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06 Dec 2022, 10:30
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GMAT Ninja’s 13-Week Study Plan
Week 8 (~15 hours)
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Welcome back for Week 8 of the study plan! If you have no idea what’s going on here, then you’ll want to start with Week 1 instead.
Until now, we’ve spent a lot of time building skills and foundations, with lots of LSAT practice and specific quant and SC topics… but not too many practice tests. That’s starting to change: this is the final week of topic-based quant practice, and practice exams are becoming a bigger part of your life.
We’ll start blasting through the official mba.com practice tests soon, and the end of the study plan isn’t so far away anymore. So if the data says that your skills aren’t quite good enough yet, now is a good time to pause the study plan if you need to. We’ll be here whenever you’re ready to come back.
(A) Inspiration & Advice (optional)+
In keeping with the themes of the past couple of weeks, check out yet another debrief that focuses on what NOT to do in your studies.
You don’t necessarily need to read the whole thing, but I strongly recommend checking out item #5 in that debrief. It’s easy to be too hard on yourself at this stage, and if you’re struggling, don’t compare yourself to anybody else – just find your rhythm and be patient with yourself.
(B) Practice Tests & Related Fun (3-4 hrs.)+
Things are getting real! This week, we’ll give you the option of repeating a full, official mba.com practice exam #1. If you don’t want to do that, we’ll have an alternative for you.
In honor of your full practice exams, here are two short videos that we recommend:
- How to choose your section order on the GMAT (4 minutes)
- How to create a successful GMAT test-day routine (9 minutes)
Week 8 practice test assignments
We’ll give you two options. Choose just ONE, please. Doing both is a bad idea – you won’t perform well on two full practice tests in a week, especially with all of the other homework in this week’s list.
Option #1: retake full mba.com test #1. If you’ve taken it once, your score will be inflated, but perhaps not too badly. Very important: please save exams #2-6 for future weeks.
Option #2: do a “fake verbal test” and a quant section from a non-official test of your choice. It’s weird, though. Here’s how it works:
- 1. Do a “fake verbal test” using Official Practice Questions 1 available for purchase at mba.com. Here’s how to set it up:
- Select 11 CR and 12 SC questions from the software, in “exam mode.” If your goal is 40V or above, select an even mix of medium and hard questions. If your goals are lower, select a roughly even mix of easy, medium, and hard questions.
- Select 13 RC questions – from 3 or 4 passages – from the OG or GMAT Verbal Guide or the LSAT. Do NOT use the mba.com software for these – you’ll get too few questions per passage.
- Set an external timer for 65 minutes.
- Yes, this is FAR from perfect. But at least these are official questions, in roughly the same quantity as the actual exam.
2. Do the quant section ONLY of a non-official GMAT practice exam from GMAT Club or any other company. You can do this before or immediately after the verbal test, depending on your desired GMAT section order. Take an 8-minute break between the two sections.
Which option should you choose?
- If you’ve taken mba.com test #1 just once, we strongly recommend choosing option #1. Yes, your result will be inflated, but we’ll help you with the interpretation in the next post in this thread.
- If you’ve taken mba.com test #1 more than once, option #2 is probably better.
- The verbal “fake test” is one of the few ways to give you something vaguely resembling a full verbal test, using official questions… but it’s very far from perfect. If you really don’t like it, that’s 100% legit – pick option #1 instead.
- The verbal “fake test” is also very hard to interpret, so please see our guidance in the next post in the thread when you’re finished.
(C) Quant (~3-6 hrs.)+
This is the final week of “topic-based” quant practice: statistics, probability, and combinations and permutations. You’ll see only a few of these questions on your actual exam, so we definitely don’t recommend investing much time in these topics, unless you’re already GREAT at nearly everything else (especially verbal!).
After this week, you’ll see a steady diet of practice tests and mixed sets. So if the data says that you’re not close to your desired results, now is a good time to pause the study plan if you need to.
