Should I postpone my test date???

i think princeton is not reliable, take test 2 as well along with few other free test then decide

Hi nithingopal,

If you are not feeling confident about your readiness to face the GMAT, then you should certainly consider pushing back your Test Date. There's no harm in testing as scheduled, but you could potentially save some money and aggravation by choosing to extend your studies at this point (even if it's for just a few weeks).

Before I can offer you any additional advice for your studies, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How many hours do you typically study each week?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) 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)?

Goals:
4) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
5) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

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

Thank you so much for your replies guys. This community is always giving. I am going to take the GMATprep 2 today. My Quant is averaging on 41 and verbal is at 34. But the highest scores I got so far are q45 and v42. with v42 once in GMAT prep1.

Today is the last day I can postpone the test with a minimum cost. So I am a little conflicted.

Besides that, I am a typical Indian engineer with majority IT experience of 3 years and 12 months of hardcore sales experience. Planning to get into consulting/strategy. So far, my schools of choice are ISB, Insead, HEC, N.W kellogg.

Any advice is appreciated.

Posted from my mobile device

## Update ##

Just finished GMATprep 2.

Got 650 with q45 and v34.

Planning to postpone the test date. Kindly advice.

Posted from my mobile device

Hi nithingopal,

Since your last practice test shows that you are about 70+ points off your score goal, I think it was a good idea to push back your exam. Regarding how to study, moving forward, to improve both your verbal and quant skills, you should follow a linear and structured study plan. A study plan that allows you to individually learn each GMAT quant and verbal topic and then practice each topic until you’ve gained mastery. By studying in such a way you can ensure that you systematically fill in knowledge gaps and improve your skills. Let me expand on this idea further.

Let’s say, for example, you are learning about Number Properties. First, 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.

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 Critical Reasoning topics: Strengthen the Argument, Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, etc. As you learn about each Critical Reasoning question type, do focused practice so that you can track your skill in answering each type of question. 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, it is likely that you 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 just a test of knowledge of grammar rules. The reason for learning 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 under 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 those reasons are not 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 meanings that make sense. 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 repeatedly until you start to see the differences between the choices that make all choices wrong except for one. Often, when you first look at the choices, only one or two seem obviously incorrect. It may take time for you to see what you have to see. Getting the right answers takes a certain work ethic. You have to be determined to see the differences 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 that resulted in your arriving at that answer and what you could do differently in order 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 have done 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 Sentence Correction skills improve, you will then 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!

Yes, you should postpone.

You definitely need a month.

But please refer to the official material only and revise all your material before you burn out any more tests.

Hi nithingopal,

Pushing back your Test Date - so that you can continue to study and improve - is a smart choice. I'll be happy to help you plan out this next phase of your studies, but I'll still need exact answers to my prior questions:

1) How many hours do you typically study each week?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) 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)?
4) When are you planning to apply to Business School?

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

Hi Rich

Thank you for following up on this. Below are the details.

) How many hours do you typically study each week?

-- I have been studying for about 6-8 hrs, 6 days a week with one day off. I am currently on leave, so I can study full time.

2) What study materials have you used so far?

I have majorly focussed on OG and GMAT club to practice questions. And Theory from GMAT club posts and some summary notes I found on the internet. For mocks, I used the free mocks that I got with Princeton review guide (not really sure why bought it). I couldn't afford the expensive online classes. :P

Finding a method to this madness of studying from random material is challenging.

3) 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)?

These are the details of my last 4 practice CATs.

07/09 - GMATPREP 1 - 670 - Q42 V39
12/09 - PR5 - 710 - Q45 V42
16/09 - PR6 - 610 - Q39 V34
20/09 - GMATprep 2 - 650 - Q45 V34

With this I've exhausted all my practice CATs

4) When are you planning to apply to Business School?

2020 fall or Early 2021


Kindly advice on how I must proceed from here. I postponed my test date by 3 weeks.

