Been studying for months but not improving...

Question

Hello everybody!

I have been looking through the forum but wasn't quite able to find another thread which is similar to my problem, so I'm posting this in hope that maybe you have ideas or tips on what I could do!

A little backstory to give you a better picture of the whole situation:
In school I always passed my classes with putting in minimal work (I'm from Germany, my grades were usually 2's or 3's, I suppose those are like B's and C's in America), so I never had to learn how to actually study (Which I now realise in hindsight, was very bad). English interested me and I mainly self-studied by reading novels, watching Youtube videos etc. and therefore could just guess on English exams based on "what sounded right" (which worked great as English was one of my best classes where I mostly did get A's). Math was a different thing, in about 7th grade I consciously decided that I would never like it, never understand it and that it was generally pointless so I only paid enough attention to not fail the class.
Now, this July (because of different circumstances) I had a change of heart and wanted to pursue a masters degree after all and since my grades and bachelor degree are just "alright", I knew I couldn't get into my preferred uni without showing that I can and want to put in the effort.

This brings me to the GMAT.

In mid July I decided to get the OG 2021 books and started going through them - at that point realising that I basically have no math skills whatsoever and no grammatical knowledge of english either. In the following time I got myself the ManhattanPrep Foundations of Math/Verbal, All the Verbal/ All the Quant books and have been going through them since. Due to basically the same circumstances on which I decided to pursue my masters degree, I quit my job in mid September and had been studying the books since.

I wish I could now say that the time I put in, really paid off and I am seeing great results but sadly that's not really what happened. In mid August I did a first CAT test (by MPrep) and scored a horrible 460. Since I had only studied for about a month I was a bit sad but logically understood that it was a realistic score based on my bad study-record I had since school. I kept going through the books and have finished doing so about 2 weeks ago. Last week I decided to take the Official CAT Practise and was horrified: 480 - basically no improvement whatsoever after months of preparing. Until that point I was mostly going through the books (and solving the questions in them) and writing flashcards. Since that official practise test I've been doing about 40 official practise questions daily (20 each on Verbal and Quant) in the hopes that if I understand the general structure of the questions, I would be able to solve them generally (many questions seem similar to me, one example being, many ask about the combined rates of filling a pool etc.) Maybe it was a bad idea but feeling that this plan surely must work I decided to take another CAT test today (again by MPrep) and yet again scored 460... I originally wanted to take the actual test this year in December but if my practise tests are this bad, I don't think it's a realistic date. At this point I'm kind of at wits end... I'd like to think I'm not dense but I'm obviously doing something wrong

Just a last point, in both MPrep tests I scored V27/Q27, so they are kind of at a same level.
In Verbal I'm (relatively) okay at sentence correction and horrible at Reading Comprehension (In the latter I'm think it's a problem with actually understanding what's written as I'm usually a fast reader) .
In Quant it's hard to say, according to my last test I'm best at Geometry and worst at Fractions, Decimals, Percents and Word Problems.

Tl;dr
I've been studying for months and my score isn't improving and I'm not sure what to do.

Sorry for writing this super long essay but I'd be extremely glad to hear your thoughts on the matter!

Best regards and best of luck to you guys too!
Nina

Just a last point, in both MPrep tests I scored V27/Q27, so they are kind of at a same level. In Verbal I'm (relatively) okay at sentence correction and horrible at Reading Comprehension (In the latter I'm think it's a problem with actually understanding what's written as I'm usually a fast reader) . In Quant it's hard to say, according to my last test I'm best at Geometry and worst at Fractions, Decimals, Percents and Word Problems. Tl;dr I've been studying for months and my score isn't improving and I'm not sure what to do. Sorry for writing this super long essay but I'd be extremely glad to hear your thoughts on the matter! Best regards and best of luck to you guys too! Nina

lakashoo28 · Answer

Hi,

I totally understand the situation you're in. This post is as if someone took my life in the last few months and pasted it here.

I had started my prep around July Ending. I also kinda took a back seat with my job for the GMAT since job and GMAT simple were a lethal combination.

Anyways, I too have similar scores in the GMAT officit prep tests till now. I got a 510, 480 and 510 again.

I did notice you stating you were doing sums from the books.

1. Have you thought of buying any self paced online quant course which could maybe strengthen your math foundations? Actually, I bought the wizako module which was extremely cheap. Math has been my enemy since childhood, so doing it from scratch I had terrible nightmares learning everything.

2. For the two tests which you wrote, were you able to see what were the topics in which the questions were wrong? For beginners, the best thing to do is to know the bad areas. Then, atleast there is something to focus on better something.

Anyways, let me know about your practice test a bit more and maybe we both could help each other out regarding this.

One difference is that I concentrated so hard on quants that I am taking a hit in verbal now.

I actually booked my test for next week and I am going through with it whatever happens.

