490 to 620 Need Advice

Question

Good day everyone,

First, I will tell you a little about me and my story.

Today I took the GMAT after 10 weeks of preparation (full time) and scored 490 (35Q,23V). To be honest I´m frustrated. In June I took the GRE (after studying 3 weeks) and score the exact equivalent of my GMAT score. This has taken a toll on my self-estime if I am completely honest. Anyway, facts...

1)GMAT Prep 1: 460 (1st week) this one (20Q,27V)
2) GMATPrep 2: 560 (after 6th weeks)
3)Manhatan Free CAT: 610 (8th weeks)
4) GMAT club Free Quant CAT: 20Q (9th week)

In general my score goes between 35-40Q and 27-33V, on CAT´s apparently. I have been using Magoosh and covered all the material, as well as all but 100 verbal excercises; OG 2016 finished all PS and had 70/176 left on DS, done and corrected the test on the OG. Used also the MathOG Review 2016, finished all PS didn´t do DS. Regarding to verbal, completed 50% RC, 70/ CR and 30% SC. Clearly I didn´t spend that much time on verbal given that I was within the range of what I wanted. My goal being (42-44Q, 30-33V).

My method: Pretty much what was suggested in Magoosh, and believe you me I felt it work, 25PS/DS 16 SC/CR 3 RC (OG and Magoosh each) a day plus its corrections, 10 video lessons for both math and verbal a day. After the 6th week I would also go over excercises I did wrong once more and see what I had retained, I separated them in batches of 10, overall I was doing 66% of those.

Regarding Magoosh, OG and GMAT club in PS and DS this is/was my distribution: Easy 100% Medium 90% Hard 60% Very Hard 10% Very Very Hard 0% (I make this distintion since the question level from OG and MAgoosh vary in relation to GMAT Club and Manhatan)

Goals:

I intend to apply to DeGroote, Ryerson and if my score allows me to Laurier. They require: 550 (37Q,28V) as a minimum for D&R, 600 for Laurier. However, that is the minimum, eventhough I am confident about my profile, I would like to have an atleast competitive score for all of them (610, 630, 620 respectively).

Deadlines are: 15/01/19, 30/01/19, 28/03/19

My "plan":

I am going to give it one more try. However, I am concerned about my learning method. In any case I feel to be in the 600lvl, although I think during the last two weeks my brain had too much, as I started making mistakes on stuff I didn´t before or simply make them again. I´ve notice at least 3-4 questions I miss I do are due to silly mistakes or negligence (not following through on the resolution of DS). Today itself, I missed 3 questions, 2 because y didn´t do the last step and did it mentally and the third one because I clicked the wrong answer choice.

On verbal, I practiced active reading for RC for the last two weeks, I´m still slow, although same happens for Quant, I end up with 3min for the last two questions. Regarding SC, I kinda relied on going over Magoosh material once, since I felt pretty comfortable for what I needed. On a personal level, SC messes me up, because I did learn english as my first language, but when I was about 7 moved to another country, so I never formally learned english as such, that is why I relly a lot on how something "sounds", but obviously for the GMAT this doesn´t really work on mid-high level questions.

I need advice on what to do, yes I feel tired, its been quite a run, but I do have a 130 gap on what I need. I do wonder if it is the material, my methods, exhaustion or maybe all.

Thinking about solutions I was considering e-gmat course eventhough it´s quite expensive. I´ve been part of a couple webinars and they seem to do what they are doing and I´ve learned a couple things. I´ve considered actually buying the online OG 2019 so I have new excercises.

Next estimated test day: 20 December

Any type of suggestion, commentaries or thoughts will be well recieved.

Thank you all in advance!

barryseal · Answer

Hi libertador, just read your comment in the chat - some quick thoughts: -I would definitely finish all the official questions (especially the DS ones) and analyze them in detail (this means reading through the respective thread on gmatclub forum and not just reading the **** "official explanation") -you dont have to buy the og19, the following thread marked all the new questions compared to previous ogs: https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmac-officia ... 40610.html -The quickest and easiest way to improve your verbal score is by focusing on SC, one can really master this topic. Again, the explanations in this forum (especially from GMATNinja) are far better than the official ones. In regards to SC theory, I recommend the SC notes from slingfox: https://gmatclub.com/forum/slingfox-s-g ... 96483.html -score-wise, its better to make an educated guess in the middle of the exam (20sec, look for opposite answers) than to run out of time in the end. If you miss the last two questions in a row, this really hurts your score Hope it helps, keep your head up and good luck!

