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Question

GMAT test day :  12th December 2019 
Days to GMAT:  19 
Hours studied:  14 
Mood:  Feeling Determined

Prep Tests: 
 
GMAT Prep 1: 620(Q37,V38) 19.11.2019

Hi Everyone,

I guess this thread will be the most interesting for people who are currently studying for the GMAT or for someone who wants to see an average joe's experience prepping for the test.

About me:
I'm in my last semester of my bachelor in an European university. Couple days ago, while talking with an old friend, I realized that I have a decent to good chance to be accepted to a good business school (in Europe) for my masters (planning on starting next fall). Well, apart from good grades, internships, extracurricular and work experience I need to score well on the GMAT. The caveat is that I am on a tight schedule. To be more precise 12th of December tight.

So, I ordered the OG 2020 which arrived yesterday and signed myself up to take the GMAT. After a day of reading the "theory" sections of the verbal as well as quant part and doing some online exercises I decided to immediately take the first official prep test today for a baseline score. I got a Score of 620 Q37 V38. I'm pleased with my V38 for a start but not so much with my Q37 as I am usually a bit better in math test. I also felt that the further I was in the quant part the easier the questions got. I guess I did my big mistakes at the start of the quant section.

Now my goal is to score above 700!
The good part about still being a student is, that I can free up these 23 days quite well to only focus on studying for the GMAT.

For me, this thread will be mostly to keep track of my work progress and connect to fellow preppers. 
Any advice on how I should tackle my preparation is highly appreciated :D.
Feel free to connect or just drop a hi, I'll definitely keep an eye on the thread.

My goal for tomorrow is to come up with a study plan and start to properly preparing myself.

Learn Journal: 
Day 1 
 Results of the day:  160 Quant questions, 34 wrong, 16 Pumpkins | level easy-medium
 Goal for Tomorrow:  Finishing the OG 2020 Quant Book

I started the day off well, was feeling good and started tackling the Quant section. I need to find out where exactly I am bad at regarding question type as well as level of difficulty. 
I took the OG 2020 Quant book and started doing PS as well as DS question sets. I did 20 Questions from PS and then another 20 from DS in the sequence they come in the book.
I did 4 of these double sets with 5 to 10 min breaks in between. Overall time spent 5.5 hours. 
First two sets went decent, with 3 respective 6 errors. The question felt on a easy, medium, hard scale rather easy.
Second set did not go as well, especially towards the end with 12 respective 13 errors. The difficulty was medium.
Thus, out of 160 Questions I got 34 wrong. Not good. I really noticed that 16 of my mistakes were done, not because I did not know how to tackle the issue but because I just was not concentrated enough and skipped either instructions 
or stopped early with the calculations. I give these mistakes the word  Pumpkin . Pumpkin mistakes are stupid and should not occur again.
I also started a Log in which i will keep book about all the exercises I do and if I do them wrong i write down what kind of question it is and how I should improve. => Error Log

I spent about another 2-3 hours on Veritas Prep YouTube videos and find them immensely helpful. (I do not count these hours as study hours as they are more passive than active)
Goal for tomorrow is to finish the OG 2020 Q Book and know specifically where my weak spots are in quant.
I also need to figure a way out to be able to concentrate myself better towards the end of the study day.
 
 Day 2&3  
 Results of the days:  160 Quant questions, 65 wrong, 12 Pumpkins | level medium-hard
 Goal for Tomorrow:  Math; Statistics/Combinatorics, Revise Arithmetic
Finishing up to OG Quant part really showed my where my weaknesses are regarding quant. In general, I far better in PS then in DS. It is also frustrating to see that from a good start in the first part my mistakes doubled!
A 31% error quota really dampens my optimism. The silver lining is, that the increase in mistakes corresponds with the A) perceived difficulty and B) with the stated difficulty of the OG book. I am definitely proportionally weak regarding probability, statistics, combinatorics & number properties. My strength is definitely geometry where I did hardly any mistakes (also what I enjoy doing the most). Mistakes also occurred because I did not read the prompt carefully enough, which is throwing points out of the window. I got my hands on the quant part of the Manhattan prep from a friend and will read up on the topics I am weak in. I am not sure how I shall increase my DS abilities.
Overall, I will focus now on the hard questions as spending time on the easy level does not seem to give me any benefit.

