GMAT Ninja 13-Week Study Plan (2024-25 ed.) Week 9

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GMAT Ninja’s 13-Week Study Plan  
  Week 9 (~15 hours)  
 Subscribe via E-mail  |  Join Study Plan Chat Group

Welcome back for Week 9 of the study plan! If you have no idea what’s going on here, then you’ll want to start with  Week 1  instead.

This week will feel a bit different: we’re bombarding you with practice tests from now on, and limiting the rest of the homework. If you’ve made it this far, you deserve a cookie.

I love the attitude and outlook in this debrief by  pnishant ,  who achieved a 740 after TWO AND A HALF YEARS of effort . He refers to his GMAT experience as a “lifetime journey” and focuses on some of the things he learned about life in general along the way.

It’s a long debrief, so if you only have a minute or two, skip down to the very last section about “life learnings.” It’s a lovely, humble perspective on the time he invested and the pain he endured on his GMAT journey. 
   
And now the fun REALLY begins.

For the rest of the 13-week study plan, we’re going to unleash a steady torrent of practice tests on you, including a full, official test each week. Obviously, we’re reducing the rest of your homework to compensate.

The most important thing: do the practice exams when you’re at your very best, and do everything humanly possible to ensure that  you’re practicing like it’s test day .

Week 9 practice tests :

1. Full mba.com test #2. Remember: always practice like it’s test day, and keep honing your test-day reset routines if you need them.2. Do a “fake quant test” using GMAT Official Practice Questions - Quantitative available for purchase at mba.com. Here’s how to set it up:  
 Access the  GMAT Official Practice site , and locate the "GMAT Official Practice Questions - Quantitative" product. 
 Click the "Study" button -> "Practice Questions" in the left nav menu -> "Start New Session" button. 
 To start a session, select the "Choose the type, difficulty, and number of questions" radio button; select 21 Problem Solving questions ( including an even mix of easy, medium, and hard ). Keep the "Unlimited" radio button selected (under "Duration"), and select "Exam Mode" (under "Mode"). 
 Click the "Start Practice" button and work through the problems.  Try to hide/ignore the timers at the top of the page  (you won't have those on test day). 
 The questions don’t randomize properly, unfortunately. But it will feel somewhat like an actual exam.  
3. (Very optional) Do a “fake verbal test” using GMAT Official Practice Questions - Verbal available for purchase at mba.com. The setup is similar to the “fake quant test” described above, but with the following differences: 
  
 Select 13 CR questions from the mba.com software, in “exam mode.” If your goal is 84V or above, select an even mix of medium and hard questions. If your goals are lower, select a roughly even mix of easy, medium, and hard questions. 
 Select 10 RC questions – from 3 passages – from the OG or GMAT Verbal Guide or the LSAT. Do  NOT  use the mba.com software for these – you’ll get too few questions per passage. 
 Set an external timer for 45 minutes. 
 Yes, this is FAR from perfect, for all sorts of reasons. But at least these are official questions, in roughly the same quantity as the actual exam.

There’s no DI “fake test” this week, just because of the limited supply of official DI questions. We’ll add DI “fake tests” later in the study plan, though.

Warning: it can be tricky to interpret your “fake test” results, so please see our guidance in the next post in this thread when you’re finished. 
   
This is the final week of “topic-based” quant practice: probability, combinations, and permutations. You’ll see only a few of these questions on your actual exam, so we definitely don’t recommend investing much time in these topics, unless you’re already GREAT at nearly everything else (especially verbal).

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.

Week 9 quant homework 
These sets are getting pretty tough, right? If you’re worried about your performance, check out the next post in this thread for guidance on how to interpret your results. And cut yourself some slack: these can get pretty nasty at times.

1. (Extremely optional) Videos (~1 hr. each):  Probability  |  Combinations & Permutations . These videos are EXCESSIVE, especially since these topics comprise a very tiny portion of the exam. Spend time on them only if you’re 100% sure that you need to – and we encourage you to stop the videos whenever the goofy big-nosed dude says “the rest of this video is advanced, and you probably don’t need it.”
2. GMAT OG PS #176-200
3. (Optional) Do 15 Probability PS questions.  Sub-655  (recommended) |  Mixed difficulty 
4. (Optional) Do 15 Combinations & Permutations PS questions.  Sub-655  (recommended) |  Mixed difficulty 
5. (Optional) Only if you’re CERTAIN that it’s worthwhile: do extra sets of topic-based questions as needed.

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’re suddenly worried about a specific quant topic in the final weeks of the plan, we have one essential piece of advice:  don’t overreact .

Imagine, for example, that you miss three rate/work questions on a practice test or OG set. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re bad at rate/work questions: maybe those questions happened to appear when you were running out of time, or the questions simply got hard at that point in the exam. Maybe a particular  non-official  practice test isn’t constructed well, or perhaps rate/work questions (or some other topic) was overrepresented.

