Here’s the deal in Week 3:
1. We’ll emphasize specific quant topics in Weeks 1-9 only. This week’s topics are exponents and roots. Enjoy.
2. We’ll work on adding flexibility to your quant approach as the questions get harder.
3. As always, you’ll need to ensure that you don’t make
score-killing silly errors. Nothing else matters much until the sloppy errors are GONE.
Still not sexy, right? But we’re turning the corner from fundamental algebra to word problems, and the difficulty level will start ticking upwards for most of you.
How to approach quant homework1.
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 3 quant homework
Be honest with yourself: did you make silly errors on quant in Week 2? If you make boneheaded errors on, say, 5-10% of questions, that’s WAY too much on an adaptive test like the GMAT. Now’s the time to eradicate the sloppiness, before quant practice tests start in the coming weeks.
If you’re making a lot of careless errors, choose the sub-600 sets until you STOP MAKING CARELESS ERRORS. If you’re free of sloppy errors, you can choose mixed difficulty on items #8-11. We’d recommend keeping a few easy ones in there for now though, just to make sure that you don’t get complacent.
Also, this list gives you plenty of freedom. If you need extra help on quant (but not verbal), great – tackle extra sets from items #1-4 and #8-12. If you’re doing relatively well on quant, focus on extra verbal homework instead, please.
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 the content this week, these resources might help: