I got 450 my diagnostic test... HELP

No probs
Consider studying 'foundation of gmat quant' by manhattan gmat if you think you need soem more help.

Make flash cards and revise them every week. Quiz yourself every week. This helped me too.

Kudos if this helped

A verbal 32 is not bad, but there is still room for improvement
For the moment, you have to focus on your quant score.
As Sachin9 said, read prep books with foundations (Manhattan's collection is excellent).
Do not underestimate seemingly simple math questions. Read every paragraph in detail and do the exercises to make sure you learned the concepts.

Do not overuse practice tests... they are limited resources.

Best

Thank you very much! I really appreciate your attention. I like this community, where everybody helps each other. Another problem I have in quant is my slowness in mental calculus. The thinq is, how is suposed that a person with no math background at all will "compete" with a lot of people very well prepared in quant issues? That is one of my main concerns.

Mate,
You must never calculate anything mentally. Mental calculation is many many times error prone. Ron Purewal, world's best instructor, told me this.

As rainfall said, you gotto get used to the formulas and concepts and that might take sometime but with perseverance, you can tackle anything.

Go through the foundation book of quant by mgmat and then take their quant foundation test on thier website. This will give you a good idea about where you stand.



Any help u need, post your questions here! people would respond

Press Kudos if this helps

Hi!

The most important thing is not to panic. I have a BS in Mathematics, but I have a hard time on some GMAT questions, because they test a few high-school level gimmicks, rather than the pure mathematics I studied in college.

My recommendation is to do the 13th Edition Official Review diagnostic (or any diagnostic for that matter) and see what types of questions you're prone to get wrong. Then, go out and buy the Manhattan GMAT books that pertain to those sections (I bought them all, because they show you a ton of useful tricks). Trust me - after doing five to ten questions of any given type, you're substantially more likely to get it right. Also - be sure to continue working on the Verbal; you're on the right track with your 32, but if you want to get a 700, you'll need to score somewhere in the low 40's.

Like I said - don't panic, and don't get discouraged. It takes a lot of determination, but I'm sure that a lawyer such as yourself has all the fundamental tools, verbal and quantitative, to do very well on the GMAT. You just need the practice.

You don't need very much to go from 'not prepared' to 'prepared' as far as GMAT goes since the concepts tested are very basic. GMAT assumes only high school Math proficiency. The problem is that high school was far back so a thorough brush up is a must. You need to go through a complete set of prep material along with sectional tests to get the concepts right. This step alone will bring your Math score in the 30s range. Thereafter, it will be a game of identifying weak areas and working again on them.
As for mental calculations, before you begin doing them, you need to 'know' a few things like multiplication tables. Remember, most GMAT questions can be solved in under a minute without putting your pen to the paper. You don't need to try that right now since you are just starting out. In fact, even if you do write down a few things, you still have enough time. But you need to be able to cut down steps by working them out in your mind else time will be short.
Check out my post on how to handle calculations in GMAT:
https://www.gmatclub.com/forum/veritas-prep-resource-links-no-longer-available-399979.html#/2012/04 ... culations/

I started this topic 3 months and 10 days ago. I needed help because I had taken my diagnostic test and scored just a poor 450 (18 q and 32 v). After following all the helpful advices -really really helpful-, I have recently taken the Gmat Prep I. The score was a happy surprise because it was a 630 (38 q 38 v). A jump of 180 point!

Now I have my real test scheaduled in two months -20th July-, and I would like to have more advice on how to use this two months left in order to make the last big jump ang get into the 700 swimming pool.

Particularly, I know what I have to do on quant -finish geometry, equations and ineqs and word translations guides from mgmat. the greates souce-. I think that after that I can reach low 40s in quant and then practice until be able to break the 45 barrier.

However, I assume that I won't be able to score 49 in two months left -I think my real limit is 47-, so I am interested in bringing my verbal score from 38 to 42, if possible. Any advice on that?

Any more general advice? I am making any wrong assumptions here? Will I be able to reach 700?

Thanks in advance

First of all, congrats on your 180 points jump!

To improve your Verbal score you should focus in order:
SC, CR and RC.

With practice you start to recognize some patterns in SC (parallelism, modifiers,...) and this will speed up your time in those questions.
Every second you save here can be useful in the other questions.

My advise is CR second and RC third because the skills you acquire with CR can be used also in RC.
So these sections can be seen as one under many points of view (inference, method of reasoning,...)

This is what works for me, hope you find it useful too
If you are looking for books on SC, I can recommend you the SC from the Veritas's Gmat Series or the SC form MGMAT.

One last thing: if you wanna know "what does it take to reach 700"take a look here.

Thanks very much for your advise. I have tried SMARTGMAT and have liked too much. I think it provides a great insight on how to plan my time left before the test. After using it, my conclusion is that I need to balance my study. Because I think I won't be able to reach some percentiles in verbal nor in quant. Particularly, given the time left -two months-, I think I have a ceiling of 42 in verbal and 47 -at max- in quant, which gives a 730 -that would make me be sooo happy-.

The only but of SMARTGMAT is that it seems to assume that there are no limits of improving a particular area. For instance, as I said, I think that it is not possible for me to reach above 47 in quant -given the time left and my natural capabilities-, so much less to score a 50 or 51.

In spite of this, indeed, it is a great software.

Thanks again!

That's some solid improvement but be prepared for more grilling over the next 2 months if you are aiming for 700. In fact, this 70 point jump will be more difficult than the 180 point jump. You must be comfortable with most basic concepts now. The problem will be advanced application. If you already know areas that you must first work on, great! It means there is still scope of good improvement with little effort. Once you finish the complete prep material, then take a test and figure out what score you are at. After that, the improvement is usually slower so keep your patience. Verbal has few basics but wide application so drill down those basics first - The various questions types in CR/RC - how to tackle each, the various errors in SC - the different forms it can take etc. Then practice as much as you can.
A 47-42 split is reasonable. Whether you will be able to reach 700 depends on your drive. It's certainly possible.

Buddy try gmatclub Quant tests...They are tough and will prepare you to get high score.

Thank you all people on the forum for your kind replies and knowledge.

I have a question. Yesterday i took a gmat prep. It's been a while since i took the last test. I got 760. But stop. These are not exactly good news: i had done before arround 70 % of the questions. I did not remember all the questions but they were familiar to me. However, when i knew the exact answer i did it wrong (this happened with 3 questions in quant). Anyway, that 760 is totally inflated.

But, my question is, where i am standing right now. Hundred points below? 50? 120? I do not know, and would like to have the insight of an expert or any people on the forums.

Second, i have done thousands of questions of all sources. So i cannot trust any test i find in the market (i think). How can i asses or test my level now?

I have my test on august 1. Any comments will be appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Try out our free question bank. There are tons of new questions in it. If you do well in them, you are good to go.