In other words, if you start freaking out about a certain topic, take a step back: is your homework data CONSISTENTLY telling you that this topic area is a problem, or is it potentially a quirk of a particular exam or practice set? If you think there’s a real problem, great -- go do some extra practice, or watch a video. If you’re not sure, binging on a specific topic probably isn’t the best use of your time, especially if you need to make bigger leaps on verbal or DI.

If you truly do need help, these resources should have you covered, as always.

1. If you need more practice on a specific topic, you can create your own custom sets using the GMAT Club  advanced search  or  forum quiz . Just don’t overdo it, please! It’s easy to get addicted to quant practice sets, and waste far too much time with them.
2. If specific quant topics are giving you trouble, whatever you need is probably in  this playlist .
3. If you’re making careless errors,  this (probably very familiar) video on how to approach GMAT quant  is still essential viewing; if you’re feeling inefficient, the video on  Developing a Flexible Quant Mindset  is still a good fit. Also,  here’s a classic short video on GMAT time management .
4.  GMAT Club Math Book 
5. Heroic quant threads from  Bunuel :  Ultimate GMAT Quant Megathread  |  Signature Question Collection  |  All You Need for Quant

By now, you should be right where you want to be on RC. We just want you to do enough homework to stay sharp -- so just one GMAT RC set each week for most of you. If you’re nowhere close to your performance goals on RC, you might want to consider pausing the study plan – RC can take some time to improve, so be patient if you still need to make a big leap.

LSAT RC sets are still optional, but if you want an extra check on your progress -- or a good challenge -- it’s still a good idea to do a set or two occasionally.

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. (We’ll say more below about how to analyze your results.)

Week 9 RC homework 
 
1. Do the 5th set of ~25 questions from a recent edition of the OG. (The question numbers vary depending on which edition you’re using, and it’s OK to do a little bit more or fewer than 25 questions so that you don’t stop partway into a passage.)
2. (Optional) One more LSAT RC set

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 (like humanities/culture/literature)? 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, say, three or more questions on a particular 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?

The usual list of RC resources in case you need them:

A full GMAT RC video course  
  A ton of LIVE YouTube videos on all sorts of topics, including RC  
  All GMAT Ninja RC resources  
  More RC explanations than anybody should ever read  
  Beginner’s guide to RC again

You’re doing full practice tests now, so we’ll continue to ease up on the CR practice. Your CR results should be consistently strong by now -- or at least as strong as you need them to be, based on your personal score goals.

As always, LSAT sets are optional at this stage, but we still recommend them if you need the challenge of some hard language, or a sanity-check on your progress over time.

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. (We’ll say more below about how to analyze your results.)

Week 9 CR homework 
 
1. Do the 5th set of 25 questions from the GMAT Verbal Guide. (If you’re using a newer edition, you’ll have plenty of questions left; if you’re in a thinner, older edition, you’ll obviously have to stop once you run out of questions.)
2. (Optional) One full LSAT CR set

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 your CR homework sets this week, here are the usual resources:

Beginners’ guide to CR  
  LIVE YouTube video on how to approach CR  or  a not-so-live video on how to approach CR  
  All GMAT Ninja CR resources on GMAT Club  
  More full CR explanations than anybody should ever read  
  A whole lot more LIVE YouTube videos on a wide variety of topics  
  A 9-video Critical Reasoning playlist , focused on the underlying causes of CR errors

Week 9 DI assignments:

1. (Optional) Watch  this video for another, more quant-based perspective on how to approach Graphical Interpretation questions 
2. (Extremely optional) Videos (~1 hr. each):  Probability  |  Combinations & Permutations . These videos also appear in the quant list – and again, keep in mind that these topics account for just a tiny percentage of questions, so don’t waste too much time on them unless you’re already a rockstar at everything else.
3. Do the 5th set of 20 Data Sufficiency questions from your version of the Data Insights Review. (If you’re using an older edition and have fewer than 20 questions left, just finish them all.)
4. 15 mixed questions (GI, TA, TPA, MSR) from the GMAT Official Guide question bank on MBA.com – see below for setup instructions. Use all four non-DS question types, but please read our usual MSR warning below. Select a roughly even mix of easy, medium, & hard questions.
5. 15 mixed questions (GI, TA, TPA, MSR) from the Data Insights Review question bank on MBA.com – see below for setup instructions. Use all four non-DS question types, but please read our usual MSR warning below. Select a roughly even mix of easy, medium, & hard questions.
6. Do 6 MSR questions from  GMAT Official Practice Questions - Data Insights  available for purchase at mba.com. See below for setup instructions, along with our usual warning about MSR questions.
7. (Optional) Do 10 probability DS questions.  Sub-655 level  (recommended) |  Mixed difficulty 
8. (Optional) Do 10 combinations & permutations DS questions.  Sub-655 level  (recommended) |  Mixed difficulty 
9. (Very optional) Do 10 Graphs & Tables questions.  Sub-655 level  |  Mixed difficulty 
10. (Very optional) Do 10 Two-Part Analysis questions.  Sub-555 level  |  Mixed difficulty

Instructions for DI practice sets on ( MBA.com )

Friendly warning : the MBA.com software doesn’t always work nicely with Multi-Source Reasoning questions. On the actual GMAT, you’ll always see three questions for each set of MSR tabs. But when you set up these practice sets, you might get only one question for each set of tabs, or you might get the full set of three questions.