Materials  
OG 2020 Bundle
Manhattan Prep 0-5

Excercise Questions  
OG 2020 Quant: Mistakes (99/319) 31%

ErrorLog

OG 2020:

OG 2020 Verbal

OG 2020 Quant
 Wrong Once
 PS:8,19,32,39,42,51,57,58,64,65,67,74,75,76,80,107,118,124,125,135,140,141,143,145,147,150,157,158,159,164,166,173

DS:183,185,189,191,200,202,206,219,222,226,233,234,242,246,247,251,252,254,255,266,268,271,287.296,298-305,307,308,315,317,319

P.S. Please apologize if my post might seem a bit chaotic, I guess they'll get a bit more structured as time progresses.
P.P.S. I will edit this post in the thread so that anyone who jumps in does not particularly need to scroll through all the posts

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Reider2,

Many GMATers spend 3 months (or more) of consistent study time before they hit their 'peak' scores, so while it's great that you can put in a lot of study time over these next 3 weeks, there will likely be a limit to how much you can improve in such a short time period. From what you describe, I assume that you are facing some immediate application deadlines - but you have to be careful about 'rushing in' an application if it's not going to be strong enough to earn you an invite to attend a particular Program. By extension, you might want to consider a later application deadline - which would give you more time to study for the GMAT AND make sure that your OVERALL application is as strong as you can make it.

Before I can offer you any additional advice for your studies, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on your timeline and your goals:

1) What Schools are you planning to apply to?
2) What are the exact application deadlines that you are facing?
3) What is the minimum GMAT Score that you would apply with?

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

globaldesi · Answer

Nice idea to post all your daily track here. Will be happy to see your good score here.
All the best

RashedVai · Answer

Hi, it seems like you are doing better in Verbal than in Quant. Mine is the opposite. I am happy with my quant but not with my verbal. so we may help each other!
for your quant, my humble advice will be: (this works for me)

Read a chapter from Manhattan Quant guides, and then do the problems regarding that topic/or chapter. There is a list of related official questions at the end of every book.

when you are doing a question, do similar questions. this is what I mean: for every question use gmatclub, use timer, read experts(mainly Bunuel & Rich) explanations and then scroll down to the bottom of that thread, you will see 5 more questions link. DO ALL the FIVE. Use the learning from earlier questions and from MGMAT guides.

* "GMAT Club Master Directory" has all the OG questions link.

Remember to take TAKEAWAYS from every question. the takeaways should be like:

IF I SEE ________ IN MY FUTURE PROBLEMS, I WILL DO ______ TO SOLVE THEM!

hope this will help.
good luck.

by the way I am also retaking the exam at the end of december. So, let's have some practice from OG together.

Reider2 · Answer

rich Thank you for your extensiv post. I do see and agree with your point that 3 months of prep would result in the best possible score. Still, I'll make it with the days I have and skimming through the forum I saw that a few people were able to score above 700 with 100-150 hours of study. Let's hope that i can achieve that too. Regarding your questions: 1) LBS, HEC Paris, St. Gallen (maybe IESE or a US one...) 2) Deadlines are on average mid January 3) I'd say a 680 Now, you probably think i could push the GMAT another week out. This is not an option because I will fly out to Asia till the start of January to see my SO. To conclude, I got 22 days to make me a GMAT assassins

RashedVai Thank you for your suggestions for Quant, will have a look at the things you mentioned now. I especially like your takeaway how to not get wrong the same question twice. I wish that I could give you as much solid advice as you just gave me regarding the Verbal part. But as I am just starting out I have not built a strategy yet to tackel them. What I did was pretty much: 1) Look at the tense 2) Pronouns (it them...) 3) prepositions 4) verb forms and more often than not i lead my intuition guide me. Doing some practice togeather sounds good! At the moment I'm probably more of a stone dragging you instead of being any help. How about you give me a week to get into it so that i can also bring an added benefit for you. globaldesi thanks for dropping by

RashedVai · Answer

Sounds good. I will knock you then.
happy studying!

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Reider2,

Since you have a plan for your next 3 weeks, we should see how well this next week of studying goes. I suggest that you study as you like for at least 4-5 days before you take your next practice CAT/mock; once you have that result, you should post back here and we can discuss any adjustments that you might make to your studies.

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

Reider2 · Answer

Dear Rich,

yes will do! Thank your for your time, really appreciate it.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Reider2,

620 is a nice start. Since you are not too happy with your initial quant score, would you like some advice on how to improve your GMAT quant skills?

MariaMia · Answer

Hi,
Just thought I would stop by and leave a comment on the post because I am in similar circumstances as well. I've started prepping for my GMAT journey about a week ago and started with a fairly low score...but I am trying to apply over to a school in Europe, so the upcoming deadline for my application is in January, which means I'll be taking the GMAT towards the end of December. It is difficult with the time crunch, but sounds like you are doing well so far. Best of luck preparing!

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