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 8 quant homework
Items #2-4 are important this week. Everything else features topics that comprise a surprisingly tiny percentage of GMAT questions. So please don’t waste too much time on them – and if you do invest in these questions, we’d recommend skipping the hardest questions. Contrary to popular belief, they won’t make or break your GMAT score.
- 1. (Extremely optional) Videos (~1 hr. each): Statistics | Probability | Combinations & Permutations. These videos are EXCESSIVE, especially since these topics comprise a very small portion of the exam. Spend time on them only if you’re 100% sure that you need to – and we encourage you to stop the videos whenever the goofy big-nosed guy says “the rest of this video is advanced, and you probably don’t need it.”
2. GMAT Quant Guide (skinny little book) PS #101-125
3. 5th set of 25 DS questions from the GMAT Quant Guide (the exact question numbers will vary depending on which edition you’re using)
4. GMAT Quant Guide (skinny little book) PS #126-150
5. (Optional) Do 10-15 statistics & sets PS questions. Sub-700 (recommended) | Mixed difficulty
6. (Optional) Do 10-15 statistics & sets DS questions. Sub-700 (recommended) | Mixed difficulty
7. (Optional) Do 5-10 combinations/permutations PS questions. Sub-700 (recommended) | Mixed difficulty
8. (Optional) Do 5-10 combinations/permutations DS questions. Sub-700 (recommended) | Mixed difficulty
9. (Optional) Do 5-10 probability PS questions. Sub-700 (recommended) | Mixed difficulty
10. (Optional) Do 5-10 probability DS questions. Sub-700 (recommended) | Mixed difficulty
11. (Optional) Only if you’re CERTAIN that it’s worthwhile: do extra sets of topic-based questions as needed.
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’re struggling on quant this week, these resources might help:
- 1. Videos: Statistics | Probability | Combinations & Permutations
2. If quant topics from previous weeks are giving you trouble, whatever you need is probably in this playlist.
3. If you’re itching for an extra few points on DS, check out this video on how to go from good to great on DS.
4. If you’re STILL making careless errors, this algebra video describes a process for approaching ALL quant questions, starting at the 1:01 mark; if you’re feeling inefficient, the video on Developing a Flexible Quant Mindset is still a good fit.
5. GMAT Club Math Book
6. Heroic quant threads from Bunuel: Ultimate GMAT Quant Megathread | Signature Question Collection | All You Need for Quant
(D) Reading Comprehension (~1 hr.)+
OK, the proverbial gloves are off now. If you’re following the study plan strictly (which may or may not be the right thing for you), you’re only about five weeks from your exam. So we’re down to one RC set per week.
LSAT RC sets are still optional, but if you need an extra check on your progress -- or a good challenge -- it’s still a good idea to do a set or two occasionally.
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 8 RC homework
- 1. Do the 3rd set of ~25 questions from a recent edition of the Verbal Guide (skinny little book). (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.)
2. (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?
The usual list of RC resources in case you need them:
(E) Critical Reasoning (~1 hr.)+
Practice tests will soon be the dominant force in your GMAT life, so we’ll ease up on the CR homework. We’re also done picking on individual question types, so if you’re still struggling with one or more of them, now is a good time to watch a video or read an article to fix your weaknesses.
As always, LSAT sets are optional at this stage, but we still recommend them if you need the challenge of some hard language, or a sanity-check on your progress over time.
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 8 CR homework
- 1. Do the 4th set of 25 questions from a recent edition of the GMAT OG.
2. (optional) Do a full 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:
(F) Sentence Correction (2-3 hrs.)+
We’ve already spent some quality time with verbs, pronouns, parallelism, and modifiers. This week, we’ll pick on comparisons. After this week, we’ll start working on relatively minor SC topics, and then we’re rolling downhill towards test day.
So hopefully, your SC results are already in the right ballpark for your score goals.
This week, we’ll also give you the rare treat of an extra set of official SC questions. Hurray!
Week 8 SC assignments:
- 1. Video: fundamentals of GMAT comparisons. If you’re tired of that guy, here’s a similar SC comparisons video with a different dude.
2. (Optional) If you want a sequel to the comparison video in item #1, you can watch the Adam Sandler lookalike here or the Peyton Manning clone here.
