GMAT Ninja's 13-Week Study Plan (Latest Edition) Week 4

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GMAT Ninja’s 13-Week Study Plan  
  Week 4 (~15 hours)  
 Subscribe via E-mail  |  Join Study Plan Chat Group

Welcome back for Week 4 of the study plan! If you have no idea what’s going on here, then you’ll want to start with  Week 1  instead.

I’m a fan of anybody who perseveres through the ups and downs of the GMAT. Our friend  PyjamaScientist  made a long, hard slog from a 430 to a 740 (the equivalent of going from a 435 to a 685 on the new score scale), and shared a lot of really great wisdom in  his very detailed debrief . Definitely worth a read if you have a few minutes. 
   
You hopefully already understand that the GMAT really doesn’t measure how much stuff you’ve memorized. Instead, it tests your ability to read and reason and think logically under pressure – and to maximize your ability to do those things, you’ll need to make sure that you’re taking good care of your mind and body, even if you’re months away from your actual exam.

So we’ll say it again this week: to be at your best on test day, you’ll want to look in some unexpected places. These three items won’t take long, and are worth a look for most test-takers.

Watch  this video about how to close the gap between your practice exams and your actual GMAT  (6 mins). 
 (Optional, but recommended) Read  this article about how exercise can can help your GMAT performance  
 (Optional, but recommended) Read  this Q&A about nutrition and mental performance . Anybody interested in gut biome testing?

This week’s focus will be on ratio and percents problems of various sorts. If you’re confident on these, great – feel free to skip the videos and optional homework. If you really struggle in these areas, that’s great, too – either spend more time on them this week, or pause the study plan if you need to invest extra time in your weaknesses.

Our usual reminder: the study plan includes specific topic-based practice and study resources only in Weeks 1-9. In Weeks 10-13, we’ll focus exclusively on practice tests and mixed OG sets.

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 4 quant homework 
There are tons of options on this list. If you need extra reps on quant (but not verbal), great – spend extra time on the videos and topic-based sets. If you’re doing relatively well on quant, do some extra verbal homework instead.

1. (Optional) Watch these videos as needed, but please skip them if you’re performing well in these topics:
 
  Percents, Ratios, and the Gift of “Direct” Translation  (~ 1 hr.) 
  More Ratios  (~1 hr.) 
  More Percents  (~1 hr.)  
2. GMAT OG PS #76-100
3. Do 20 ratios PS questions.  Sub-555 level  |  Mixed difficulty 
4. Do 20 percents PS questions.  Sub-555 level  |  Mixed difficulty 
5. Quant section only from the GMAT Club tests or another NON-official source (save the mba.com exams for later!)
6. (Optional) Do 15 word problems PS questions.  Sub-555 level  |  Mixed difficulty 
7. (Optional) Only if you’re CERTAIN that it’s worthwhile: do extra sets of topic-based questions as needed (algebra, exponents, geometry, word problems, percents, ratios).

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:

1. If you’re worried about time management on your practice test, here’s  a familiar video reminder to bail when you flail .
2. If you’re making careless errors,  this (probably very familiar) video on how to approach GMAT quant  is essential viewing.
3. If you’re feeling inefficient, the video on  Developing a Flexible Quant Mindset  is probably a good fit.
4. Perhaps-familiar videos on  word translations (~1 hr.) ,  ratios (1 hr.) ,  percents (1 hr) , or  a combination of both (along with percents) (~1hr) .
5. If quant topics from previous weeks are giving you trouble, whatever you need is probably in this first half of  this playlist .
5.  GMAT Club Math Book 
6. Heroic quant threads from  Bunuel :  Ultimate GMAT Quant Megathread  |  Signature Question Collection  |  All You Need for Quant

By now you’ve hopefully gotten comfortable with different topic areas, and you’ve hopefully done some serious thinking about how to optimize your process on RC.

This week, we’ll take a look at some common pitfalls on RC (and CR). From there, we’ll mostly just ask you to keep practicing, and let’s see if you can move the needle on your results.

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 4 RC homework 
 
1. (Optional) Watch  this video on the most common mistakes on RC and CR . (The same video appears in this week’s CR homework.)
2. One full LSAT RC set
3. Do the second set of ~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.
4. (Very 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?

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

Videos:  How to approach RC  |  Another RC basics video  |  Dealing with RC culture and literature passages  |  How to identify different points of view on RC passages  |  Full GMAT RC video course  
  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

This week, we’ll offer extra practice on inference and “except” questions if you need it. If you don’t need the extra practice, don’t force it -- if your general process on CR is solid, you probably don’t need to drill specific question types at all.

