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27 Nov 2022, 08:02
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Hello everyone,
I am a prospective applicant en route for a retake and have a few questions on how to improve my test prep.
Background on me :
I’ve worked in public relations in Francophone Africa for the past 7 years. I was good in maths up until high school but then studied political sciences in College and got a masters in political communications - obviously not a lot of quant. I’m aiming to apply to the M7 schools.
My GMAT prep journey thus far
I’ve begun my GMAT journey in August, using Magoosh and had to set to take my test in early November.
First I went through all the quant video lessons (special <3 to Matthew McGarry) and subsequently began practicing. In retrospective, my study plan was more about ensuring that I had reviewed and practiced every topic than making sure I was building my ability for each concept one by one. I also did not practice through OQ questions but exclusively on Magoosh. I realized I would not have enough time to go through every topic AND practice Verbal and IR, so I pushed my exam date to the end of November.
I did a first practice test on Magoosh on Oct. 24 and scored a 500 (Q34,V25). Now of course, in retrospective I know that that should have been indicator that I needed much more time and a different approach. I still wanted to try and make the January deadline and believed that by some miracle, I could get an extra 200 points in a month.
I should mention that I took the practice test starting with quant and was feeling almost sleepy during verbal section, so I figured I needed to retake a practice test in a different order. The next day, I took the first GMATPrep test and score a 610 (Q44,V30). I noticed that I felt much more comfortable with this order : at the time, I had not began studying verbal but I also felt like reading through the long passages, trying to pay attention to grammar during SC, was easier if I hadn’t gone through an hour of quant before.
Given that 610 was close enough to my target score (700), I believed that my approach was fine and I should simply start going through verbal practice to improve my verbal score.
A little over a week later, after having gone through MAgoosh’ verbal video lessons, I took another practice test and score 650 (Q40, V40), once again starting with verbal. Naturally, I felt like the queen of the universe, having improved by 40 points in just over a week. What I did not consider sufficiently was the 4 point drop in my Verbal score (and what it meant).
A week later, I took another practice test and score another 650 (Q38, V41). This time, I did feel really good about my Verbal section but did notice that I lost my way through the quant section (especially from a timing perspective).
A week later, I retook a practice test and scored 620 (Q35, V40). That was one week before my exam and that result ffectively put me in a very anxious mode. I couldn’t get why my quant score kept on plummeting (obviously between practice exams I was actively practicing - by that I mean doing a bunch of questions in my weak areas).
My First GMAT experience
I took the GMAT at an exam centre. My thought process behind that is that I believed I would be more relaxed at a test centre versus in the comfort of my home where I’d be sitting all by myself. The contrary happened. I was the first to arrive at the test centre but through my test, people were ushered in the room to take their own test. At some point, I heard someone having a phone conversation on the other side of the building and there were also conversations coming from the adjoint office in the test centre.
Beyond these not-ideal test conditions, I also completely fumbled my timing strategy. Thus far, I had never been in an experience where I had to rush through a lot of questions (at best, I had to rush through the 2-3 last questions in Quant, but still with a good 1.5 minutes to solve each). During my real test, I had spent over a third of my time on the first 11 questions in Verbal and rushed through at least the last 10 questions (and by rush, I mean I practically guessed half of them). I knew that I had messed up my Verbal section and it was very hard to pick myself up in Quant after that despite taking the break, drinking some water and eating a tangerine.
I ended up with a 540 (Q31, V34).
My Retrospective on my Practice
Now, the good news is that I no longer need to aim for the January 2022 deadline as I’ve got an exciting new opportunity at work which I want to enjoy before going to b-school. I am now set to apply for Sept 2023. I see this experience as a positive one because I know that I can learn to practice for the test in a different way, which leads me to this post today :
What I believe went wrong with the way I practice
For Quant
I had too much of a high school math approach to it and focused on how many questions I could get right. I have kept an error log with over 220 entries for quant, it is neat and colour-coded but even though I know from it that I tend to make a majority of silly mistakes (misreading the prompt, error in calculation) I have not really dived in to understand which sections had the most of these silly mistakes, why they kept on happening, whether timing is an issue or not. I also have not really sought to improve the areas where I make conceptual mistakes - outside of doing more questions.
For Verbal
I did make an effort to go through each video lessons, and while CR and RC are my strongest suites, I have not really made an effort to understand why my SC mistakes kept on happening, and find a methodology to improve.
So I come to the GMATClub for help
- How can one truly improve on quant : I believe that I’ve got a decent grasp of all the concepts except for all things related to combi and absolute value. Where I struggle is with their application, especially for word problems and integer properties. If a prompt is too long, or if a prompt involves my having to « translate » English into an equations, I tend to find it hard. How can I move forward from that point ?
- How can one improve on SC : if you hear me speak English, you’d think I was absolutely bilingual but I apparently still struggle with some rhetorical construction concepts.
- How to build a study plan. From e-GMAT, I was able to estimate how many study hours I would need (140). I believe a good chunk of it needs to go to quant, I also do not want to set an exam date until I’m certain I’m ready but I’m not sure where to begin in rebuilding my study plan : should I go topic by topic ? If so how do I avoid « losing my ability », when is the good time to retake mock exams again ?
Thank you in advance for your precious feedbacks !
I am a prospective applicant en route for a retake and have a few questions on how to improve my test prep.
