GMAT Ninja Study Plan Week 10

Question

GMAT Ninja’s 13-Week Study Plan  
  Week 10 (~15 hours)

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Welcome back for Week 10 of the study plan! If you have no idea what’s going on here, then you’ll want to start with  Week 1  instead.

My favorite part of this week’s featured debrief:

The end result of chilling out a little? A 750.  Read the full story here .  
   
Once again: lots of practice tests. Welcome to your final month of GMAT prep!

As always, do everything humanly possible to ensure that  you’re practicing like it’s test day , every single time.

Week 10 practice test assignments: 
 1. Full mba.com test #3, including AWA and IR. Remember:  always practice like it’s test day , and keep honing your  test-day reset routines  if you need them.

2. “Fake quant test” using  Official Practice Questions 1  (formerly the GMATPrep Question Pack 1) from mba.com. Here’s how to set it up:
  Select 31 medium & hard quant questions, and do a roughly even mix of DS and PS. 
 Select “timed”, and set a limit of 62 minutes. 
 Select “exam mode.”  
 The questions don’t randomize properly, unfortunately. But it will feel somewhat like an actual exam.

3. (Very optional) “Fake verbal test” using  Official Practice Questions 1 . 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 far 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.

Warning: it can be tricky to interpret your “fake test” results, so please see our guidance in the next post in this thread when you’re finished. 
   
Friendly reminder: the quant section is thin in Weeks 9-13 -- just some mixed practice sets, and that’s it.

Also, you can always do remedial work on quant topics if you need it, but by now, you shouldn’t have any game-changing weaknesses in any particular subject area. And of course, the careless errors should be long gone.

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 10 quant homework 
These sets are getting pretty tough. If you’re worried about your performance, check out the next post in this thread for guidance on how to interpret your results. Don’t panic – these should feel pretty hard. But so will the actual test, right?

1. GMAT OG PS #176-200
2. 5th set of 25 DS questions from the GMAT Quant Guide (the exact question numbers will vary depending on which edition you’re using)
3. (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 suddenly worry about a specific quant topic in the final weeks of the plan,  don’t overreact .

Instead, ask yourself: does the data CONSISTENTLY say that this topic area is a problem, or did you have a flukey bad performance on a particular exam or practice set?

If you think there’s a real problem, cool -- go do some extra homework or watch a video. But if you’re not sure, binging on a specific topic probably isn’t a great investment, especially if your quant scores are solid on the mba.com tests.

If you truly do need help, these resources should have you covered:

1. If you need more practice on a specific topic, you can always create your own custom sets using the GMAT Club  advanced search  or  forum quiz . Just don’t overdo it, please! It’s easy to get addicted and waste far too much time on these. 
2. If quant topics from previous weeks are giving you trouble, whatever you need is probably in  this playlist .
3. 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. And  here’s a classic short video on GMAT time management .
4.  GMAT Club Math Book 
5. Heroic quant threads from  Bunuel :  Ultimate GMAT Quant Megathread  |  Signature Question Collection  |  All You Need for Quant   
   
Again, we’re just trying to keep you sharp, and that’s it. So there’s just one GMAT RC set again this week; optional LSAT sets are always a nice sanity-check if you need one, too.

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 10 RC homework 
 1. Do the 4th 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:

A full GMAT RC video course   
  A ton of LIVE YouTube videos on all sorts of topics, including RC  
  All GMAT Ninja RC resources  
  More RC explanations than anybody should ever read  
  Beginner’s guide to RC again    
   
At this stage, our goal is just to keep you sharp on CR. If you’re consistently great on CR on your practice tests, then it’s OK to skip the CR set if need be. Just make sure that you’re making that decision based on a cold, hard look at the data -- not just on how you feel.

As always, LSAT sets are optional at this stage, but we still recommend them if you want the challenge of harder language or a sanity-check on your progress.