More broadly, your main goal remains the same at this stage: strive to become 100% consistent in how you read and comprehend CR passages. If you can do that, consistent results will follow.

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 4 CR homework 
 
1. Watch  this video on the most common mistakes on RC and CR . (The same video appears in this week’s RC homework.)
2. (Very optional) A set of 5-10 inference questions from the LSAT or older editions of the OGs; you can find some from OG 12 and the Verbal 2nd edition  here  or from the LSAT  here .
3. (Very optional) A set of 5-10 “except” questions from the LSAT or older editions of the OGs; you can find some from OG 12 and the Verbal 2nd edition  here  or from the LSAT  here .
4. Do the second set of 25 questions from a recent edition of the GMAT Official Guide. These will feel MUCH easier than the LSAT. (The CR question numbers will vary slightly, depending on which edition you’re using.)
5. One full LSAT CR set
6. (Very optional) One additional 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:

EXCEPT questions aren’t interesting enough for their own video, but there’s a brief discussion in  this video , including a full example at the 6:01 mark. 
 Some wisecracks about CR and RC inference questions can be found in  this video on common CR & RC mistakes . 
  Beginners’ guide to CR  
  LIVE YouTube video on how to approach CR  or  a not-so-live video on how to approach CR  
  All GMAT Ninja CR resources on GMAT Club  
  More full CR explanations than anybody should ever read  
  A whole lot more LIVE YouTube videos on a wide variety of topics  
 CR “pitfalls” videos:  Missing the Heart of a CR Passage  |  Paraphrasing on CR  |  Obsessing over CR Question Types  |  Anticipating Correct CR Answers... Incorrectly  |  Falling in Love With Answer Choices  |  Irrelevant & Out of Scope Answers  |  CR Word-Matching  |  Rejecting Imperfect Answer Choice    
    
Here comes the REAL Data Insights fun, starting with Graphical Interpretation (GI).

This is admittedly a light week of GI homework, and you’re probably itchy to do more than just one set of 10 questions. But again: please keep in mind that there’s a limited supply of official DI questions. We’ll carefully assign the official stuff to maximize its value, so please don’t race ahead -- we’ll get to everything over the next month or so, including every DI question type.

Week 4 DI assignments:

1. (Optional, but recommended) Watch  this LIVE video on how to approach Graphical Interpretation questions . Alternatively, you could watch this  this not-so-live GI intro video  and perhaps  its sequel on odd-looking graphs and charts 
2. 10 Graphical Interpretation questions from the GMAT OG question bank on MBA.com – see below for instructions on how to set this up
3. Do the second set of 20 Data Sufficiency questions from your version of the OG.
4. Do 15 ratios DS questions.  Sub-555 level  |  Mixed difficulty 
5. Do 15 percents DS questions.  Sub-555 level  |  Mixed difficulty 
6. (Optional) Do 15 word problems DS questions.  Sub-555 level  |  Mixed difficulty

Instructions for Official Practice Questions on  MBA.com

Access the  GMAT Official Practice site at mba.com , and locate the "GMAT Official Guide 2024-2025" product (or whichever edition of the OG you’re using) 
 Click the "Study" button -> "Practice Questions" in the left navigation menu -> "Start New Session" button. 
 To start a session, select the "Choose the type, difficulty, and number of questions" radio button; click the checkbox to the left of the assigned question type(s) to select ALL remaining questions for that type. Keep the "Unlimited" radio button selected (under "Duration"), and select "Exam Mode" (under "Mode").  
  Week 4 assignment: select easy & medium GI questions only.  And please stop after you’ve completed 10 questions – we’ll save the rest for later. 
 Click the "Start Practice" button.  Try to hide/ignore the timers at the top of the page , since you won't have those on test day. 
 After doing the assigned number of questions, click the "Pause" button at the top right -> "Pause Custom Practice" button in the popup -> "Submit and End Session" (red, scary button) to confirm.

What to do AFTER completing a Data Insights homework set

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

Need help with Data Insights?

If you make careless errors or struggle on this week’s content, these resources might help:

1. If you’re making careless errors on quant or Data Sufficiency,  this (probably very familiar) video on how to approach quant and DS questions . For a deeper dive into Data Sufficiency, check out  this live video  or  this prerecorded DS video 
2. If you’re struggling on GI questions in general, check out  this live video on how to approach Graphical Interpretation questions , or try  this not-so-live GI intro video  and perhaps  its sequel on odd-looking graphs and charts .
3. If you’re worried about DI in general,  here’s an overview video on how to approach the Data Insights section .
4. If you’re struggling with quant-specific content (percents, ratios, etc.) on DI questions, please take a look at the resources list under the quant section of this week’s study plan.