Access the  GMAT Official Practice site at mba.com , and locate the "GMAT Official Guide 2024-25" or “GMAT Official Guide Data Insights Review 2024-25” – or whichever editions you’re using. 
 Click the "Study" button -> "Practice Questions" in the left navigation menu -> "Start New Session" button. 
 To start a session, select the "Choose the type, difficulty, and number of questions" radio button; click the checkbox to the left of the assigned question type(s) to select ALL remaining questions for that type. Keep the "Unlimited" radio button selected (under "Duration"), and select "Exam Mode" (under "Mode").  
  Week 9 OG assignment : select DI, GI, MSR, and TA only (no DS, please), and do a nice mix of easy, medium, and hard questions. And please stop after you’ve completed a total of 15 questions – we’ll save the rest for later. 
  Week 9 Data Insights Review assignment : select DI, GI, MSR, and TA only (no DS, please), and do a nice mix of easy, medium, and hard questions. And please stop after you’ve completed a total of 15 questions – we’ll save the rest for later. 
  Week 9 Online Practice Questions – Data Insights assignment : select ALL of the MSR questions, regardless of difficulty. Stop when you’ve completed 6 questions. 
 Click the "Start Practice" button.  Try to hide/ignore the timers at the top of the page , since you won't have those on test day. 
 After doing the assigned number of questions, click the "Pause" button at the top right -> "Pause Custom Practice" button in the popup -> "Submit and End Session" (red, scary button) to confirm.

What to do AFTER completing a Data Insights 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 Data Insights?

1. If you’re struggling with DI, everything you need is probably in  this series of five DI videos (filmed LIVE) , or  this playlist of 10 delicious DI videos 
2. If you need help with specific quant topics, check out the quant section of the homework list for more resources.

GMATNinja · Answer

How to Interpret Your Week 9 Homework Results

Please read this section if you’re serious about optimizing your study time. In particular, this will help you make sense of this week’s practice exams.

As always, if you’re worried about something that isn’t addressed here, please post your questions/worries/doubts either here or in the Week 1 thread.

Practice Tests+

How to interpret mba.com test #2

How far are you from your target score overall? In theory, you’re about 4 weeks from your actual exam, so you shouldn’t be TOO far from your goal. As a very very rough guideline, I’m worried if you still need to gain more than 30-40 points – but it depends on what, exactly, went wrong.
Omitted questions can DESTROY your GMAT score. Check to see if you left any questions unanswered. The current version of the GMAT penalizes you severely for omitted questions, so please answer absolutely everything, even if you’re guessing blindly at the end of a section.
Remember that in the GMAT scoring system, 3 = 20. If you gain 3 “section points” – on any individual section or combination of sections – your total GMAT score will increase by 20 points. More on that in this short video, or here’s a nifty score calculator.
How far are you from your target score on the quant, verbal, and DI sections? If you’re 5+ points away from your target score on any individual section, you’re at risk of running out of time, and you might want to pause the study plan to work on your underlying skills. Just keep in mind that DI scores are 3-5 points lower than verbal and quant scores, on average – so make sure that you keep that in mind as you set your score targets.
How many careless errors did you make on quant and DI? If you made more than one silly error on quant or DI, then your main problem might be sloppiness – not necessarily a lack of skill. Even a small handful of silly mistakes can cost you 5+ points on quant or DI. So if this is a problem, fix it NOW.
Do you notice any patterns in your quant errors? Are you disproportionately missing word translation questions? Annoying algebraic questions with very few words in them? Something else? One or two errors might mean nothing – for example, if you missed two hard, weird rate/work questions (but usually nail the easy ones), that’s cool, and you don’t have anything to worry about. But if you’re missing the same sort of thing repeatedly – especially if the questions seem to be on the easier side – then you’ll want to consider pausing the plan to focus on your weaknesses.
Count the number of errors you made on each verbal question type. If you see a dramatic imbalance, then you know exactly what to focus on. If your verbal errors are relatively balanced between CR and RC, that might take more time to fix.
Do you notice any patterns in your DI errors? Are you disproportionately missing verbal-based DI questions? Getting freaked out by the mountain of information on MSR questions? Paralyzing when you see particularly weird graphs? Or do you see some other pattern? To be fair, DI is so multifaceted that it can be hard to spot patterns in your mistakes, but if you’re unhappy with your DI score, try to look beyond the question type, and figure out if anything tends to trigger most of your mistakes.
Look for signs of stubbornness. If you’re spending more than 3 minutes on individual questions, you’ll need to learn to let go. Time is a scarce resource on the GMAT, and spending 3+ minutes isn’t efficient, other than on the first question of an RC passage or a Multi-Source Reasoning set.
Is nervousness a factor? Is your mind going blank under the pressure of a practice test? Are you struggling to sleep the night before a practice test? If so, check out this beginner’s guide to test anxiety, this test anxiety quiz, or this YouTube playlist.
Remember that the experience is totally different if you’re seeing repeated questions. You might not consciously recognize many questions, but I 100% promise that you’ll be faster and more accurate on questions you’ve seen before – and you’re MUCH less likely to struggle with time management as a result. We can’t know whether your score was inflated by 10 points or 50 points or 100 points, but tests with repeated questions are always at least somewhat inflated – and you’ll struggle more with timing on a brand-new test than you did on a familiar one.

