GMAT Ninja Study Plan Week 10

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.

Benchmarks for Your Week 10 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 (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?

• 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.

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.

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.