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 10 CR homework 
 1. Do the 5th set of 25 questions from the GMAT OG. (If you’re using a newer edition, you’ll have plenty of questions left; if you’re in a thinner, older edition, you’ll obviously have to stop once you run out of questions.)
2. (Optional) One more 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:

Beginners’ guide to CR  
  YouTube video on how to approach CR  
  All GMAT Ninja CR resources  
  More full CR explanations than anybody should ever read  
  A whole lot more YouTube videos

We hear this question every day: “How do I get better at meaning questions on SC?”

We’ve addressed that in all the videos you’ve suffered through over the past two months, but… well, sometimes it’s HARD to find those little meaning differences in the final two options. We can’t give you any magic bullets for them, but we’ll give you one last video that might help a bit.

And that’s the final frontier in SC. You’ve learned all of the “mechanical” stuff now. Now all you can do is keep practicing, and push as hard as you can to get better at comparing those fine little shades of meaning.

Week 10 SC homework  
 1. (Optional, but recommended) Watch  this video on hard SC meaning questions .
2. (Very optional) 10 “meaning” questions from older OGs; we recommend the questions  here  for mixed difficulty, or the questions  here  if you're just warming up with easier questions. (Warning: pretty much every GMAT SC question involves “meaning” in some way. So I’m not sure that you’ll find a dedicated set of “meaning” questions very useful. But try it if you’d like.)
3. Do the 6th 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:

All GMAT Ninja SC resources on GMAT Club  
  GMAT Ninja’s 18-video SC course  
  Beginner’s Guide to SC  
  Links to all of the old live GMAT Ninja verbal videos  
  More SC explanations than you could possibly want to read    
   
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.

GMATNinja · Answer

How to Interpret Your Week 10 Homework Results

Please read this section if you’re serious about optimizing your study time. If you’re not thrilled with your practice test scores yet, then you’ll definitely want to read this post – maybe it’s time to pause the study plan if you need to?

As always, 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.

Practice Tests+

How to interpret your results on mba.com test #3

How far are you from your target score overall? In theory, you’re about 3 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 20-40 points – but it depends on what, exactly, is going wrong. Keep reading…
How far are you from your target score on quant? If you’re 3-5 points away from your target quant score, time is running low, and you might need to consider pausing the 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 probably sloppiness – not necessarily a lack of skill. Even a small number 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 might mean nothing – for example, if you missed two hard, weird rate/work questions (but usually nail the easy ones), then you have nothing 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 3-5 points away from your target verbal score, I 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. I don’t necessarily mind a weaker performance on SC at this stage, since you’re more likely to make a big leap on SC in the final few weeks than to pull off a similar jump on CR or RC. If your verbal errors are relatively balanced – or if you’re worse on CR or RC – then you might need more time to improve.
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 on one question is never a great idea (unless you’re doing the first question of an RC passage).
Is nervousness a factor? Is your mind going blank under the pressure of a practice test? Are you struggling to sleep the night before a practice test? If so, check out this beginner’s guide to test anxiety, this test anxiety quiz, or this YouTube playlist.
Remember that the test experience changes radically if you’ve done test #3 before. You might not consciously recognize many questions, but I 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 timing as a result. We can’t know whether your score was inflated by 10 points or 50 points or 100 points, but repeated tests are always at least somewhat inflated – and you’ll struggle more with timing on a brand-new test than you did on this one.

Benchmarks for the Week 10 quant “fake test” (item #2)

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.

Benchmarks for the optional Week 10 verbal “fake test” (item #3)

Remember: the verbal “fake test” is FAR from ideal. But at least it gives you 36 official questions in 65 minutes. So take the 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. The “fake test” is a clumsy approximation of an actual verbal section, so it’s fair to expect some timing oddities, within reason.

What to do about your Week 10 practice test results

If you’re close to your goal on the mba.com test, please do something nice for yourself. Have a nice meal, watch a movie, or go do something fun. Celebrate your victories – doing so will help keep you fresh in the final month of your studies.
If you’re a long way from your goal on the mba.com test, consider pausing the study plan. If you’re 20-40+ points away from your goals, you might want to take a break from the practice tests, and see if you can move the needle on your weaknesses before jumping back in.
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 guess and move on.
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 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 10 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 10:

Careless error rate: < 2%. You’ve heard this before: the careless errors need to be gone, or almost gone.
OG & Quant Guide sets (items #1-2): 80%+ correct is great, 70-80% is good. The questions are pretty darned tough now, so don’t worry AT ALL if your accuracy rate is flat or even dropping a bit.
Optional topic-based practice sets (#3 on the list): as always, take these with a grain of salt. The quality and difficulty will vary quite a bit on these, so don’t freak out if you miss hard, weird, or badly written questions.
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 still not choosing efficient paths forward.

