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In Episode 4 of our GMAT Ninja CR series, we tackle the most intimidating CR question type: Boldface & "Legalese" questions. If you've ever stared at an answer choice that reads, "The first is a consideration introduced to counter a position that...
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26 Oct 2015, 18:47
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My insights (in order):
(1) Don’t bother with 700+ questions.
The 700+ questions on this forum have the most attempts and responses (perhaps for discussion purposes). I see a majority of people spending a lot of time on 700+ questions. GMAT, as are other standardized tests, is a thinking test. You’ll be better to answer 700+ questions not by practicing 700+ questions, but by really building a foundation and knowing sub 700 level questions inside and out. The 700+ level questions are so few and far between, that learning one won’t help much you because you will rarely see something similar. The purpose of 700+ questions isn’t to know it, the purpose is when you see something unfamiliar you know the basics to work your way through it.
(2) Do as much high yield as you can
Do all reviews you can. There are a ton of reviews here created by users. They are golden. It’s usually the basics, but since it’s written by different authors, it’ll help you understand different perspectives of the basics.
Same thing with flash cards. A lot of people overlook them and think it’s very basic, and you’ll never see the same questions. Which is true, but if you are able to think through the very basic, you can handle anything.
The area’s you are weak on, do a lot of the sub 600 and even some 600-700 questions in that topic. For me, that was permutations and combinations, and algebra in DS (can plug in numbers for PS).
(3) I think ~3 months is the optimum time line.
I prepared over the summer, which was 3 months. I don’t have a job. But, I did not study all day either. I actually went to study abroad for two weeks. Few family weekend trips (2-4 days). I had a social life, went to clubs, etc. I didn’t have a time limit of studying either. Some days I didn’t study at all. Most days was 2-6 hours. Some days I went 14+ hours.
Like a sweet spot on a baseball bat, I think 3 months is key. And I think there is a limit on the amount of practice you should do (unless you are weak in a concept to where you aren’t answering a majority of the sub 700 questions correctly).
Quality > Quantity. Do as much of the official questions as possible. Don’t skip any questions, that means do the 700+ (only time you’ll hear me say this).
A big misconception is the more questions you do, the better. This is not true. Once you go beyond the official questions, you need realize you are slowly veering yourself off the course. I had friends who I took the MCAT with me that studied since freshman year. Went though thousands of questions and learned them, but did poorly on the actual test. As mentioned above, standardized tests are about seeing something you’ve never seen before and figuring it out. Standardized tests are not about doing as much practice as you can in hopes of seeing questions similar to the ones you practiced.
(4) timing two minutes per questions
Did the MGMAT books. They strongly suggest in every book how at a 1 minute mark make a commitment to figure it out or guess and move on, etc. And how you should take about 2 minutes for every questions. I wouldn’t pay too much attention to this. There was some DS questions I can figure out in 20 or 30 seconds. There was a question that took me almost 5 minutes on the actual test date.
Should point out my opinion here is a bit biased. I had a really strong foundation to where I felt like there wasn’t a question I couldn’t eventually figure out. If there is something you don’t know, and you know you don’t know, throw up the white flag, and move on to the next question.
(5) error log is a waste of time
Some people swear by it, but not me. I think it’s a waste of time. That is, not to say that I didn’t do any type of assessment. For math, I think you know what you are strong in and what you are weak in. Same thing with anything else in life. If I asked you to play a pick up game of basketball, I think you know if you are good at basketball or not.
For verbal, I think it’s especially a waste of time identifying the questions, etc. Most of the time here the topic of the passage is a better indication of your assessment than the question type itself.
Some info about me:
I am not new here. My main username is my first and last name, so for the sake of privacy, I’ve decided to create this name.
I am currently in undergrad. I am actually pre-med, I took my MCAT the summer before my junior year, and my GMAT the summer before my senior year. I am, of course, applying to a joint MD-MBA program.
I also did well on my MCAT (top 5%), but I don’t consider myself a genius or anything of that sort. My ACT was 29. Had a perfect 36 on the math section but the GMAT math is quite a bit different from the ACT, so I wouldn’t bank on your high school math assessments for the GMAT quant. My English ACT was quite low (23). Again, the ACT English is quite different from the GMAT English, I actually think the GMAT English is quite a bit easier as, I believe, it can be prepared for quite easily.
Integrated Reasoning - I can’t offer much help here. Think I had an advantage as I am pre-med and read a lot of research papers and charts, etc. I didn’t study much here.
Writing - there is a good guide here, looked at it the night before my exam. If you are a US grad, I wouldn’t spend more than a night here. This is mostly for foreign applicants to see whether they can write.
