GMAT Ninja Study Plan Week 2

Question

GMAT Ninja’s 13-Week Study Plan - Week 2 Week 2 (~15 hours) Subscribe via E-mail | Study Plan Chat Group Welcome back! If you have no idea what’s going on here, then you’ll want to start with Week 1 instead. For the rest of you: it’s Week 2. You might already hate me. Here, have some homework! Read this debrief by souvik101990 , one of the legends of GMAT Club. He spent FOUR YEARS studying, and eventually scored a 760. Yes, the GMAT can be hard. In case you’re wondering: souvik101990 graduated from Ross and now works at a very large company, where he sometimes delivers advice directly to the c-suite execs. The dude’s epic hard work paid off. You might also be entertained by this thread on the biggest GMAT and MBA application mistakes , featuring some great material by bb , AndrewN , and others. In Week 2, we have two main goals for quant: 1. Address any major weaknesses in your command of the fundamentals of figure geometry, exponents, inequalities, and absolute values. Nothing fancy here: just the very basics for now. 2. Continue to ensure that you don’t make score-killing silly errors. I know: still not sexy. But we’ll ramp up the difficulty at least a bit this week. How to approach quant homework 1. Time each set, but don’t rush through . Do every set with test-like intensity , but don’t impose an artificial time limit -- at least not yet. 2. When you’re finished, please do NOT review your errors at all just yet. On the day you do the homework, just input the results into your error log, and walk away. For more on how to analyze your results, check out the next post in this thread . Week 2 quant homework Be honest with yourself: did you make silly errors on quant in Week 1? If you’re not sure, go back through all of your sets and categorize your mistakes. Even if you make boneheaded errors on, say, 5-10% of questions, that’s WAY too much on an adaptive test like the GMAT. In Week 2: if you’re making a lot of careless errors, choose the sub-600 sets until you STOP MAKING CARELESS ERRORS . If you’re free of sloppy errors, feel free to choose mixed difficulty on items #4-8. We’d recommend keeping a few easy ones in there for now though, so you don’t get complacent. 1. GMAT Quant Guide (skinny little book) PS #1-25. Any edition is fine. 2. Official Guide PS #26-50 3. First 25 DS questions from the GMAT Quant Guide (the exact question numbers will vary depending on which edition you’re using) 4. Do 25 geometry PS questions. Sub-600 level | Mixed difficulty 5. Do 25 geometry DS questions. Sub-600 level | Mixed difficulty 6. Do 10 exponents PS questions. Sub-600 level | Mixed difficulty 7. Do 10 exponents DS questions. Sub-600 level | Mixed difficulty 8. (Optional) Only if you’re sure that you need the extra reps: do more sets from items #4-7 9. (Very, very optional) Quant section only from the GMAT Club tests or another NON-official source (save the mba.com exams for later!) What to do AFTER completing a quant homework set 1-3 days after completing the set, redo your errors from scratch. Try to “wash your brains” and pretend that you’ve never seen the questions before. If you get most of the questions RIGHT the second time: you’re probably making careless errors, and fixing them needs to be your #1 priority. See below for some videos that might help. If you miss a question twice, don’t overreact. Obsessively studying individual questions drains a TON of your study time – if you miss a particular question, you’ll probably never see anything quite like it again. So focus on GENERAL takeaways on how to improve -- don’t spend hours memorizing steps for individual questions. For more on how to interpret your results, see the next post in this thread . Need help with quant? If you make careless errors or struggle on this week’s content, these resources might help: 1. If you’re STILL making careless errors, this algebra video describes a process for approaching ALL quant questions, starting at the 1:01 mark . 2. If you’re struggling with the fundamental content this week, check out this GMAT geometry video , this “intermediate” geometry video , or this exponent video . 3. GMAT Club Math Book 4. Heroic quant threads from Bunuel : Ultimate GMAT Quant Megathread | Signature Question Collection | All You Need for Quant In Weeks 2 and 3, we’ll try to ease your pain on specific RC topic areas, starting with science passages. Maybe they scare you, and maybe they don’t. Either way: your process for RC shouldn’t change at all based on the passage type -- or your mood, or the weather, or what you had for breakfast (