3. (Optional) 10 comparison questions from older OGs. we recommend the questions Mixed difficulty | Sub-600
4. Do the 3rd set of 25 SC questions from the GMAT Verbal Guide (the exact question numbers will vary depending on which edition you’re using)
5. Do the 4th set of 25 SC questions from the GMAT OG (the exact question numbers will vary depending on which edition you’re using)
Need more SC help?
Please don’t go crazy watching extra videos or reading piles of extra articles – the really important stuff is baked into the study plan. But in case you need them, here are links to more SC resources than you’ll probably ever need:
(G) IR & AWA (0 hrs.)+
You’ll get tired of reading this, but IR and AWA are always optional in this study plan. Why? Nobody really cares about them. Spend your time elsewhere, please.
06 Dec 2022, 10:30
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How to Interpret Your Week 8 Homework Results
Please read this section each week if you’re serious about optimizing your study time. If you don’t read this, it will be harder to (A) choose your homework wisely, and (B) avoid wasting time reviewing things that don’t really matter.
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.
At this stage, it can be particularly hard to make sense of your practice tests. So we strongly recommend reading through at least the first section below.
Practice Tests+
How to interpret your mba.com test #1 (option #1 on the homework list).
- Assume that your score was inflated if you’ve done test #1 before. You might not recognize many questions consciously, but I can 100% promise that you’ll be faster and more accurate on questions you’ve seen before – and you’re MUCH less likely to struggle with time management as a result. We can’t know whether your score was inflated by 10 points or 50 points or 100 points. But your result was definitely somewhat inflated – and please keep in mind that you’ll struggle more with timing on a brand-new test than you did on this one.
- How far are you from your target score overall? In theory, you’re about 5 weeks from your actual exam, so you shouldn’t be TOO far from your goal. As a very very rough guideline, I’m worried if you still need to gain more than 50 points – but it depends on what, exactly, went wrong. Keep reading…
- How far are you from your target score on quant? If you’re 5+ points away from your target quant score, I would worry that time is running out on you, and you might want to pause the study plan. But…
- How many careless errors did you make on quant? If you made more than one silly error on quant, then your main problem is sloppiness – not necessarily a lack of skill. Even a small handful of silly mistakes can cost you 5+ points on quant. So if this is a problem, fix it NOW.
- Do you notice any patterns in your quant errors? Are you disproportionately missing word translation questions? Geometry? Annoying algebraic data sufficiency questions with very few words in them? Something else? One or two errors in a certain topic area might mean nothing – for example, if you missed two hard, weird rate/work questions (but usually nail the easy ones), that’s cool, and you don’t have anything to worry about. But if you’re missing the same sort of thing repeatedly – especially if the questions seem to be on the easier side – then you’ll want to consider pausing the plan to focus on your weaknesses.
- How far are you from your target score on verbal? If you’re 5+ points away from your target quant score, I would still worry that time is running out on you, and you might want to pause the study plan to do some extra work, potentially even on your fundamental reading skills. But…
- Count the number of errors you made on each verbal question type. If you see a dramatic imbalance, then you know exactly what to focus on. In particular, I’m happy to see a weaker performance on SC at this stage, since you’re more likely to make a big leap on SC in the final 5 weeks than to pull off a similar jump on CR or RC.
- Look for signs of stubbornness. If you’re spending more than 3 minutes on individual quant, CR, or SC questions, you’ll need to learn to let go. Time is a scarce resource on the GMAT, and spending 3+ minutes isn’t an efficient way to use it (unless you’re doing the first question of an RC passage).
Benchmarks for the Week 8 verbal “fake test” (option #2 on the assignment list):
- Remember: the verbal “fake test” is FAR from ideal. But at least it gives you 36 official questions in 65 minutes. Just be sure to take these benchmarks with a grain of salt.
- Medium CR & SC questions: 80% is good, 90%+ is excellent if your goal is V40.
- Hard CR & SC questions: 50% is good, 70%+ is AWESOME if your goal is V40. No, really: you can miss a TON of hard questions on the GMAT and be in great shape.