Benchmarks for the Week 9 quant “fake test” (item #2 on the assignment list):

Medium quant questions: 80% is OK, 90%+ is excellent if your goal is a quant score in the 80s.
Hard quant questions: 50% is solid at this stage. No, really: you can miss a TON of hard questions on the GMAT and be in great shape. If you’re comfortably above 50%, congratulations. But you don’t need to be too far above 50% to have a great chance at an 80+ on quant.
Careless error rate: < 3%. Maybe we can shrug off a single careless error. More than that? You’ll need to focus on getting your process right before it’s too late.
Questions that took you 3+ minutes: < 3%. I know: it’s hard to let questions go. But keep fighting to “bail when you flail”, as our friend Mike likes to say.

Benchmarks for the optional Week 9 verbal “fake test” (item #3 on the assignment list):

Sorry, the verbal “fake test” is FAR from ideal. But at least it gives you 23 official questions in 45 minutes. So take the benchmarks with a grain of salt.
Medium CR questions: 80% is solid, 90%+ is excellent if your goal is V84.
Hard CR questions: 50% is good, 75%+ is AWESOME if your goal is V84. You can get beat up by the hard ones, and still be in great shape for a top verbal score.
OG RC questions: 80% is a decent benchmark, but it depends on exactly which questions you selected.
CR questions that took 3+ minutes: none, please. No CR question is worth that much time. Learn to let go if you get stuck.
Overall time management: it’s OK if it was kinda weird. The “fake test” is a clumsy approximation of an actual verbal section, so it’s fair to expect some timing oddities, within reason.

What to do about your Week 9 practice test results:

If you’re close to your goal on the MBA.com test, PLEASE do something nice for yourself. Have a nice meal, watch a movie, or go do something fun. Celebrate your victories – it’ll help keep you fresh in the final month of your studies.
If you’re a long way from your goal on the MBA.com test, consider pausing the study plan. If you’re 30-50 points (or more) away from your goals, you might want to take a break from the practice tests, and see if you can move the needle on your weaknesses before jumping back in. There are only 6 official practice tests, and you don’t want to burn through them until you’re close to your target score.
If you’re making careless errors: As always, job #1 is to stamp them out. Check out the resource list in the study plan for help.
If you spent 3+ minutes on too many questions (3:30+ on non-DS DI questions): This is a question of discipline and mindset. Learn to let go! Remember: the test is designed to make you miss 25-50% of the questions, and most of you will do exactly that – even if you get a GREAT score. So dump the perfectionism, and learn to let questions go.
If you struggled on “medium” questions from the MBA.com question banks: I’m still not a fan of reviewing individual questions in detail, because it’s so time-consuming. But ask yourself: were these careless errors? If not: have you missed similar questions recently? If the answer is “yes”, then you might have uncovered a weakness that’s worth some attention.
If you struggled on “hard” questions from the MBA.com question bank: Hey, these are hard, and I can promise that they aren’t the #1 thing holding you back from a 655 or even a 705. So don’t waste too much time on these, unless you think you missed a question out of carelessness.
Again: don’t spend a ton of time reviewing individual questions. They can drain too much of your precious study time. If a question was hard or weird, then it isn’t the biggest threat to your GMAT goals. So please don’t obsess over individual questions.

Quant+

Benchmarks for Your Week 9 Quant Results

The first part is the same as in previous weeks:

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 80s, here are the metrics I’d like you to hit in Week 9:

Careless error rate: < 2%. You’ve heard this before: the careless errors need to be gone, or almost gone.
OG & Quant Guide sets (#2 on the list): 80%+ correct is great, 70-80% is good. The questions are tough now, so don’t worry AT ALL if your accuracy rate is flat, or even dropping a bit.
Optional topic-based practice sets (#3-5 on the list): as always, take these with a grain of salt. The quality and difficulty will vary considerably on these, so don’t freak out if you miss hard, weird, or badly written questions.
Speed: On the OG and topic-based sets, you're still 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 skills are shaky, or that you're not choosing efficient paths forward. Then again, some of these are TOUGH now – so if a few questions are pulling your times upwards, that’s maybe not the end of the world, as long as you’d let go of those same questions on an actual exam.

What Should You Do About Your Quant Weaknesses in Week 9?