), or anything else. The goal on RC is always to develop a 100% consistent approach to reading -- and that’s harder than it sounds. Stick with it! How to approach RC homework 1. Time each set, but don’t rush through . Do every set with test-like intensity , but don’t impose an artificial time limit -- at least not yet. 2. When you’re finished, please do NOT review your errors at all just yet. On the day you do the homework, just input the results into your error log, and walk away. Week 2 RC homework 1. Watch this video on how to approach RC science passages . (Skip it if you’re 100% confident on science passages, but if you’re afraid of other topics, the messages in the video might help a bit.) 2. Do 3 science passages from older editions of the OGs; you can find some from OG 12 and the Verbal 2nd edition here . 3. Do a full LSAT RC set (~25 questions, ~ 1 hr). Click here if you’re wondering why there are LSAT sets in a GMAT study plan. 4. (Optional) One additional LSAT RC set (~25 questions, ~ 1 hr) What to do AFTER completing an RC homework set Don’t obsess over the questions you missed. You’re never going to see these passages again, and you don’t want to burn too much time reviewing them. Instead, focus on general patterns. Did you miss a bunch of primary purpose questions? Inference questions? Did you get intimidated by certain types of passages? Did you panic? Run out of energy? Pay special attention to errors that surprised you – did you somehow make a silly mistake? If you missed three or more questions on a passage, you might consider redoing the entire passage (and its questions) from scratch. If you do better the second time, ask yourself: what should you have done differently the first time? For more on how to interpret your RC results, see the next post in this thread . Need help with RC? If you struggled with the RC homework, here are some resources that might help: Videos: How to approach RC | Another RC basics video | Dealing with RC science passages | How to identify different points of view on RC passages All GMAT Ninja RC resources More RC explanations than anybody should ever read Beginner’s guide to RC again A whole lot of YouTube videos This week, we’ll start to pick on some of the most fundamental CR question types: strengthen, weaken, and assumption questions. Just as for RC, the core principle for CR is that your process shouldn’t change much based on the question type. Your goal is to become 100% consistent in how you read and comprehend CR passages -- and that’s much, much harder than it sounds. How to approach CR homework 1. Time each set, but don’t rush through . Do every set with test-like intensity , but don’t impose an artificial time limit -- at least not yet. 2. When you’re finished, please do NOT review your errors at all just yet. On the day you do the homework, just input the results into your error log, and walk away. Week 2 CR homework 1. Watch this “CR 102” video that discusses tougher variants on strengthen, weaken, and assumption questions. 2. (Optional) Do a set of 10-15 strengthen/weaken questions from older editions of the OGs; you can find some from OG 12 and the Verbal 2nd ed. here . 3. Do 10 assumption questions from older editions of the OGs; you can find some from OG 12 and the Verbal 2nd edition here . 4. Do a full LSAT CR set (~25 questions, ~ 1 hr). Click here to understand why we assign LSAT sets in a GMAT study plan . 5. (Optional) One additional LSAT RC set (~25 questions, ~ 1 hr) What to do AFTER completing a CR homework set 1-3 days after completing the set, redo your errors from scratch. Do your best to “wash your brains” and pretend that you’ve never seen the questions before. If you get most of the questions RIGHT the second time, that’s a sign that your overall CR process isn’t nearly as consistent as it needs to be, and fixing your process needs to be your #1 area of focus. See below for some videos that might help. If you miss a question a second time, don’t overreact: obsessively studying individual questions can drain a TON of your study time – and it really isn’t very valuable on CR. So don’t spend hours memorizing the steps for individual questions. For more on how to interpret your CR results, see the next post in this thread . Need help with CR? If you struggled with the CR homework, here are some resources that might help: Beginners’ guide to CR YouTube video on how to approach CR All GMAT Ninja CR resources More full CR explanations than anybody should ever read A whole lot more YouTube videos No SC for you this week! Again. We know: ignoring SC just doesn’t feel quite right. But you’ve probably already noticed that we’re giving you a LOT of work on RC, CR, and quant right now. Those things generally take longer to improve than SC, and remember that there’s a limited supply of worthwhile SC practice questions. Don’t worry: we’ll start the sentence correction mayhem next week. You’re excited, right? You’ll get tired of reading this, but IR and AWA are always optional in this study plan. Why? Nobody really cares about them. Spend your time elsewhere, please.