- OG RC questions: 80% is a decent benchmark, but it depends on exactly which questions you selected.
- CR & SC questions that took 3+ minutes: none, please. No SC or CR question is worth that much time. Learn to let go if you get stuck.
- Overall time management: it’s OK if it was kinda weird. This is a clumsy approximation of an actual verbal section, so it’s fair to expect some timing oddities, within reason.
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 8 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 did the mba.com test… feel free to take the score (somewhat) seriously. Yes, it might be inflated, so don’t celebrate TOO hard just yet. But if the official test tries to tell you that you need to work on something, you’ll definitely want to listen. Pause the study plan if necessary.
- 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 fan of reviewing individual questions in detail, 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 some attention.
- If you struggled on “hard” questions from the mba.com question bank: Hey, these are hard, and I can promise that they aren’t the #1 thing holding you back from a 700 or 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 individual questions. They 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.
Quant+
Benchmarks for Your Week 8 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 high 40s, here are the metrics I’d like you to hit in Week 8:
- Careless error rate: < 2%. You’ve heard this before: the careless errors need to be gone, or almost gone.
- OG & Quant Guide sets (items #2-4): 80%+ correct is great, 70-80% is good. The questions are getting harder now, so your accuracy might be dropping a bit.
- Statistics, probability, and combination/permutation questions (items #5-10): 70% or above is probably excellent, but take the results with a grain of salt! These sets are random, and test-prep companies tend to create bizarre questions on these topics. If you happened to see oddball questions, 50-60% correct might be pretty good. The important thing: don’t overreact to your results, as long as you’ve mastered the very basics.
- 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 8?
Our usual reminder: on an adaptive test, job #1 is to be accurate on the questions that you’re capable of getting right. If you’re accurate on the easier ones, you’ll get pounded by harder questions – and you’ll miss plenty of them. Embrace the pain.
So don’t obsess over the hard questions that you’ve missed. They aren’t worth much of your precious time.
- If your careless error rate is too high: that’s bad. Do whatever you need to do to fix this. Do it now. Better: do it yesterday. Pause the study plan if you need to. Just fix the careless errors.
- If you struggled on the OG or Quant Guide sets (items #2-4): as usual, ask yourself WHY you struggled. If you’re at, say, 70% accuracy, that’s not ideal, but context matters: I really don’t mind if you got beat up by hard or unusual questions. If you missed a cluster of similar questions – especially if they don’t appear to be terribly difficult – then invest time in those topics if necessary. But don’t overreact to individual questions, please.
- If you struggled on the statistics, probability, or combination/permutation sets (items #5-10): These aren’t super-important topics on the GMAT! Yes, you want to master the very basics. But I don’t care AT ALL about the harder, stranger versions of these questions. So if you got CRUSHED on easier questions, you might want to revisit the videos in the study list, but you don’t need to nail the hard, weird ones to score in the high 40s.
- If you struggled on other topic-based sets (item #11): 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 absolutely DESTROYED by ALL of the quant homework: it’s probably time to pause the study plan, invest some time in rebuilding your basic quant skills, and come back to the plan later.
- 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.
CR & RC+
Benchmarks for Your Week 8 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.
- 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 if you want 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 8?
- 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… and you might want to do so ASAP, because time is getting short. Pause the study plan if you need to.
- If you’re better at CR than RC: same as above. If you haven’t already addressed this, it’s probably time to do so. Pause the study plan if you need to.
- If you’re slow ( > 60 mins per LSAT set, > 2 minutes per OG or Verbal Guide question): by now, you should have standardized your approach to RC and CR questions; if you haven’t, then you probably need to do so ASAP. If your process is spot-on already, maybe you’re slow because of “non-academic” issues: fatigue, distraction, anxiety, the time of day that you’re doing sets, barking dogs outside your window, low blood sugar, a lack of sleep, or a lack of intensity. It’s also possible that you’re a slow reader, and that’s always 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 very impressed that you’re still reading this in Week 8, but if you’re getting demolished, you NEED to check out this video about the factors that can lead to GMAT verbal struggles. If fundamental reading skills are an issue, this article and this one will give you some ideas for how to improve over time.
