GMAT on 27th January, 600 OG to 700??? ONE MONTH LEFT Any advice? @bb

Question

Hey  bb  and other experts, 
I need an action plan asap. I have been taking mocks and the results are as follows:

Manhattan CAT :  620 - Q 40, V35 
Veritas CAT :  620 - Q43, V32 
GMAT official prep free mock 1 :  600 - Q38, V34

I used to struggle with CR, RC, and DS, but after watching GMATNinja's RC series, I was able to improve my RC accuracy, though I still struggle with CR and DS accuracy.
On the  27th of January , I will take the GMAT for the second time, and I need to score at least 700.

I have access to the Magoosh premium course and have been working on the easy questions in both Quant and Verbal, with the goal of progressing from easy to medium to hard and then to very hard questions.
Any suggestions and approaches on how I should go about it would be immensely helpful.
I know I've asked the same question several times, but it would be extremely helpful if someone could tell me what I should do to make the most of the time I have left.
Thank you very much.

Russ19 · Answer

Hi hamzamohd , Your approach of working with easy and medium questions seems good. Give a bit more focus on quant. A link for you in which you can find video solutions to OG questions: https://gmatquantum.com/official-guides ... at-videos/ Good Luck!

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

For Verbal working on solving approach can be helpful, basically working on the way to tackle questions. May sound strange but it's one of the more popular things I am doing with Verbal students (literally less than 2 hours ago).

Important of Solving Approach (SA) - Not just for Quant  1 minute read

For Quant, at the Q40ish level there are probably some fundamentals you are still slippery on. Working on SA there can be helpful, too, but you might want to isolate where your weak spots are first.

nislam · Answer

Hi,  hamzamohd 
Quant should be your priority area to focus on. please do pay extra attention to easy & medium OG problems.

Good Luck!

HotMess · Answer

Not an expert per se.

Though I think you should "over-analyze" your mistakes (after every mistake you make, think about what exactly your strategy should have been). Note it down and revise ( This is assuming you have covered basic concepts). From your score, it seems like for a given amount of time, you can increase your score more in quant than you can in verbal

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi hamzamohd,

The good news is that you are in a pretty nice spot. To increase your GMAT score to a higher level, you need to go through GMAT quant and verbal carefully to find your exact weaknesses, fill gaps in your knowledge, and strengthen your skills. The overall process will be to learn all about how to answer question types with which you currently aren't very comfortable, and do dozens of practice questions category by category, basically driving up your score point by point. For example, if you find that you are not strong in answering Number Properties questions, then carefully review the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer Number Properties questions and practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties: LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, remainders, etc. When you are working on learning to answer questions of a particular type, start off taking your time, and then seek to speed up as you get more comfortable answering questions of that type. As you do such practice, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get right. If you got a remainder question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not properly apply the remainder formula? Was there a concept you did not understand in the question? By carefully analyzing your mistakes, you will be able to efficiently fix your weaknesses and in turn improve your GMAT quant skills. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.

Each time you strengthen your understanding of a topic and your skill in answering questions of a particular type, you increase your odds of hitting your score goal. You know that there are types of questions that you are happy to see, types that you would rather not see, and types that you take a long time to answer correctly. Learn to more effectively answer the types of questions that you would rather not see, and make them into your favorite types. Learn to correctly answer in two minutes or less questions that you currently take five minutes to answer. By finding, say, a dozen weaker quant areas and turning them into strong areas, you will make great progress toward hitting your quant score goal. If a dozen areas turn out not to be enough, strengthen some more areas.

You can work on verbal in a similar manner. Let’s say you are reviewing Critical Reasoning. Be sure that you practice a large number of Critical Reasoning questions: Strengthen and Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, find the Conclusion, Must be True, etc. As you go through the questions, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get correct. If you missed a Weaken question, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize what the question was asking? Did you skip over a key detail in an answer choice? Getting GMAT verbal questions right is a matter of what you know, what you see, and what you do. So, any time that you don't get one right, you can seek to identify what you had to know to get the right answer, what you had to see that you didn't see, and what you could have done differently to arrive at the correct answer.