Anyways, don't worry, with practice and repeated focus, the terrible nights start paying off.

Posted from my mobile device

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

Have you checked out Thursdays with Ron?

bb · Answer

Sorry about your issue. It is not uncommon at all. However, you don’t need to wait months or even weeks to figure out that you are not having any progress. You should be able to tell within days and hours if you were hearing progress or not. We just need to use the correct measuring tools. Taking a full cat test after doing a little bit of prep here and there it’s not really helpful. Imagine you were competing in triathlon and you only practiced riding a bicycle. Would you still do the running and swimming to see if you have improved your time? It may improve marginally but if you haven’t trained for swimming, then maybe not. Similarly, not only do I need to train for each section, you also need to put it all together.

I don’t think the issues with materials or books that you are using. Manhattan guides are pretty thorough. I think this has to be more in grand with your study habits and effort.

Are you starting every day with reviewing what you stated yesterday? Are you making sure that you are feeling confident with each chapter you cover? What percent of questions do you get right from the end of chapter exercises? Are you doing everything but you can think of to succeed? Imagine your life depended on it, if that was the case, would you do anything else?

Are you writing notes for each chapter? If you haven’t done that, you should do that.

Who’s my first impression thoughts. I could be wrong and I could’ve made some false assumptions so forgive me and hopefully you can correct if I assumed anything incorrectly.

Posted from my mobile device

NinadeBrand · Answer

Thank you for your reply, I really appreciate it! Your comparison to the triathlon explained my current position pretty well - and I think you might really be on to something regarding the study habits!

To answer the questions you asked: 
- The past few days I had started by going through questions I answered wrong (especially the quant ones) and solve them a second time and analysing what the best way would be. After that I would go through the flashcards I created out of all my books
- When going through the exercises after the chapters I usually got about 70% right, depending on the topic. I'm not sure if I would say that I am completely confident with the chapters as I understand all the content but if a question varies too much from the standard ones, I often don't know how to solve it
- Considering my current efforts aren't working out very well I sadly have to admit that I'm definitely not doing everything I can. The time, as in hours I can practise per day, (at least currently) isn't a problem but there is certainly something wrong with the strategy I'm going for

And generally speaking, would you say it is a matter of "having seen enough problems that are similar" to get better, at least with quant problems? Or is it more of a deeper understanding of all the elements and how they work with each other?

Thank you again!

NinadeBrand · Answer

As sad as I am to hear, that you're in the same spot as me, I'm kind of glad to hear, I'm not alone with this problem! I wish you the best of luck with your test! I was thinking of getting a different math book or course but I'm not sure if that would really help as I need to learn to think more logically, if that makes sense? I'm not sure where your problems lie but sometimes when I see a quant question I have no idea what to do with all the components, I try a few things out and have to guess eventually and move on! Then later I look at the solution and am baffled that it would have been pretty simple (even though I would have never been able to figure it out on my own) And is there something specific you'd like to know about my practise tests? If it helps you, I'm glad to share! What are your weak spots, maybe we really can figure something out

Xboct26 · Answer

i really understand you, I've had this thing with "studying, but not really" for my whole life, you know

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi NinadeBrand,

I'm sorry to hear how things have been going with your GMAT studying. Since you have been studying for a number of months and have yet to break 480 on a practice test, I think you need to look at HOW you have been preparing and make some changes, right? Moving forward you may consider following a study plan that allows you to learn GMAT quant and verbal from the "ground up". In other words, follow a study plan that allows you to learn each GMAT quant and verbal topic individually and then practice each topic until you've gained mastery. Let me expand on this idea further.

If you are learning about Number Properties, 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. 
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, types that you would rather not see, and types 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.

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 topics: Strengthen the Argument, Weaken The Argument, Resolve the Paradox, etc. As you learn about each question type, do focused practice, so that you can track your skill in answering each type. 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, you likely 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 really a test of knowledge of grammar rules. The reason for learning the 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 less than 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 none of those reasons are 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 logical meanings. 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 until you start to see the differences that make all choices wrong except for one. Often, when you first look at the choices, only one or two seem obviously incorrect. Getting the right answers takes a certain work ethic. You have to take the time to see the differences between answers 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 to arrive at that answer and what you could do differently 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 do 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 skills improve, you will 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!

GMATWhizTeam · Answer

Hey Nina,

It's not about how much effort you put but it's about putting the effort in the right direction. When you don't prepare the right way, no matter how many hours of effort you invest, you won't get the desired result. To do your prep the right way, you need to understand what is actually tested on GMAT. Because without knowing the destination, there's no point starting your journey.

What is tested on GMAT? 
GMAT is a test of application of concepts. So, once you learn the concepts, it's important to learn the application of those concepts as well. Because most questions on GMAT are framed along the application point of view. And to reach a level of 700, it's important that you learn the right methodology to solve the questions.

