44Q: My situation with 1st attempt

Question

Hello guys, I'm new in the forum and just wanted to explain my situation to receive some opinions that can be useful for my future strategy learning path. Today I took my first GMAT Prep practice exam after about a month of non-very intensive studying and got 44 as result in the quantitative section, and skipped the other ones because i havent started to prepare for them yet. What i noticed during and after the rewiew is that i committed many silly mistakes, like five or six, which brought me to make 12 mistakes on 37 questions overall.. have to admit that i wasnt very concentrated for making them more than once, because i knew the concepts but somehow made stupid errors (such as request from question not read well, easy calculates wrong, and in the majority of the cases i wasnt lucky when i had to decide from 2 alternative remained). What i would ask is: if i hadn't make these errors, would i have received a much higher score such as 47-48? I suppose most of you now will think: depends on difficulty of the wrong questions. I already know this, but after having analyzed them i dont think they were very very difficult, maybe on a medium or maximum medium-high level just to be clear. 
 Therefore what i'm interested to understand is if my score would have changed much without making silly mistakes and if i have possibilities on increasing from 44Q to at least 47-48, which would be my target score before facing verbal.

i'll appreciate your contributes, thank you

LauraOrion · Answer

Hi there and welcome! Unfortunately, it's really impossible to know if you would have gotten to your goal score if you hadn't made those mistakes. It all depends on a) whether the questions you missed were scored questions b) the difficulty level of the questions you missed and c) what the rest of your answers looked like. With all that said, here are a few suggestions.

In terms of careless mistakes: What you do want to make sure to do next is to add those mistakes to your error log and make sure that you are learning from them. Did you make the same type of mistake over and over again, or were there many different kinds of mistakes? Do you make the same kinds of mistakes in everyday practice?

Then take a look at your practice section in general. What were the questions you  should  have gotten right? The questions you  could  have gotten right? What about the questions you could  someday  get right? Focus on the first two types of errors before you move on to the third.

In terms of practice tests in general: Practice tests are good for seeing where you are, but they're also a really good opportunity for you to practice the act of test taking in general. Sitting down and taking a test as long as the GMAT isn't something you do every day (for good reason). Having some practice just sitting down for that length of time - without distraction, in as test-like an environment as you can (local libraries, especially those with study rooms, are great for this) gives you the physical and mental stamina you'll need on test day.

And on the verbal/quant question: Without any information on where you are in verbal, it's really hard to say! My advice would be to go back and finish that practice test and see where you are in verbal and how that compares to where you need to be. Then make your decision on how to study. (That said, I would be cautious about studying all quant and then all verbal - a lot of learning comes through spaced repetition, and if you aren't practicing what you've learned regularly your skills will atrophy.)

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi matt9665,

To start, you seem to understand that there's no way to calculate the exact number of points that all of those little mistakes cost you. However, you almost certainly would have scored higher if you had avoided those mistakes - so you should take THAT idea to heart. Your goal in each section is NOT to be 'fast' - it's to be efficient - meaning that you want to get to the correct answer using whichever method is fastest for that question AND avoid doing anything careless that will cost you the points. It's takes time to hone all of those skills, so you shouldn't expect 'perfection' after just 1 month of study. In addition, you would likely find it beneficial to study some Quant and some Verbal each week - as opposed to the "all of one, then all of the other" approach that you appear to be taking.

Even if you have not studied for every question type that could appear on Test Day, you really MUST take FULL-LENTH CATs (with all sections - including the Essay and IR) going forward. There are aspects to Test Day that you can really only train for by you taking a FULL CAT in a realistic fashion. Skipping sections is NOT realistic, so you shouldn't train in that way. We need to know your current skills, strengths and weaknesses relative to the FULL Exam - but after 1 month, we don't have that info yet. You should study as you like for the next week, then take a new FULL CAT (next weekend would be a good time for that). Once you have that Score, you should post back here and we can discuss the results.

Before I can offer you any additional advice, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on your timeline and goals:

1) What is your goal score?
2) When are you planning to take the GMAT?
3) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
4) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

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

CAMANISHPARMAR · Answer

Review your mistakes again and again. Maintain an error log.

GMAT quant is a reasoning test & not a MATH test. YOu need to learn & revise basics. This could be achieved with patience, persistence and hard work.

I will be happy to help you with specific advice after reviewing your mock results.

matt9665 · Answer

Thanks everyone for the answer. Actually i don't have an error log, what should be the specific steps to create and use it?. Just taking notes of all errors on some sheets or something of more sophisticated? However, when i was talking about beginning with verbal just after taking a good score in quantitative i didnt mean not to dive in quantitative until the exam day, but in sequence: 1) study verbal with books for a month 2) taking a simulation only for the verbal section once i gained determined skills 3) combine both quantitative & verbal and take full length exam. I need to get a 700 score within February 2019 to apply for BS that don't require other gmat sections that don't include verbal and quantitative. 
Since i'm non-native speaker, i believe that if i were to take the entire gmat exam in the following days without even a minute of practice in verbal, i would be killed by that part. I understand that i should focus as more as possible with both sections combined, but my actual situation with studies doesnt allow me this comfort because of other university exams

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi matt9665,

Academically-speaking, your proposed study plan is not efficient. It might still end up helping you to improve, but if you're going to ignore any advice that you don't "like", then you might find it difficult to Score 700+ on Test Day. That's a Score that approximately 90% of Test Takers can't achieve - meaning that they either CAN'T or WON'T do what it takes to earn that Score. Right now, you have LOTS of time to study, so you can proceed however you choose. If one of your goals is to be efficient with your studies though (so that you don't inadvertently end up studying for the next 6 months), then you're going to have to adjust your plan.

