Told 710 not good enough for my targets...re-writing for 730

Hello fvoci ........ congratulations on the great score improvement in both Q & V. As mentioned by other users OG , GMAT Club Book & Tests are enough to take you to the next level in Q. Wish you all the luck for the next exam .

It will also be great if you can share some tips ( the way you determined the weaknesses - the way you worked on sections - if you ever had 'active reading' speed related issues - soft copies for last minutes revision etc)about the v33 to v40 journey. It will help a lot of people (especially me ).

Hi fvoci,

I’m glad you reached out, and I’m happy to help. The good news is that a Q47 is a fantastic starting point. As I’m sure you know, you will need some further dedicated prep to increase your quant score from 47 to 49+. While it’s possible to achieve such a score increase in 5 weeks, there is no guarantee. That being said, I’m happy to provide some detailed advice on how to improve your quant score.

To increase your score to a higher level, you have to go through GMAT quant carefully to find your exact weaknesses, fill gaps in your knowledge, and strengthen your skills. The overall process will be to learn all about how to answer question types with which you currently aren't very comfortable and do dozens of practice questions category by category, basically driving up your score point by point. 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 the 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.

For example, if you find that you are not strong in answering Number Properties questions, carefully review the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer Number Properties questions and practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties: LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, remainders, etc. As you practice, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get right. If you got a remainder question wrong, ask yourself why you got it wrong. 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. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.

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 and types that you would rather not see, and types of questions 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.

So, work on accuracy and generally finding correct answers, work on specific weaker areas one by one to make them strong areas, and when you take a practice GMAT or the real thing, take all the time per question available to do your absolute best to get right answers consistently. The GMAT is essentially a game of seeing how many right answers you can get in the time allotted. Approach the test with that conception in mind, and focus intently on the question in front of you with one goal in mind: getting a CORRECT answer.

In order to follow the path described above, you may need some new quant materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the best quant courses.

You also may find my article about
how to score a 700+ on the GMAT helpful.

Please reach out with any further questions. Let’s do this!!!

Thanks bb! I appreciate the response. I have printed your post and will implement the strategies.

Thanks pushpitkc! Very helpful. I will try to address my biggest weak points. I have purchased my ESR and see that its quite lop sided in certain areas (geometry).

Hi fvoci,

Congrats on great improvement in just 8 weeks. 610 to 710 is huge improvement to begin with. I am currently sailing in the boat of lower 600. But your post gives good hope to achieve a 700+.
During my prep, I had also seen 700+ in gmatprep mocks, but on th e test day everything went south.

So I would like to ask you, how did you plan your 8 weeks and what did you do to achieve a 100 point improvement.

Thanks

Posted from my mobile device

utopian25

One of the things that helped me the most was ensuring that I get fully comfortable with 500 level questions for both quant and verbal. Once I could do 10-20 500 level questions without more than 10 to 20% mistakes I started focusing on the 600 level questions. When you start to make mistakes see which sections you are more prone to error to and dig deeper into those sections. I would go to the gmatclub question discussions and find a series of questions relating to work/rate problems for example and do 10-20 of those.

Now I am focusing more on 700 level questions only and as the advice of others has indicated I have to dig even deeper into the sections that I have weaknesses in.

Maintaining an error log doesn't mean you keep doing the same questions over and over again, it means you have an indication of what section results in more mistakes for you.

Believe me you can do it.

u1983

I keep an error log in excel and tag all my errors within quant (i.e percents / work & rate problems etc.). After doing 500+ questions I noticed certain trends within certain sections.

Next I went to the https://gmatclub.com/forum/all-you-need-for-quant-140445.html and started drilling into those sections that I found weaker.

Dont give up! Dont neglect your strengths either.

ScottTargetTestPrep

Just finished reading your "How to Score a 700+..." these are all the tips one needs. Brilliant post.

Thanks for producing great content. I have bookmarked the page.

How are you identifying 500,600,700 level questions? Are you using GMATclub to create problem sets?

fvoci

Congrats on your score improvement. Q47 is an amazing score to start with. Most of the strategies / suggestions to improve to Q49 are shared in the above comments.

My target is also Q49 and i like to share the strategies / information that helped me so far in my journey.

1. GMAT Club Tests - These are the best resource for GMAT Quants. I completed all 25 tests and currently analyzing my error log.

2.I prepare my weak area using GMAT Quant Mega thread. You can find this link here https://gmatclub.com/forum/ultimate-gma ... 44512.html

3. You can find all links, blogs, study materials in this link - https://gmatclub.com/forum/all-you-need ... 40445.html

4.I follow this link every day - https://gmatclub.com/forum/the-ultimate ... 09801.html
This page list down chapters that are very important to reach Q51 and also gives strategies and example on how to reach Q51.

5.Bunuel Signature Series - After completing the GMAT Club tests , i started working on all the quant sets listed under Bunuel's signature. Those are really really good sets.

6.Question Pack 1 - These are additional practice questions from the official test makers. This set will give you some good practice.

Please look into the below given link to see how we can create additional quant tests in the question pack 1
https://gmatclub.com/forum/experts-topi ... 44293.html

You would have seen most of the information already in the GC. I strongly believe within 5 weeks you can improve Q47 to Q49.

All the very best for your exam.

You are welcome! If you need any further advice, feel free to reach out to me directly. I am always happy to help.

Hi fvoci,

To start, raising a 610 to a 710 is a fantastic achievement - and that 710 is an outstanding Score! A Q47 means that you were great on the 'math questions' that you faced in the Quant section, but you missed out on LOTS of 'strategy-based' questions. It's important to remember that the Quant section of the GMAT is NOT a 'math test' - it's a 'critical thinking test' that requires lots of little calculations as you work through it. This is why you'll often see different approaches to a Quant question in the forum posts - GMAT questions are designed so that they can be solved in more than one way. To score at a higher level in the Quant section, you need to become more of a 'strategist' and less of a 'mathematician.'

1) What is your exact Test Date?
2) Going forward, how many hours do you think you can consistently study each week?

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