730 (Q48,V42) - 6 months to beat the Dreaded Quant !

Question

Hello GMATclubers ! I promised myself I would write a review to help test takers who, like me, struggle with Quant. While there are already great reviews on GMAT Club I couldn't find a lot of reviews focused on improving your quant score. So I thought it may help some people on GMAT Club to hear about such an experience. If you want the short version, scroll to the bottom of the post for the General, Quant and Verbal Strategies. A word of caution on GMAT debriefs (including mine!): When I first discovered this forum I went through tons of debriefs. It provided me with the motivation I needed and with a clear idea of what to expect in terms of prep. But since the best GMAT debriefs mentions exams with stellar scores (750+) with dramatic time frame (100 points surge in 4 weeks) it somehow made it seem easier than it truly is. So don't be disheartened if you can't reach the 700 barrier right away or at all: it can take a lot of time and the scores mentioned above are truly exceptional. Scoring a 680 is already a great score on the GMAT. It took me 6 months and 5 tests to obtain my dream score and much sweat, tiredness and exasperation but with perseverance, patience and focus I truly believe that it can be done. Another word of caution: the strategies and tips listed in the debriefs might have worked for their authors but they may not suit you. You're the best judge of what works for you. So don't follow blindly a study plan or strategy but think about what will help you the most. So this goes for everything I listed below, I just hope that it gives you new ideas to study and motivation

. The other debriefs were great to give me new pointers and new ideas and how to improve. Background I have neither a business nor an engineering background and I hadn't used my quantitative skills since high school so Quant was definitely a challenge ! Even though I'm an international applicant, Verbal was not an issue. My goal: to obtain a 700+ with strong sub scores in Quant and Verbal to apply to Top 10 programs. I especially needed a high quant score on the GMAT since I had no other way of displaying my quant skills. Materials High school maths books OG 16 + OG Quant 16 MGMAT Strategy Guides Magoosh ($99 offer with GMAT Club) GMATPrep Question Pack 1 + Additional exams Blog posts (see the complete list at the end of the post) Chineseburned's AWA Guide : a must ! My GMAT Prep: Summer 2015 : cover the maths basics I started my GMAT prep in June 2015 with Barron's GMAT book : do NOT use this book. It contains several mistakes and doesn't have clear explanations. It's not listed in my materials used since I recommend you not to use it. For me it was a waste of time. I needed to get my maths skills up to level so I spent 3 months reviewing the basics with some high school maths books : how to do long division, solve linear and quadratic equations, deal with exponents, fractions, probabilities. I also did a thorough review of geometry, much needed in my case. I then took a practice test and obtained a disappointing 560 (Q33 V34). By then I had discovered GMAT Club. Thank you so much GMAT Club, especially bb and Bunuel ! Thanks to all the advice, resources, free materials and GMAT Debriefs I designed a study plan and a strategy. Fall 2015 : learn the GMAT strategies I decided to purchase the MGMAT SG Guides but not to follow an online or in-person course. I identified Quant as a major weakness whereas I managed a relatively good verbal score without any preparation. I needed to focus all my energy on quant and could not afford to spend time on Verbal. At this time I also started to look into strategies relating to timing and guessing (see blog posts below). It was important for me to have a dry-run to assess the environment at the test center and the exam conditions. I scored a 600. Because I knew the surroundings, the people and the test center contributed to my feeling more relaxed for the next tests. I was ready to pay the fee for it but I don't think it's a must and most people can certainly do without it. I continued to focus on improving my Quant but I had reached a plateau in terms of score. I was unable to improve above Q40. At this point I decided to book 5 sessions with a tutor (online tutoring from MGMAT) to get to the next level. This was a great decision. My tutor zeroed-in on my weaknesses, gave me great advice and truly built up my confidence. My next CAT scores improved: MGMAT 2nd CAT : 620 (Q37 V37) GMAT Prep #1 : 660 (Q40 V40) Winter 2015 : improve the quant ! GMAT Official Exam 2nd retake: 670 (Q42 V40). This was still not sufficient in terms of quant so I kept on pushing and studying for Quant, mainly trying to stop silly mistakes and focus on easy questions to make sure I got them right. MGMAT 3rd CAT 600 (Q39 V34) : Ouch ! My advice: don't take a CAT when you're exhausted. The results will depress you ! GMAT Official Exam 3rd retake: 700 (Q46 V40). I was very happy to have reached the 700 club ! Yet, my quant score was not in the 70th percentile range and I really needed to show my quantitative abilities to schools. So I kept going ! GMAT Official Exam 4th retake : I can't even remember my score but it was around 680 and most of all the Quant was not good. I was starting to loose hope but I decided to give it one last try. I did not want to have any regrets. During 3 weeks, I worked intensively on quant. What I did is actually not advised by the prep companies and by anyone but I did it with a family member who was a high school maths tutor: I spent hours going through all the Quant questions in the OG 16 and the OG Quant 16. If I got the question right I didn't spend much time reviewing, if I got it wrong I made sure I spoke out loud my take away : how would I approach this question the next time. The goal here was to develop pattern recognition : even though every question is different it helps to recognize patterns and common difficulties. Seeing a variety of GMAT questions was actually more important for me than spending 15mns reviewing a problem. Don't get me wrong, it is very important to review carefully the questions. But what I personally needed to go from Q42 to Q48 was to expand the breadth of questions I had seen. GMAT Official Exam 5th retake : 730 (Q48 V42) : I did it