The right way to prepare: 
As you have mentioned about assessing your level before starting your prep, you can take the free official mock from mba.com website. Make sure to give the test in the ideal test environment so that the score is not inflated. Once you take the mock, analyze your weaker areas and follow the below steps.
  Learn the concepts (Deal with one topic at a time) 
 Learn the methodology of that topic ( Most important ) 
 Practice a few questions to solidify your learning 
 Move to the next topic only if you get at least 80% accuracy 
 If not, revisit the concepts and make sure to understand them better 
 Once you are done with all the topics, start taking timed quizzes

As you see, I have highlighted the second step that is learning the right methodology. So, you need to make sure that you select a standard resource which helps you learn the concepts, learn the methodology and then lets you practice questions and take timed quizzes. And the  best way to learn the right methodology is to analyze the solutions . Spend considerable time on analyzing solutions even if you get the question right. Compare your approach with the right one and narrow down the gaps if any. So, all in all, look for a resource which provides you all the content on a single platform, thereby reducing your effort to shuffle among various resources.

Now I'm sure you must have missed focusing on the methodology because that's not something most of us tend to us explicitly. So, I would suggest you to  focus on the methodology this time  and then see if your results get any better. Having said that, if you wish to get a structured study plan or a more solid advice on how to approach your prep, you can get in touch with me using the below link.

Click here to schedule a call

lakashoo28 · Answer

Yeah, what you are saying about seeing a sum and not being able to think of that 2nd step, happened to me initially when i made the mistake of starting cold with OG sums. I just wanted to start the prep in a hurry and it kinda backfired. Like i said and everyone else in the posts below, a basic idea of all the concepts will help you atleast think. Like, "Oh, this sum, maybe that formula or maybe rearrange the equations". Worst case scenario, when you do a set of sums and get all of them wrong, just seeing the solutions of those sums will spark an idea, that maybe for a similar sum in the future let me use the idea in that sum. I was extremely demotivated at first and at that time, this helped get those 2/10 questions right atleast. Small wins help a lot.

Regarding your practice tests,

1. In the sums you got wrong, was there a topic of sums which you got repeatedly wrong? If yes, let me know about that. 
2. In the sums you got right, again the same. Knowing you are good in some topic gives some amount of relief as well. Basically, it's a mental game as well. When you keep getting sums wrong, your mood goes bad and then you can't solve easy sums as well. It's important to kinda not concede defeat to gmat.

Just let me know your thoughts on these and then we can discuss with each about our weaknesses and strengths. Likewise, I do want to know what approach you took for your verbal. I literally am struggling to get a grip after having put all my eggs into the quant basket.

Cheers!

NinadeBrand · Answer

My main problem lies with Fractions, Decimals & Percents, closely followed by Word Problems (because of the issue, that I don't know what to do with the given information). I am now following the advice from the experts above by deep diving into one topic at a time and going though the material again! Time will tell if that works but logically, it does make sense so I'm hoping for the best, haha!

Regarding verbal I also started to switch my approach up since yesterday! I'm best at Sentence Correction, and surprisingly horrible at Reading Comprehension! Critical reasoning kind of lies in the middle as of now. Here are my current ideas on what to do/ what I am doing currently:

- RC: I realised that my main problem is that I get overwhelmed by the wall of text and the time limit, causing me to skim through but also instantly forget everything (personally I am a very fast reader but somehow the stress stops me from remembering anything, let alone draw any conclusion from the passage). The MPrep books suggested to jot down the most important points but somehow I started to write down way too much, loosing even more time. 
What I now want to do is take RC passages I have read already or generally just some complex passages, read it in about 2-3 minutes and afterwards try to retell the main idea of the passage. That way I should learn how to keep the main information in mind! Another tip I just saw while going through the MPrep books, is to also take a few seconds to summarise the answer choices. That way it is easier to tell which address which talk about the main point etc.

- SC: To improve it even further I started to dive deeper into grammar rules (Dive deeper actually meaning that I try to remember what the books generally say about essential Modifiers, non-essential modifiers etc.) Apart from that, what I think is probably the key to most problems: try to block out everything that is not relevant to the main core of a sentence. Usually the sentences are loaded with some "junk" that you don't really need. The first thing I always do is find the main Subject in the non-underlined part and check all verbs match and if the verbs then are parallel to each other!

-CR: This one is a bit trickier, I think my main issue here is the same as with RC - I get overwhelmed and forget the main points, so in theory the practise for RC should pay off here as well. Additionally I wanted to go through all the types of questions (Assumption based questions etc.), so it is easier for me the to at least have some sort of direction! Apart from that it's a good idea to understand what the given information part is, if that makes sense - is it a main point, conclusion, background, counterpoint? I think that might be the key to answering a lot of the questions correctly

I hope that this helps!

Best regards
Nina

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