What Should You Do About Your Quant Weaknesses in Week 10?

Our usual reminder: on an adaptive test, job #1 is to be accurate on the questions that you’re capable of getting right. When the GMAT punches you in the head with harder questions, just smile and say “haha, you got me that time, GMAT!”

I’m not kidding: I want you to learn to enjoy that particular type of pain. It’s a good thing on an adaptive test like the GMAT. Just nail the questions that are in your wheelhouse, and don’t lose sleep over the crazy hard stuff – especially on quant.

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, or a few weeks ago. Pause the study plan if you need to. Just fix the careless errors.
If you struggled on the OG or Quant Guide sets (items #1-2): as usual, ask yourself WHY you struggled. If you’re at, say, 70% accuracy, that’s not ideal, but context matters: I 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 optional topic-based sets (item #3): 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: well, that shouldn’t be happening at this stage. But if it is, please pause the study plan ASAP, before you burn through all of the remaining practice tests.
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 10 RC & CR Results

OG & Verbal Guide RC & CR sets: 80% correct in under 2 minutes per question is great, 90% is outstanding. These are getting hard now, so it’s not necessarily a disaster if you’re under 80%, thanks to the increased difficulty.
Accuracy on (optional) LSAT CR & RC sets: 80% accuracy is still the goal if you want a 40+ on verbal. If you need a check on your progress, it’s wise 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 goal if you want to finish 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 that you might need to work on your approach to questions.

What Should You Do About Your CR & RC Weaknesses in Week 10?

Look for “careless” mistakes. 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’ll 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 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… and you’ll need to do so ASAP. Again, pause the study plan if you need to.
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 if all is well on SC. If you’re not quite hitting the CR/RC benchmarks yet, are you at least seeing some improvement? If so, keep at it! It’s OK if you need more time, and 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 10, but if you’re getting demolished, you’ll definitely want 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+

Throughout the study plan, we’ve preached patience on SC: there’s a limited supply of official questions, and it’s not wise to binge on them.

But now that we’re in Week 10? If you’re still a long way from the SC benchmarks, you’re almost certainly taking a beating on the practice tests, too. If that’s happening, it’s probably time to pause the study plan for a week or two – you don’t want to burn through the remaining official practice tests until your SC skills are close to where you want them to be.

And if you’re pretty close to your SC goals? Awesome. Then you’re just fine-tuning your SC skills now, and that’s lovely.

Benchmarks for Your Week 10 SC Results

Accuracy on OG & Verbal Guide sets: 90% correct is serious cause for celebration, and 75-90% is still completely solid. The questions are getting harder, so it’s OK if your results are pretty flat from week to week, or even declining a bit.
Optional random sets of “meaning” questions from the older OGs: sorry, we can’t really give you a benchmark for these, since randomness plays a HUGE role, and almost any question could be considered a “meaning” question. Maybe you saw tougher, weirder questions, and maybe not. Did you at least feel 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 good. At this stage, if you’re much slower than that, I’m getting worried.

What Should You Do About Your SC Weaknesses in Week 10?

Pause the study plan if you’re struggling. If your SC is STILL lagging way behind your quant, CR, and RC skills then you’ll want to allocate more time for SC in the next few weeks – and it might be time to pause the study plan. It’s too easy to burn through the last remaining practice tests, and it’s better to use them only when you’re very, very close to your target score.
Be careful not to spend TOO much time reviewing individual SC questions. A little bit of time on individual questions is OK at this stage – especially if SC is one of your biggest remaining weaknesses – but every SC question has its own unique qualities that you might not ever see again. A better approach is to focus on your underlying skills first, and then come back and redo the questions you missed later. Stay aware of the fact that it’s easy to burn HOURS on a small handful of SC questions, and doing so might not be the best use of your time.
If you’re 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 – it’s only one small part of SC.
If you’re slow on SC questions: 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 it’s admittedly hard to master those processes.
If you’re struggling on hard, meaning-based SC questions: well, that happens to all of us. Don’t overreact: you might be in GREAT shape, but some meaning-based questions will always feel hard, no matter who you are. If you haven't already seen it, this video on meaning-based SC questions might help if you want to do a deeper dive on the hardest questions, but you should consider it optional.