GMATNinja · Answer

How to Interpret Your Week 4 Homework Results Please read this section each week if you’re serious about optimizing your study time. We’ll 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. Also, if you’re worried about something that isn’t addressed here, please post your questions/worries/doubts either here or in the Week 1 thread . I guarantee that other students are suffering in the same ways as you are.

Benchmarks for the non-official quant test : Quant section score : I don’t care, and you shouldn’t either. Non-official tests aren’t necessarily very accurate. Instead, focus on the next two metrics... Careless error rate : < 3%. If you made one silly error, that’s OK. More than that? Grrrrrr... Questions that took you 3+ minutes : < 3%. Didn’t you hear our guy Mike telling you to “bail when you flail” ? What to do about your Week 4 practice test results : Don’t overreact to non-official test scores! It's nearly impossible for practice tests to mimic the actual scoring of the GMAT, so the score itself doesn't matter much. If you’re making careless errors : As always, job #1 is to stamp them out. Check out the resource list in the study plan for help. If you spent 3+ minutes on too many questions : This is an issue of discipline and mindset. Learn to let go! Remember: the test is designed to make you miss 30-50% of the quant 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. Again: don’t spend a ton of time reviewing your mistakes. Reviewing individual questions can drain too much of your precious study time. If a question was hard or weird, then it isn’t the biggest threat to your GMAT goals. So please don’t obsess over individual questions – especially non-official ones. Benchmarks for Your Week 4 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 4: Careless error rate : < 3%. You’ve heard this before: the careless errors need to be gone, or almost gone. OG & Quant Guide sets (#2 on the list) : 80-90% correct is excellent, 70-80% is probably fine, since these are getting harder. Just remember that WHAT you miss is more important on the GMAT than how many you missed. Careless errors are apocalyptic, but if you missed OG questions on topics that you haven't studied, that's totally cool -- you'll have time to learn those things. Ratios and percents questions (#3-4 on the list) : 85-90% correct is probably 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. Other randomized question sets (#6-7 on the list) : again, 85-90% is good on sub-555 questions, but take the results of mixed-difficulty sets with a 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 still have time to improve those things. What Should You Do About Your Quant Weaknesses in Week 4? 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 : that’s bad. Do whatever you need to do to fix this. Do it now. Pause the study plan if you need to. Just fix the careless errors. If you struggled on the OG or Quant Guide sets (item #2) : don’t panic. Again: ask yourself WHY you struggled. If you’re at, say, 70% accuracy, that’s not ideal, but context matters: if nearly all of those errors are on topics that you’ve never really studied, you’re in great shape, since you have plenty of time to study those over the next couple of months. If you struggled on the ratios or percents sets (items #3-4) : concentrate on putting your errors into context, and look for broad patterns. If you missed several questions of the same type, then maybe this ratios video , this percents video , or some other resource might help. But if you missed really hard ones or one-off oddball questions, please don’t waste your time on them. If you struggled on other topic-based sets (items #6-7) : again, concentrate on putting your errors into context, and look for broad patterns. If you make similar errors on several questions, then it’s time to buckle down and figure out what needs to be fixed in your approach. But if you missed hard or strange questions, who cares? If you got CRUSHED by ALL of the quant homework : if you’re nowhere close to the benchmarks on quant – and if your long-term goal is 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. Our usual disclaimer: 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 – be proud when your results tick upwards a little bit. Slow, steady progress is still gorgeous, even when it hurts. Benchmarks for Your Week 4 RC & CR Results Accuracy on LSAT CR & RC sets : 80% is the long-run goal if you’re shooting for a 90th percentile score or above on verbal. It’s still OK if you’re not quite there in Week 4, as long as you’re getting close. Please adjust accordingly if you’re happy with a lower verbal score – for example, 70% on the LSAT is probably fine if you’re shooting for an 80V on the GMAT. Efficiency on LSAT CR & RC sets : 60 minutes or less is your long-run goal. Again, it’s OK if you’re not quite there in Week 4, but you should be close by now. 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. GMAT OG RC + Verbal Guide CR sets : if you’re shooting for a 90th percentile score on the GMAT, we’d like to see 85-90% accuracy here, in no more than 2 minutes per question. (Adjust accordingly if your GMAT score goal is more modest.) These aren’t too hard yet, but they’ll get tougher in the coming weeks, so don’t be alarmed if your results look somewhat flat over time. What Should You Do About Your CR & RC Weaknesses in Week 4? Look at Week 1 for signs of progress . Are you seeing ANY improvement in your average accuracy and times from Week 1 until now? If you’ve reduced your LSAT CR and RC errors by 5-10%, that’s legitimately a great achievement, and you’re very much on track. 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 on an adaptive exam than getting better at harder questions. If your results are significantly better on RC than on CR : you might want to invest time in some extra CR sets or videos – we’ll provide recommendations each week. If you’re better at CR than RC : When this happens, the most common reasons are that you’re obsessing over details when you read RC (and missing the “big picture” by doing so), or you’re struggling to stay focused through a long passage. Maybe you’ll want to err on the side of getting a bit of extra practice on RC in the coming weeks, and we’ll keep feeding you videos that might help, too. If you’re slow ( > 60 mins per LSAT set, > 2 minutes per OG or Verbal Guide question) : sadly, there are a ton of different reasons why your times might be high. At this stage, maybe you’re still learning new approaches, so you’re still figuring out how to integrate them into your process – if that’s the case, your times will come down. Maybe you’re not doing each set with test-like intensity. Maybe you need more coffee or more sleep. Maybe you’d be sharper at a different time of day. Maybe there’s inefficiency in your process – and if that’s the case, it’s likely that you’re still struggling to fully incorporate the techniques that you’ll see in the videos. It’s also possible that you’re a slow reader, and that’s a hard thing to fix. I wish I could tell you which of these things is happening – but you’ll have to figure that part out for yourself, unfortunately.

