GMAT Ninja 13-Week Study Plan Week 1 - Start Here

GMATNinja, Thank you for making this study plan.

I am pretty much getting mauled by GMAT Verbal, so I decided to go through all the verbal resources on the Study plan. I just noticed that links in both the "How to approach" videos in RC and CR are linked to the same CR Video. Is this by design or are we missing a RC video link?

Great question, sa800. And apologies for my slowness in responding to it!

To be clear: I'm not saying that you should NEVER spend time reviewing questions. I'm just saying that you want to be very, very careful not to burn a TON of time doing so.

You're spot-on about one general principle: when you make mistakes, you need to figure out why you're making them. If you don't learn about yourself through this process, it's awfully hard to improve.

But we see far too many students obsess over every single answer to every single question, and that's not a great use of time. Others maniacally read expert explanations to everything they miss, and that's not a great habit, either: the point of reviewing is to learn more about why YOU make mistakes, and how you might avoid those mistakes next time. You could read hundreds of our best explanations to verbal questions, and those explanations won't teach you very much about yourself, unfortunately.

That's why we very strongly recommend redoing your mistakes first, before you start diving into a bunch of explanations of a question. If you get the question right the second time, then either you've learned something about your propensity to make careless errors, or else you somehow got better at something -- and both of those are potentially good, productive things.

If, on the other hand, you miss the question a second time, then you have some decisions to make. Is the question worth obsessing over, or is it a question that's hard or unique or obscure enough that it isn't worth studying? After all, TONS of GMAT questions are one-off oddballs, and you're unlikely to see anything quite like them ever again. Even a question isn't totally unique or strange, you'll still need to be very clear about what you hope to gain by reviewing it. If you spend 30 minutes reviewing an RC passage, will it make you better at reading a completely different passage? Or will you just spend 30 minutes becoming an expert on some topic that you'll never see again?

So yes: reviewing can be productive, and sometimes it can be absolutely indispensable. But your time is valuable, and in the study plan, I basically just argue that you want to be very, very thoughtful about how and what you review. We meet a ton of test-takers on GMAT Club who review questions in so much detail that it's wildly inefficient or even counterproductive -- so please just be careful not to let that happen.

I hope that helps a bit!
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Thank you so much for catching that, rahulp11! Very much appreciated.

The link is fixed now, and I have a bad feeling that I might have to fix the links in some of the other weeks, too...
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Hello altogether,
I just wanted to point out that the link for practicing linear equations at math dot com doesn't work. I assume it doesn't work because the practice settings are created locally. Would you be so kind and post the settings instead, so that anyone who would like to practice can create their own algebra sets?

Unfortunately I cannot post any link because I have less than 5 posts so far.

Kind Regards,
ADKI

Thank you so much for bringing this to our attention, ADKI! The link is fixed now, and I added a note that recommends a specific type of exercise for basic quadratics. Hopefully that does the trick.

Thank you again, and have fun studying!
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Hi everyone,

GMATNinja thankyou so much for sharing this amazing plan and all the other amazing content out there
Just wanted to check if there is any way to get a pdf version or a word doc for the 13-week study plan that can be printed.

Is it okay to use books of 2020 or previous version?

Posted from my mobile device

Hello GMATNinja, Thanks so much for this plan. I have recently started executing it.
I wanted to point to item #6 in Week 1 Quant Homework :

When I click on the link "here" it returns a search with multiple questions in the search results that are tagged 700 (hard). Is that intentional?
I simply took the first 20 but my score isn't as good on the hard ones. How should I interpret that? And consequently, what action should I take to improve my score?
Any help is highly appreciated! TIA

Hi GMATNinja,

Thanks for creating this comprehensive study plan. Really appreciate it.




In this sub-section of the study plan point numbers 5, 6, 7 and 8 refer to the questions from respective topics. If we go to those pages the questions are sorted by latest post. Would you recommend to sort/filter the questions by any other column name say kudos or replies to cover most of the concepts from that topic and to cover a good variety of questions.

Many thanks for the effort you have put in...!

JaySiyaRam

Yup! Almost any OG edition is fine for now -- 12th, 13th, 2015-2022. They swap out a few questions whenever they switch editions, but as long as the book was printed in the last 15 years or so, it will work perfectly well. (Obviously, this advice might change once the new GMAT Focus Edition is up and running.)