GMATNinja · Answer

How to Interpret Your Week 2 Homework Results Please read this section each week if you’re serious about optimizing your study time. Our goal is to help you understand how good or bad your results are, so that you can (A) choose your homework wisely, and (B) avoid wasting time reviewing questions that don’t really matter. Obviously, some of this advice will be similar from week to week. But plenty of things will change, too. So if you’re panicking about a homework result – or if you’re tempted to spend a half-billion hours reviewing individual questions – please take a deep breath, and read through this post first. Most of you probably didn't do a practice test this week, and that's great. Generally speaking, your time is best spent elsewhere right now. If you took a non-official quant test (from GMAT Club or another source) : Hopefully it didn't replace something that you needed more than a quant practice test . It was listed as optional – and as always, we want you to use your time wisely. Don't overreact to the score. It's nearly impossible for non-official practice tests to mimic the actual scoring of the GMAT, so the score itself doesn't matter much. Count your careless errors . No, really: please count them. In the long run, you’ll need to completely eliminate those careless errors on quant – and nothing else matters until you do. Count the number of questions that took 3+ minutes. In the long run, there should be none of these; this time management video might help a bit if you haven't already seen it. Don’t spend a ton of time reviewing every question you missed . We’ll say more about that in the quant section below. Benchmarks for Your Week 2 Quant Results Before you do anything else: Count the errors that make you go "whoa, how the 🤬 did I miss THAT one?!?" No really: count them, for EVERY quant set you completed . Then divide that by the total number of questions to get your careless error rate. If your long-term goal is to score in the high 40s, here are the metrics I’d like you to hit in Week 2: Careless error rate : < 5%. If you make careless errors on 5% of questions now, you’ll make far more under the pressure of the actual exam – maybe three times as many, which means that you’d make about 5 goofy errors on your actual test. And that will destroy your score. So please get this careless error rate down to 1-2% at most. OG & Quant Guide sets (#1-3 on the list) : 85-90% correct is excellent, 80% is probably good. Just remember that WHAT you miss is more important on the GMAT than how many you missed: careless errors are apocalyptic. If you missed OG questions on topics that you haven't studied, that's totally cool -- you'll have time to learn those things. Randomized batches of forum questions (#4-8 on the list) : 85-90% correct is good on the sub-600 questions, but if you did mixed difficulty sets, you’ll have to take the results with a grain of salt. If you happened to see nasty, strange questions, 50-60% might be pretty good. Don’t overreact if the percentage wasn’t great, though. Speed : On the OG and topic-based sets, you're in good shape if you’re reasonably close to 2 minutes per question. If you're slower than, say, 2:30 per question on average, it might be a sign that your basic skills are rusty, or that you're not choosing efficient paths forward -- and you'll be able to improve those things over time. What Should You Do About Your Quant Weaknesses in Week 2? First, an unpleasant truth: you’re probably going to miss 20-50% of the quant questions on the GMAT , regardless of your score. The goal of an adaptive exam is to find the level of question at which you get roughly 40-50% of the questions wrong. So even if you score in the high 40s on quant, you’re going to miss A LOT of questions – that’s just how the test works. Also, if you make careless mistakes on easier questions, the GMAT will eat you for breakfast. You probably already know that from watching this short video on time management though, right? The punchline: when you study, please pick your battles wisely. If you’re painstakingly reviewing every single question you missed, you’re probably missing the point. Yes, you’ll want to look for signs that your foundations are shaky, and you’ll also need to eliminate careless errors. But if you’re getting abused by hard or obscure questions? That’s cool. Don’t waste too much of your precious study time on that stuff. Here’s some guidance on what to do once you’ve analyzed your results: If your careless error rate is too high : address this problem ASAP. Nothing else matters on quant until you do. Check out the resource list in the study plan for help. If you struggled on specific topics (algebra, geometry, exponents), don’t panic . It’s far too easy to overreact to a few errors, and study these problems until your eyeballs burst. Instead, try to put your struggles in context: did you miss particularly hard or strange versions of these questions? Were your errors careless? If so, you probably don’t need to do much studying, exactly. But if you missed basic questions because your foundations are shaky, then you might need to do some remedial studying, and it might even make sense to “pause” the study plan to do so – but don’t assume that you need to do this unless the data is very, very clear about your weaknesses. If you struggled on the OG or Quant Guide sets : don’t panic. Again: ask yourself WHY you struggled. If you’re at, say, 70-80% accuracy, that’s not ideal right now. But context matters: if mosts of those errors are on topics you’ve never really studied, you’re in great shape, since you have plenty of time to learn those in the next 11 weeks. If you got CRUSHED by ALL of the quant homework : if you’re nowhere close to the benchmarks on quant – and if your long-term goal is a high-40s score – then maybe you need to back away from the study plan, and invest some time in rebuilding your basic quant skills. If that’s the case for you, tag us in the thread, give us as much detail as you can about your situation, and we’ll try to help. How much time should you spend reviewing individual quant questions? Not much, please! Because it can take SOOOOOOO much time to review a question, it should be your absolute last resort. That’s why we want you to redo questions first – sometimes, you’ll see your mistake right away, and that’s the best way to learn. If you miss a question a second time, then maybe it’s a sign of an underlying issue. No, really: resist the temptation to obsess over individual questions . Instead, look for patterns in your errors – an error on one question might be a fluke (or a weird, hard, or badly written question), but if you miss several related questions, you have an opportunity to get a good ROI on your study time by addressing a general weakness via a video or articles or books. First, another unpleasant truth: LSAT sets are HARD. If you’re not in pain, you’re probably not doing it right.

