520 to 650 GMAT in 2 weeks?

Question

Hey, 
I have given GMAT mock 1 yesterday after completing Manhattan guides in 20 days and scored 520.
I am planning to give gmat before January 15 as deadline 2 for most colleges ends in mid Jan.
I work full time (9 hours shift) with 2 days off and study 2 hours before shift and 2 hours after shift.
Please advice how to improve score by 100-150 in 2 weeks. What should be the best plan?

Detailed scores :

Quant - scaled score : 32, percentile : 22%, 17 of 31 Q correct

Verbal - scaled score : 25, percentile : 38%, 14 of 36 Q correct.

egmat  @veritasprep  JoshAtDreamScore   avigutman   EMPOWERgmatRichC   ScottTargetTestPrep   bb   MartyTargetTestPrep 
  AndrewN   GMATWhizTeam   Bunuel

P.S - Not sure if I need to tag people or do they see the post without tagging as well.

Russ19 · Answer

Hi  Jaychoudhary ,

What OG material have you finished in the meantime? Your current quant score signals that you need to work with easy and medium OG problems.

Good Luck!

Jaychoudhary · Answer

sjuniv32

I completed all PS/DS Q from OG, 60Q per day.
Where did I lack?

Russ19 · Answer

Your current quant score reflects that you might make mistakes in easy and medium quant problems in your CAT; if so, try to focus on them.

nislam · Answer

Hi  Jaychoudhary ,
I recommend you review the quant concepts from Manhattan prep strategy guides as you have gone through them.

Best wishes.

AndrewN · Answer

Hello,  Jaychoudhary . To answer your postscript, it certainly helps to tag people. Doing so is the best way to catch the eye of that person. Without a tag, the person may stumble across the thread—I think Rich from EMPOWER and Scott from TTP would be most likely to come across the thread without being beckoned—but it is not too likely.

Now, regarding your real question, you have got to accept that the odds are stacked against you to make such a drastic improvement in two weeks. I have written  a detailed post  on common preparation mistakes and how to address them, but basically, you will need to practice or review  with purpose  every day for the next week and a half or so to see any kind of real improvement. You will not just "get it" one day by completing more questions. You have to really dig in and, in Verbal, see if you can understand how to take apart the question and answer choices, piece by piece. The more you chase correct answers, the less consistent your performance will be. In Quant, you will likely need to comb through the fundamentals for each type of question. A 32 is simply not going to cut it.

The extra stress you seem to be piling on to get everything in order by mid-January is going to do you no favors. You have to let go of deadlines, cutoff scores, and so on, and start to focus on the minutiae of the test to get better at the task. See if you can make a game of it. Count how many low-level questions you can wrack up in a row before you even attempt medium-level questions, then repeat the process. Until you can get your accuracy up on these types of questions, you have no business steeping yourself in upper-level material. (You would not even see such questions on the test.) But if you can work your way up to certain benchmarks for accuracy—I prefer a 90/80/60 split by question difficulty—then you will be ready to take on anything the exam throws your way.

Best of luck with your preparation. Thank you for thinking to ask me.

- Andrew

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Jaychoudhary,

Many GMATers spend 3 months (or more) of consistent study time before they hit their 'peak' scores, so if you've been studying for just 20 days - and you have no more than about 4 weeks of additional study time - then there will likely be a limit to how much you can improve. While I understand that you might really want to apply for Round 2, if you ultimately "need" a 650+ to get into your first-choice School, then THAT Score Goal has to come first - and you might want to consider pushing back your Test Date and application plans. You would likely need at least another 2-3 months of consistent, guided study before you would be able to consistently score at that higher level.

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:

1) Have you used any other study materials besides the books that you mentioned?
2) Are you planning to take the At-home GMAT or are you planning to take your GMAT at a Test Facility?
3) What Schools are you planning to apply to - and what are the next application deadlines AFTER Round 2?

760+: What GMAT Assassins Do To Score at the Highest Levels

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

Contact Rich at: [email protected]

Jaychoudhary · Answer

EMPOWERgmatRichC

1) Have you used any other study materials besides the books that you mentioned? 
A- Only Manhattan and OG questions.
2) Are you planning to take the At-home GMAT or are you planning to take your GMAT at a Test Facility?
A- At a test facility.
3) What Schools are you planning to apply to - and what are the next application deadlines AFTER Round 2?
A- Rotman (Dream school) - Round 3: 7 March
 - Alliance Manchester - Round 5 : 7 March
 - HEC Montreal- Round 3 15 March
 - Schulich - Round 2: 10 Feb (Last round for international student) 
 - Sauder UBC - Round 3: 5 April

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Jaychoudhary, I've sent you a PM with some notes and additional questions. GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made, Rich Contact Rich at: Rich.C@empowergmat.com

