MGMAT CAT 1 - 540 (Q34, V31) - test in 2 weeks....help!

blitz,

I agree with Rishiraj - you really need to identify your strengths and weaknesses. Taking 6 to 7 CATs in the next two weeks won't help. Here's what I'd suggest:

1. Today: ID your areas of weaknesses (you can do this on the MGMAT website...let me know if you need instructions). A "weakness" is really anywhere that your assessment report tells you use are scoring less than 50%.

2. Spend the next few days drilling your biggest weaknesses through sets of similar problems. For example: Do 10 Critical Reasoning "Draw A Conclusion" questions in a row and really develop your strategy and your skills. This is generally more effective than just doing problems randomly. Think of a basketball player practicing his free throws. Instead of just practicing when he gets fouled, people will shoot 1,000 free throws in a row. Beyond this, for the first 100 he might just practice his balance. Then 100 more to practice the grip. Then 100 more to practice the release. 100 more for the breathing. Etc. The following is a crude way of thinking about it, but: The GMAT wants you to know how to do everything, so if you're scoring 750 on SC and only 400 on RC, then you'll never even get to see the 750 level questions and thus prove your abilities because the test algorithm will give you 400 level questions until you get them right. So you really need to work on your weaknesses before you can focus on improving your strengths.

3. Throughout the next week: Really focus on timing. If you can't get a problem right in 2-2.5 minutes, it's absolutely not worth getting it right in 5 minutes. If you had to guess on the last 10 verbal problems, chances are that hurt your verbal score by about 15% - a huge difference! Leaving 10 minutes on the clock in quant is nearly as big of a problem. If you divide those into 10 segments of 1 minute each and divide those extra minutes up to problems where you might have guessed too soon or not double checked your answer, you might have been able to get a whole bunch more right.

4. For one day in the next few days: For RC, develop a process to give yourself some structure. I'd suggest taking relatively good notes on the first sentence / paragraph and then pretty sketchy notes for the rest of the passage. The thinking here is that paragraphs 2-4 generally contain very detailed information that you do NOT want to learn on your first read. Instead, you just want to know where the passage talks about those things so IF you are given a question about that topic, you know where to look. Practice this process / note-taking technique on several passages over the next week.

5. One week before test day: Decide where you are going to guess. If you aren't going to have time to really learn the geometry, then you need to realize that you'll probably have to take a pretty random guess on some of the geometry questions. That, by the way, is completely OK. Everybody has to guess when taking the GMAT; your goal is to make sure you guess in the right places and at the right times.

6. The few days before the test: Don't burn yourself out. Study hard, but make sure in those last few days you rest enough that you are excited, rather than exhausted, when you walk in on test day.

That should be enough to get you started. If you won't to post another message with your strengths and weaknesses, I'd be happy to look through those with you.

Happy Studying!

Brett