Improving on RC and CR is usually a slow, agonizing process. Don’t get discouraged – keep fighting to read a little bit more sharply, every time you do a set. Keep fighting to be more consistent in how you approach sets. For most test-takers, improving on CR and RC is the hardest thing to accomplish, because there are no formulas or “tricks” that can help. So please be patient with yourself, and be nice to yourself. Be proud when your results tick upwards a little bit, and don’t beat yourself up when you have a bad set. Slow, steady progress is beautiful. Even when it really hurts. Benchmarks for Your Week 2 Verbal Results Accuracy on LSAT CR & RC sets : if your goal is a 40V or above, we eventually want to see 80% accuracy on LSAT CR and RC. That’s your long-run goal. It’s OK if you’re not quite there in Week 2. Efficiency on LSAT CR & RC sets : in the long run, you’ll need to complete full LSAT sets in under 60 minutes to have a shot at finishing the GMAT verbal section on time. If you’re in the 60-70 minute range right now, that’s still OK – you have time to become more efficient and energetic in your approach. If you’re slower than that, we might be worried. More on that below. Consistency on LSAT CR & RC sets : your errors and times should fall within a fairly narrow range across ALL of your LSAT sets. LSAT sets (~25 Qs each) do not vary much in difficulty, so if your errors or times fluctuate wildly, that’s a sign that you’re doing very different things at different times – and that’s not cool. You’ll certainly struggle more on some passages than others, but the results on the full sets of ~25 questions should be pretty stable. GMAT OG & Verbal Guide RC & CR questions : we can’t give you a benchmark, because it just depends on the difficulty level of the questions that you happened to do. All I can say is that you’ll want to look for HUGE patterns in your mistakes: are science passages freaking you out? Are you overwhelmingly missing a certain question type? If the patterns are CLEAR, they’re worth addressing, but don’t overreact to a question or two. What Should You Do About Your Verbal Weaknesses in Week 2? Don’t panic . CR and RC progress can be slow. Take a long view: are you seeing ANY improvement in your average accuracy and times from Week 1 until now? If so, great – even if that improvement is small. Look for “careless” errors . As with everything on the GMAT, pay close attention to anything that seemed to be an “unforced error.” Did you miss a ton of questions that felt easy to you? If so, you might want to revisit the techniques in the videos and articles in the assignment list. If your results are significantly better on RC than on CR : that’s not a bad thing! There’s no reason why you can’t bring your CR results to the level of your RC, but something is funky in your approach to CR. In the coming weeks, you might want to invest time in some extra CR sets or videos – we’ll provide recommendations each week. If you’re better at CR than RC : again, this isn’t a bad thing! You can bring your RC up to the level of your CR. When this happens, the most common reasons are that you’re obsessing over details when you read RC (and missing the “big picture” by doing so), or you’re struggling to stay focused through a long passage. Maybe you’ll want to err on the side of getting a bit of extra practice on RC in the coming weeks, and we’ll keep feeding you videos that might help. If you’re slow ( > 60 mins per LSAT set) : well, I wish that I could tell you exactly what’s happening, but there are a ton of different reasons why your times might be high. At this stage, maybe you’re still learning new approaches, so you’re still figuring out how to integrate them into your process – if that’s the case, your times will come down. Maybe you’re not doing each set with test-like intensity. Maybe there’s inefficiency in your process – and if that’s the case, it’s likely that you’re still struggling to fully incorporate the techniques that you’ll see in the videos. It’s also possible that you’re a slow reader, and that’s a hard thing to fix. I wish I could tell you which of these things is happening – but you’ll have to figure that part out for yourself, unfortunately.

