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John36
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Hi Mike,

The bulk of the questions in the OG(about 70%) are from the old format of the GMAT where the average difficulty was lower because time per question was also less(about 1.5 min). It does have 30% of the questions that are from recent administrations of the GMAT. Now when we move to GMATPrep, the difficulty level is a lot closer to the real GMAT and the entire adaptive experience of the test is also fairly close to an actual GMAT test taking experience.

Here is what I would recommend.
1) Continue to use the Official GMAT guides, the main one and the supplements. You need to know everything that is in these guides, even if the average difficulty does not correspond to the real exam.

2) Next move on to GMATPrep Question Pack1 (supplemental database to GMATPrep). These are closer to the real exam.

3) Once you have taken the two free GMATPrep tests, go over the entire database of questions that are part of the GMATPrep. There is about 700 quant and 700 verbal questions. Get them from this gmatclub post: all-gmatprep-questions-quant-verbal-187679.html

4) And you can use Exam Pack 1 tests to evaluate your standing as you go ahead with your preparation.

This is a good size pool of practice questions. I would stick with official GMAT questions. The difficult questions on the GMAT are written in a particular way and that is what you are trying to internalize. Your time is too valuable and it takes a lot of effort to do problems, then review them, and then internalize your mistakes and you should only use the highest quality practice questions.

Cheers,
Dabral
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OptimusPrepJanielle
Hi Mike,

The GMAT Prep CATs and the OG questions are the best indicator of your performance.

You should be happy if you are doing good on these questions. However, do you time yourself when you are solving the OG questions? If not, then I would recommend you to solve the questions in a timed fashion so that you have that element of the time pressure in your preparation.

You may want to go for the Exam pack 1 and Question pack1.
These are very useful resources and will provided you with the recent type of questions that are tested on the GMAT.

I appreciate the advice. I am timing myself when I practice OG questions and do fairly well on pacing; however I psych myself out during practice exams, which results in poor pacing and inevitably poor scores.
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EMPOWERgmatRichC
HI John36,

Before I can recommend any resources to you, I'd like to know more about your studies so far and your overall timeline/goals:

1) What is your goal score?
2) How long have you been studying?
3) What materials have you been using?

4) How have you scored on each of your practice CATs (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores)?

5) When are you planning to take the GMAT?
6) When are you planning to apply to Business School?

Thankfully, the GMAT is a predictable, standardized Test, so you CAN train to score at a higher level.

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

Hey Rich - I'm glad you responded to my post. I'm actually using your program in conjunction with other resources. To answer your questions.

1) What is your goal score?
- 680 to 720

2) How long have you been studying?
- Beginning of March 2015

3) What materials have you been using?
- EmpowerGMAT
- I've gone through all of stage 1, 2, a majority of 3, a bit on 4 and 5

- MGMAT Series 6th edition + MGMAT Foundations of Math + MGMAT Advanced Quat (to practice a few 700+ questions)

- Phone apps for studying on the go (Magoosh, MGMAT, GmatPrep)

4) How have you scored on each of your practice CATs (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores)?
- I'm almost embarrassed to say this...
- CAT1 (no prep): 490
- MCAT1 (2nd month): 400
- CAT2 (3rd month): 550
- CAT3 (4th month): 450
- CAT4 (*2 weeks ago): 500

5) When are you planning to take the GMAT?
- Now here's the scary part: THIS SEPTEMBER 19TH.
- I know where I stand and am prepared to to retake it 20 days after.

6) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
- I received a conditional offer (awaiting GMAT scores) from an EU b-school. School year starts in early January 2016.

I know my weaknesses and use EMPOWER error log to record EVERYTHING. There are a few questions that are out of my content knowledge and I don't even try to answer them. I simple TRIAGE them and move on. Here is a list of the ones I pass on:

- Complex Permutations/Combinatorics/Probability
- Function/Formula problems
- Symbols ( I know they're "easy" but I struggle with these)
- Standard Deviation
- Overly difficult Sequence questions
- Slopes

Honestly, I know my stuff but the psychological pressure I put myself during practice exams really hurt my score. Every CAT I've taken, I've guessed on the last 5-10 questions. I panic during the tests.

Well any help would be appreciated. Thanks
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dabral
Hi Mike,

The bulk of the questions in the OG(about 70%) are from the old format of the GMAT where the average difficulty was lower because time per question was also less(about 1.5 min). It does have 30% of the questions that are from recent administrations of the GMAT. Now when we move to GMAT Prep, the difficulty level is a lot closer to the real GMAT and the entire adaptive experience of the test is also fairly close to an actual GMAT test taking experience.

Here is what I would recommend.
1) Continue to use the Official GMAT guides, the main one and the supplements. You need to know everything that is in these guides, even if the average difficulty does not correspond to the real exam.

2) Next move on to GMAT Prep Question Pack1 (supplemental database to GMAT Prep). These are closer to the real exam.

3) Once you have taken the two free GMAT Prep tests, go over the entire database of questions that are part of the GMAT Prep. There is about 700 quant and 700 verbal questions. Get them from this gmat club post

4) And you can use Exam Pack 1 tests to evaluate your standing as you go ahead with your preparation.

This is a good size pool of practice questions. I would stick with official GMAT questions. The difficult questions on the GMAT are written in a particular way and that is what you are trying to internalize. Your time is too valuable and it takes a lot of effort to do problems, then review them, and then internalize your mistakes and you should only use the highest quality practice questions.

Cheers,
Dabral

The free practice pack I went through felt so easy compared to the questions on the practice exam. I was in shock when I saw the question types that were on my test. I honestly recognized 50% of the question types.

