Not giving up! What is the best prep stategy? HELP!

Question

Hello GMAT experts, assassins and friends, I need your help!

I have been studying for the GMAT since July 2019. The decision to go to business school dates back since mid-2017 when I was working for a consultancy firm (I still work here) that provides analysis to top multinational companies operating in Southeast Asia (where I currently live, I am American), including the big four! So it was natural for me to be drawn to an MBA since all my mentors and advisors had them. I also aspire to lead and manage a firm someday or work for the big four. Anyway, the GMAT has always been intimidating to me, simply because I had to re-learn many math concepts as math and anything quantitative was never my thing (however, I must say that now, I know a lot about math rules and is pretty good in geometry!). I took Kaplan's online course (and paid handsomely) as well as classroom course for two months. I took four mock tests while I was there. On my first test without any prior studying, I scored 470 (forgot composition). Second test, 530, third, 560, fourth, remained at 560, but a verbal percentile of 69. I was confident on my verbal and decided to study more on the quant section. I took the official GMAT test for the first time and scored a dreaded 430. I had trouble sleeping the night before, blanked out during test day and was just not ready. I took a Kaplan mock test and my quant percentile went up to 40, the highest it's been. So yesterday, I took another test after two additional months of prep on quant. I GOT A 470...felt weak, destroyed and diminished.

Is it me, or ACTUAL test problems are MUCH, MUCH harder? Anyway - I AM DETERMINED TO SUCCEED AND I KNOW I CAN DO IT!!!

My goal is to break the 600 threshold, preferably 650! But hey, I joined GMATclub, so why not 700?! I am optimistic. My goal is to enroll in ND Mendoza Business School in the of Fall 2020. I have submitted my application and did my interview - everything went well. The GMAT is the last thing I need.

So my question is - what is your suggestion GMAT assassins? What is an effective study method? How do I pass the 600 threshold in TWO months? The HIGHEST quant score I received is 40 (percentile) and verbal 69 (percentile), this adds up to around 610/620? But this was in a mock test. In addition, I have been going through at least 20-25 adaptive practice questions everyday.

In addition, would anyone recommend a new online course prep?!

Best, C

Raxit85 · Answer

Hi, Raycalvin90 Welcome to GMAT club. Below link may help you. https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-study-p ... l#p1680625 Regards.

Gmatsaiyan · Answer

Follow the following study plan:-
https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-study-p ... ml?fl=menu
https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-self-pr ... tml?f=menu

Courses that can help with your prep:-
https://gmatclub.com/forum/best-gmat-co ... ml?fl=menu

Best books for Quants:-
https://gmatclub.com/forum/best-gmat-ma ... ml?fl=menu
Best books for Verbal:-
https://gmatclub.com/forum/best-gmat-ve ... ml?fl=menu

Best Gmat practice tests:-
https://gmatclub.com/forum/all-gmat-pra ... ml?fl=menu

MahmoudFawzy · Answer

I think the answer for your question is simple. You have a problem with the quant. section.
My advice would be away from taking extra courses.

I recommend that you depend solely on GMATclub for the quant section.
here is my recipe:
1- study each topic from this megathread:  https://gmatclub.com/forum/ultimate-gmat-quantitative-megathread-244512.html#p1886497 
2- After each topic, don't jump to the next until you practice questions on it.
3- After finishing a topic, go to the questionbank  https://gmatclub.com/forum/search.php?view=search_tags 
4- choose the same topic, start with the easy difficulty, and choose known sources only (Offical guide, Kaplan, Veritas, Manhattan,....) and click search
5- rearrange the questions in decending order according to the number of kudos.
6- Solve the top questions (easy top 50) (medium top 25) (hard top 15)
7- for each question, use the time counter.
8- for any question that you solved too slow or solved wrong, add it to you bookmark.
9- read the explanation of each questions thoroughly (both right and wrong ones)
10- pay attention to how the questions are answered and the concept behind
11- if you find any new concept or formula, write it down in a separate paper for your reference.
12- repeat these steps for each topic by advancing from easy to medium to hard.
13- don't skip a level without making sure that the previous level is mastered (easy 90%, medium 80%, hard 65%)
14- don't skip a day without solving quant.

AnirudhaS · Answer

Just borrow Bunuel's brain for a day!

