Stuck at 530, Please help!

Hi Rich, thank you for replying. I will take the offical GMAC CAT early next week and let you know how i do on it. If i spend more time studying each day, would i be able to get at least a 600 by the end of this month?

[quote="HiLine"]Stop everything you are doing. Clearly, it is not working and you are wasting official GMAT practice questions.

Have you stopped everything you're doing?

Great.

Now, how have you been practicing? Did you ever practice without timing yourself? How is your accuracy when you are not under time pressure?

Hi HiLine, thank you for replying. I have stopped doing problems in the offical GMAT guide. I have practiced without timing myself. For questions that are in their 500 range i can usually do them easily, but when it comes to questions that are in their 600-700 or 700-800 range its either i know how to do them or im completely stuck. I was thinking about doing all the problems in this forum that are in their 600-700 range then 700-800 range. Just to practice and familiarize myself with common techniques that are required to solve problems that are in their 600-700 and 700-800 range.

So after encountering more difficult problems that you cannot solve, do you look up the answer and figure out why you could not answer it correctly? Do you try to "pre-think" the answer before considering the answer choices for each question?

Posted from my mobile device

Hi Dave 1234,

Based on your practice test scores and the amount you have already studied, I think that a 150-point increase in 4 weeks will be difficult to achieve. To make the jump you need, (in both quant and verbal) you first must solidify your foundational knowledge; only then will you be able to attempt mastering more advanced material . New knowledge tends to be based upon a solid understanding of earlier concepts. And without solid knowledge, you are merely burning questions.

I see that you have been relying heavily on the Official Guide as a primary study resource. This reliance may be the reason your quant and verbal scores have plateaued. The Official Guide is a great resource for practice because it has official questions from past GMATs; however, the Guide does not provide enough questions on each topic to provide full exposure to all the important issues on the actual test. Additionally, the questions are presented in a random order, so it’s challenging to use the OG for targeted learning.

Thus, your next move should be to find a study resource that allows more focused learning and practice of one topic at a time: e.g, sentence structure or good reasoning practices for verbal; number properties or rate problems for quant. For example, if you are learning about percents, you want to make sure you learn everything possible about percents, e.g., percent less than, percent greater than, variable percents, percent profit, percent change. After that, be sure that you practice a lot of questions (50 or more) just on percents. The results of that practice will help you to determine how well you have mastered that particular topic. Following this study strategy of targeted practice should help you to improve both your verbal and quant scores.

Once you feel you have fully learned all the important GMAT topics, but not before, start taking Official MBA.com tests, as those exams provide the most accurate exam experience and use the most accurate scoring algorithm. You can start with the two free exams. After that you can purchase exam pack 1 and exam pack 2

Also, read my article that provides some actionable steps that you can follow to help achieve your GMAT score goal.

Hi dave1234,

From your last post, it sounds like you're changing the 'parameters' of how you're going to study and your score goals. A score goal of 600+ in 4 weeks will still take some serious effort, but is considerably easier to achieve than a 650+ score in that same time. It's important that you not confuse "quality" of study with "quantity" of study. The consistency in your scores shows that your current approach to this Test will likely earn you a score in the low-500s on Test Day - even if you choose to put in more study time using your current materials and methods.

Beyond likely needing MORE study time than you've allotted, you'll need to learn/practice some new Tactics, which will likely require that you invest in some new study materials.

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