GMATNinja wrote:
DrVanNostrand wrote:
Hi Charles,
My question is with regards to GMAT prep for my 5th and final attempt.
My 3rd attempt's score was 720( Q48 V40 )
My 4th attempt's score was 690 ( Q49 V34)
I am gunning for a 750+ score in a month and a half's time.
Please tell me the necessary steps.
I have attached the ESRs.
Thank you so much for the wonderful donation,
DrVanNostrand! And sorry that we didn't get to your ESR in the livestream. The lovely behind-the-scenes crew made a point of mentioning your post to me afterwards, so here's a long-winded analysis.
A few thoughts, not necessarily in any particular order:
- It's interesting that you're consistently clobbering IR. That's obviously not a definitive sign that you can get to a 750+, but it makes me think that when you're at your very best, you're perfectly capable of reading with precision, picking your battles wisely, and executing without making silly mistakes. I might be wrong here, but my bet is that you're relatively calm and relaxed on IR, and that might not be the case on quant and (especially) verbal.
- On the verbal section of your 1st exam in July (720/48Q/40V), I think you got a little bit lucky. Your timing was a mess on both sections. In the 4th quarter of the verbal section, you spent just 28 seconds per question... and somehow got 7 out of the final 8 questions right. That's some wonderful good fortune. Also, we need to talk about your speed in verbal -- I'll get to that below.
- On the quant section of the July exam, you had very similar timing issues: 51 seconds, on average, for your final 7 questions. It cost you a bit: you missed 4 of those final 7. More importantly: is your allocation of time on quant really efficient? I doubt it. You spent nearly 3 minutes per question on average in the first chunk of the test, and you were forced to speed up as time went on. You probably would have been better off letting a few of the harder ones go early, so that you didn't melt down quite as badly towards the end. For more on quant time management, check out this video.
- On your 2nd exam in August (690/49Q/34V), the demons we see in your July exam reared their heads again, with somewhat different effects this time. On both quant and verbal, you spent an eternity on the first chunk of questions, and then you were forced to speed up later. This time, you got away with it on quant -- an average of 64 seconds for the last 7 questions, and you only missed two of them. That's somewhat lucky. Similar deal on verbal: you had 78 seconds per question for the last 8 questions, and somehow only missed two again. You mostly got away with it, but the timing issues are certainly going to drive a ton of variability in your scores from day to day. Unless you make changes to your process (and psychology -- more on that in a moment, too!), I wouldn't be surprised if your scores look totally different on the next test, just because the timing issues will lead to quite a bit of erraticness in your results.
- And now here's the biggest thing on that August test: you were a mess at the beginning of both the quant and verbal sections. Yeah, you only missed one question out of the first 7 on quant, but it was a very easy one, and you averaged more than 3 minutes per question. That can't happen -- careless errors will keep you from your ceiling, and so will stubbornness. Verbal was worse: somewhat slow in that first quarter of the section (2:34 per question), but also terrifyingly inaccurate. Something was happening to you in the beginning of both sections, but especially verbal. You're the only one who knows for sure, but my bet is that you were nervous, and you were struggling to focus. You may or may not have felt consciously jittery, but your brain wasn't working in its normal ways -- you were probably reading sloppily, or rereading things, or rushing at times and paralyzed at other times. As always, I could be very wrong here, but this shows all of the classic signs of test-day nerves in the August exam.
- One last elephant in the room: is efficiency a big underlying problem on verbal? I can't quite be sure. It's very possible that the timing issues are driven primarily by feeling a bit overwhelmed or paralyzed at times on test day. But it's also very possible that you need to get more efficient at verbal. If that's the case, there's no easy solution -- all of the BS I teach in all of my verbal videos is geared towards maximizing your efficiency, and it can be a slow, hard process to get better. But again, it's not clear to me whether the problem is your approach to verbal, your fundamental reading speed, or test-day nerves. Or some combination of those things.
- Your ESRs do seem to be saying that you're weaker on CR than the other verbal question types. Maybe there's a real issue there, and it would be good for you to put some serious work into improving your process on CR. But I'll repeat the same caveat as in today's livestream: these question-level percentile scores are based on only about 10 questions each for CR, RC, and SC, so the sample sizes are kinda small. And since some of your errors seem to be driven by time pressure and/or nerves, they might be somewhat random at times. It might be worth doing a few LSAT sections if you haven't already -- and if you perform better on RC than CR, it's probably a good sign that you need to work on your process for CR.
Did all of that make you want to throw your computer out the window?
One final thought: my instincts are telling me that your talent level is probably fine. We have a 690 and a 720, filled with what appear to be "non-academic" issues: bad time management, probably some nerves or paralysis of some kind... and perfect IR scores. That combination makes me think that a 720 isn't your ceiling on this test. Please don't prove me wrong on that last bit.
I hope that helps a bit! And seriously, thank you so much for your generosity with our Pakistani friends. It is very, very much appreciated.
Hi Charles,
Thanks dearly for such an eye opening analysis.
I have few questions:
1) While I am practicing CR from GMAT Club, I have a accuracy of around 50-60% on questions which have 75%+ difficulty level but more than 85% accuracy on all the questions below that level.
Should I focus on improving my accuracy on 75%+ difficulty level questions?
2) Combinatorics and Probability are hard nuts to crack and I struggle with these topics. Should I focus on medium level questions from those topics and leave the hard ones?
3) In my August attempt, what I found strange was that I was not able to properly understand the first two SC questions and it took time to let go.I found those question really diffecult. I didn't face the same scenario in my July attempt and I was really confident about my accuracy even in the last quartile of questions.
Where am I going wrong here?
I hope you can find time to answer my questions.
Looking forward to your suggestions.
P.S. I had an eye problem that I identified later, probably that caused the lack of focus on the August exam.It could have hindered my ability to focus on the verbal section especially starting from the middle of the verbal section.
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