Our usual reminder: on an adaptive test, job #1 is to be accurate on the questions that you’re capable of getting right. If you’re accurate on the easier ones, you’ll get pounded by harder questions – and you’ll miss plenty of them. Embrace the pain.

So don’t obsess over the hard questions that you’ve missed. They aren’t worth much of your precious time.

If your careless error rate is too high: that’s bad. Do whatever you need to do to fix this. Do it now. Better: do it yesterday, or a few weeks ago. Pause the study plan if you need to. Just fix the careless errors.
If you struggled on the OG or Quant Guide sets (item #2): as usual, ask yourself WHY you struggled. If you’re at, say, 70% accuracy, that’s not ideal, but context matters: I really don’t mind if you got beat up by hard or unusual questions. If you missed a cluster of similar questions – especially if they don’t appear to be terribly difficult – then invest time in those topics if necessary. But don’t overreact to individual questions, please.
If you struggled on optional topic-based sets (item #3-5): again, concentrate on putting your errors into context, and look for broad patterns. If you made similar errors on several relatively easy questions, then you might want to revisit the quant books or videos. But if you missed hard or strange questions, who cares?
If you got absolutely DESTROYED by ALL of the quant homework: well, that shouldn’t be happening at this stage. But if it is, please pause the study plan ASAP, before you burn through all of the remaining practice tests.
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.

CR & RC+

Benchmarks for Your Week 9 RC & CR Results

OG & Verbal Guide RC & CR sets: 80% correct in under 2 minutes per question is great if you’re trying to hit the 90th percentile on GMAT verbal, 90% is outstanding. These are getting hard now, so if you’re squirming, that’s cool – and it’s not necessarily a disaster if you’re under 80%, thanks to the increased difficulty. As always, adjust these benchmarks accordingly if you’re happy with something lower than the 90th percentile.
Accuracy on (optional) LSAT CR & RC sets: 80% accuracy is still the goal if you’re trying to hit the 90th percentile on GMAT verbal; 70% accuracy is fine if you’re happy with an 80V. If you need a check on your progress, it’s a good idea to do an LSAT set occasionally, and compare it to your Week 1 results.
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.
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 you might need to work on your approach to questions.

What Should You Do About Your CR & RC Weaknesses in Week 9?

Look for “careless” errors. As with everything on the GMAT, pay close attention to anything that seems to be an “unforced error.” Did you miss a ton of questions that felt easy to you, especially in the OG and Verbal Guide? If so, you might want to revisit the techniques in the videos and articles in the assignment lists. This is MUCH more important than getting better at harder questions.
If your results are significantly better on RC than on CR: you might want to invest time in some extra CR sets or videos... and you might want to do so ASAP, because time is getting short. Pause the study plan if you need to.
If you’re better at CR than RC: same as above. If you haven’t already addressed this, it’s probably time to do so. Pause the study plan if you need to.
If you’re slow ( > 60 mins per LSAT set, > 2 minutes per OG or Verbal Guide question): by now, you should have standardized your approach to RC and CR questions; if you haven’t, then you probably need to do so ASAP. If your process is spot-on already, maybe you’re slow because of “non-academic” issues: fatigue, distraction, anxiety, the time of day that you’re doing sets, barking dogs outside your window, low blood sugar, a lack of sleep, or a lack of intensity. It’s also possible that you’re a slow reader, and that’s always 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: If you’re hitting our benchmarks, you’re doing GREAT, and you’re ready to get something close to an 84V. If you’re not quite hitting the CR/RC benchmarks yet, are you at least seeing some improvement? If so, you’re on track – keep at it! You can always pause the study plan if you need to.
If you’re getting CRUSHED on CR & RC: well, I’m very impressed that you’re still reading this in Week 9, but it’s probably time to hit the pause button. You’ll definitely want to check out this video about the factors that can lead to GMAT verbal struggles; even though it references an old version of the test, it’s still good food for thought. If fundamental reading skills are an issue, this article and this one will give you some ideas for how to improve over time.

Data Insights+

Benchmarks for Your Week 9 Data Insights 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 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 80s, here are the metrics I’d like you to hit in Week 9:

