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03 Jan 2023, 10:30
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GMAT Ninja’s 13-Week Study Plan
Week 12 (7-15 hours)
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Welcome back for Week 12 of the study plan! If you have no idea what’s going on here, then you’ll want to start with Week 1 instead.
By now, you have just two official practice tests left. If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably 100% ready to use them.
But please be honest with yourself: if you aren’t already within a few points of your target score, you might be better off saving those last two mba.com tests for later. Pause the study plan if you need to – there’s no shame in that at all.
If your scores are already where you want them to be, awesome! We’ll give you one last week of fairly intense practice, and then we’ll ease up in Week 13 so that you’re relaxed, rested, and focused on test day.
(A) Inspiration & Advice (optional)+
If you’re like most people, you’re probably starting to get butterflies in your stomach as test day approaches. That’s completely normal. After all, you’ve never gotten nervous about something you don’t care about, right? Your body is telling you that you care about the GMAT, and caring is definitely a good thing.
If you’re squirming as test day approaches, read these three articles by GMAT tutors – outstanding, experienced tutors, with scores of 780 or above – who struggled with test anxiety on their actual exams:
- This tutor obsessed over her sunglasses and spent NINE minutes on a single RC question
- This tutor literally couldn’t sleep at all the night before his GMAT, and
- This tutor had to physically push himself away from the computer in the middle of his test to calm himself down.
Bottom line: nerves are normal, and you’re not alone.
(B) Practice Tests & Test-Day Preparation (4-5 hrs.)+
We probably don’t need to remind you that you’re close to your test day. If you’re starting to feel tense, you might want to start with this:
- 12-minute workout for mental clarity, created by Kyle Krancher, a brilliant, beloved personal trainer with a psychology degree.
Kyle created the workout specifically for time-crunched GMAT test-takers. I’d strongly recommend giving it a try if you can spare 12 minutes to release some tension.
Week 12 practice test assignments
- 1. Full mba.com test #5, 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.
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:
As always, please see our guidance in the next post in this thread if you need help interpreting your results.
(C) Quant (2-3 hrs.)+
It’s almost showtime, so the main focus should be on getting your body and mind rested for the big day.
By now, you shouldn’t be worried about specific quant topics. A little bit of review can be OK, but if you’re compulsively cramming a bunch of quant knowledge in, something has gone wrong. Either you’re overreacting to your practice results, or you’re struggling with anxiety… or you managed to completely miss something earlier in the study process.
In other words: at this stage, you’re just honing your execution, mindset, and time management. It’s good to keep practicing official questions, but don’t overdo it.
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 12 quant homework
- 1. 9th set of 25 DS questions from the GMAT OG (the exact question numbers will vary depending on which edition you’re using)
2. Any remaining PS questions from the GMAT Quant Guide
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 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 these videos.
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 (0-2 hrs.)+
It’s almost exam time, so go easy on the extra practice. Do enough questions to keep yourself sharp, and that’s it -- even if that means just doing a short little “mini-set” of whichever Verbal Guide RC questions you might have left.
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 12 RC homework
- 1. Do any remaining questions from a recent edition of the Verbal Guide. Depending on the exact edition you’re using (and the choices you’ve made about where, exactly, to end your previous practice sets of ~25 questions), you might only have one or two passages left. That’s totally fine.
2. (Optional) One more LSAT RC set. Or just a passage or two from an LSAT set. Whatever you need to do to stay sharp and focused.
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 (0-2 hrs.)+
Once again, your focus now should be on getting your mind right. If you want to do a few extra CR questions to stay sharp, awesome. If you don’t need them, that’s awesome, too. You’re doing plenty of CR on your practice tests now, anyway.
LSAT CR questions are nice, but do you really need to cramp your brain on a full set of them? Do a few if you’d like to play with some nice, tough language. But you shouldn’t need (or want) too many at this stage.
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 12 CR homework
- 1. Do the 6th set of 25 CR 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… 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 (0-2 hrs.)+
You’ve already done nearly every SC question in the OG and Verbal Guide, and you’ll want to use the last few questions just to stay sharp. And honestly, if you feel like the practice tests are providing enough SC practice, there’s not much harm in skipping the SC homework from now on -- there’s not much of it anyway.
Week 12 SC homework
- 1. Do any remaining SC questions from the GMAT OG (the exact number of questions remaining will vary depending on which edition you’re using)
2. Get some sleep!
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.
03 Jan 2023, 10:30
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How to Interpret Your Week 12 Homework Results
The end is near! Are you already hitting your target score, or are you within a few points of your goals? If so, awesome: you probably don’t need much help interpreting your results. Also, you probably deserve a cookie.
But if you’re struggling a bit, please read through this post. If you’ve followed the study plan, you only have ONE more mba.com practice test left – and it’s best to save it until you’re ready to get your target score. If you aren’t within a few points of your goal yet, please keep reading, and be prepared to pause the study plan.
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 #5
- How far are you from your target score overall? It’s almost showtime, and this is your next-to-last practice test. So nothing else really matters: is your score within 20 points of your goal?
- How many careless errors did you make? If this is a problem, fix it NOW. Don’t waste another practice test until you can do 100 questions in a row without making a careless error. (Non-careless errors are fine.)
- Do you notice any HUGE patterns in your quant errors? One or two errors often mean nothing – for example, if you missed two hard, weird probability questions (but usually nail the easy ones), then there’s 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’re running out of time to fix your weaknesses.
- Count the number of errors you made on each verbal question type. If you still have a major weakness on a verbal question type, pause the study plan ASAP – 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 experience changes if you’ve done test #5 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 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 12 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? Fix your process 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.
What to do about your Week 12 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 sexy GMAT tutor, visit the coolest tourist attraction near your home, or go play with a particularly fun dog. Celebrate your victories – doing so will help keep you fresh and focused.
- If you’re a long way from your goal on the mba.com test, consider pausing the study plan. If you’re 20+ points away from your goals, 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’ve probably 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 12 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 12:
- 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 (item #3): 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 12?
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. 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 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 aren’t 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 your last official practice test.
- 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 12 RC & CR Results
- OG & Verbal Guide RC & CR sets: 80% correct in under 2 minutes per question is great, 90% is outstanding. The remaining questions are the toughest ones in the book, so it’s not necessarily a problem 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’re looking for a 40+ on verbal. If you need a check on your progress, do an LSAT set occasionally, and compare it to your Week 1 results.
- Efficiency on LSAT CR & RC sets: 60 minutes or less, please.
- 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 12?
- 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’ll need to address this ASAP. Pause the study plan if you need to.
- If you’re better at CR than RC: same as above. 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 CRUSHED on CR & RC: well, I’m very impressed that you’re still reading this in Week 12, 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+
Hopefully, you’re close to your goals now, and the remaining practice is just a bit of fine-tuning. If you’re still struggling with your speed or accuracy, please consider pausing the study plan – there aren’t a ton of high-quality SC questions or practice tests left, so you’ll want to use them wisely.
Benchmarks for Your Week 12 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 HARD now, so it’s OK if your accuracy is flat or even declining a bit.
- Speed: 50 minutes or less (for 25 questions) is good. At this stage, if you’re slower than that, I’m worried.
What Should You Do About Your SC Weaknesses in Week 12?
- 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 I also understand that it can 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.
05 Jan 2023, 15:07
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Hi GMATNinja ! Thank you very much for posting these - I've found these study plans extremely helpful. I just took the practice test #4 and #5 and scored below a 660 even though I was scoring in the 700s for #1-3. What do you think is happening? I'm a bit bummed considering I thought I was so close to being finished.