SC+
We’re turning the corner a bit: the SC workload is getting heavier, and we’ve covered most of the key grammar and usage topics now.
You still have more than a month to improve on SC, so we don’t expect you to be at your peak just yet. But you should see some solid progress by now. Just keep in mind that the questions get harder as you move through the OGs – so if your accuracy rate is flat, that means that you’re actually improving.
Benchmarks for Your Week 8 SC Results
- Accuracy: 90% correct is serious cause for celebration, and 70-90% is still completely solid. If you’re under 70%, don’t worry – the questions are getting harder, and there’s still time to improve.
- Random sets of comparison 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 – even if some of the questions made your head spin? 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 8?
- 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 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. Focus on your underlying skills first, and then come back and redo the questions you missed later. That’s a more efficient approach for most students.
- 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 don’t automatically assume that learning more grammar is the answer – that’s only one small part of SC.
- If you’re 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 and this video on how to approach SC are probably familiar to you already, but might be worth re-watching. We promise that if you master the processes in those videos, your efficiency will improve – but we also understand that it can be really hard to master those processes.
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Joined: 11 Apr 2023
Last visit: 19 Aug 2024
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Schools: HEC Sep'24 Intake (A) Oxford Said'25 (A)
GMAT 1: 690 Q48 V36
03 Aug 2023, 21:16
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Hi there, I don't know how many people have make it this far in the study plan but if you have I invite you to post some of your results here to serve as a benchmark for future people following the study plan. But first, I want to thank all the team of GMAT Ninja for this incredible plan and all the related resources.
Here is a partial debrief since I plan to post a full one at the end (exam scheduled for September 15th):
I've been following 100% the study plan, about 11 hours of practice sets, 4 hours of review and 3 hours of concepts. A total of 18 hours per week.
My results for the first official mock on week 1 were the following:
530 Q31 V32.
I ran out of time on both sections, missed 11 on quant and 2 on verbal.
My quant concepts were really rusty and I took a lot of time for questions I knew I knew but just didn't remember how. Verbal were suprisingly good, mainly missed SC.
On Sunday I retook the first official mock and scored a 660 Q45 V35. Ran out of time again but only missed 4 questions in quant and 2 in verbal. I'm hoping to get to Q47 -Q49 and V38-V40. I'm focusing in getting faster and in learning some last concepts in quant. In verbal I need to get better in SC concepts, I keep using too much how the sentences sound and not much theory. I'm good in RC and CR but I'm starting to do more excercise and maybe try some meditation or something that help me to keep focused and get faster. I'm a non-native English speaker but I think it really helped me reading a lot of books in English for several years.
I hope this helps someone and also I'd gladly receive some advice for my last weeks.
Posted from my mobile device
Here is a partial debrief since I plan to post a full one at the end (exam scheduled for September 15th):
I've been following 100% the study plan, about 11 hours of practice sets, 4 hours of review and 3 hours of concepts. A total of 18 hours per week.
My results for the first official mock on week 1 were the following:
530 Q31 V32.
I ran out of time on both sections, missed 11 on quant and 2 on verbal.
My quant concepts were really rusty and I took a lot of time for questions I knew I knew but just didn't remember how. Verbal were suprisingly good, mainly missed SC.
On Sunday I retook the first official mock and scored a 660 Q45 V35. Ran out of time again but only missed 4 questions in quant and 2 in verbal. I'm hoping to get to Q47 -Q49 and V38-V40. I'm focusing in getting faster and in learning some last concepts in quant. In verbal I need to get better in SC concepts, I keep using too much how the sentences sound and not much theory. I'm good in RC and CR but I'm starting to do more excercise and maybe try some meditation or something that help me to keep focused and get faster. I'm a non-native English speaker but I think it really helped me reading a lot of books in English for several years.
I hope this helps someone and also I'd gladly receive some advice for my last weeks.
Posted from my mobile device
), some concepts are still a bit fuzzy