(1) Don’t bother with 700+ questions.
The 700+ questions on this forum have the most attempts and responses (perhaps for discussion purposes). I see a majority of people spending a lot of time on 700+ questions. GMAT, as are other standardized tests, is a thinking test. You’ll be better to answer 700+ questions not by practicing 700+ questions, but by really building a foundation and knowing sub 700 level questions inside and out. The 700+ level questions are so few and far between, that learning one won’t help much you because you will rarely see something similar. The purpose of 700+ questions isn’t to know it, the purpose is when you see something unfamiliar you know the basics to work your way through it.
(2) Do as much high yield as you can
Do all reviews you can. There are a ton of reviews here created by users. They are golden. It’s usually the basics, but since it’s written by different authors, it’ll help you understand different perspectives of the basics.
Same thing with flash cards. A lot of people overlook them and think it’s very basic, and you’ll never see the same questions. Which is true, but if you are able to think through the very basic, you can handle anything.
The area’s you are weak on, do a lot of the sub 600 and even some 600-700 questions in that topic. For me, that was permutations and combinations, and algebra in DS (can plug in numbers for PS).
(3) I think ~3 months is the optimum time line.
I prepared over the summer, which was 3 months. I don’t have a job. But, I did not study all day either. I actually went to study abroad for two weeks. Few family weekend trips (2-4 days). I had a social life, went to clubs, etc. I didn’t have a time limit of studying either. Some days I didn’t study at all. Most days was 2-6 hours. Some days I went 14+ hours.
Like a sweet spot on a baseball bat, I think 3 months is key. And I think there is a limit on the amount of practice you should do (unless you are weak in a concept to where you aren’t answering a majority of the sub 700 questions correctly).
Quality > Quantity. Do as much of the official questions as possible. Don’t skip any questions, that means do the 700+ (only time you’ll hear me say this).
A big misconception is the more questions you do, the better. This is not true. Once you go beyond the official questions, you need realize you are slowly veering yourself off the course. I had friends who I took the MCAT with me that studied since freshman year. Went though thousands of questions and learned them, but did poorly on the actual test. As mentioned above, standardized tests are about seeing something you’ve never seen before and figuring it out. Standardized tests are not about doing as much practice as you can in hopes of seeing questions similar to the ones you practiced.
(4) timing two minutes per questions
Did the MGMAT books. They strongly suggest in every book how at a 1 minute mark make a commitment to figure it out or guess and move on, etc. And how you should take about 2 minutes for every questions. I wouldn’t pay too much attention to this. There was some DS questions I can figure out in 20 or 30 seconds. There was a question that took me almost 5 minutes on the actual test date.
Should point out my opinion here is a bit biased. I had a really strong foundation to where I felt like there wasn’t a question I couldn’t eventually figure out. If there is something you don’t know, and you know you don’t know, throw up the white flag, and move on to the next question.
(5) error log is a waste of time
Some people swear by it, but not me. I think it’s a waste of time. That is, not to say that I didn’t do any type of assessment. For math, I think you know what you are strong in and what you are weak in. Same thing with anything else in life. If I asked you to play a pick up game of basketball, I think you know if you are good at basketball or not.
For verbal, I think it’s especially a waste of time identifying the questions, etc. Most of the time here the topic of the passage is a better indication of your assessment than the question type itself.
Some info about me:
I am not new here. My main username is my first and last name, so for the sake of privacy, I’ve decided to create this name.
I am currently in undergrad. I am actually pre-med, I took my MCAT the summer before my junior year, and my GMAT the summer before my senior year. I am, of course, applying to a joint MD-MBA program.
I also did well on my MCAT (top 5%), but I don’t consider myself a genius or anything of that sort. My ACT was 29. Had a perfect 36 on the math section but the GMAT math is quite a bit different from the ACT, so I wouldn’t bank on your high school math assessments for the GMAT quant. My English ACT was quite low (23). Again, the ACT English is quite different from the GMAT English, I actually think the GMAT English is quite a bit easier as, I believe, it can be prepared for quite easily.
Integrated Reasoning - I can’t offer much help here. Think I had an advantage as I am pre-med and read a lot of research papers and charts, etc. I didn’t study much here.
Writing - there is a good guide here, looked at it the night before my exam. If you are a US grad, I wouldn’t spend more than a night here. This is mostly for foreign applicants to see whether they can write.
mvictor
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28 Oct 2015, 09:32
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congrats on a great score, and thank you for your story!!! Good Luck with your application 
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