So, work on accuracy and generally finding correct answers, work on specific weaker areas one by one to make them strong areas, and when you take a practice GMAT or the real thing, take all the time per question available to do your absolute best to get right answers consistently. The GMAT is essentially a game of seeing how many right answers you can get in the time allotted. Approach the test with that conception in mind, and focus intently on the question in front of you with one goal in mind: getting a CORRECT answer.

In order to follow the path described above, you may need some new verbal and quant materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the  best quant  and  verbal courses .

You also may find my article with more information regarding  how to score a 700+ on the GMAT  helpful.

Feel free to reach out with any further questions.

Good luck!

GMATWhizTeam · Answer

Hi hamzamohd,

Over time, I have had the opportunity to talk to many students who are stuck in the 550-650 score range even after months of preparation. And I have found something common among these students. Most people start their preparation by  focusing on learning concepts and then they directly jump to solving questions  on that particular topic. However, there is a very important step in between which is “ To master the right strategies to solve Questions ”. Most people don’t know how to do so or simply choose to ignore it and follow shortcuts.

WHAT DO I MEAN BY THE RIGHT STRATEGY? 
 
By right strategy I mean, following a  step-by-step methodical process  for solving questions. For example, if asked to solve 2 linear equations in 2 variables, you will probably Equate the co-efficient of 1 variable in Step 1, then eliminate that variable in Step 2 and then substitute the value of the obtained variable to get the other one in Step 3. You follow these 3 steps in any linear equations Question and you get the right answer.

Now when it comes to Quant, generally people understand the right methodologies mostly because that’s how it is taught at School, but what about Verbal. Most non-native speakers find it challenging not because they don’t understand the concepts. Concepts are easy to learn. The main reason is they don’t understand how to apply the concepts methodically. Similarly, if you don’t follow a methodical approach in Quant, you will struggle there as well.

The worst thing is very few experts detail out a methodical approach to solve questions (including the Official Guide solutions – I’m sure many are unable to understand OG solutions), so students even after looking at the solutions don’t realize the importance of learning the Right Strategy. Now without applying the right strategy you can get the easy and to an extent medium questions correct, but you will struggle with the tough ones. The tough questions require you to have a strong understanding of the Strategy.

WHAT IS THE INFERENCE DRAWN BY STUDENTS? 
 When students don’t get hard questions right and get a decent accuracy in easy & medium questions, they start believing that they are not getting the question right because the question is tough. They believe that they can get hard questions by practising more and hence start practising tons of questions instead of working on the core problem.

What they fail to realize is why do they get hard ones incorrect? It is not because 2 choices are close in hard questions but more importantly because the hard questions require you to apply the concepts properly using the right strategy.

WHAT’S THE IMPACT OF NOT MASTERING THE RIGHT STRATEGY? 
 Now if you don’t master the right strategy, you don’t get hard questions right consistently and what happens when you don’t get hard questions right consistently, your score is stuck in the range of 600-650 at best. It is really painful to find yourself stuck at 600-650 range after months of preparation, so if you want to avoid being stuck there, I would recommend learning the right strategy asap, so that you don’t have to redo your prep in the end.

SO, WHAT SHOULD BE YOUR ACTION PLAN WHILE LEARNING? 
 You should do the following:

1. Arrange the topics in a section in the right order– Start with basics, then move to intermediate topics and finally advanced topics, and more importantly

2. Learn each topic in 3 steps

Step 1 – Learn the concepts related to each topic.

Step 2 – Learn how to apply these concepts using the right Strategy. This is the most important part of learning

Step 3 – Practice questions to identify gaps in your understanding and work on covering them.

If you focus on learning the right methods, you can ace the GMAT with ease. Hope this helped. Feel free to reach out if you have any queries related to your GMAT preparation or you need help with the right strategies. Always happy to help!

You can schedule a call with me using the link given below:
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GMAT on 27th January, 600 OG to 700??? ONE MONTH LEFT Any advice? @bb

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