Background on me :
I’ve worked in public relations in Francophone Africa for the past 7 years. I was good in maths up until high school but then studied political sciences in College and got a masters in political communications - obviously not a lot of quant. I’m aiming to apply to the M7 schools.
My GMAT prep journey thus far
I’ve begun my GMAT journey in August, using Magoosh and had to set to take my test in early November.
First I went through all the quant video lessons (special <3 to Matthew McGarry) and subsequently began practicing. In retrospective, my study plan was more about ensuring that I had reviewed and practiced every topic than making sure I was building my ability for each concept one by one. I also did not practice through OQ questions but exclusively on Magoosh. I realized I would not have enough time to go through every topic AND practice Verbal and IR, so I pushed my exam date to the end of November.
I did a first practice test on Magoosh on Oct. 24 and scored a 500 (Q34,V25). Now of course, in retrospective I know that that should have been indicator that I needed much more time and a different approach. I still wanted to try and make the January deadline and believed that by some miracle, I could get an extra 200 points in a month.
I should mention that I took the practice test starting with quant and was feeling almost sleepy during verbal section, so I figured I needed to retake a practice test in a different order. The next day, I took the first GMATPrep test and score a 610 (Q44,V30). I noticed that I felt much more comfortable with this order : at the time, I had not began studying verbal but I also felt like reading through the long passages, trying to pay attention to grammar during SC, was easier if I hadn’t gone through an hour of quant before.
Given that 610 was close enough to my target score (700), I believed that my approach was fine and I should simply start going through verbal practice to improve my verbal score.
A little over a week later, after having gone through MAgoosh’ verbal video lessons, I took another practice test and score 650 (Q40, V40), once again starting with verbal. Naturally, I felt like the queen of the universe, having improved by 40 points in just over a week. What I did not consider sufficiently was the 4 point drop in my Verbal score (and what it meant).
A week later, I took another practice test and score another 650 (Q38, V41). This time, I did feel really good about my Verbal section but did notice that I lost my way through the quant section (especially from a timing perspective).
A week later, I retook a practice test and scored 620 (Q35, V40). That was one week before my exam and that result ffectively put me in a very anxious mode. I couldn’t get why my quant score kept on plummeting (obviously between practice exams I was actively practicing - by that I mean doing a bunch of questions in my weak areas).
My First GMAT experience
I took the GMAT at an exam centre. My thought process behind that is that I believed I would be more relaxed at a test centre versus in the comfort of my home where I’d be sitting all by myself. The contrary happened. I was the first to arrive at the test centre but through my test, people were ushered in the room to take their own test. At some point, I heard someone having a phone conversation on the other side of the building and there were also conversations coming from the adjoint office in the test centre.
Beyond these not-ideal test conditions, I also completely fumbled my timing strategy. Thus far, I had never been in an experience where I had to rush through a lot of questions (at best, I had to rush through the 2-3 last questions in Quant, but still with a good 1.5 minutes to solve each). During my real test, I had spent over a third of my time on the first 11 questions in Verbal and rushed through at least the last 10 questions (and by rush, I mean I practically guessed half of them). I knew that I had messed up my Verbal section and it was very hard to pick myself up in Quant after that despite taking the break, drinking some water and eating a tangerine.
I ended up with a 540 (Q31, V34).
My Retrospective on my Practice
Now, the good news is that I no longer need to aim for the January 2022 deadline as I’ve got an exciting new opportunity at work which I want to enjoy before going to b-school. I am now set to apply for Sept 2023. I see this experience as a positive one because I know that I can learn to practice for the test in a different way, which leads me to this post today :
What I believe went wrong with the way I practice
For Quant
I had too much of a high school math approach to it and focused on how many questions I could get right. I have kept an error log with over 220 entries for quant, it is neat and colour-coded but even though I know from it that I tend to make a majority of silly mistakes (misreading the prompt, error in calculation) I have not really dived in to understand which sections had the most of these silly mistakes, why they kept on happening, whether timing is an issue or not. I also have not really sought to improve the areas where I make conceptual mistakes - outside of doing more questions.
For Verbal
I did make an effort to go through each video lessons, and while CR and RC are my strongest suites, I have not really made an effort to understand why my SC mistakes kept on happening, and find a methodology to improve.
So I come to the GMATClub for help
- How can one truly improve on quant : I believe that I’ve got a decent grasp of all the concepts except for all things related to combi and absolute value. Where I struggle is with their application, especially for word problems and integer properties. If a prompt is too long, or if a prompt involves my having to « translate » English into an equations, I tend to find it hard. How can I move forward from that point ?
- How can one improve on SC : if you hear me speak English, you’d think I was absolutely bilingual but I apparently still struggle with some rhetorical construction concepts.
- How to build a study plan. From e-GMAT, I was able to estimate how many study hours I would need (140). I believe a good chunk of it needs to go to quant, I also do not want to set an exam date until I’m certain I’m ready but I’m not sure where to begin in rebuilding my study plan : should I go topic by topic ? If so how do I avoid « losing my ability », when is the good time to retake mock exams again ?
Thank you in advance for your precious feedbacks !
27 Nov 2022, 08:23
Kudos
Bookmarks
Well ... What i have researched regarding material used for Gmat Prep , specially for Quant , Manhattan Guide All the Quant is recommended by those who have scored 700+.
Posted from my mobile device
Posted from my mobile device
