Going from Q50 to Q51 in 20 days | ESR Evaluation

Hi anud33p,

First off, great job with Q50! Regarding how to move forward, certainly you can work on the weaker areas indicated by your ESR; however, make sure that you avoid falling into the trap of focusing too much on micro-details based on your ESR and thus misdiagnosing your weaknesses. Since your ESR is based on only 31 quant questions (a very small sample size), it may not give you a complete picture of what to focus on going forward. For example, does your scoring 100% in Rates/Ratios/Percents mean that you are devoid of weakness in those topics? Not necessarily. Perhaps you were given many lower-level questions or had some lucky guesses on those topics. Furthermore, there is no way to know HOW MANY questions you were given from those topics, right?

A few things do seem clear. For one, your ESR seems to indicate that you could improve in Geometry and Equal/Inequal/Alg.. So, by becoming super-strong in those areas, you would likely score a few points higher in quant.

In addition to working on those areas, you may find it helpful to engage in focused practice, of various quant topics, so you can continue to find and then fix your weaker areas in quant. For example, let’s say that you want to practice Number Properties. You can do so by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties: LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, remainders, etc. 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.

Feel free to reach out with further questions.

Good luck!