Thank you for your great reply. It helps seeing different perspectives.
I made a few comments below.
Hi Sergiu,
1) Regarding leaving questions unanswered - Agree that it is a complex algo. But I have read in some places that
each unanswered question takes your percentile down by 3. Not sure of the authenticity of this, but if it's even slightly true, it is a very big hit. It could be the reason you scored low, but may not be the only reason.
It's stated in the OG that 5 unanswered questions can knock you down by almost 20 percent, percentile-wise.2) My experience with GMAT Prep - I am taking the GMAT in a couple of months and I took the GMATPrep test (the first) after 2-3 weeks of study (almost full time). I was extremely surprised to see 760 even though I got 14 of the quant questions wrong and 4 of the verbal. Your score depends quite a lot on
which questions, what difficulty, how many in a row, how much time you spend at the end (whether the software thinks you are just guessing if you answered 5 questions in 5 seconds, say) and so on and so forth. Just a couple of days after that, I took the gmatclub test and scored a 670 with an abysmal verbal score - so bummer.
760 is impressive ! What you are saying makes perfect sense.3) Data sufficiency - that's a new monster to understand. As you said, you'll start to
recognize patterns -
don't assume integers if not specified, positive does not include zero, percentages and actual values behave very differently, it's OK to have two equations in three variables if you are not asked the values of the variables themselves but rather are asked something like "what's x+y+z?" and so on.One of the keys is to
completely ignore A when you evaluate B the first time. It is pretty logical, but I agree some of the problems are tough to get your head around. Especially as you move on, you'll find the
OG problems get tougher toward the end. Practice will help here.
This is indeed a new beast. But we must tame the beast 
and if others did it, so shall we. Practice is key. 4) General - I experimented solving a lot of problems, but my sense so far is, it helps to
pick a topic (like how Manhattan gives you),
master it, solve all problems you can find on that topic and then
move on. Also, what I call
"meta-study" is important - you have to
go back, revise what you found difficult/what you got wrong and remember why you committed the mistake you did. Finding patterns and remembering them is very important.
According to me, solving 20 problems and really, really spending time understanding them inside and out is more beneficial than solving 100 but not revising solutions/reiterating strategy.
I spoke to someone that got a 780 on GMAT. Her approach was do to figure out where she made mistakes, identify these weaknesses and then go and practice those topics over and over and over again. I read a lot of posts from people that were complaining about low GMAT scores despite a lot of studying. The patters was that most of them did not bother too much understanding where they made mistakes. They were not analysing teh solutions of the problems they got wrong, and because of that I believe they were not changing their approach to the type of problems they were getting wrong. Doing practice problems will show you what you know and what you don't know. The ones you don't know you can either spend a lot of time alone trying to figure them out or read the solution and see what the approach is.
I barely get to do 2 hours / day (I spend 11 hours with work + commuting) so that doesn't leave much time to study. My focus is primarely to do problems, understand them - even if i get the solution right i want to check that i had teh right thought process. I try to do about 10 questions / day, and do them well. The questions I don't know, I mark. After I do 50 questions let's say...i go back and re-attempt the ones I didn't initially know. That's teh strategy...if i get the problem wrong, i read teh solution, understand it as best as I can logically then attempt the problem at a later date.5) Future study plan - Since I am pretty much in the same place as you are, here's what I am going to do, see if it helps you too: I have read Manhattan CR and am halfway through SC. I am going to finish a quick read/solving of these. I am going to solve
OG the first time entirely on my own with what little extra reading that happens side by side. I am going to go through
gmatclub Math Book (available for free) once. THEN, I am going to repeat Manhattan CR, SC and gmatclub Math book. This time, I will try and remember strategies, specific equations etc etc. and underline important stuff while I revise the books. Then, I will go through all problem explanations in
OG (the entire
OG explanation section for all categories of questions) to see which ones I was doubtful about, which ones I got wrong, why, and even the ones I got right (to see if a better approach was available). Once this is done, I will take up
OG Verbal Review and Quant Review with the aim to really, really reduce the error rate compared to the first pass of
OG done earlier based on the study and revisions done so far. I will probably intermingle this phase with Manhattan's 6 tests that I got with the SC guide / the 2 extra tests I purchased for GMAT Prep /
gmatclub tests (if I am able to accumulate kudos, so there's how you can help
)
I think you got it all figured out in terms of your strategy. My strategy is as follows:
- spend the rest of september on Quant (solve problems from OG). Redo problems i did not know how to initially solve.
- at the same time go though quant section of mangattan
- watch magoosh videos on all quant sections
In october I will start alternating Quant with Verbal. I feel I have a huge quant defficiency which I need to make up for. Around mid October I will take 2 full practice tests and see how my progress is.I think going topic-by-topic will be helpful - read the theory, immediately try out problems. This should help really "fix" it in your mind. Manhattan has the list of questions on each topic from the
OG that I will try and look at the next time I read the guide (I only have the SC and CR guides,but still).
One final point -
I believe really spending time (even as much as 4-5 mins) on a tough question and getting it right is really good, compared to moving on every 2 mins. You only have to worry about time in the last 10 mins (PROVIDED your usual experience is that you are able to do questions in an average time of 2 mins - oh yeah, make sure you time yourself every time you solve practice questions). Some questions hardly take a few seconds, so you can use the extra time on tough ones and getting the tough ones right is a good boost.
By the way...where do you plan on applying? Hope this helps! Best to you for your GMAT!
close
06 Sep 2015, 10:59