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

keyboardandmouse · Answer

There are many ways to maintain an error logs. The easiest method is to mark the questions that you got wrong on the answer sheet of the OG. (remember the rule to always not do your working on the OG so as to maintain a fresh attempt each time). I am quite comfortable with quant, and i can say that you need to understand the formula rather than knowing the formula. This is because questions are designed such that if you do not know the formula inside out, you might run into a situation in which you are pseudo-studying when you are reviewing questions that you done before. That is the worst situation to be in - wasting time while not improving. One way to get out of it is to treat every mistake seriously, deep dive and understand why you got wrong. If you do not know the concept, find it out. If a certain book or online course does not explain it well, do not let it end there, and find it out. In this way, you will truly understand the concept and be able to handle any curve balls.

AkshdeepS · Answer

Hi,

It is very very important not to repeat mistakes while preparing for GMAT. This habit of repeating mistakes proves very costly to students. To get away with this habit is to revise the topics or questions you have already done. Revision should be frequent enough. Nothing remains in mind forever, and therefore you tend to forget things during exam, even the mistakes you have done in past.

For your second question, it is difficult to say whether you would have got the different marks, had you not made such silly mistakes. The thing is " The early you start getting questions correct, the better would be the score".

bb · Answer

Hi. Here are some ideas to go up to Q50 potentially: https://gmatclub.com/forum/how-to-impro ... 41670.html

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi matt9665,

I’m glad you reached out, and I’m happy to help. As already mentioned, there is no way to truly know what your score would have been had you not made any silly mistakes. That being said, rather than spending time worry about the GMAC algorithm, you should spend your time on what you can control: getting better at the GMAT! In order to improve your GMAT skills, consider following a linear study routine such that you can slowly build GMAT mastery of one topic prior to moving on to the next. Within each topic, begin with the foundations and progress toward more advanced concepts.

For example, if you are learning about number properties, you should develop as much conceptual knowledge about number properties as possible. In other words, your goal will be to completely understand properties of factorials, perfect squares, quadratic patterns, LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, and remainders, to name a few concepts. After carefully reviewing the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer number properties questions, you will want to practice by answering 50 or more questions just from number properties. As you practice, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get right. If you get a remainder question wrong, ask yourself why you got it wrong. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not properly apply the remainder formula? Was there a concept you did not understand in the question? By carefully analyzing your mistakes, you will be able to efficiently fix your weaknesses and in turn improve your GMAT quant skills. Number properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.

Each time you strengthen your understanding of a topic and your skill in answering questions of a particular type, you increase your odds of hitting your score goal. You know that there are types of questions that you are happy to see and types that you would rather not see, and types of questions that you take a long time to answer correctly. Learn to more effectively answer the types of questions that you would rather not see, and make them into your favorite types. Learn to correctly answer in two minutes or less questions that you currently take five minutes to answer. By finding, say, a dozen weaker quant areas and turning them into strong areas, you will make great progress toward hitting your quant score goal. If a dozen areas turn out not to be enough, strengthen some more areas.

For verbal, follow a similar routine. Let’s say you begin studying Critical Reasoning. Your first goal is to master the individual Critical Reasoning topics: strengthen the argument, weaken the argument, resolve the paradox, etc. As you go through the questions, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get correct. If you missed a weaken question, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize what the question was asking? Did you skip over a key detail in an answer choice? Getting GMAT verbal questions right is a matter of what you know, what you see, and what you do. So, any time that you don't get one right, you can seek to identify what, if anything, you would have needed to know in order to get the right answer, what you had to see that you didn't see, and what you could have done differently to arrive at the correct answer.
 
When you do dozens of questions of the same type one after the other, you learn just what it takes to get questions of that type correct consistently. If you aren't getting close to 90 percent of questions of a certain type correct, go back and seek to better understand how that type of question works, and then do more questions of that type until you get to around at least 90 percent accuracy in your training. If you get 100 percent of some sets correct, even better.
 
So, work on accuracy and generally finding correct answers, work on specific weaker areas one by one to make them strong areas, and when you take a practice GMAT or the real thing, take all the time per question available to do your absolute best to get right answers consistently. The GMAT is essentially a game of seeing how many right answers you can get in the time allotted. Approach the test with that conception in mind, and focus intently on the question in front of you with one goal in mind: getting a CORRECT answer.
 
In order to follow the path described above, you may need some new verbal and quant materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for  best quant courses  and  verbal courses .
 
You also may find it helpful to read my article about
 how to improve your accuracy on the GMAT. .
 
Please reach out with any further questions.

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