If you’re getting impatient with your results : hey, it’s Week 2. If you’re above 80% on your LSAT sets, you’re doing GREAT. If you’re in the 60-80% range, you still have time to improve. If you’re getting CRUSHED on CR & RC : my heart hurts for you, because that’s a terrible feeling. If your goal is something like a 30V or a 35V, our benchmarks are too aggressive – so 60% or below on your LSAT sets might not be too bad. But if you have ambitious goals (40V+) and you’re truly struggling to understand the passages, it’s possible that you need to spend some time working on your fundamental reading skills before returning to GMAT-specific verbal prep. This article and this one will give you some ideas for how to improve your reading precision over time.

nithyak · Answer

Hi GMATNinja

LSAT 01, SEC III 18/26 69.23% 64min
LSAT 02, SEC I 22/28 79% 70min
LSAT 03, SEC II 24/27 88.88% 64min
LSAT 04, SEC IV 24/27 88.88% 70min

Thank you for the incredibly detailed study plan and your advise on using LSATs for practice. Its really helping me gain momentum reading topics that I don't really dig reading otherwise and also have a clear target to work towards.
My LSAT sets results are as above.
My concern is that I am getting all the Hard (40-50% on the gmat club meter) questions right but the majority of the ones I'm getting wrong show a 60-65% accuracy on the gmat club meter. I am worried because the test is adaptive and every medium level question I get wrong will make my chances of encountering a hard level question slimmer right?? So what's the point of me getting those right!?
Second, how many medium level questions can a person aiming for 740+ skip or get wrong?
Third, do I even need to pay attention to these aspects or just move on, since I am seeing an above 80% average on the practice sets?

Sharing below as an example, a question I got wrong which shows 75% accuracy on the gmat club meter.
https://gmatclub.com/forum/anthropologi ... 86172.html
Q5. According to the passage, one way in which life history studies differ from life-passage studies is that life-history studies are
(A) Usually told in the subject’s native language.
(B) Less reliable because they rely solely on the subject’s recall.
(C) More likely to be told without the influence of an intermediary.
(D) More creative in the way they interpret the subject’s cultural legacy.
(E) More representative of the historian’s point of view than of the ethnographer’s.

I chose E over C; Reason, I failed to analyze the answer choices correctly.

GMATNinja · Answer

Thank you for the wonderful questions,  nithyak ! And sorry for my horrendously slow response. I might be a bit too late to help you, but maybe this will help some other students with similar issues.

First, I would take the difficulty levels that you see here on GMAT Club with a huge grain of salt. They don't necessarily match the actual difficulty levels of official questions, because GMAT Club's difficulty ratings are calculated with a completely different formula than testing agencies use, and they're based on a different sample of test-takers. So those difficulty levels are useful, but far from perfect.

That said, I would ask yourself this question: WHY are you getting those "medium" questions wrong? Are you misreading something? Are you less focused when the question seems easier? Are there certain question types that you're missing disproportionately? Is your process of elimination less sharp than it could be?

In other words: if you really are missing questions that should be easy for you, then there's an underlying reason why. Broadly speaking, there's something inconsistent in your approach to questions if that's happening. It's totally possible that what you're seeing is just a quirk of the data: what you personally find difficult doesn't match the GMAT Club population as a whole, for example. But if you look deeper, it's very possible that there's something unsystematic in your process that can cause trouble on test day.

In the longer run, your LSAT results will almost always reflect those inconsistencies very clearly. If you're consistently missing -3 on every set you do, you're fine (at least in terms of accuracy; timing might be a different story). If the next four sets you do look very much like these four (-8, -6, -3, -3), then I would be convinced that you're approaching things differently on different days, and the fact that you're missing "medium" questions is just another symptom of that inconsistency.

Bottom line: yes, you'll want to explore more deeply to see if those errors on easier questions are caused by some specific test-taking behavior. But in the longer run, your LSAT results will very loudly yell at you if there's a real problem with the consistency of your process.

I hope that helps a bit!

nithyak · Answer

Thank you  GMATNinja  
This gives some perspective for sure.

My next 3 sets went like this -1,-2,-3. (Accuracy dropped because I took less time, around 1.9min per question, in the last set)
Out of the 6 wrong, 3 were <60% on the accuracy meter and the other three, >60% on the accuracy meter (one even 80%)

I'll try and analyze my mistakes more deeply to figure out if I have some underlying pattern. Thanks again!