General strategies: Solve the easy & medium questions first. Do NOT attack the hard/700+ level questions before you can solve easier questions with speed and ease. This is crucial since if you're able to solve the easy questions on test day, you'll never even see the hard questions. CATs: I actually took only 4 CATs on my entire preparation, all under strict test conditions. Because Quant was my weakness, I couldn't afford to spend 4 hours with only 75 minutes of Quant. I would suggest to use CATs if you have major timing issues or if it's your first try on the GMAT. But don't waste too much time on CATs because you get better by practicing and reviewing answers not just by taking a test. Also I needed to keep my strength for the real thing. MGMAT Scratch pad: Use the MGMAT Scratch Pad during your practice. You don't want it to be a surprise when you step in the test center. Tutoring: Once you have reached a good level (60th percentile at least), a tutor can be very helpful to help you grab the remaining points. I would not advise to hire a tutor early on since a tutor is expensive and I believe that you can easily improve on your own at the beginning. Ron Purewal's videos : once you've reached a certain level, this is a great resource to target your weaknesses. Ron is a MGMAT instructor who analyses questions in depth. Check out carcass consolidated download of videos (or search on MGMAT websites and you tube) and a very useful list of all topics with the links by Engr2012 (up to date until July 2015). Error Log: Target your weaknesses . Use the Error Log in the right way. Think about WHY you are building your error log : you want to know which areas you should improve on and which areas are strengths. I ended up doing a quick recap after each study session to list the areas I needed to improve and the stupid mistakes. I also took note of how to approach certain questions in a different manner. This helped me a lot more than to list questions with the precise timing, type of questions, link and so on etc.. But this sort of analysis can be useful with a CAT to see how your timing is. And the usual : sleep, eat healthy and practice sports

