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GMAT Ninja’s 13-Week Study Plan
Week 11 (~15 hours)
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Welcome back for Week 11 of the study plan! You're amazing for making it this far, and you deserve another cookie.
Friendly warning: in these last three weeks, you'll finish the final few mba.com practice tests, and it’s time to think carefully about whether you're ready to exhaust them.
By now, your scores should be reasonably close to your target. If they aren't, then you might want to consider pausing the study plan. These last few weeks are designed to polish your skills, not to overhaul them. So keep moving through the study plan (and especially the full practice tests) only if you're certain that you're 100% ready.
(A) Inspiration & Advice (optional)+
This is a very unconventional debrief, and I guess it isn’t a debrief at all: it’s a letter from 24-year-old Amrita to her 22-year-old self. It’s short, and 100% worth reading.
If you’re wondering what happened to Amrita in the end, here’s the little-noticed sequel to her original debrief. It all worked out.
(B) Practice Tests & Test-Day Preparation (4-7 hrs.)+
It’s almost party time! Please start with this video before you do anything else this week:
Week 11 practice test assignments
- 1. Full mba.com test #4, including AWA and IR. Remember: always practice like it’s test day, and keep honing your test-day reset routines if you need them.
- 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.
- 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.
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:
3. (Very optional) “Fake verbal test” using Official Practice Questions 1. Here’s how to set it up:
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.
(C) Quant (2-4 hrs.)+
Friendly reminder: the quant section is thin in Weeks 9-13 -- just some mixed practice sets from the OGs, and that’s it.
Again: you shouldn’t have any game-changing quant weaknesses at this point, but if you’re CERTAIN that you’ve missed something important, it’s OK to do some remedial studying in a specific 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 11 quant homework
I’m sure that you’ve already noticed, but these sets are getting tough, and they should feel hard at times. If you start to freak out, please check out the next post in this thread for guidance on how to interpret your results.
- 1. GMAT OG PS #201-225
2. 8th set of 25 DS questions from the GMAT OG (the exact question numbers will vary depending on which edition you’re using)
3. Any remaining PS questions from the GMAT Quant Guide
4. (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 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 GMAT quant video 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
(D) Reading Comprehension (1-2 hrs.)+
We’re still 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 useful if you want a challenge or an extra check on your progress.
Honestly, if you’ve been consistently GREAT on RC, it’s cool to skip this week’s RC homework, and spend that time elsewhere. Just be careful: it can be remarkably easy to lose your RC mojo, so when in doubt, keep punching through these sets.
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 11 RC homework
- 1. Do the 6th set of ~25 questions from a recent edition of the OG. (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 (1-2 hrs.)+
You’ll hear this from us quite a bit in the final weeks, but the focus now should be on staying sharp on CR. That might mean doing a couple of sets, and it might mean doing nothing at all beyond the CR questions in your practice tests. If your CR results are consistently great, feel free to focus your energy elsewhere – but again, base your decisions on actual data, not just how you feel.
LSAT sets are optional, but we still recommend them if you want the challenge of extra-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 11 CR homework
- 1. Do any remaining CR questions from the GMAT Verbal Guide. (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… and that might have happened already.)
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:
(F) Sentence Correction (1-2 hrs.)+
By now, you’re getting lots of sassy feedback from your practice exams, and these dedicated SC sets are probably low on your list of worries.
But we’ll still give you one more practice set, along with a very optional video on GMAT punctuation. Frankly, the punchline of the video is that you don’t really need to worry much about punctuation, so if you’re tired of the big-nosed dude in the videos… well, just know that everybody at GMAT Ninja headquarters is very tired of him, too.
Week 11 SC homework
- 1. (Optional) Watch this older video about punctuation on SC or this newer one featuring a younger, better-looking guy.
2. (Extremely optional) 5-10 punctuation questions from older OGs; mixed difficulty are available here
3. Do the 4th set of 25 SC questions from the GMAT Verbal Guide (the exact question numbers will vary depending on which edition you’re using)
Need more SC help?
By now, you hopefully don’t need extra videos or articles. But just in case, 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.
27 Dec 2022, 10:30
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How to Interpret Your Week 11 Homework Results
Please read this section if you’re serious about optimizing your study time.
At this point, you’re deliciously close to the end, and your practice tests are doing most of the talking. Are you already hitting your target score, or are you within a few points of your goals? If so, great: you probably don’t need much help interpreting your results.
But if you’re struggling a bit, please read through this post. Hopefully something here will help you make the right moves in the final weeks.
As always, if you’re worried about something that isn’t addressed in this thread, 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 #4
- How far are you from your target score overall? You’re only about 2 weeks from your actual exam. 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, went wrong. Keep reading…
- How far are you from your target score on quant? If you’re still 3-5 points away from your target quant score, 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 handful of silly mistakes can cost you 5+ points on quant. So if this is a problem, fix it NOW. Don’t waste another practice test until you can do 100 quant questions in a row without making a careless error.
- 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 probability questions (but usually nail the easy ones), then 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 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. But…
- Count the number of errors you made on each verbal question type. If you’re 2-3 weeks from your exam, there’s still time to move the needle a bit on SC. But that probably isn’t enough time to make a significant leap on CR and RC, considering all of the work you’ve already done. So pause the study plan (and don’t waste any more official practice exams!) if you still have a ways to go, especially if CR and/or RC are the biggest issues.
- 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 whole experience changes if you’ve done test #4 before. You might not consciously recognize many questions, 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 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 11 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 tolerable. 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 11 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 11 practice test results
- If you’re close to your goal on the mba.com test, please do something nice for yourself... even if you did something nice for yourself last week, too! Have lunch with a friend, go to a concert, or go hiking or skiing or roller skating. Celebrate your victories – doing so will help keep you fresh in the final weeks 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 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 11 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 11:
- Careless error rate: < 2%. You’ve heard this before: the careless errors need to be gone, or almost gone.
- OG & Quant Guide sets (items #1-3): 80%+ correct is great, 70-80% is good. The questions are tough now, so don’t worry AT ALL if your accuracy rate is flat or even dropping a bit.
- Optional topic-based practice sets (item #4): 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 11?
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!”
No, really: please learn to enjoy that particular type of pain. Smile when you see impossibly hard questions 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 #1-3): 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 optional topic-based sets (item #4): 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 11 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. And these should probably hurt your brain a bit.
- 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 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 you might need to work on your approach to questions.
What Should You Do About Your CR & RC Weaknesses in Week 11?
- 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 past 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… 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! If your results have plateaued – and you’re not happy with those results – then it might be time to pause the study plan and invest some time in figuring out what, exactly, is going wrong.
- If you’re getting CRUSHED on CR & RC: well, I’m very impressed that you’re still reading this in Week 11, but if you’re getting demolished, it’s past time to pause the study plan and 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 11? 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, hit the pause button ASAP – you don’t want to burn through the remaining official practice tests until your skills are close to where you want them to be.
If you’re pretty close to your SC goals already, that’s awesome. Now you’re just fine-tuning, and that’s lovely.
Benchmarks for Your Week 11 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 punctuation questions from the older OGs: sorry, we can’t really give you a benchmark for these, since randomness plays a HUGE role. Maybe you saw tougher, weirder 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 good. At this stage, if you’re slower than that, I’m getting worried.
What Should You Do About Your SC Weaknesses in Week 11?
- Pause the study plan if you’re struggling. If your SC is STILL lagging way behind your quant, CR, and RC skills, then it’s probably time to pause the study plan. It’s too easy to burn through the last two 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 that 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 – that’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 can admittedly be 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. 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.
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