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Raycalvin90,

I'm sorry to hear that your 2 Official GMATs did not go as well as hoped. Before I can offer you the specific advice that you’re looking for, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) On what dates did you take your 2 GMATs and how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores - not the percentiles)?
2) How many hours did you typically study each week?
3) On what dates did you take EACH of your CATs/mocks and how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

Goals:
4) What is your exact goal score? What is the minimum Score that you would need to apply to the School(s) that interest you?
5) What is the latest that you can submit your GMAT Score (the more specific that you can be with your answer, the better)?

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

Raycalvin90 · Answer

My goodness, thank you all for the response. MahmoudFawzy, I appreciate your input and I will definitely give it a try!

EMPOWERgmatRichC, to answer your questions:

Studies:
1) The two official GMAT tests were taken on October 1, 2019 and January 4, 2020. I unfortunately do not know how to pul my scores on these two tests as I cancelled both scores.

GMAT1 - 430
GMAT2 - 470

2) Over the last month, two hours daily. Before that - very inconsistent due to work and personal issues. However, I have more time now in the next four months.

3) 
CAT1 - 470 Sometime in early July 2019 (I lost the scores)
CAT2 - 530 (Q32, V31) - Third week July 2019
CAT3 - 560 (Q35, V32) - First week August 2019
CAT4 - 560 (Q34, V33) - Third week August 2019
CAT5 - 510 (Q35, V25) - Fourth week August 2019
CAT6 - 540 (Q37, V27) - Third week December 2019

*SHOCKED at the amount of drop at CAT5 and CAT6 verbal scores. I must admit I neglected verbal study!

Goals:
4) My goal score is 650+ I want my Q to be 40+ and V to be 35+. The schools that I am looking at is around the 600-700 range.
5) I can submit my GMAT score the latest sometime in the first week of April this year in order to meet the deadline of the school I want to go to.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Raycalvin90,

I’m sorry to hear how things have been going with your GMAT. Since you have taken the GMAT a number of times and have yet to break 470, you clearly lack the foundational skills you need for a high score, right? Moving forward, make sure that you follow a study plan that allows you to learn GMAT quant and verbal from the ground up. In other words, you must learn each GMAT quant and verbal topic individually, and then practice each topic until you’ve gained mastery. Let me expand on this idea further.

Let’s say you are learning about Number Properties. First, you should develop as much conceptual knowledge about Number Properties as possible. In other words, your goal will be to completely understand properties of factorials, perfect squares, quadratic patterns, LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, and remainders, to name a few concepts. After carefully reviewing the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer Number Properties questions, practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties. 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. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.

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.

Follow a similar routine for verbal. For example, let’s say you start by learning about Critical Reasoning. Your first goal is to fully master the individual Critical Reasoning topics: Strengthen the Argument, Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, etc. As you learn about each Critical Reasoning question type, do focused practice so that you can track your skill in answering each type. If, for example, you get a weakening question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize the specific question type? Were you doing too much analysis in your head? Did you skip over a keyword in an answer choice? You must thoroughly analyze your mistakes and seek to turn weaknesses into strengths by focusing on the question types you dread seeing and the questions you take a long time to answer correctly.

When practicing Reading Comprehension, you need to develop a reading strategy that is both efficient and thorough. Reading too fast and not understanding what you have read are equally as harmful as reading too slow and using up too much time. When attacking Reading Comprehension passages, you must have one clear goal in mind: to understand the context of what you are reading. However, you must do so efficiently, so you need to avoid getting bogged down in the details of each paragraph and instead focus on understanding the main point of each paragraph. That being said, do not fall into the trap of thinking that you can just read the intro and the conclusion and thereby comprehend the main idea of a paragraph. As you read a paragraph, consider how the context of the paragraph relates to previous paragraphs, so you can continue developing your overall understanding of the passage. Furthermore, as you practice Reading Comprehension, focus on the exact types of questions with which you struggle: Find the Main Idea, Inference, Author’s Tone, etc. As with Critical Reasoning, analyze your incorrect Reading Comprehension answers to better determine why you tend to get a particular question type wrong, and then improve upon your weaknesses. Keep in mind that GMAT Reading Comprehension passages are not meant to be easy to read. So, to better prepare yourself to analyze such passages, read magazines with similar content and style, such as The New York Times, Scientific American, and Smithsonian. 
 
Sentence Correction is a bit of a different animal compared to Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning. There are three aspects to getting correct answers to GMAT Sentence Correction questions: what you know, such as grammar rules, what you see, such as violations of grammar rules and the logic of sentence structure, and what you do, such as carefully considering each answer choice in the context of the non-underlined portion of the sentence. To drive up your Sentence Correction score, it is likely that you will have to work on all three of those aspects.
 
