context matters: if most of those errors are on topics you’ve never really studied, you’re in great shape, since you have plenty of time to learn those in the next 11 weeks.
- If you got CRUSHED by ALL of the homework: if you’re nowhere close to the benchmarks on Data Sufficiency – and if your long-term goal is a DI score in the 80s – 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 Data Sufficiency 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.
Hey, I warned you this would be very similar to the quant section. It will all look different once we start working on the other DI question types in the coming weeks. Enjoy the calm before the DI mayhem really begins!
04 Mar 2025, 10:51
Kudos
Bookmarks
Would like to mention that for this week where we dive into absolute value and inequalities there are some great videos made by a Youtube Channel called The Tutor which explains certain tricks that are very usefull for high level quant questions.
The titles are GMAT Quant guide: 7. Modulus and inequality
The titles are GMAT Quant guide: 7. Modulus and inequality
