EXAM IN 20 DAYS

Question

Hello everyone, I’ve been preparing for a couple of months now and have my exam in twenty days. I’ve taken two official mocks and one Magoosh mock, with scores ranging from 555 to, most recently, 575 and 595.
- OG Mock 1: V83, Q79, DI73
- OG Mock 2: Q71, V86, DI82
Most of my studies were from magoosh, additionally I finished the MGMAT all the quant book and OG
I feel like my quant usually goes okay, but I tend to miss the last question. (I often get the last few consecutive answers wrong, which I think leads to penalties?)

With my exam in 20 days, I need a score at least above 635. Since I'm pretty short on time, I was wondering what strategies would fit best now to help with quant and DI, Any tips or guidance would be greatly appreciated!

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

For Quant, when reviewing, seeing whether there may have been shorter/easier ways to get to the correct answer choice may be helpful. Perhaps, for example, the answer choices themselves could have been useful in some way. If time management is an issue, using question/time markers may help a bit.

5 Quant tips

Spectre26 · Answer

For Quant -

0. Forgot this while writing, hence this step. Resolve all the errors from your practice tests. See if you can solve them. If yes, that most probably means you did some silly mistake. Find if that is happening for some specific reason, such as, may be it is happening in certain topics like time speed distance or may be when calculations are intensive like percentages. Attack those reasons with practice.

1. Review quant section of previous practice tests, try to observe the pattern - such as any specific topics that you are guessing, topics you're spending most time on. (consider time spend less than 20 secs as a guess, if the question is not straightforward, and any time above 2.5 mins as spending extra time)
 
2. For the topics you guess mostly try to review the topics, and practice OG questions from those topics only. You can filter qustions in the PS forum in GMAT Club. Start gradually like for easy 10 questions then medium 10 then hard 10. Guage your level and practice more from the most error prone level.

3. For the topics you spend most of your time (i.e., > 2.5 mins) try to understand the problem - are you spending more time on calculations or more time understanding the question or approach to it.
If calculation is the problem, practice topic wise questions - mixed difficulty. As much as you can.
If approach is the problem do step 2.
 
Till now do all the practice untimed, without pressure of the clock.

4. Do sectional practice, this will be timed. See if you make any progress or not after following above steps and act accordingly.

This worked for me in quant, but I still have miles to go.

Best wishes for your GMAT !!

Gmat760+ · Answer

Thank you for this. I spent the day reviewing all my mocks, and it turns out I tend to make a lot of silly mistakes. I was able to solve most of the questions when untimed, which is frustrating. Will follow these tips for the coming week. Also, I read your debrief, very inspiring! Was wondering how the difficulty compared for you between the mocks and the actual exam in all sections?

Ayeka · Answer

For improving quant, you need to see why was the answer wrong, was it a calculation error, careless mistake, conceptual gap, or whatever reason. Write the reasons why you have done a question wrong (and how you can avoid making that same mistake again next time) on a piece of a piece of paper and try to avoid making that mistake again. Keep revising all wrong points every 3-4 days. Also, don’t forget to revise those points a day before exam.

Also, for the coming two weeks try to make your study sessions longer (2.5 to 3 hrs), so that you will get used to keeping focus for a longer time.
Try to give mocks every 3-4 days until exam day.

You can also try to switch the order to solve mocks. Sometimes the order to solve sections matters a lot. For me, i solve DI first (for me DI is tiring & tough) then 10 min break, then Verbal and Quant (which are easier for me and i can maintain focus while doing these sections)

Hope it helps

Posted from my mobile device

Spectre26 · Answer

Glad that it was helpful. Keep practicing you will do great.

The difficulty was similar to that of mocks only. For all sections.

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