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi libertador,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day didn't go as well as planned. When these types of score drops occur, the two likely "causes" involve either something that was unrealistic during practice or something that was surprising (or not accounted for) on Test Day. If you can answer a few questions, then we should be able to figure this out:

When you took your CATs:
1) Did you take the ENTIRE CAT each time (including the Essay and IR sections)?
2) Did you take them at home?
3) Did you take them at the same time of day as when you took your Official GMAT?
4) Did you ever do ANYTHING during your CATs that you couldn't do on Test Day (pause the CAT, skip sections, take longer breaks, etc.)? 
5) Did you ever take a CAT more than once? Had you seen any of the questions BEFORE (re: on a prior CAT, in an online forum or in a practice set)?

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

libertador · Answer

Barry thankyou very imuch for taking the time!

I didn´t realize there was such a list of excercises here, that actually saves me a couple bucks and well, tons of practice. Same regarding verbal, is there any other material you would recomend?

And yes, I do have to improve my timming and let myself know when I need to guess. I do try some excercises because I know I can and suddenly "damn that was 3 min", then I rush over the next ones and, well, clearly its not helping.

Again thank you for your reply you did help!

libertador · Answer

Thanks for the reply empower gmat!

1) No, except for Magoosh CAT´s that I use as a review, and don´t really count them in if you notice, I did them complete
2) Yes, in my country there isn´t many options with good enough internet to do so otherwise. Anyway, I do have an isolated room with bearly enough space for a desk and a laptop that I must say resembles the test center, although the test center is more comfortable
3) No, I took them at night, and took the GMAT in the morning
4) No
5) Yes I retook one of the first Prep exams a week before just to practice (but as you can notice I do not include it on my analysis)

Murthykvln94 · Answer

There's no need to feel bad about your self esteem. Positive thing is you can easily achieve your trget score..believe that first . Keep pushing yourself until u solve few quant problems and and Rc a day later switch to verbal questions.. in a month you will see improvement

Posted from my mobile device

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi libertador,

I've sent you a PM with some additional questions.

Raising a 490 to a 620+ will likely require at least another 2-3 months of consistent, guided study - and you'll have to make significant improvements to how you handle BOTH the Quant and Verbal sections. Thankfully, the GMAT is a consistent, predictable Exam, so you CAN train to score at a higher level. That having been said, a December 20th Test Date gives you only about 5 week of study time remaining - and that might not be enough time for you to train to consistently score at that higher level. While you don't have to make any changes to your plans just yet, you might need to push back your Test Date.

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

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi libertador,

I realize that you are frustrated, but keep in mind that you have been studying for only 10 WEEKS. Despite what you may think, some students have to study for 3+ months to improve their scores by 160 points. So, as long as you are up for another bout with the GMAT, I’m confident that you can improve your score. That being said, let’s address your previous study routine.

Given that over the course of the last 10 weeks you have not been able to improve your GMAT score, you need to look at HOW you have been studying and make some change, right? Based on your story, I see that your study routine is centered on doing practice questions. While engaging in practice is a necessary part of improving your GMAT skills, such practice is only beneficial after you have studied the topics on which those questions are based. Thus, moving forward, consider adjusting your study plan such that it allows for linear learning. Specifically, consider using a resource that allows you FIRST to learn the concepts and strategies related to GMAT quant and verbal and SECOND to practice with a large number of realistic questions. The key is that you follow a gradual and methodical approach so that you can learn and master one topic at a time.

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, practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties. 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. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.