Careless error rate: < 2%. You’ve heard this before: the careless errors need to be gone, or almost gone.
Official DS set (#3 on the list): these are getting harder as you move through the books, so I’d be happy with 80% accuracy here. As always, context matters: if you struggled with a few weird questions, that’s not a big deal.
Mixed mba.com sets (GI, TA, TPA, MSR – #4-5 on the list): Now that you’re mixing easy, medium, and hard questions, it’s harder to provide a one-size-fits-all benchmark. On easy questions, we’d like to see perfection, or something close to it; 80% on the medium questions and 50% on the hard questions is pretty solid. If you’re beating those numbers already, you definitely deserve a cookie.
MSR set from the Online Practice Questions (#6 on the list): This set is brief and random, so I don’t think it makes sense to pin you to a benchmark. Just ask yourself this: are you getting more comfortable spotting the right information, without getting bogged down in the things you don’t need? Are you generally doing well on the easy and medium questions? If so, you’re on track.
Randomized batches of forum questions (#7-10 on the list): 85-90% correct is good on the sub-555 questions, but if you did mixed difficulty sets, you’ll have to take the results with a grain of salt – especially since non-official GI, TA, and TPA questions vary enormously in quality. 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 for Data Sufficiency: 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. If this is still a problem, you might want to consider honing your DS technique, maybe with some help from the videos that appear in the resources lists.
Speed for Multi-Source Reasoning: On DI, you’ll have an average of 2:15 per question. It’s OK if you’re a bit slower on MSR on test day, but you don’t want to be TOO much slower. So in the long run, you’ll want to average somewhere around 7-9 minutes per set of 3 MSR questions. Of course, you may or may not see 3 questions per MSR “tab set” on mba.com practice sets, so adjust your expectations accordingly – something like 3-5 minutes on the first question is probably OK, and ideally 2 minutes per less on any subsequent questions. If you’re close to these speeds right now, that’s great.
Speed for GI, TA, & TPA questions: You're in good shape if you’re close to 2:30 minutes per question. If you're slower than, say, 3:00 minutes per question on average, it might be a sign that your basic skills are rusty, or that you're not choosing efficient paths forward. If that’s still a problem, you might consider spending some extra time with the videos in the resources list to see if those help at all.

What Should You Do About Your Data Insights Weaknesses in Week 9?

Our usual reminder: on an adaptive test, job #1 is to be spectacularly accurate on the questions that you’re capable of getting right. If you’re taking care of business on the easier ones, you’ll get pounded by harder questions – and you’ll miss plenty of them. Embrace the pain.

In other words: don’t obsess over the hard stuff. It isn’t worth much of your precious time.

Here’s what to do once you’ve analyzed your results:

If your careless error rate is too high: address this problem ASAP. Nothing else matters until you do. Do whatever you need to do to fix this. Do it now. Check out the resource list in the study plan for help.
If you struggled with a specific DI question type: whatever you need is probably in this playlist.
If you struggled on a specific quant-based topic: 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 Data Insights Guide sets: don’t panic. Again: ask yourself WHY you struggled. If you’re at, say, 70% accuracy, that doesn’t sound ideal right now, and careless errors need to be fixed immediately. But if you got a bunch of weird, hard, or obscure questions, then maybe 70% is fine.
If you got CRUSHED by ALL of the homework: if you’re nowhere close to the benchmarks on Data Insights – and if your long-term goal is a score in the 80s – then maybe you need to back away from the study plan, and invest some time in rebuilding your basic 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 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.

If you’re getting impatient with your results : If you’re hitting our benchmarks, you’re doing GREAT, and you’re ready to get something close to an 84V. If you’re not quite hitting the CR/RC benchmarks yet, are you at least seeing some improvement? If so, you’re on track – keep at it! You can always pause the study plan if you need to. If you’re getting CRUSHED on CR & RC : well, I’m very impressed that you’re still reading this in Week 9, but it’s probably time to hit the pause button. You’ll definitely want to check out this video about the factors that can lead to GMAT verbal struggles ; even though it references an old version of the test, it’s still good food for thought. If fundamental reading skills are an issue, this article and this one will give you some ideas for how to improve over time. Benchmarks for Your Week 9 Data Insights 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 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 80s, here are the metrics I’d like you to hit in Week 9: Careless error rate : < 2%. You’ve heard this before: the careless errors need to be gone, or almost gone. Official DS set (#3 on the list) : these are getting harder as you move through the books, so I’d be happy with 80% accuracy here. As always, context matters: if you struggled with a few weird questions, that’s not a big deal. Mixed mba.com sets (GI, TA, TPA, MSR – #4-5 on the list) : Now that you’re mixing easy, medium, and hard questions, it’s harder to provide a one-size-fits-all benchmark. On easy questions, we’d like to see perfection, or something close to it; 80% on the medium questions and 50% on the hard questions is pretty solid. If you’re beating those numbers already, you definitely deserve a cookie. MSR set from the Online Practice Questions (#6 on the list) : This set is brief and random, so I don’t think it makes sense to pin you to a benchmark. Just ask yourself this: are you getting more comfortable spotting the right information, without getting bogged down in the things you don’t need? Are you generally doing well on the easy and medium questions? If so, you’re on track. Randomized batches of forum questions (#7-10 on the list) : 85-90% correct is good on the sub-555 questions, but if you did mixed difficulty sets, you’ll have to take the results with a grain of salt – especially since non-official GI, TA, and TPA questions vary enormously in quality. 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 for Data Sufficiency : 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. If this is still a problem, you might want to consider honing your DS technique, maybe with some help from the videos that appear in the resources lists. Speed for Multi-Source Reasoning : On DI, you’ll have an average of 2:15 per question. It’s OK if you’re a bit slower on MSR on test day, but you don’t want to be TOO much slower. So in the long run, you’ll want to average somewhere around 7-9 minutes per set of 3 MSR questions. Of course, you may or may not see 3 questions per MSR “tab set” on mba.com practice sets, so adjust your expectations accordingly – something like 3-5 minutes on the first question is probably OK, and ideally 2 minutes per less on any subsequent questions. If you’re close to these speeds right now, that’s great. Speed for GI, TA, & TPA questions : You're in good shape if you’re close to 2:30 minutes per question. If you're slower than, say, 3:00 minutes per question on average, it might be a sign that your basic skills are rusty, or that you're not choosing efficient paths forward. If that’s still a problem, you might consider spending some extra time with the videos in the resources list to see if those help at all. What Should You Do About Your Data Insights Weaknesses in Week 9? Our usual reminder: on an adaptive test, job #1 is to be spectacularly accurate on the questions that you’re capable of getting right. If you’re taking care of business on the easier ones, you’ll get pounded by harder questions – and you’ll miss plenty of them. Embrace the pain. In other words: don’t obsess over the hard stuff. It isn’t worth much of your precious time. Here’s what to do once you’ve analyzed your results: If your careless error rate is too high : address this problem ASAP. Nothing else matters until you do. Do whatever you need to do to fix this. Do it now. Check out the resource list in the study plan for help. If you struggled with a specific DI question type : whatever you need is probably in this playlist . If you struggled on a specific quant-based topic : 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 Data Insights Guide sets : don’t panic. Again: ask yourself WHY you struggled. If you’re at, say, 70% accuracy, that doesn’t sound ideal right now, and careless errors need to be fixed immediately. But if you got a bunch of weird, hard, or obscure questions, then maybe 70% is fine. If you got CRUSHED by ALL of the homework : if you’re nowhere close to the benchmarks on Data Insights – and if your long-term goal is a score in the 80s – then maybe you need to back away from the study plan, and invest some time in rebuilding your basic 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 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.