GMATNinja · Answer

Oh wow, those are some great results. Sure, you might find some interesting pattern in the errors, especially if a few of those are truly on the easier side (and they may or may not be). But something is definitely going very, very right. Keep up the good work!

lomachenko · Answer

Hi  GMATNinja

For the timing benchmarks on the LSAT sets (~1hr per set), is this assuming that all of the 25 CR questions (or all the 4 RC passages) from a set are done in one sitting? I'm seeing that I am more efficient with timing if I break these up in say 2 sittings instead of attempting all in one sitting, which is understandable. Should we be aiming for a <1hr benchmark when all questions are done in one sitting? Thanks in advance!

GMATNinja · Answer

Running 20 miles at once is very different than running 10 miles one day and 10 miles another day (even though both sound kinda miserable!). Also, the first half of an LSAT set tends to be easier than the second half -- it's best to do the entire set at once so that you're forced to navigate the entire range of difficulty levels and manage your time and process accordingly.

If you're taking the current version of the GMAT, the verbal section alone will last longer than an hour, and one-hour LSAT sets are a good way to build your stamina. The verbal section will be shorter on the new GMAT, but the test will still require more than two hours of concentration. Sure, LSAT sets are more repetitive than the GMAT, but if you can stay focused on an LSAT CR or RC set that takes about an hour, it will probably help you get through the GMAT with your brains intact.

So I'd recommend sticking with full LSAT sets, completed in one sitting. It'll give you cleaner data, and it will help build your stamina in useful ways.

I hope that helps a bit!

mendax · Answer

Hi GmatNinja,
Where can I find GMAT Quant Guide?

KMDrkx · Answer

Hi  GMATNinja , firstly i would like to thank you for providing such an extensive, yet achievable study plan for the GMAT Prep. I am loving it. However, after week 2 i was not able to find the link to interpreting the result section for this specific week, all the links get back to Week 1 interpretation. Is it like that? Should i interpret week 2 results same as week 1?

GMATNinja · Answer

Thank you so much for the kind words, and sorry for my slow response!

Good catch: there was a typo in  this post  -- it should say "Week  2 " not Week  1 " in the header. It's fixed now, and everything else in that "how to interpret your results" post is correct, though.

Sorry for the confusion!

Manifesting710 · Answer

Hi  GMATNinja

I frequently struggle with LSAT RC, but I perform relatively well in GMAT RC with fewer mistakes. However, when I review my LSAT RC answers, I notice that I often choose the wrong option even when I've narrowed it down to two choices. For example, out of 27 questions, I ended up selecting the wrong answer for 11 questions, while the option I didn't choose was actually correct.

How can I address this issue? Can it be resolved?

I know lsat is harder but am I supposed to get so much more wrong in lsat questions than gmat questions? This is the case in CR as well, I score better in gmat questions than lsat

Posted from my mobile device

GMATNinja · Answer

For starters, I would be a little bit careful when comparing your GMAT and LSAT results, since the GMAT OG questions range enormously in difficulty. If, for example, you do the first 25 questions in the OG CR section, they're going to be MUCH easier than any set of 25 LSAT questions -- and all else being equal, you're likely to see a huge gap in your accuracy between an LSAT set and the easiest GMAT questions. If, on the other hand, you're doing the very last batch of ~25 questions in the OG, the gap should be smaller, and might even disappear altogether.

So yes, sometimes it's completely normal to see a huge gap between your GMAT and LSAT results. But it just depends on exactly which GMAT questions you're doing.

It's common to eliminate all but two answers on verbal questions. I guess that's a sign that you're not completely lost, but in many cases, the question-writers came up with only one truly tantalizing wrong answer, and the rest are often relatively easy to eliminate. So if you're like most test-takers, you'll find yourself in this situation fairly frequently.

Generally speaking, if you're unable to choose the right answer from the final two, that's usually a sign that you're missing something in the passage for one reason or another. I'm not sure that this will help much, but for more on this issue, check out  this article about why "close" doesn't mean much on GMAT verbal .

I hope that helps a bit, and have fun studying!

usernamearindam · Answer

Hi  GMATNinja

I cant thank you enough for providing this study plan. I was quite lost and clueless in my journey and this plan has given me a new hope.

I have the following questions regarding homework:

1. Are the weekly homework all the practice we need, or are they over and above an expected practice that is so obvious that it's not mentioned?