Sadly, there's no pdf version. It might be possible to print from your browser, but that will obviously depend on the configuration of your device and its software. Sorry that I don't have anything more useful on this one!


Oops, that's embarrassing! Sorry for my mistake.

If I'm being completely honest, I'm shocked that I didn't make more mistakes with the links. Thank you for catching this one! It's fixed now, and should be working properly.


Thank you for the kind words, Jaisiyaram!

That's a great question, and I don't know that I have a great answer. I thought about this issue quite a bit when I was writing the study plan, and never came to a good conclusion. I suppose the idea is that we want you to see a somewhat random assortment of high-quality questions, and I don't think that any sorting method is obviously better than the others. Feel free to play around with it if you'd like, but I don't think it'll make a huge difference, one way or another.

I hope that helps a bit!
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Hello GMATNinja

I am just starting the plan and I've found that in the "Error log" section:
Set up an error log of some sort. Here are some options, here’s an ambitious reimagining of the error log,

The two links are the same. Is this intended? What is the link of the "ambitious" error log?

Many thanks for your hard work!

Just FYI. Error log is an auto-linked term. I think GMAT ninja as talking about some general concept of a minimal or ambitious concept.
We do have a few templates besides the one that is built into the GMAT Club. Here is a link:

Existing Error logs and resources you may want to use to create/revise your error log:

Some error logs available on GMATClub:

Latest log that combines Ability and Accuracy
https://gmatclub.com/forum/new-error-lo ... l#p1719508
https://gmatclub.com/forum/new-error-lo ... l#p1888303

Magoosh GMAT Companion for the Official Guide
GMAT Official Guide (2017) Companion
GMAT Official Guide (2016) Companion

An error log is part of the GMAT Toolkit:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-toolkit ... 82830.html

Error log made by members:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-error-log-86232.html

Built in timer for answering questions in the GC forum:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/time-yoursel ... 96251.html

Track using your workbook:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/ucp.php?i=workbook

Previous (now retired) error log thread:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/all-about-th ... 11754.html

https://gmatclub.com/forum/new-gmat-pra ... 11448.html
https://gmatclub.com/forum/all-about-th ... 11754.html
https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-club-gu ... 85956.html
https://gmatclub.com/forum/error-log-te ... 68055.html
https://gmatclub.com/forum/standardizin ... 84791.html
https://gmatclub.com/forum/error-log-tool-8717.html
https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-timer-56014.html
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Hello bb,
I think the two links in that section were intentional, I looked at Charles Q&A video about data input and error logging and was just curious at how the more "ambitious" version looked like

Anyhow I'm new and trying to catch up with all the stuff and features. I must say great resources so far and the plan looks amazing!

Had the same question but never asked. I'm currently on week 5 and it's helping me a lot since it gives me the pressure i need to keep the pace. It also saves me a lot of time because I just get directly into the sets and don't have to spent time choosing or planning what to do next. In the académic side i've been making few changes to the study plan according to my need and using some additional material for theory and basic concepts (Manhattan foundations). Hope we can listen from other people more advanced in the study plan

Posted from my mobile device

Hi GMATNinja I am in week 5 of the study plan and am still making careless errors in 10-15% of quant questions. I have tried figuring out why it's happening. I have gone through the video you recommended as well. But I can't seem to think of any solution to fix this.

I know it's very important to deal with this issue but I am unsure of how to go about it. Is it because I lack concentration? I am kinda lost now

Hi GMATNinja, thanks for the amazing resource. The link you shared to generate math questions from math dot com seems to be broken (I can't link a URL), do you know of any other such resource? Thanks!

howdy all - the math dot com links don't seem to be working. are there alternate links, or is that site just down?

Hi! Thanks for the post. I just checked and it seems the entire domain/site www.math.com is having some issues. I was able to pull the worksheet up on the third or fourth try: http://www.math.com/students/worksheet/algebra_sp.htm

I am assuming it will be back up and running and this is temporary... but we can find something alternate in case this becomes a permanent type of thing.
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Hi Charles, thank you so much for putting this plan together. A quick question, where can I find the skinny little book that you are referring to, for the verbal section? If you could provide the exact name of the book, that would be great.