Planning a Personalized Study Plan

Question

Dear GMAT Experts

Hello.
I am a recent Business graduate and I am preparing for my Masters Program. 
I took my first GMAT about a week ago, and I got 480. The score was about 130 lower than what I have got for my mock test. 
I spent 3 months studying GMAT and I expected at least above 600 for GMAT but was very disappointed when I saw the score.

My target goal is getting +720. I have my more than 5 hours a day to study for GMAT and I am planning to rewrite GMAT after a month period.

I would like to ask for help to GMAT Experts on how to set my study plan so I can improve my score as much as I can during the 1 month period.

Thank you for your help in advance.

Regards
Yesul

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Yesul,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day did not go as well as hoped. When these types of score drops occur, the two likely "causes" involve either something that was unrealistic during practice or something that was surprising (or not accounted for) on Test Day. Before we discuss any of those potential issues though, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

1) Did you take the At-home GMAT or did you take your GMAT at a Test Facility?
2) How many hours do you typically study each week?
3) What study materials have you used so far?
4) 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)?
5) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?

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

Yesul · Answer

Hello! Thank you for your response

During the exam, after finishing my Verbal section, I took extra 2 minutes of break not realizing the time has passed. So I panicked and could not fully focus on the Quant section. I think it did affect me negatively:( Here are the answers to your questions. 1.) I took GMAT at a Test Facility 2.) I studied about 35~40 hours a week 3.) I have used e-GMAT online course and OG 2020 Study Guide. 1st attempt: 6 July 2020 / Score:510 (V26 Q34) OG Practice Exam 1 2nd attempt: 10 July 2020 / Score:520 (V19 Q44) OG Practice Exam 2 3rd attempt: 13 July 2020 / Score: 590 (V23 Q48) OG Practice Exam 3 4th attempt: 15 July 2020 / Score: 610 ( V27 Q48) OG Practice Exam 4 4.) I am planning to apply next year January. I am preparing for Accounting Masters Program ranked 50th ~ 100th schools in the USA or in Canada. (Not certain yet) Thank you in advance and I look forward to hear from you! Regards Yesul

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Yesul,

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

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

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Yesul,

Although I cannot provide an exact study plan, I’m happy to provide some general advice regarding how to improve your GMAT quant and verbal skills. Since you recently scored 480, moving forward, you want to follow a study plan that allows you to learn GMAT quant and verbal from the ground up. In other words, follow a study plan that allows you to learn each GMAT quant and verbal topic individually and practice each topic until you’ve gained mastery. Let me expand on this idea further.

If you are learning about Number Properties, 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. 
Each time you strengthen your understanding of a topic and your skill in answering questions of a particular type, you increase your odds of hitting your score goal. You know that there are types of questions that you are happy to see, types that you would rather not see, and types that you take a long time to answer correctly. Learn to more effectively answer the types of questions that you would rather not see, and make them into your favorite types. Learn to correctly answer in two minutes or less questions that you currently take five minutes to answer. By finding, say, a dozen weaker quant areas and turning them into strong areas, you will make great progress toward hitting your quant score goal. If a dozen areas turn out not to be enough, strengthen some more areas.

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 topics: Strengthen the Argument, Weaken The Argument, Resolve the Paradox, etc. As you learn about each 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, you likely 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 really a test of knowledge of grammar rules. The reason for learning the 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 none of those reasons are 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 logical meanings. You also have to make sure that you put some real energy into finding the correct answers. Finding the correct answer to a Sentence Correction question may take bouncing from choice to choice until you start to see the differences that make all choices wrong except for one. Often, when you first look at the choices, only one or two seem obviously incorrect. Getting the right answers takes a certain work ethic. You have to take the time to see the differences between answers 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 to arrive at that answer and what you could do differently 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 do 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 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 Yesul,

I received your email and ESR - and sent you a PM with an analysis of your ESR and some additional questions.

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

Yesul · Answer

Hello.
First of all, thank you so much for your thorough and specific response. I really appreciate it.

After reading your reply, I realized what my problems were when I was studying for my 1st GMAT. 
Every time I got any question wrong, I simply read the solution and did not "analyze" why I got that question wrong. 
I also realized that I tend to give up on understanding RC passage when I see sentences that I could not decode and fully understand. Maybe these were the reasons why I got most of my inference questions for RC wrong.

I reread your response and definitely put what you have advised into action. I hope I can come back to you with great news after my 2nd GMAT.

Once again, thank you very much for your effort.

Sincerely
Yesul

Yesul · Answer

Hello

I will check and reply to you right away!

Thank you

GMATWhizTeam · Answer

Hi Yesul,

It is sad to hear about how things went with your GMAT. A difference of 130 points is huge and it is really necessary to identify the reason behind it because 3 months is a considerable amount of time for GMAT preparation.

The most likely reason could be your preparation was inconsistent and a few gaps in your understanding of how to approach the questions. A score of 480 indicates that you have a lot of conceptual gaps. To get a score of 600, it is really important to have a strong conceptual knowledge and it is important to get the easy-medium questions right.

Having said that you are correct that you need a personalized study plan. As you have about a month’s time to prepare and need a significant improvement, a generic plan would not suffice. By personalized study plan I mean a plan which:
  takes into account the number of hours you can dedicate in a week and creates a plan based on that. 
 Has clear deadlines and is adaptive

But to suggest you what needs to be done in order to improve, I would need you to answer the following questions.
  Was the mock you took the official one? 
 Did the approach you used in the mock differ from the one used in the actual test? 
 Did you use any standard resource?

Answers to these questions will help me guide you better. You can write back to me here or a better way would be to discuss this quickly over a call. You can schedule a free consultation call using the below link.

Click here to schedule a call

Be rest assured about the personalized study plan. I can definitely help you with that. In my journey, I have helped many students improve their score by more than 100 points in a month duration. I can suggest you how to create a personalized study plan and what should be the study strategy in the consultation call.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Sounds good! I'm here if you need me.

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