GMAT Ninja Study Plan Week 7

• Medium quant questions: 80% is solid, 90% or above is excellent if your goal is a high-40s quant score.
• Hard quant questions: 50% is solid. No, really: you can miss a TON of hard questions on the GMAT and be in great shape. If you’re comfortably above 50%, congratulations. But you really don’t need to be in order to hit a 47+ on quant.
• Careless error rate: < 3%. If you made one silly error, that’s OK. More than that? You’ll need to 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.

• 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”?

• One more time: 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 a question of discipline and mindset. Learn to let go! Remember: the test is designed to make you miss 30-50% 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 huge fan of reviewing every individual question, 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 might have uncovered a weakness that’s worth your attention.
• If you struggled on “hard” questions from the mba.com question bank: Friends, these are legitimately hard, and I can promise that they aren’t the #1 thing holding you back from a 700 or probably even a 740. 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 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.

Benchmarks for Your Week 7 Quant Results

• 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.

• Careless error rate: < 2%. You’ve heard this before: the careless errors need to be gone, or almost gone.
• OG & Quant Guide sets (#5-7 on the list): 80%+ correct is excellent, 70-80% is probably fine, since these are getting kinda hard. Just remember that WHAT you miss is more important on the GMAT than how many you missed. If you missed OG questions on topics that you haven't studied, that's totally cool -- you'll have time to learn those things. And again: the questions are getting harder.
• Overlapping sets & sequences questions (#3-4 & #8-9 on the list): 75% or above is probably excellent, but take the results with a grain of salt! These sets are random, and if you happened to see nasty, strange questions, 50-60% might be pretty good. The quality and difficulty of these questions varies HUGELY, so don’t overreact to your results.
• 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 not choosing efficient paths forward.

What Should You Do About Your Quant Weaknesses in Week 7?

• 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 (items #5-7): as usual, ask yourself WHY you struggled. If you’re at, say, 70% accuracy, that’s not ideal, but context matters: if your errors were on hard, strange, or unfamiliar questions, that’s fine. We still have a few topics coming in Week 8, so there’s time to improve.
• If you struggled on the overlapping sets tasks (items #3-4): If you missed really hard ones or oddball questions, please don’t waste your time reviewing them. If you got CRUSHED on easier questions, you might want to revisit this overlapping sets video or others in the resource list, but don’t overreact – this topic isn’t worth THAT much time. If you can just master the very basics, you’re fine – you don’t need to nail the hard, weird ones to score in the high 40s.
• If you struggled on sequences sets (items #8-9): the quality of these can vary greatly, so please don’t stress about them too much. Did you feel comfortable with the basics? Do you understand sequence notation? Then you’re probably 100% fine. This topic isn’t worth much of your time, either.
• If you struggled on other topic-based sets (item #10): 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 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 high-40s score – 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.

Benchmarks for Your Week 7 RC & CR Results

• OG & Verbal Guide RC & CR sets: 80% correct in under 2 minutes per question is solid, 90% is outstanding. These are getting hard now, so if you’re squirming, that’s cool.
• Random sets of fill-in-the-blank CR questions from the older OGs or LSAT: sorry, we can’t really give you a benchmark for these, since randomness plays a role. Maybe you saw tougher questions, and maybe not. Did you at least feel confident and systematic in your approach? If so, you’re probably fine.
• Accuracy on (optional) LSAT CR & RC sets: 80% accuracy is still the goal if you’re looking for a 40+ on verbal. 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 is your long-run goal to have a shot at finishing the GMAT verbal section on time.
• 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 7?

• 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 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 some 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: If you’re hitting our benchmarks, you’re doing GREAT, and you’re ready to get something close to a 40V once you get SC under control. If you’re not quite hitting the CR/RC benchmarks yet, are you at least seeing some improvement? If so, you’re on track – keep at it! You can always pause the study plan if you need to.
• If you’re getting CRUSHED on CR & RC: well, I’m impressed that you’re still reading this in Week 7. It might be time to check out this video about the factors that can lead to GMAT verbal struggles. If you think that your fundamental reading skills are an issue, this article and this one will give you some ideas for how to improve over time.

Benchmarks for Your Week 7 SC Results

• Accuracy: 90%+ correct deserves a celebration; 70-90% is solid. If you’re under 70%, don’t worry – there’s still time to improve.
• Random sets of modifier questions from the older OGs: sorry, we can’t really give you a benchmark for these, since randomness plays a role. Maybe you saw tougher questions, and maybe not. Did you at least feel confident and systematic in your approach? If so, you’re probably fine.
• Speed: 50 minutes or less (for 25 questions) is great. If you were in the 50-60 minute range, you’ll need to get more efficient, but you STILL have plenty of time to do so. If the set took you more than an hour, don’t panic yet – just be aware that you might have extra work to do as you strive for efficiency.

What Should You Do About Your SC Weaknesses in Week 7?

• Be prepared to spend more time in the coming weeks if you’re struggling. If your SC is lagging way behind your quant, CR, and RC skills then you’ll want to allocate more time for SC videos, optional practice sets, and articles in the next few weeks…
• ...but please don’t spend too much time reviewing individual SC questions. It’s incredibly time-consuming, and every SC question has its own unique qualities that you might not ever see again. Instead, be patient – you’ll have plenty of chances to build your underlying skills via videos and more practice, and that’s a better use of time than obsessing over individual questions. You can always redo the questions you missed in a few weeks, after you’ve improved your underlying skills.
• If you’re 100% sure that your SC fundamentals are nowhere close to where they need to be: then you could spend extra time with SC videos (such as this full GMAT SC video course), but we’ll still hit plenty of key topics in the coming weeks. Don’t automatically assume that learning more grammar is the answer – that’s only one small part of SC. So when in doubt, be patient: we still have more SC topics ahead, and you’ll have plenty of chances to practice.
• If you’re REALLY slow on SC questions: it’s soul-searching time. If you’re slow on ALL verbal questions, then maybe reading speed is a problem, and that’s really hard to fix. But if you’re slower on SC than RC or CR, you’re probably not consistently identifying the EASIEST ways to eliminate answer choices. This video on getting your priorities straight or this video on how to approach SC are probably familiar to you already, but might be worth re-watching. I promise that if you master the processes in those videos, your efficiency will improve – but I also understand that it can be hard to master those processes.