The homework for RC in week 2 recommends 3(science passages) + 4(1 set of LSAT) + 4 (1 set of LSAT) passages. So is the recommendation to do 11 passages in the entire week, or is it to do these additional 11 passages over and above something that is obvious, that its not mentioned.

2. If I am worse in RC than CR, shall I simply practice more LSAT material (I'll be using gmat club forum to practice LSAT questions), or use any other material because of the limited quantity of official materials?

I have finished my week 1 and based on the verbal results from week 1, (CR - 72%,76% and RC - 70% and 67%), I suppose I'll need extra preparation on RC. So I want to understand whats the recommended prep quantity and source.

GMATNinja · Answer

Thank you for the kind words! I'm glad that the plan has helped a bit already.

We haven't omitted anything from the study plan (other than changes for the GMAT Focus Edition -- we'll add those soon enough). More broadly, I don't think there's anything that's completely obvious if you're studying for the GMAT. So there's no need to add anything, unless you identify a specific, crucial weakness that isn't addressed elsewhere in the study plan.

If you need extra RC practice, you'll definitely want to stick to official sources, without exception. In theory, you could dig for additional GMAT resources, but most of the available official GMAT questions are included somewhere in the study plan already. So LSATs are the next-best thing if you need extra RC reps.

Just be a little bit careful not to overdo it with RC. More practice is good up to a point, but if you do too much -- whatever that might mean for you personally -- it can be remarkably easy to just "go through the motions", and that's not going to help. So make sure that whenever you practice RC, you're doing it with test-like intensity -- even if that means doing a little bit less from week to week.

I hope that helps!

usernamearindam · Answer

Thanks a ton  GMATNinja !!! That's exactly the clarity I needed. This absolutely helps, thanks again.

Ant750 · Answer

Hi  GMATNinja ,

I'm preparing for the GMAT Focus exam and love your teaching style and 13-week GMAT plan!

Are you planning to create a dedicated GMAT Focus study plan, similar to your 13-week GMAT plan? If so, when can we expect it?

Thanks

GMATNinja · Answer

Thank you for the kind words,  Ant750 !

Yup, we're working on adapting this for the GMAT Focus edition, but there's no specific timetime just yet. For now, just skip anything geometry-related and trade SC assignments for official DI practice, and you'll be on the right track.

Have fun studying!

daynesj24 · Answer

Hi GMAT Ninja,

Thanks for the study plan. Where do I get the LSAT questions? Is there a book I'm suppose to buy? sorry if I missed it.

nosaj · Answer

Hey Daynesj, You can get one off Amazon. GMATNinja mentions more here https://gmatclub.com/forum/why-you-shou ... 39365.html "Ready to get started? I’m the first to admit that a pile of LSAT books won’t magically cure all of your GMAT verbal problems. If you’re struggling with the language or logic of basic GMAT verbal questions, the LSAT might be overkill. In the long run, LSAT questions can definitely help you improve your fundamental reading and logical skills – but they’re no magic bullet, and they can be demoralizing if your skills aren’t already pretty good. But if you’re interested in challenging yourself with some LSAT materials, I’d recommend starting with the 25 RC and 50 CR (“logical reasoning”) questions available in sections 2-4 of the free, official test on the LSAT website . (I’d also recommend ignoring the LSAT’s ridiculous time limit of 35 minutes per section. If you can do each set of 25 questions in less than an hour, you’re doing great.) If you want more, you can move on to any of the LSAT’s creatively-named books: 10 Actual, Official LSAT PrepTests , or The Next 10 Actual, Official LSAT PrepTests , or any other similarly-named book – though none of them include answer explanations. Alternatively, you could pick up The Official LSAT SuperPrep I or The Official LSAT SuperPrep II , each of which includes three tests with detailed, official explanations. If you decide to use LSAT tests to improve your GMAT score, here are two small things to keep in mind: 1. Please ignore the Analytical Reasoning ("logic games") section, since it doesn't bear all that much resemblance to anything you'll see on the GMAT. 2. Newer versions of the LSAT include an RC passage type called Comparative Reading, which requires you to compare two passages, just as the name implies. It's not going to hurt you or anything, but if you'd prefer to avoid it, do older LSAT tests (pre-2007, or anything up to PrepTest #51). With the exception of the LSAT SuperPrep II, the books mentioned in this post consist exclusively of the old LSAT format, without Comparative Reading."

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