Regarding what you know, first and foremost, you MUST know your grammar rules. Let's be clear, though: GMAT Sentence Correction is not just a test of knowledge of grammar rules. The reason for learning grammar rules is so that you can determine what sentences convey and whether sentences are well-constructed. In fact, in many cases, incorrect answers to Sentence Correction questions are grammatically flawless. Thus, often your task is to use your knowledge of grammar rules to determine which answer choice creates the most logical sentence meaning and structure.
 
This determination of whether sentences are well-constructed and logical is the second aspect of finding correct answers to Sentence Correction questions, what you see. To develop this skill, you probably have to slow way down. You won't develop this skill by spending less than two minutes per question. For a while, anyway, you have to spend time with each question, maybe even ten or fifteen minutes on one question sometimes, analyzing every answer choice until you see the details that you have to see in order to choose the correct answer. As you go through the answer choices, consider the meaning conveyed by each version of the sentence. Does the meaning make sense? Even if you can tell what the version is SUPPOSED to convey, does the version really convey that meaning? Is there a verb to go with the subject? Do all pronouns clearly refer to nouns? By slowing way down and looking for these details, you learn to see what you have to see in order to clearly understand which answer to a Sentence Correction question is correct.
 
There is only one correct answer to any Sentence Correction question, there are clear reasons why that choice is correct and the others are not, and those reasons are not that the correct version simply "sounds right." In fact, the correct version often sounds a little off at first. That correct answers may sound a little off is not surprising. If the correct answers were always the ones that sounded right, then most people most of the time would get Sentence Correction questions correct, without really knowing why the wrong answers were wrong and the correct answers were correct. So, you have to go beyond choosing what "sounds right" and learn to clearly see the logical reasons why one choice is better than all of the others.
 
As for the third aspect of getting Sentence Correction questions correct, what you do, the main thing you have to do is be very careful. You have to make sure that you are truly considering the structures of sentences and the meanings conveyed rather than allowing yourself to be tricked into choosing trap answers that sound right but don't convey meanings that make sense. You also have to make sure that you put some real energy into finding the correct answers. Finding the correct answer may take bouncing from choice to choice repeatedly until you start to see the differences between the choices that make all choices wrong except for one. Often, when you first look at the choices, only one or two seem obviously incorrect. It may take time for you to see what you have to see. Getting the right answers takes a certain work ethic. You have to be determined to see the differences and to figure out the precise reasons that one choice is correct.
 
To improve what you do when you answer Sentence Correction questions, seek to become aware of how you are going about answering them. Are you being careful and looking for logic and details, or are you quickly eliminating choices that sound a little off and then choosing the best of the rest? If you choose an incorrect answer, consider what you did that resulted in your arriving at that answer and what you could do differently in order to arrive at correct answers more consistently. Furthermore, see how many questions you can get correct in a row as you practice. If you break your streak by missing one, consider what you could have done differently to extend your streak.

As with your Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension regimens, after learning a particular Sentence Correction topic, engage in focused practice with 30 questions or more that involve that topic. As your skills improve, you will then want to practice with questions that test you on skills from multiple Sentence Correction topics.

In order to follow the path described above, you may need some new quant and verbal materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the  best quant  and  verbal courses . You also may find it helpful to read the following article about  The Phases of Preparing for the GMAT .

Feel free to reach out with any further questions. Good luck!

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Raycalvin90,

I've sent you a PM with some additional questions.

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

Raycalvin90 · Answer

First of all, thank you to ScottTargetTestPrep and EMPOWERgmatRichC for the amazing responses. ScottTargetTestPrep, thank you for the detailed tip. I will actually attempt to follow through with your tip and see where it takes me. I can spare around two-three hours of studying everyday since I am back at work now and I plan on taking the two official GMAT test (CAT?) on their website within the next month.

Best,

Calvin

Best,

Calvin

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

My pleasure!!

Raycalvin90 · Answer

Hello everyone!

Just a quick update from the last two weeks. My studies have been going like this:

One hour in the morning, practice with adaptive quizzes, one hour in the afternoon, practice with adaptive quizzes, and in the evening: one hour to review mistakes, where I went wrong etc.

3/4 quant study and 1/4 verbal study FOR NOW.

My vow for the next two months: A CAT/mock test EVERY Sunday afternoon.

I am happy to announce that I made some progress:

Latest CAT, let's call it 2020CAT1: 580, Q37,V32

The goal is to bump quant to 40 and verbal to 35 within the next two weeks! I am expecting a 600 in the next CAT and move on from there. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Not giving up! What is the best prep stategy? HELP!

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