PANIC: Help a friend out

Question

I’m supposed to take the test a week from Wednesday and I am freaking out. I took gmat prep software yesterday and scored a 590. I know this is not reflective of my knowledge, as I have been studying hardcore since December. I’ve done sackman total math, mgmt books, but have saved the OG for this week. I know these concepts, but mixed up I get a little thrown off. I can’t seem to let a question go because I know I can answer it. I took the first mgmt CAT at my own pace just to see my quant and scored a 46 (I did cheat on one overlapping set problem just to get the formula), oh and I also did it at 1130pm at night lying in bed, so I’m sure if I tweaked my setting and the time of day, I would have scored higher. for those who have been slapped with disappointment as you got down to the wire, what did you do? I have good Friday off, sat, sun and took mon and tues off. so I have 5 full days of study before the test. I NEED to score a 700+. I have put in all of this time, I know these concepts. I know I need to brush up on verbal and some general mistakes in math, but I know the bulk of this stuff. I was not intimidated by the prep software and people said that it is close to the gmat. I knew I could answer almost every one of those questions, except maybe 2 or 3. thanks for any replys, this site is a great shoulder to cry on :-D

udvranto · Answer

Relax... You are going thru a burn out. You are lucky that it happened before the test. Take a planned approach so that you are not mentally burned out during the test. I will post a link shortly.

udvranto · Answer

Look in this post: help-not-much-improvement-after-two-months-of-practice-128634.html
nsspaz posted a link about professional athlete. That link contains a two week of workout schedule before a test. Take this as a guideline and just make a plan for the remaining days.

Please do post your plan here. Although, I am not an expert on the subject, someone else may be able to help.

AMD793 · Answer

here is my plan:

Quant:
I still run into issues with overlapping sets, mixture problems, hard questions about interior angles and finding a side/area of something, roman numeral questions that center around number properties, and very hard probability. that’s what I got from the prep. my plan is to go back through mgmt geo, numprop and word translations in these sections. I also have Total Math and will poke around there. I’ve done 400 of sackmans designed problems on arith, number prop, exponents, ratios and wasn’t getting much wrong. then it’s all OG. I’m going to do all the OG 12 problems and the quant supplement, review any answers I got wrong. should I time myself for these OG problems at first? I’m sure the first half of the problems I will be able to do in under 2 minutes, but obviously that’s not the difficulty range I want to end up in on the actual test. I wanted to mix in the rest of the mgmt cats, some of the gmat club tests and the hard problems from sackmans book of 1000 problems. this was my goal at least

Verbal
I need to brush up on SC. I was doing fine when I looked at it, and I used the Aristotle prep which I found very helpful. is there anything beyond Aristotle that’s worth a look? critical reasoning I need help on some of those boldfaced ones. I’m fine with strengthen/weaken/assumption, but the others could use some in depth review again I believe. RC I actually do well in. I took OG 12 verbal section and made 8 or so mock tests. I took 14 SC, 14 CR and 3 passages together, mixed them up so they all weren’t in a row, and timed myself. (I can post these mock tests if anyone needs). so for example, I took the first 14 SC, first 14 cr and 3 passages (I think it was the first three RC), I adjusted to get 41 by adding an extra SC or RC. so mock test #1 was easy because it was the easier problems, and then got harder. back to my point, unless I had an off day at work so far on the first 5 tests I made I was getting 1 or 2 wrong out of the total RC passages. SC and CR varied. overall I found I would get a max of 7 questions wrong. 1-2 was careless errors, 1-2 were ALWAYs the question I read after looking at the clock, and the rest were just being human. I have 3 mock tests leftover which are the harder ones, so I’m going to see what happens. I haven’t reviewed thoroughly what I got wrong in the last test either.

bottom line

I know I need to get better with timing. I also know at this point I can be flip flopping verbal to math. I need to do a little bit of everything every day, then really slam hard between fri-tues. at this point the whole relax the day before the test approach is not flying with me, I still feel like I was be doing work on tues. probably hit the gym twice so I keep myself sane. anyways, I know I am capable of more. I’m not afraid of this test. I am ready, I know I am, I just am trying to put the final pieces together. in a faraway world, I reasonably assumed that my biggest gains would be in this week from practice practice practice. but, if I have the wrong approach and should realistically push this back a few weeks I will do so. I just am maxed out. I want to take on this test. I believe I my heart I can beat it, and I’m just trying to make sense of the home stretch. :shock:

udvranto · Answer

AMD793, It feels that you have problems in timing. Read this MGMAT post . Specially work on the 1-min sense. Let go of a difficult quant problem if you are spending more than the allowed time. Focus on OG. OG is the best material to study from. I did the same mistake of saving it for the last. Anyway, focus on it now. Don't just solve, read the explanation and really learn the content so that if the similar problem appears in the test you can answer it. You still did not reduce your load. Rather pumping up to do even more study. The link I provided is a scientific research, not just some online junk found on the net.

It came from a book called periodization. So practice on your weak areas, focus on the official material and review the answers and take planned rest (maybe not exactly like the way mentioned in the post, but at least a reasonable amount of rest). Most importantly, do NOT overdo and do NOT panic. It's just a test! (BTW, please take my advice with a grain of salt. My last GMAT was a disaster. I learnt from that lesson but did not prove myself yet.)

AMD793 · Answer

thanks a lot for your help. ill decide tomorrow if i want to reschedule as thats the last day before you lose the money. at this point i feel like i should just take it, and take it again if need be. oh the anguish of this test!

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