If you’re getting impatient with your results : hey, it’s still only Week 4. If you’re hitting our benchmarks, you’re doing GREAT. If you’re not quite hitting the marks yet, are you at least seeing some improvement? If so, you’re on track – keep at it! 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, 60-70% on your LSAT sets might be OK 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. We’re still warming up on Data Insights, and this week’s homework featured Data Sufficiency and just a wee bit of GI – we have a long way to go, so the most important thing is not to overreact. You’ll spend TONS of time building your fundamental DI skills in the next month or two – so don’t obsess over individual questions yet. It’s a waste of your time. That said, if you struggled badly on the Graphical Interpretation set, that’s a sign that you’ll want to invest more time in DI – perhaps by spending extra time with the videos, since there’s a limited supply of high-quality DI practice questions – in the next month or two. If you can afford to cut back on other topics to make room for extra DI work, great. If not, you can always pause the study plan, and spend extra time with DI content in the next month or so. 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 set you completed . Then divide that by the total number of questions to get your careless error rate. If your long-term goal is to score in the 80s on DI, here are the metrics I’d like you to hit in Week 4: Careless error rate : < 3%. You’ve heard this before: the careless errors need to be gone, or almost gone. This is the first week you’ve done any Graphical Interpretation questions, so you might see one or two careless errors slip through, but please do everything you can to get rid of them as soon as possible. OG & Data Insights Guide sets (#2-3 on the list) : if your long-term goal is an 80+ on DI, I’d like to see you get at least 80% correct at this stage on GI questions, and ideally closer to 90% on DS, since those questions are still relatively easy. Just remember that WHAT you miss is more important on the GMAT than how many you missed: careless errors are apocalyptic. If you missed DS questions on quant topics that you haven't studied, that's totally cool -- you'll have time to learn those things. Randomized batches of forum questions (#4-6 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 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 -- and you'll be able to improve those things over time. Speed for Graphical Interpretation : On the OG-based sets, you're in good shape if you’re reasonably close to 2:30 minutes per question. If you're slower than, say, 3:00 minutes per question on average, it might be a sign that your basic skills are rusty, or that you’re misreading a bit, or failing to choose efficient paths forward -- and you'll be able to improve those things over time, too. What Should You Do About Your Data Insights Weaknesses in Week 4? 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. This might look familiar by now: 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 with the graphical interpretation questions : check out this live video on how to approach Graphical Interpretation questions or this one that tells you to just read the bleeping graph If you struggled with specific quant topics : (ratios, percents, etc.), don’t panic . It’s far too easy to overreact to a few errors, and study these topics until you faceplant into your desk. 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 9 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 score in the 80s – then maybe you need to back away from the study plan, and invest some time in rebuilding your basic skills. If that’s the case for you, tag us in the thread, give us as much detail as you can about your situation, and we’ll try to help. How much time should you spend reviewing individual questions? Not much, please! Because it can take SOOOOOOO much time to review a question, it should be your absolute last resort. That’s why we want you to redo questions first – sometimes, you’ll see your mistake right away, and that’s the best way to learn. If you miss a question a second time, then maybe it’s a sign of an underlying issue. No, really: resist the temptation to obsess over individual questions . Instead, look for patterns in your errors – an error on one question might be a fluke (or a weird, hard, or badly written question), but if you miss several related questions, you have an opportunity to get a good ROI on your study time by addressing a general weakness via a video or articles or books.

agrawrim · Answer

Hi
 GMATNinja  Quant Homework links are not working.  bb 
Thanks

GMATNinja · Answer

Ugh, sorry for the trouble -- we're still grappling with a little technical glitch, and my links sometimes get eaten when I edit a post.