BatrickPatemann · Answer

Hi  GMATNinja , another week another grind.

As I read the “Interpret the Results” section, I’m surprised by the constraint of needing to be within 5 points of my score goals. I’d be really happy to add those 4–5 points in the remaining weeks, although that might be too optimistic.

Also, I feel like I should be able to jump from successfully completing mid-easy questions (<2 min) directly to mid-difficulty ones (<2 min). After revisiting previous weeks, most of the work was on sub-555 questions (maybe there were some mid-high difficulty questions via mixed sets, which I interpreted as optional vs. the dedicated sub-555 set). So how can I be expected to score high if most of the volume is around easy questions?

I feel a little left out when I read that I’m supposed to be within 5 points of my goal scores or else pause the strategy given I haven’t improved much from the beginning (already scoring 78s in Quant).

- Are high scores built from practicing easy/mid-easy questions only?
- Would I be wasting my time (and sanity) if I focused on doing lots of sets of 605–705 questions? About the same volume we did for sub-555.
- What would you recommend for addressing such a problem?

Thanks!

bb · Answer

I would be curious what Charles thinks and what he sees from his experience of tutoring people.

I would say if you are struggling or basically hitting less than 80 or 90% correct on easy questions, I wouldn’t just do more questions but I would address the core issue.

The emphasis is always on analyzing your performance and reacting if it doesn’t meet expectations.

Please note that in my experience “ more questions will fix this problem” or “ let me just take more questions” is not the solution. If you are expecting a 90% accuracy on easy questions, and you suddenly hit 60% for example then everything should stop a crisis should be announced and you should examine what the heck went wrong. You never know how the real test is going to go so you never want to dismiss valid signals about your performance. Then you should act on it, go and study, review and spend time learning or relearning material and only then attempt another set of questions and this should be a fairly minimal set. If all you’re doing is just easy questions for example you can take five if you’re mixing easy and medium you can probably take eight and if you’re mixing easy and medium and card you can probably take 10 and that will give you enough data points about how you’re doing on a particular topic.

Again I know Charles and I differ substantially on some points of advice so don’t take this by any means as a more correct recommendation, I’m just hijacking his topic 😂

bb · Answer

But if you are doing well in easy questions, it’s not a mistake to do too many easy questions. It’s OK if it gets repetitive and tiring but I’m yet to see anyone in their debrief blame focusing on easy questions as the reason for their failure. It’s usually people who chase the super hard questions and never see any of them on the test because they can never get through the medium ones.

PS. You are correct that the biggest value and how do I come from doing easy and medium questions. Even if you only get half the hard ones right but you get over 90% of easy and medium ones, you’ll walk away with a strong score.

PS. You are correct that the biggest value and how do I come from doing easy and medium questions. Even if you only get half the hard ones right but you get over 90% of easy and medium ones, you’ll walk away with a strong score.

GMATNinja · Answer

Broadly speaking,  bb  is spot-on here. If you're missing easier questions, there's no real point in moving forward with harder ones -- tougher questions are irrelevant unless you're doing well on easier ones.