Well I'm a purchased them and hopefully they're different than the ones I've been practicing on. Thanks Dabral!
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Also, I forgot to mention, I struggle with translating word problems into equations, charts, tables, etc. Translations and Staying Calm are my biggest problems.
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Hi Mike,

I've sent you a PM with some questions and suggestions.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
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John36


I appreciate the advice. I am timing myself when I practice OG questions and do fairly well on pacing; however I psych myself out during practice exams, which results in poor pacing and inevitably poor scores.

Psyching out is a big problem for most of us in the actual GMAT too. Solving the questions in a timed fashion will make sure that you are always aware of the clock and will mitigate this problem.

All the best!
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OptimusPrepJanielle
John36


I appreciate the advice. I am timing myself when I practice OG questions and do fairly well on pacing; however I psych myself out during practice exams, which results in poor pacing and inevitably poor scores.

Psyching out is a big problem for most of us in the actual GMAT too. Solving the questions in a timed fashion will make sure that you are always aware of the clock and will mitigate this problem.

All the best!

Thanks! Looking back on my study plan, I have found that I spent a lot of time on content review when I really did not need to. I revamped my study plan and will do more timed questions per session.
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John36
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John36


I appreciate the advice. I am timing myself when I practice OG questions and do fairly well on pacing; however I psych myself out during practice exams, which results in poor pacing and inevitably poor scores.

Psyching out is a big problem for most of us in the actual GMAT too. Solving the questions in a timed fashion will make sure that you are always aware of the clock and will mitigate this problem.

All the best!

Thanks! Looking back on my study plan, I have found that I spent a lot of time on content review when I really did not need to. I revamped my study plan and will do more timed questions per session.

Sure John. All the best
Also, make sure you make an error log for all the questions you solve incorrectly. This will make sure that you do not make the same mistake again
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Ok...took another CAT (GMATPrep) and saw a bit of an improvement. Not where I want to be but I'll take it for now. I'll list both CAT's from 9/4 and my most recent one, 9/11.

9/4: Score: 500
Quant:
- Questions 1-10: 4/10 Incorrect.
- Questions 11-23: 6/13 Incorrect.
- Questions 24-37: 12/14 Incorrect. (Guessed on last ten).

Reasons for Incorrect:
- Silly Mistakes: 9
- Intentionally passed / Triaged: 4
- Guessed/Rushed (due to time): 9
Total: 22

Verbal:
- Questions 1-10: 5/10 Incorrect. 3 S.C / 1 R.C / 1 C.R
- Questions 11-25: 7/15 Incorrect. 2 S.C / 3 R.C / 2 C.R
- Questions 26-40: 7/15 Incorrect. 1 S.C / 2 R.C / 5 C.R (Guessed on last three and got wrong due to time)
Total Wrong: 19

Reasons for Incorrect:
- Silly Mistakes / Didn't read Carefully: 5
- Did not know: 2
- Missed: SV agreement / modifier / Comparison / Parallelism : 1 each - 4 total
- Did not POE: 1
- C.R: Chose 180: 1
- Missed Idiom: 3
- Guessed (last 3 due to time): 3

9/11: Score: 560 Quant: 36 Scaled / 40 Percentile. Verbal: 31 Scaled /51 Percentile

Quant:
- Questions 1-10: 6/10 Incorrect. ( 1 Content / 4 Silly Mistakes)
- Questions 11-23: 4/13 Incorrect. (3 Too Difficult / 1 Silly Mistakes)
- Questions 24-37: 8/14 Incorrect. ( 1 Too Difficult / 2 Disorganized / 2 rushed / 3 Silly Mistakes)
Total: 18

Reasons for incorrect:
- Silly Mistake: 8
- Content / Did not know / Too Difficult: 5
- Rushed / Disorganized: 4

Verbal
- Questions 1-10: 4/10 Incorrect. 2 S.C / 2 C.R
- Questions 11-25: 3/15 Incorrect. 2 S.C / 1 C.R
- Questions 26-41: 5/16 Incorrect. 3 S.C / 1 C.R / 1 R.C (rushed last two).
Total: 12 (7 S.C / 4 C.R / 1 R.C)

Reasons for Incorrect:
- Silly Mistakes / Didn't read Carefully: 5 (4 S.C / 1 C.R)
- Did not know: 1 (1 S.C)
- Missed: SV agreement / modifier / Comparison / Parallelism (2 S.C)
- Did not POE: 1 (1 S.C)
- Missed Meaning / Mis-interpreted "Prethink" in CR and RC: 4 (3 C.R / 1 R.C)

Diagnosis??

Quant:
Silly Mistakes:
Not much of an improvement here. When I mean silly, I mean REALLY SILLY.
Example of a question I missed:

What is the Range in set { 9,8,7,3,17,15, and 16}? I Chose 13 (16-3) and missed the 17.

Ouch I know...

Missing Patterns:
There were a few questions that I got correct but spent too much time on them. This led to rushing and disorganization in some of my of my other work. After reviewing the questions, I see where I missed certain patterns and If noticed, would have shaved off a few minutes.

Pacing:
It felt better this time but still need to work on it.

Too difficult / Content:
These I intentionally dropped so I'm not too worried about them.

Verbal:

Silly Mistakes:
Much of this is due to not completely reading the answer choices in S.C. In the beginning of my studies, SC was my strongest area so I've neglected it a bit. I feel that more practice in this area will get me going a bit.

Missed Modifier / Comparison / Parallelism / SV agree:
Same as above, Practice more SC questions

Missed Meaning / Mis-interpreted "Pre-think" in CR and RC:
Overall I feel good about RC and just have to work on pre-thinking answer choices in CR.


Please chime in you have any suggestions or observations.
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