I just fixed it again, but if they aren't working for you, just let us know. Thank you for the heads-up, and have fun studying!

shreya0000 · Answer

hi what does 
Quant section only from the GMAT Club tests mean? is it a whole quant mock test? where can I access it?

yc168 · Answer

Hi, this is referring to another resource here on GMAT Club:  GMAT Club Tests

You can do full-length mock tests there (I think 10+ as of now), comprising all three GMAT FE sections, or just do mock tests on a single section, depending on your own prep plan needs.

More details can be found in  this post - GMAT Club Tests - Focus Edition (Adaptive) .

sanatakesGMAT · Answer

Hello, can someone help with the DI homework section where we use Mba.com.

Im not able to set it up according to instructions, since there are only 3 DI questions in total (1 medium and 2 hard ones, there are 0 easy ones.)

How do I go about this?

bb · Answer

Hi. It looks like you are using the free practice question bin on mba.com (very small as you can see). 
GMAT Ninja was referring to the Official Guide instead which has a much bigger selection of the official Questions. (MSR and G&T DI Questions have to be accessed online as they cannot be used on paper)

sanatakesGMAT · Answer

I think it got it now, thanks bb!

BatrickPatemann · Answer

Quick question regarding the DI work, is the product  GMAT Official Practice Questions - Data

The product supposed to be purchased to do this and next weeks' DI assignments? I have done already this week's homework but have no more 'easy/medium GI questions' so I am wondering whether I have purchased wrong product.

Thank you so much!

GMATNinja · Answer

The assignment was from the  GMAT Official Guide  -- not the DI Official Practice Questions, which are a different product. The confusing thing is that most of the DI questions (including all of the GI questions) are only available online. So regardless of whether you bought a physical or digital copy of the Official Guide, you'd access the GI questions through your mba.com account.

That said: honestly, it doesn't really matter if you swap one source of GI questions for another, as long as they're official questions. So think of these assignments as a certain number of GI questions of a certain difficulty -- and if you want to use a different official source, that's OK.

I hope that helps a bit, and sorry for the confusion!

gotkimherela · Answer

hey  GMATNinja , for the LSAT test, I use the ones on LawHub. They have both prep tests and drill sets, and in drill sets, there are logical reasoning and reading comprehension. For the assignment each week, do I use prep test or drill sets?? How many questions are expected in a full LSAT RC/CR set in the assignments?

GMATNinja · Answer

Good question! For GMAT purposes, I would stick with the preptests, just because they're designed to be consistent in terms of length and difficulty, and they'll give you better data than the drill sets, which seem to vary quite a bit more in difficulty.

Yes, the logical reasoning (CR in GMAT-speak) and RC preptests are long enough to hurt (usually 23-27 questions). But the hope is that the GMAT verbal section will feel a little bit (or a lot) less painful once you do enough full LSAT sections.

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

dignissimosipsa · Answer

Hey,  GMATNinja , for point 5 on the quant homework "Quant section only from the GMAT Club tests or another NON-official source "

I have clicked on the link for the GMAT club tests, but I only have access to one full adaptive test for free. Do I need to purchase the quant/ other sections or is there something I am missing?

Thanks!

GMATNinja · Answer

I'll leave that up to you! If you want to purchase additional GMAT Club practice exams, you could do that. You could also wait until a day when GMAT Club tests are free -- usually on major holidays. Or you could use non-official quant tests from a different company if you'd like.

Not everybody needs more quant practice tests, especially since plenty of full, adaptive mba.com exams are coming up in future weeks. So if it's really not in your budget to buy non-official tests, it's not that big of a deal in the scheme of things.

I hope that helps a bit!

henrywilliams · Answer

Hi Gmat ninja team, I received the study plan for week 4 but haven't received week 5 and so on. Could you please help send the later plan? Many thanks !

bb · Answer

Hi. Not sure what happened. I see you were there on Jan 2nd and you got the 4th week. 
I have added you back to the list.

You can find week 5 and 6 here:

henrywilliams · Answer

Thank for your help.

Rimeral · Answer

Thanks for sharing this, the Week 4 structure makes the workload feel more manageable🙏✨

AbhishekG01 · Answer

Hi
 GMATNinja  Quant Homework links are not working. Can you look into it ?  bb

Attaching a screenshot for your ready reference.

Thanks

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