HELP!!

Question

Hello Everyone,

I took the GMAT once in October with  very  little studying, and somehow I got a 500, and I only needed 550 minimum to get into the school I was hoping to apply for. So I booked my 2nd test and I have my GMAT test coming up on January 8th, so basically I have about 9 days of studying left. I feel like I know nothing, I've been watching videos via empowergmat, and doing questions from the books, but for the most part I am not doing well. I was wondering if you had an insight regarding any strategies for each of the portions in the gmat. I could really appreciate any help I could get at this point.

Thanks Everyone!!

fitzpratik · Answer

Hi!

You may want to breakdown Quant and verbal weak areas. focus on SC. Most gains in short time will be achieved through SC. Understand the basics of sentence correction and also know that meaning trumps grammar. 
In quant, please focus on number properties, as this topic usually covers greater no of questions in initial 10 questions. this should be followed by work rate and distance time problems. COMPLETE your exam, GMAT penalizes skipping of questions more than getting answers wrong.

revise AWA and IR using the strategies mentioned on this forum.

I hope this helps. Please do tell us how was your GMAT

Abhi077 · Answer

Right now at this point, You must focus more on the review part than the solving and experimenting part. especially reviewing the Official guide. But considering that you only have 9 days to go, you must go ahead with a strategy. i feel this should help you as they have brilliantly explained all the what if scenarios on GMAT prep.  https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-prep-software-analysis-and-what-if-scenarios-146146.html#p1171760 All the best for the test day

cfc198 · Answer

Devote a full day to revising all the concepts that you have understood and then proceed to take a CAT the next day. Ensure to take at least 2 CATs in the next 9 days so that your body and mind will tune itself for the big day. Also, heavily analyze the CATs ,so that you will be able find areas of realistic improvement. Best wishes

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi rk15zt,

Since it's been at least 2 months since you took the Official GMAT, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying since then and your goals:

1) What study materials have you used so far?
2) How long have you been using the EMPOWERgmat Course? Which Study Plan have you been following?
3) Have you taken any practice CATs/mocks? How have you scored on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?
4) When you say that you only "need" a 550, what does that mean exactly? If you score 550+, does that mean that you will automatically get into that Program (and how do you know that?)?

Thankfully, to hit 550+, you do NOT need to correctly answer ANY questions that you think are too hard or too weird - so your best move is to 'dump' those hard questions (just take a guess and move on). You do need to keep the little mistakes to a relative minimum though, so you need to make sure that you're doing the necessary work to correctly answer the questions that you are capable of correctly answering.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

AjiteshArun · Answer

You're very close to your target score, but have you taken any practice tests after your first GMAT? Just checking whether you are completely comfortable with the structure of the exam and with managing time.

CAMANISHPARMAR · Answer

Kindly provide this information so that members can help you further:-

1) What is your Quant and Verbal split? 
2) Do you face any issues with timing? (Since your target score is 550+ then you can think of strategic guessing and not wasting time of questions which are out of your reach and spending more time on questions which are well within your reach)
3) Do a mix of Quant and Verbal on Daily basis.
4) Try to give at least two official mocks in the next 8 days. Review the mocks thoroughly and try to indentify areas where you can improve in short duration

All the best!!

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi rk15zt,

Although it may be difficult to improve your GMAT score by 50 points in just 10 days, I’m happy to provide some advice on how to improve your quant and verbal skills. To do so, 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. When you do dozens of questions of the same type one after the other, you learn just what it takes to get questions of that type correct consistently. If you aren't getting close to 90 percent of questions of a certain type correct, go back and seek to better understand how that type of question works, and then do more questions of that type until you get to around at least 90 percent accuracy in your training. If you get 100 percent of some sets correct, even better.

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 and types that you would rather not see, and types of questions 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.

I realize this is a lot to tackle in just 9 days, but do the best you can, and if for some reason things don't go your way on test day, reach back out, and I’ll be happy to provide some further advice.

Good luck!

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