So here's the big question: why do you think your scores are stuck in the high 70s? Is it because you're missing questions that you know how to answer correctly? If so, that's where you'll want to focus your energy. I think you've seen me write this before, but the difference between a 78 and a low-80s score might be just one or two errors on easier questions.

If, on the other hand, you're reliably nailing easier questions, that's a different story. Maybe you should be practicing harder questions -- and that's why we give you the option of mixed difficulty questions starting early in the study plan. If you're doing well on the easy ones, you'll want to graduate to mixed sets fairly quickly.

Put another way: obviously, the study plan can't diagnose your problems, but the idea is that there's plenty of flexibility built into it, as long as you can recognize your own problems (perhaps with help from the long-winded "interpreting your results" section each week). Stick with the easy questions if those are the issue; move on to harder questions if they aren't.

The tough thing is that five points might not sound like much, but it's quite a bit on this version of the GMAT. It's HARD to get an 83 on quant, and two things are true at the same time:

A couple of careless mistakes can easily knock an 83-level scorer down to a 78. 
 If your skills are really at a 78 level, it can be a long journey to an 83 on quant.

Again, I don't know whether your issue is execution (careless mistakes, for example) or skill (your quant foundations are shaky in some way, and you struggle on mid-level questions at times) -- or a mix of the two. If it's more about execution, you need to fix those problems ASAP, and nothing else really matters much until you do. If skill is the problem, that's fixable -- but might take some time. From your posts, I have the vague impression that this is more of a story about execution -- but I obviously don't know for sure, and that's something you'll have to figure out before you move forward.

I hope that helps a bit!

BatrickPatemann · Answer

Thank you so much again for your time and answer,

Answering your questions I have done more silly errors lately, specially as the weeks have passed (probably because of coming back to my full-time job after vacation plus been spending more a more hours as results did not advance at the pace I expected) but what shocks me the most is this anxiety/mind blowing experience I get whenever I come across a mid 600s question or higher, specially on the mock exams.

I have the impression that the knowledge I've been acquiring from the guides and the skills I then apply to most of the question sets are completely different from the knowledge and skills I need to complete those mid to difficult questions but again I do not want to fall in the trap of frying my brain with difficult questions if what I lack must come from the basic concepts in the books and the basic skills tested on easier questions.

So my decision here is to reinforce the theory for now a couple of days, rewatching some videos and books and coming back again with mixed sets for each topic.

BatrickPatemann · Answer

Thank you so much for your answer here,

After analysing the situation these last couple of days and your feedback I do believe the best strategy now is to review as you said this 'basics' and build on them again, maybe at a steeper pace than before, acknowledging each and every alert signal that might come from low accuracy on low-mid questions.

I know there are some discussion in the forum around this but I have the question of whether to focus on a specific topic and not giving up on it until I completely master it or mix it around and steep up the difficulty evenly.

Thank you again!

gotkimherela · Answer

GMATNinja 
I'm having such fluctuating results on my CR, even on the same difficulty level.
Could you give me some suggestions on how I should deal with this?

Wk Sec. Source Correct Rate
6 CR GMAT OG(25-26) Easy 68% 
6 CR GMAT Verbal Guide Medium 76% 
7 CR GMAT Verbal Guide Medium 95%
7 CR GMAT OG(25-26) Medium 68% 
8 CR GMAT OG(25-26) Medium 76% 
9 CR GMAT Verbal Guide Medium 64%

GMATNinja · Answer

A few thoughts:

1. For a moment, let's assume that these results are truly accurate and meaningful, and are a sign of genuine inconsistency in your performance. If that's the case, your approach is definitely inconsistent: on different days, maybe you read with different intensity, you think differently about passage structure, you become more or less attuned to small details, you're more or less disciplined about process of elimination, you're tired/hungry/distracted/anxious on certain days, and so on. If that's the case, you'll want to take a hard look at your methodology, and see what you can improve; this video series might help if you haven't already watched it -- but to diagnose your own weaknesses, you probably need introspection more than you need the video lessons.

2. The difficulty ratings in the official GMAT materials aren't 100% reliable, and there's probably a fair amount of variation in the difficulties between these six sets. Notably, if we remove that 95% result, the rest fall within a fairly narrow range. It makes me wonder what happened on that 95% set -- is that the one time that you nailed the process, or was it a fluke (maybe driven by either familiar or unusually easy questions)? If it's the latter, then maybe you had one lucky set, and you're not so inconsistent after all?

3. Have you done any LSAT sets for CR and RC? Every LSAT set is roughly the same difficulty and length, so if your approach is inconsistent, you'll see it immediately in the data -- if the times or accuracy fluctuate by more than a couple of errors (or minutes), it's definitely because you're doing something different on different days. We can't quite say the same thing about the GMAT sets, since they do vary somewhat in difficulty, even within "medium" sets.

Give all of that some thought, and let's see if it helps at all?

Have fun studying, and congrats on surviving far more of the study plan than most students!

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GMAT Ninja 13-Week Study Plan (2024-25 ed.) Week 9

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