Posted from my mobile device

Hi nithingopal,

To start, the scoring algorithm on the Official GMAT is far more complicated than most people realize. Since that algorithm is proprietary, no GMAT company has an exact match for it, thus CAT scores can vary a bit based on the 'biases' involved in their respective designs. The most realistic CATs available are the 6 from GMAC, but retaking a CAT that you've already taken is NOT a realistic way to assess your skills - since you will likely see some 'repeat' questions that you have already faced. Unfortunately, seeing even a couple of repeats can 'throw off' the Scoring Algorithm and impact your pacing, energy levels, fatigue, etc. (meaning that they would likely all appear to be better than they actually are). Thankfully, the CATs from Kaplan, MGMAT and Veritas are all 'close enough' to the real thing that they will provide you with a relatively realistic score assessment (assuming that you correctly take the CAT in a realistic fashion).

I'm going to focus more on your two recent Official CATs - and those overall results are relatively similar to one another. The 'swings' in your Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores are likely due to the number of 'lucky' and 'unlucky' guesses you take (especially in the Verbal section - when you might often be narrowing the answers down to 2 choices and in DS - in which not doing enough work will make you think that one of the Facts is sufficient/insufficient when it's actually not).

Given these CAT results, your Score Goal and the Schools that you are interested in, you will have to make significant improvements to how you handle BOTH the Quant and Verbal section - and that training will likely take another 1-2 months of consistent, guided study.

1) What is your exact Test Date now?

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

Hi Rich

Thank you very much for your analysis. I agree with most of your points there. My major weaknesses are in DS and RC.

RC- I normally have to rush through the last passage because of time constraint, and that is making all the difference.

DS - I agree, I need more practice here. Not sure how to go about it though. Looking forward to your advice here.

My new test date is 11/09/2019. I know it is sooner than what you recommended, but I can't push it any further ( gotta go back to work). I have/am willing to work harder to get my target score.


Looking forward to your advice.

Posted from my mobile device

Hi nithingopal,

I'm hoping that you can clarify your situation a bit:

1) What happens after September 11th? Will you not be able to study at all?
2) If you do not score at least a 720, will you continue to study?
3) What is the minimum Score that you will apply to School with?

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

Hi Rich

After 11th, I will be taking up a new job and moving to a new city. So I may not be able to give sufficient time to continue my prep. Besides that, I am a little worried about the deadlines too. I fear I am already late to apply for 2020 - fall classes.

Hi nithingopal,

To start, with just 3 weeks of potential study time, there will likely be a limit to how much you can improve. Based on everything that you've described, I think that you would probably need 1.5 months of consistent, guided study to hit your Score Goal. Of course, it's possible that you could improve a great deal in 3 weeks, but you will have to be really 'efficient' with your study time going forward.

While it might be tempting to try to 'cram' in a lot of study time over these 3 weeks, 'cramming' rarely leads to great results on Exams such as the GMAT. In addition, if you're going to study 6-8 hours a day during this stretch, then you'll greatly increase your chances of 'burning out' before Test Day (which is something that we want to avoid). As such, I suggest that for every 2 hours of study that you do, you take one hour "off" (re: study for 2 hours, take 1 hour off, study for another 2 hours, take 1 hour off, etc. - the exception will be when you take your CATs, since those should each be done in a continuous 3.5 hour block).

Based on everything that you’ve described, I think that you would find the EMPOWERgmat Total Score Booster to be quite helpful. You likely will NOT be able to complete that entire Study Plan in the timeframe that you've described though - so we'll have to put together a modified version for you that focuses on your specific 'needs.' We have a variety of free resources on our site (www.empowergmat.com), so you can 'test out' the Course before setting up an Account.

If you have any additional questions, then just let me know.

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

Hi Rich

Thank you very much for all your help. I am currently following a similar study structure you suggested and will be checking out empowergmat. I need your advice on two more things here.

i. Can you please tell me what topics in quant I must focus on to get a Q49. I am currently struggling to cross Q45, unable to solve hard level questions in majority of the topics and 3-4 avoidable mistakes like miscalculations or misunderstanding the question etc.

ii. I think one of the factors thats effecting my performance in the test is that I get impatient and rush through most questions. Do you have any advice to fix this.

Hi Nithin,

The algo used in scoring varies between different test providers. The most accurate test would be the free mock tests provided by GMAT (GMAC). Do them and check your score. Ideally, you would need 3 months of consistent prep for peak performance. If, after doing the GMAT mock test you find you're not able to reach your target score, I'd advise postponing the test by a month or more (depending on your score).

Hi nithingopal,

I've sent you a PM with some additional advice.

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