Recommendations for retake?

Question

Hi guys, would really appreciate your input on the below, even if its just a few words. Took the GMAT in October and was ill-prepared (610 Q42 V33). Used:

Q 
-5 MGMT guides 
-MGMT Foundations Math guide

V  
-3 MGMT guides
-GMAT Pill SC videos

General  
-OG 12th ed
-6 Practice CATS (4 MGMT, 2 GPREP)

I won't lie I didn't go through any of the above books thoroughly enough as I didn't have much time towards the end of prep (only read SC once properly - for instance). I also didn't do enough timed cats or keep an error log. I will be doing both of those this time around.

I'm retaking in early April, could you please add in any material that you think is essential or helped you a lot? So far i've booked the Knewton course for Jan - March. I will be doing the 8 MGMT guides inside out 2 or 3 times each including all guide and OG-related questions. I'm looking to improve quant from 42 to 46/47 and improve V from 33 to 42+. I had a bad V experience in the real thing and bottled it! I was scoring in the higher 30's for the cats.

Thinking about getting:
-OG Verbal 2nd Ed
-OG Quant 2nd Ed
-OG 11th edition 
-Buying OG 12th edition again (my first copy is ruined!) and doing the questions again
-GMAT Club maths tests
-Interacting a whole lot on the Q and V forums here

ANY advice or suggestions for improving the scope of my V and Q materials would be great. Specific downloads? Essential readings? Books i'm missing? Anything!

Appreciate it.
Rux10.

mohater · Answer

Did you see this thread? should-i-retake-gmat-thread-retaking-gmat-strategies-83339.html

rishiraj · Answer

I think you have enough material to prepare. Since you've plenty of time for the real thing,I'd highly recommend reading diverse stuff. Read articles on wikipedia about anything which interests you, read the newspaper daily for at least half an hour. Read a lot of non-fiction. The advantages of doing all this will probably not be evident on the surface but underneath you'll see your comprehension skills improving. That will help you not only in RC but also in CR and SC because you'll not face difficulty in analysing complex sentences.

Rux10 · Answer

Hi guys, thanks for your feedback.

Mohater, yes i've been lurking on that particular thread for a while, thanks for posting it. There's a lot of information in the thread recommending a multitude of books and approaches. I was hoping for people on this thread to perhaps identify any gaping omissions in my retake prep materials!

rishiraj, thanks for the advice! Ample time sure is a nice thing to have when preparing. I'll definitely take your advice on board. Hopefully i'll pick up a lot subconsciously if I just keep reading. The funny thing is i'm a native speaker but seem to have a 'lazy' reading method or something. I read a lot but I find myself just looking for the 'gist' of passages without paying a huge amount of attention to syntax or passage structure. I can't quite put my finger on it. Guess i'll just have to concentrate harder.

Thanks guys

thegmatguru · Answer

Hi guys, would really appreciate your input on the below, even if its just a few words. Took the GMAT in October and was ill-prepared (610 Q42 V33). Used:

Q 
-5 MGMT guides 
-MGMT Foundations Math guide

V  
-3 MGMT guides
-GMAT Pill SC videos

General  
-OG 12th ed
-6 Practice CATS (4 MGMT, 2 GPREP)

If you want to raise your math score, you not only need to make sure you understand the concepts but also need to time yourself correctly. If you listen only to MGMT on this, you might run into trouble. MGMT suggests that you really need to finish the test, not spending too much time on any question. This is flat out wrong. You can completely guess the last 10 questions of the math and still do very well. Getting the first 27 as correct as possible is much more important than doing all 37 questions.

As an experiment, I guessed "A" on the last 10 questions of my last GMAT quant section (real exam taken about 1 year ago). I got 49! So you can totally throw out the last 10 questions and still do very well.

Rux10 · Answer

Thanks for the timing tip, i'll definitely be working on that. From everything i've read on this site over the past 6 months I would have to disagree with your opinion that it's not important to allocate proportionate amounts of time to each question on the GMAT.

With regards to your experiment of guessing 'A' for the last 10 questions in your quant and getting a 49... you could have gotten 10/10 right guessing. If you did this experiment a 100 more times, we'd have a decent sample size to draw conclusions from! I found myself scoring 5 points higher in my verbal cats and then getting a bad score in verbal. I know that a big part of that bad score was having to guess a lot of questions at the end as a result of poor time management. In fact, I felt I was doing abnormally well for the first 2/3rds of the test and had to start rushing/guessing the last 10 or so. So I have tried that method (inadvertently in the real thing) and it didn't work for me! If it works for you though, great.

Just wondering, when you say 'MGMT suggests that you really need to finish the test, not spending too much time on any question. This is flat out wrong.' How long would you suggest spending on any one or group of questions?

thegmatguru · Answer

Note that my example and experiment was on the QUANT, not the verbal. For verbal, the test is not as front loaded and it is much more important to finish all questions. On my next GMAT, I will skip the last 5 verbal. I suspect that my score will drop even more than my quant did, even though I will be skipping half as many questions.

I do not need to do my "guess on quant" experiment 100 times to draw statistically valid conclusions. If you run the probability distribution for 10 guesses each with 20% chance of getting each right, about 97% of the distribution is under (correct =0,1,2,3, or 4), So I'm VERY sure I missed at least 6 of those last 10 questions and I'm pretty sure (68%) that I missed at least 8 of those 10.

Rux10 · Answer

Apologies, I thought your example pertained to verbal also.

I see what you mean about the confidence levels for the last 10 questions. Although to make the last 10's effect on the overall score really relevant for others surely we would need to know how the scoring went for the first 27 questions. For instance with regards to the algorithim - the specific order and amount of correct,wrong,correct in a row, and wrong in a row answers will determine how effective guessing the last 10 will be to your overall score. Would you need to be getting like 23+ of the first 27 correct to be able to guess the last 10 and still score well? In your opinion obviously, no one has time or resources to run those sorts of numbers!

rg1 · Answer

@thegmatguru - We still need to go with a mindset of finishing all questions in verbal and quant despite uncertainty of GMAT algorithm. But, you just reinforced my personal opinion AFSA- Accuracy First Speed Afterward. I remember my high school tutor used to repeatedly ask us to remember AFSA and this became my personal opinion.

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

Recommendations for retake?

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

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

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards