Looking for advice on which strategy/program to prep for retake?

Hi Pangolin,

Assuming that your Verbal skills are consistently this strong, then you could focus on the Quant section, hone the necessary skills and potentially retest in a month (and hit both your Quant Scaled Score and Overall Score Goals). A Q44 means that you did well on most of the 'math questions' that you faced in the Quant section, but you made some little mistakes as you worked through the section AND you missed out on LOTS of 'strategy-based' questions. The Quant section of the GMAT is NOT a 'math test' - it's a 'critical thinking test' that requires lots of little calculations as you work through it. To score at a much higher level in this section, you need to become more of a 'strategist' and less of a 'mathematician.'

With an ESR, we could nitpick your performance in a bit more detail. That having been said, it's not necessary to have that data to define what you need to work on in the Quant section.

1) Going forward, how many hours do you think you can consistently study each week?

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

Hi Pangolin,

660 is a good score even if not your target score. I say this because this score indicates that you have a decent grasp over the concepts tested on the GMAT and sets a good foundation for your further improvement.

Getting to your target score

Having a personalized study plan that has clear milestones will double your chances to reach your target score in 25% fewer hours. To create one such plan for yourself, you can use Personalized Study Planner. I have created a sample plan for you from 660 to 750. You can create your own plan by giving personalized inputs using your ESR.


This article on Creating a study plan using PSP and ESR lists the steps and tips that you can use to create your own plan.

Identifying your weakness is the first step

You have rightly understood that to solve a problem you need to first identify what is going wrong. For that you need precise feedback on your performance. Scholaranium is one such platform that many students like Guillermo and Nishant have leveraged to improve their abilities.

• Guillermo improved from a Q38 (36 percentile) to Q50 (86 percentile). Click here to watch is inspiring video interview. Read his amazing GMAT Club debrief here.
• Carrie improved from a Q35 (26 percentile) to a Q50 (85 percentile) in 3 weeks. Click here to watch here video interview. Click here to read her amazing GMAT Club de-brief.

Way Forward

The maximum improvement will come from your weak area. Below is an outline for identifying the weak areas and working on them

• Take ability quizzes right at sub-section level. Click here to take a Quant Ability Quiz.
• Analyse the Skill Data section to identify the weak areas and work on them
• Track Improvement and repeat the process until you achieve your desired scores

With thorough analysis you will be able to identify not only the topics you need to work on, but also where the gap is – if it is understanding a concept or applying the same. If you have any query, please free to write to us at support@e-gmat.com.


Regards,
Zinnia

Hi Pangolin,

I’m glad you reached out, and I’m happy to help. The good news is that 660 is a good start! That said, to improve your GMAT score to a higher level, 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.

Regarding prep courses, in addition to seeking advice in this thread, take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the best quant and verbal courses, and also read through some [url=https://gmatclub.com/forum/share-your-gmat-experience-8/?fl=menu] GMAT success stories to see what materials have worked well for other test-takers.

You also may find it helpful to read the following articles about
how to score a 700+ on the GMAT and [url=https://blog.targettestprep.com/improve-gmat-score/]how to increase your GMAT quant score.

Feel free to reach out with further questions.

Good luck!