. Quant Strategies: Cover the basics first. This can take a lot of time to first build the basics (the bottom of the pyramid as mentioned in bb's study plan ). It is important that you master the basic maths rules first. You need to know by heart the common rules and formulas so that you don't lose time on this. It will then be easier to focus on GMAT strategies such as timing, process of elimination and guessing. Get rid of your silly mistakes : they will weigh you down more than you think. List your silly mistakes and practice maths (non-gmat) drills on these (e.g.: solving linear equations or adding fractions) so that you don't waste OG questions. Mental Maths App : an incredible Iphone app to practice your mental maths skills. I recommend a daily use to build your mental maths skills and stamina. Bunuel's explanations on GMAT Club are a MUST. Always google them (type the beginning of the question + "gmatclub" + "bunuel"). They will often provide you with the simplest and quickest way to solve a question. They complement well your MGMAT Navigator or any Prep Company's explanations to OG questions. Read the GMAT Club posts on how to improve Quant : incredibly useful ! See the Section 9 in the All you need for quant post How to improve Quant Score by nktdotgupta . For the perfectionnists: Ultimate Q51 Guide by MathRevolution The Magoosh blog post can also be useful Verbal Strategies: I can't offer specific advice since I managed to rise from a V34 to V42 mostly on my own and without books. It worked for me but it's probably not the best way for everyone. I would suggest the following tips, which can apply to everyone: Read: the most important thing for me. For 6 months I only read in English and I read more than 200 pages per week. This truly helped me improve my vocabulary and syntax. It will also help you to read quickly Reading Comprehension. For books recommendation read bb's great post on GMAT fiction or listen to the BBC "A Good Read" Podcast. I would suggest to start with easy books and not to use a dictionary all the time, don't get hung up on every word you don't understand. Enjoy your reading and you will get much more out of it. :wink:

Listen: I'd suggest is to listen to podcasts in English. Even though there is no oral test, this would still help you develop your ear and vocabulary. It will also come in very handy later on for interviews. Besides it can be easier to find the time to listen to a podcast, while doing your every day tasks or on your commute, than to read. e-GMAT free webinars , especially "CR-Prethink the Assumption". It helped me to structure my analysis of CR questions. I strongly recommend it to everyone. Useful blog posts: MGMAT - How to set up the GMAT Scratch Paper Careless mistakes Time Management Part 1 & Time Management Part 2 The Second Level of Learning to Take the GMAT Get the most of your CATs Part 1 & Part 2 Thank you for reading. Good luck on your GMAT and on your applications !

wafflegearsolid · Answer

As someone in a very similar situation (low quant score) your debrief is much appreciated!! Could you elaborate a little bit on how you practiced quant questions? One thing I'm struggling with right now is implementing the strategies I've learned. I have a solid foundation of math skills, but I still feel like a deer in headlights when I look at a GMAT problem. I'm working my way through the MGMAT guides which is helping, but I'd be interested to hear more about your strategy.

HKD1710 · Answer

Congratulations on the brilliant score. best of luck for the journey ahead. but you have time to rest

Lazure · Answer

Hi, yes I had the same issue. I had reached the level where I knew all the theory and formulas very well but I still couldn't reach a great score. 
That's when I booked a few sessions with a tutor. I will try to capture what I learnt. But first credit where credit is due : a lot of this comes from what I learnt with my tutor and from the MGMAT blog posts by Stacey Koprince (a few links in my post and then in her articles she links back to her other posts). Definitely check her posts.

From a general view point for all Quant questions :

The main idea is to have "a plan": to know how you will approach the quant on the exam day. This will make you feel more relaxed and thus more confident.

- Step 1:  are you solving all 500-level questions easily  ? If not target these areas first. As I said that's where you lose the most points.

Step 2 :  implement a guessing strategy for the harder questions.

The problem: I don't know if you have any timing issues during your CAT but that was a big problem for me. I would find myself guessing totally randomly and especially guessing on very easy questions just to "buy time". This would cost me a lot of points because I got the easy questions wrong.

The goal : you should aim to guess only on hard questions which you already know will take you too long to solve. And you should actually aim to guess at around 3 questions, when I implemented this strategy my score really increased.

How ?
 So first assess which questions are too hard for you and try to recognise these questions when you do sets of questions. The type of questions that you always get wrong anyway. 
The trick is not to guess blindly. This may not always work but try go with the majority and don't pick the outlier. For example let's you have the find a perimeter of a geometric shape and you have the following answer choices (completely made up)
A. 10pi
B. 10/3 pi
C. 7/3 pi
D. 5/3 pi
E. 8 pi
I wouldn't pick A or E because the majority of the answer choices have fractions in them. And then I would pick 10/3pi because I have another 10 in the answer choices.
Again this will not work all the time but it's the approach that worked best for me.

