Help, I can't get my quant score up. How can I fix this quickly?

Question

Hello,

I recently took my second GMAT and scored a 645 (V87/Q76/DI82). I am honestly happy with this score, but my score in quant has not increased since the first exam (575...) and I seem to be getting around the same score on mock exams.

I have never studied for any other GMAT section, so I have done over 100 hours of strictly quant on TTP. Obviously something isn't clicking here...

I am familiar with majority of the material on TTP and do well - I tend to get around 90-100% accuracy on easy questions and 70-80% on medium. I haven't really even attempted hard questions because I realize I need more work and better pattern recognition with the easy/medium questions first.

I want to retake the GMAT within the next few weeks before round 1 applications close and I only really care about getting quant up (preferably to an 80 at least, I realize I don't have much time here so I would be content with an 80). I also would be fine submitting my 645 score, I just want a better quant score for the superscore at least.

Brief background about me: Female, American, 2 years post grad, decent stats from college (finance major), good work experience, and other accomplishments I think would strengthen my resume. Hoping to get into msc finance program in London/UK (I don't want to share too many personal details, nor asking for a profile evaluation.)

Please let me know if you can provide an advice for how to get quant up/what I might be missing. Thank you!

bb · Answer

Hey. Sorry about that Quan score being a bit stuck.

So, first is how much do you want to improve? 
Second, regardless of your answer a couple weeks is a great amount of time to minimize the pain and slug through something you may not enjoy it first for a high quantitative school you will need to overcome any blood you may have with math.

Another thing to outfront is that if you are someone who believes you know a math person or you immediately declare that I’m terrible at, that is fine to admit but it’s not fine to use an excuse and definitely not fine to use repetitively. Not being good at quant just means you need to do more work, it doesn’t mean mistakes are forgivable or that the Jim Matt will treat you in some special way, and people who sort of declare that about themselves tend to never deal with the problems they have.

In terms of improvement, I say you need to start doing mixed quizzes. Try three easy three medium and three hard questions. You can put four medium so that you get around 10 question number.

Most important part for the next two weeks is to figure out every mistake. Your focus should be not volume and not quantity but quality. Take 10 questions see where mistakes are made and why and make sure your time yourself too so give yourself 20 minutes something along those lines one more time in case you’re eligible for additional time...

And then every mistake you made you figure out why you made it and you figure out what will enable you not to make it next time. I would go as far as printout or save every question with a note why you have made the mistake. You can then review these questions a day or two later and sort of spot the mistake you made and again review your remediation approach and if that’s still good and if that still holds and hopefully you never made this mistake again. Even doing 20 questions per day, making two or three or four mistakes per step will be productive if you can guarantee that you don’t make that mistake again. You must guarantee you make it so you must come up with a solution to go refresh your topic or something needs to happen otherwise you’re playing Waka ball and you will never get good.

The goal should be never to repeat the same mistake twice

modiassumenda · Answer

Hi,
bb's advice is on point, start doing mixed quizzes. 
Try three easy three medium and three hard questions. You can put four medium so that you get around 10 question number.
Blindly follow and you will see the improvement quickly.

HarshaBujji · Answer

I have once suggestion regarding the quant score, Try to introspect and understand where you are going wrong is it concepts or time management or silly mistakes.

Most of the times it will be careless mistakes. So based on that you need to customize the approach. In my case it's most of the time silly mistakes. So I had made it a habit to recheck the solution second time before moving on.

AllisonBell · Answer

Hi!

One thing I noticed in your post was that I didn’t see a mention of time management strategies. I’d encourage you to consider whether you’re maximizing your strengths by giving yourself time to get all easy and most medium questions right, while moving on quickly from hard questions. This may already be something you’ve worked hard on, but if you at all suspect that time management is playing a role (or have questions about best practices), check out  Everything You Need to Know About GMAT Time Management .

Quant was my weakest area, too, and the thing that helped me the most was working my way through Official Guide questions as timed sets (20 questions in 40 minutes). I started with the easiest questions and just worked my way up in order. This allowed me to a) be more confident about strengths b) identify gaps and c) build my skills one step at a time, mastering the easier version of topics before working my way to harder versions. This approach has the added bonus of being a great opportunity to practice time management strategies in a test-like situation.

Help, I can't get my quant score up. How can I fix this quickly?

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