Did you at least feel 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 good. At this stage, if you’re much slower than that, I’m getting worried. What Should You Do About Your SC Weaknesses in Week 10? Pause the study plan if you’re struggling . If your SC is STILL lagging way behind your quant, CR, and RC skills then you’ll want to allocate more time for SC in the next few weeks – and it might be time to pause the study plan. It’s too easy to burn through the last remaining practice tests, and it’s better to use them only when you’re very, very close to your target score. Be careful not to spend TOO much time reviewing individual SC questions . A little bit of time on individual questions is OK at this stage – especially if SC is one of your biggest remaining weaknesses – but every SC question has its own unique qualities that you might not ever see again. A better approach is to focus on your underlying skills first, and then come back and redo the questions you missed later. Stay aware of the fact that it’s easy to burn HOURS on a small handful of SC questions, and doing so might not be the best use of your time. If you’re 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 – it’s only one small part of SC. If you’re slow on SC questions : 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 it’s admittedly hard to master those processes. If you’re struggling on hard, meaning-based SC questions : well, that happens to all of us. Don’t overreact: you might be in GREAT shape, but some meaning-based questions will always feel hard, no matter who you are. If you haven't already seen it, this video on meaning-based SC questions might help if you want to do a deeper dive on the hardest questions, but you should consider it optional.

Manifesting710 · Answer

Help  GMATNinja 
My practice exam score dropped by 100 points in gmat focus 😭

Practice Exam 2 I scored 695 Q82,V86,DI 85
3.2.24

Practice Exam 3 I scored 595 Q80 ,V83, DI76
18.2.24

I feel like something’s gone wrong in my verbal approach especially with CR but I can fix that quickly

My main concern is DI, the two part analysis (both math and non math) and some DS gave me a very hard time in this exam, idk if it was just my luck that I got some tough questions or during the 2 weeks between the exam 2 and exam 3, something happened to my answer process(I also started a internship after exam 2, so maybe that?) 
Kinda panicking now, I am planning to write the exam March 14
Quant I am aiming for minimum of 80 and desiring a 84 
Verbal I want to keep it at 86 (but my cr thought process doesn’t work for higher difficulty questions)
DI I want a 84 atleast but idk what is going wrong as I am able to answer most of the data insights questions in the forum quiz

What can I do to fix my Verbal approach when it comes to the higher difficulty questions like 700+ 
And DI math related 2 part analysis, idk how to approach it, for non math related 2 part analysis I get the first answer correct but it’s the 2nd answer that ruins it

Posted from my mobile device

GMATNinja · Answer

Oof, sorry to hear about the painful dropoff!

Whenever this sort of thing happens, the culprit is DEFINITELY your approach to questions. You're missing questions that you're capable of answering correctly -- and probably quite a few of them, especially on DI.

Why is that happening? It could be that internship-fueled fatigue is making it harder for you to focus. The more significant culprit is probably that you're not being systematic enough about reading questions carefully (twice, please), and you're not sanity-checking your work to make sure that you have the right answer. If you're getting stubborn on some harder questions, that can make the problem worse, because you might be rushing through parts of the test to compensate for the questions that take you too long.

Exactly which factors are causing the most damage in your case? I can't know that, unfortunately. But if you haven't already, retry the questions that you missed (from scratch, without looking at the correct answer), and see how many make you go "how the (bleep) did I miss THAT?!" On an adaptive test like the GMAT -- especially with the short sections on the GMAT Focus -- it doesn't take too many of those silly errors to send your score spiraling downwards on an individual section.

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

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