egmat · Answer

Hi Jaychoudhary , Thank you for sharing the details and tagging us. Please go through the following observations and our recommendations. 1.Your current ability level Both your Verbal score and Quant score suggest that you still have significant gaps in your conceptual understanding and gaps in your approach to solving the questions. To get a 650+, you need to work on both these aspects. Tracking the improvement - Just completing a resource is not a great strategy. You must follow a structured approach. While studying, you must track whether you are really learning the concepts and mastering the right methods or not. Only by tracking(getting feedback on your learning), you can make necessary adjustments to your prep. This is very important, especially if you have to improve in less time. You also need a high level study plan that is personalized to your strengths and weakness. Many of our students executed such trackable study plans to improve in less time. Here are a couple of such examples Vikash sored a 730 in 30 days . - He got stuck at a 590 after some initial prep with books. He then changed the approach, studied full time for these 30 days and complete the prep in a structured way. Jayati scored a 690 in just 1-month (She worked very hard and was very diligent while executing the 30-day study plan). 2.Your next steps to achieve 650+ Improving from 520 to 650+ will easily require about 130 to 150 hours of overall effort (you can take 20 days or 3 months, but this time investment in number of hours has to be put in). I see that you have some B-school deadlines (R3) in March. So, I recommend that you put in the required effort by stretching your deadline to Jan end or 1st week of Feb (giving yourself 1 to 1.5 months), then you can surely stand a chance to achieve the 650+ score (as you see from the above examples). May be you can take a few vacation days from work to cover up. If you are ready to do this, we can surely help you set up a trackable study plan. If you need this, please drop an e-mail to rajat@e-gmat.com or book a one on one strategy session with one of our experts using the below link - One-on-One Strategy Session with e-GMAT experts 3.Feedback on learning and tracking Please note- Once again, you need to track and get feedback on your learning. Without this, it's not easy to improve faster. Here are a couple of screenshots that can help you understand how you can get feedback at a topic level. https://e-gmat.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Linear-Inequalities-Learning.png https://e-gmat.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Subject-Verb-Learning.png

GMATWhizTeam · Answer

Hi Jaychoudhary,

As evident from the information provided by you, you have not given adequate time to your preparation. You have to prepare in a disciplined and structured manner to get to your target score. A significant improvement of 100+ points would require more prep time with efforts directed in the right direction.

It’s always better to spare some more time on your preparation until you are ready instead of missing out on your dream colleges/ b-schools in hurry.

Looking at your score breakup, you appear to be struggling with concepts in case of both Quant and Verbal. You may need to revisit the concepts and get a clear understanding of them before you solve the questions.

OG may be a great source for solving GMAT like questions, however, it is definitely not the ideal way to prepare in your case. Moreover, you may find that the OG is a good option as a question bank but lacks detailed explanations for you to use for improvement. It’s always better to prepare with a definitive resource to help you learn concepts while formulating a consistent strategy to solve questions before practicing them from the OG. This way, your preparation will be a lot more structured, and the chances of you leaving gaps in your learning will be significantly less. Focus on improving the method you follow to solve questions because that's what stops people from scoring high.

I have a few articles which you might find helpful. Please go through them to understand the right way to prepare for GMAT.

How to effectively plan your studies for GMAT

How to score 700+ on GMAT

How to start preparing for GMAT

Important Tip  –  Don’t practice tons of questions directly. First focus on learning the right methods for each question. That plays a significant role in getting hard questions correct within 2 mins.

The need of the hour (A personalized study plan):  
A customized study plan may be useful in your case as it will help you to prepare in a disciplined and strategic manner along with an exhaustive course structure which covers GMAT like questions.

The first thing to do is to create a proper study plan with clear deadlines. But a generic study plan will not help as you need a study plan according to your requirements. You need a study plan which has tasks that can be finished in 4 hours on any day. Not less, not more.

So, you need a personalized study plan which takes into account the number of hours you can study in a day. Once you have a study plan, make sure to stick to that. Create a habit of studying everyday because consistency is the key. You can go through the recording below to understand the right way to create a study plan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65n8_LIbPIM

Having said that, I need a few more details about your GMAT prep so that I can help you in a much better way. The details could include:

the study strategy being followed by you 
 your weak areas 
 your approach of solving questions

You can write back to me here or a better way is to get in touch over a call and discuss the same. You can use the link below to schedule a call with me.

Click here to schedule a call

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Jaychoudhary,

My fear is that you won't have enough time to make such a massive score improvement by January 15th. So, my question to you is, what will happen if you do not hit your GMAT score goal by your application deadlines?

Jaychoudhary · Answer

ScottTargetTestPrep

Q. What will happen if you do not hit your GMAT score goal by your application deadlines? 
- I will extend my preparation, try to achieve the desired goal and apply in Round 3 deadlines i.e, in end of Feb or first week of March, for some schools.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Got it. So, do you want some advice regarding your overall study plan?

Jaychoudhary · Answer

ScottTargetTestPrep

I need advice in achieving desired score 650+ in 2 weeks of time. If this plan is not successful then the round 3 comes in picture, but that is to be dealt with in future. Right now I need advice on achieving desired score in 2 weeks as my first priority is to apply in January.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

To improve your GMAT score to a higher level, you need to go through GMAT quant and verbal 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. For example, if you find that you are not strong in answering Number Properties questions, then 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. 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. 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, 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.

You can work on verbal in a similar manner. Let’s say you are reviewing Critical Reasoning. Be sure that you practice a large number of Critical Reasoning questions: Strengthen and Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, find the Conclusion, Must be True, etc. As you go through the questions, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get correct. If you missed a Weaken question, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize what the question was asking? Did you skip over a key detail in an answer choice? Getting GMAT verbal questions right is a matter of what you know, what you see, and what you do. So, any time that you don't get one right, you can seek to identify what you had to know to get the right answer, what you had to see that you didn't see, and what you could have done differently to arrive at the correct answer.

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 verbal and quant materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the  best quant  and  verbal courses .

You also may find my article with more information regarding  how to score a 700+ on the GMAT  helpful.

Feel free to reach out with any further questions.

Good luck!

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