Other ways to guess in a smart way :
- estimate (e.g: if you have fractions) or 
- go through a process of elimination. If you can already eliminate 2 or 3 answers that will increase your chances. This works well when you can tell that the answer choices must be bigger or smaller than other answer choices. (In word problems). 
To get better at guessing : once you've solved a question look at it again. If you didn't guess try to think what you have picked if you had had to guess.

More specifically on how to approach a Quant question  :

You have 2 minutes per question. So you should try to  stick to a schedule  per question : 
- by 30-45 seconds within the questions you should have a plan to solve and know how will approach and solve the questions. If not and it's a hard question guess smartly and immediately. If it's an easy question breathe and try one more time. Remember that the answer for easy questions is within our reach but it's twisted and not recognisable right away so try to think outside the box. If you still can't figure it out guess. 
- by 2mns up to 2mns30 you should be done or almost done. If at 2.30 you're not done either you just need 10 more seconds to finish a calculation or you need more time than that and you haven't figured it all out and then you should go with the process of elimination and move on.

In general:
-  focus is extremely important :  I advise you to take your time to read the question stem and to understand it.there are so many questions I missed just because I wasn't concentrated enough or too tired.

-  organise information clearly on your pad.  This is very important too to avoid silly mistakes. Write on your pad what you need to find (e.g: x=...) and if x is assigned to something write it too (eg: x = nbr of apples =....).

-  strengthen the areas which are the most tested in the GMAT  : I really liked permutations and combinations but at most I got 1 question during my GMAT in this topic. Sometimes I would get no question at all. So it wasn't worth spending hours on this topic. I should have spent more time of fractions, decimals and percents (my weakness) because they appear a lot in the GMAT. 
So focus on :
- fractions, decimals and percents 
- algebra 
- word problems 
- geometry 
Then : 
- a few questions on number properties. 
- even less probabilities.

-  Know what works for you : 
What also helped me was to know which approach worked for me. I know that MGMAT doesn't always the most "mathematical" way of solving questions. Yet for some algebra questions it was easier for me to go with the maths method rather than their method. 
For example : for inequalities it was easier for me to solve with a sign table. But that's not what they teach you. For quadratic I would solve the "proper" mathematical way by finding the delta and each root. 
But for other questions I would fin it easier to estimate or pick numbers (especially when you have variables like x or y in the answer choices) It's very important to know which method you're comfortable with but it takes a lot of time. Go with your instinct but don't hesitate to try the MGMAT methods you may be surprise.

- finally :  don't start right away to solve the problem . Have a look at the answer choices first because it might guide you / help you or make you realise you were going in the wrong direction. (Eg: there's no pi in your answer when there really should be).

Sorry for the very long post and thanks for reading if I haven't lost you. I hope that this helped a bit. Don't hesitate if you have more specific questions.

Lazure · Answer

Thank you HKD1710

. Yes almost done with the whole process (I applied for a MBA in the fall 2016) and it feels good. Good luck to you.

	Manhattan Prep: $99 Bonus Score Higher on Your GMAT Exam. Guaranteed.
	Target Test Prep - Save up to $599 $400 Discount + $99 Bonus GMAT Club Tests
	e-GMAT: 60% Off on GMAT Focus Get to 735+ from any starting point
	Magoosh increases your score, guaranteed - 15% off ALL Magoosh GMAT plans with code GMATCLUB15 + Free GMAT Club Tests.
	Experts' Global - ~~$1720~~ $960 End-to-End GMAT Prep + App Support: 150+ Videos, 2000+ Questions, 15 FLTs +
	GMATWhiz - $299 ~~$499~~ Experience the course through a free trial.
	GMAT Club Tests - Free Included with every course purchase of $149+ View all deals

730 (Q48,V42) - 6 months to beat the Dreaded Quant !

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards