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19 Apr 2014, 05:49
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Hi Mike,
So the story goes that i am a working professional with experience of 8 years and preparing to take GMAT on 31st May'14. I have been a member of Magoosh since November'13 and have been putting in regular 2-3 hours weekdays and 5 hours weekend. Followed the 3 month maths focused study plan as directed in the website.
Goal was to get my Quant score up-to 40-45 while preparing for Verbal SC though Manhattan, CR- Powerscore and RC-Magoosh.
Issue is that i started with a baseline of 320 score in GMAT prep last year and currently in 450-550 range, with Quant around 18-20/37 and Verbal 18-23/41.This has been going on for a month or two and am unable to understand the root cause of this. Kindly help me to get out of this unending quantum loop and provide a direction to help achieve a score of 700+ in GMAT.
Regards,
RoyQV
So the story goes that i am a working professional with experience of 8 years and preparing to take GMAT on 31st May'14. I have been a member of Magoosh since November'13 and have been putting in regular 2-3 hours weekdays and 5 hours weekend. Followed the 3 month maths focused study plan as directed in the website.
Goal was to get my Quant score up-to 40-45 while preparing for Verbal SC though Manhattan, CR- Powerscore and RC-Magoosh.
Issue is that i started with a baseline of 320 score in GMAT prep last year and currently in 450-550 range, with Quant around 18-20/37 and Verbal 18-23/41.This has been going on for a month or two and am unable to understand the root cause of this. Kindly help me to get out of this unending quantum loop and provide a direction to help achieve a score of 700+ in GMAT.
Regards,
RoyQV
21 Apr 2014, 15:23
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royQV
Dear RoyQV,
I'm happy to respond.
First of all, recognize that the increase from 320 to 450-550 is already a gargantuan increase, and you want to achieve another gargantuan increase on top of it. That is extremely hard to do. Second, understand that the fact is in the 450-550 range tells me absolutely zero about where you are. Even with your Q & V ranges, there's so much I don't know. I don't know what your common mistakes are. I don't know whether you don't have basic math formulas memorized, or whether you are getting math problems wrong precisely because you are relying on memorization too much. I don' t know whether you don't know the idioms or the basic rules of grammar. I don't know what you clearly recognize as right, what you clearly recognize as wrong, and what's simply unclear to you.
Have you been keeping a log of your mistakes? Do you know what mistakes are common for you, and what mistakes you have made more than once?
What kind of review process do you have when you get a question wrong? Do you simply read the solution and think, "I'll try to remember that", or do you take active steps to make sure you will integrate whatever you missed in the problem?
You say you worked through MGMAT SC --- does that mean you know cold everything they said? Does it mean you know how to apply everything they said? Do you know how many of your mistakes on SC are directly attributable to things you didn't know well enough from the MGMAT SC volume? Similarly, with each other source you have used: to what extent do you now "own" that content?
How good is your number sense? What are your primary strategies for mathematical problem solving?
Can you recognize wrong answer patterns on the SC? on CR? on RC? Are you familiar with the most common math mistakes, and do you recognize those trap answers?
Understand, there is not some magic piece of advice that I can give that will get you from 550 to 700+. If there were, everyone would do it, and 700+ would no longer be an elite score.
I will say: you should be reading 1/2 a day, every day. Read hard, challenging material. The Wall Street Journal and the Economist Magazine are excellent sources. This should be over and above your GMAT studies. Reading challenging material is one of the best ways to practice all your verbal skills.
I definitely would have to see examples of questions you got wrong. Here's what I recommend. For each individual question that you have gotten wrong, find it in GC. Every question in the official material and in the big guides has already been posted here somewhere. Look VERY carefully before starting a brand new thread devoted to the question. Find the questions, and read the thread: you may find that others made the mistake you made and asked questions about it already: reading the thread may answer all your questions about that individual problem. If not, add to the thread, posting the full question, and explaining very carefully exactly what you thought, exactly how you approached it, what assumptions you were making, what you eliminated, etc. Understand that one of the many skills you need to to make radical progress is to be an excellent question asker: you need to provide a complete map of your thought-process, so that an expert can come in and say, "Ah, this is the piece you were missing." Feel free to send me a p.m. if you want to solicit my help on such a posting.
If you haven't been keeping an error log, I would say reviewing the questions you got wrong and figuring out why you made the mistakes you did is much more important than practicing any more questions.
Understand that the GMAT is not simply a challenge where hard word pays off in and of itself. It's not as if you double how much you are working and you will see a score increase. That might be enough to get you from the 300s to the 500s, but that is most certainly not the stuff of elite GMAT scores. To get an elite GMAT score, you must develop mastery. See this blog on levels of understanding:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/understand ... rformance/
That's one way to think about deepening your understanding.
Part of what makes the 700-level questions so hard is that even the folks who know all the material inside out have trouble with the mental shifts needed to re-imagine the question and see what it is really asking. The folks who know the material inside-out but can't do this re-imagining are typically in the mid 600s. You have not achieved this level of knowing all the material inside-out, and beyond that level, there are all the challenges of getting up to the 700+.
I hope you find some of what I have said helpful. Please let me know if there is anything I can clarify.
Mike
22 Apr 2014, 01:06
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mikemcgarry
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Hi Mike,
First of all, thank you for replying back. Apart from the suggestions that you have provided, I would like your help further in order to improve my score by analyzing the following:
Weakness:
(1) Quant- DS, Geometry , Probability,
(2) Verbal- (a)SC –able to pick the correct choice but grammatically unable to describe why
(b) RC Timing
Now, only a month left (note I can extend it to june or july max as deadline to apply is Aug 31st for 3/5 B schools-What do you suggest, should i do this or stick to May 31st?) , I would like to give you my study plan (will be maintaining an error log) :
Study Plan & Material
(a) Study Material – GMAT Quant and Verbal OG 2nd Ed, OG 13,Powerscore,Manthattan SC Grockit and eGMAT
(b) Mock Tests Plan(every Sunday )- Grockit, Free Kaplan CAT, Princeton Review CAT, MGMAT CAT, GMAT Prep 1-4
(c) Study Plan- Please evaluate and provide tweeks !!!
Week 1 April 21st-26th-CR (read eGMAT and solve Q Grockit+ Verbal OG 2nd Ed)+ Complete Quant OG 2nd Ed
Week 2 April 28-May 3rd- SC(Egmat and Grockit+ + Verbal OG 2nd Ed)+ Quant OG 13
Week 3 May 5-May 10- SC(Egmat and Grockit+ + Verbal OG 2nd Ed)+ Quant OG 13
Week 4 May 12-17-RC(Egmat and Grockit+ + Verbal OG 2nd Ed)+ Revise OG 2nd Ed
Week 5 May 19-23- Revise V(OG 13) + Q( Magoosh-513)
Week 6- Tests (GMAT Prep 1-4)
Regards,
Roy QV