When you are working on learning to answer questions of a particular type, start off taking your time, and then seek to speed up as you get more comfortable answering questions of that type. As you do such practice, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get right. If you got a remainder question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not properly apply the remainder formula? Was there a concept you did not understand in the question? By carefully analyzing your mistakes, you will be able to efficiently fix your weaknesses and in turn improve your GMAT quant skills.

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.

You can work on verbal in a similar manner. For example, let’s say you start by learning about Critical Reasoning. Your first goal is to fully master the individual Critical Reasoning topics: Strengthen the Argument, Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, etc. As you learn about each question type, do focused practice so that you can track your skill in answering each type. If, for example, you get a weakening question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize the specific question type? Were you doing too much analysis in your head? Did you skip over a keyword in an answer choice? You must thoroughly analyze your mistakes and seek to turn weaknesses into strengths by focusing on the question types you dread seeing and the questions you take a long time to answer correctly.

When practicing Reading Comprehension, you need to develop a reading strategy that is both efficient and thorough. Reading too fast and not understanding what you have read are equally as harmful as reading too slow and using up too much time. You must have one clear goal in mind: to understand the context of what you are reading. However, you must do so efficiently, so you need to avoid getting bogged down in the details of each paragraph and instead focus on understanding the main point of each paragraph. That being said, do not fall into the trap of thinking that you can just read the intro and the conclusion and thereby comprehend the main idea of a paragraph. As you read a paragraph, consider how the context of the paragraph relates to previous paragraphs, so you can continue developing your overall understanding of the passage. Furthermore, as you practice Reading Comprehension, focus on the exact types of questions with which you struggle: Find the Main Idea, Inference, Author’s Tone, etc. As with Critical Reasoning, analyze your incorrect Reading Comprehension answers to better determine why you tend to get a particular question type wrong, and then improve upon your weaknesses. You can perfect your reading strategy with a lot of practice, but keep in mind that GMAT Reading Comprehension passages are not meant to be easy to read. So, to better prepare yourself to tackle such passages, begin reading magazines with similar content and style, such as the Economist, Scientific American, and Smithsonian.

Studying Sentence Correction is a bit different from studying Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning. There are three aspects to getting correct answers to GMAT Sentence Correction questions: what you know, such as grammar rules, what you see, such as violations of grammar rules and the logic of sentence structure, and what you do, such as carefully considering each answer choice in the context of the non-underlined portion of the sentence. To drive up your Sentence Correction score, it is likely that you will have to work on all three of those aspects. 
 
Regarding what you know, first and foremost, you MUST know your grammar rules. Let's be clear, though: GMAT Sentence Correction is not really a test of knowledge of grammar rules. The reason for learning the grammar rules is so that you can determine what sentences convey and whether sentences are well-constructed. In fact, in many cases, incorrect answers to Sentence Correction questions are grammatically flawless. Thus, often your task is to use your knowledge of grammar rules to determine which answer choice creates the most logical sentence meaning and structure.
 
This determination of whether sentences are well-constructed and logical is the second aspect of finding correct answers to Sentence Correction questions, what you see. Likely, the main reason that Sentence Correction has not "clicked" for you is that you have not put enough work into developing your skill in seeing what is going on in the various versions of the sentence that the answer choices create. To develop this skill, you probably have to slow way down. You won't develop this skill by spending under two minutes per question. For a while, anyway, you have to spend time with each question, maybe even ten or fifteen minutes on one question sometimes, analyzing every answer choice until you see the details that you have to see to choose the correct answer. As you go through the answer choices, consider the meaning conveyed by each version of the sentence. Does the meaning make sense? Even if you can tell what the version is SUPPOSED to convey, does the version really convey that meaning? Is there a verb to go with the subject? Do all pronouns clearly refer to nouns? By slowing way down and looking for these details, you learn to see what you have to see in order to clearly understand which answer to a Sentence Correction question is correct.
 
There are clear reasons why one Sentence Correction answer is correct and the others are not, and those reasons are never that the correct version simply "sounds right." In fact, the correct version often sounds a little off at first. That correct answers may sound a little off is not surprising. If the correct answer were always the one that sounded right, then most people most of the time would get Sentence Correction questions correct, without really knowing why the wrong answers were wrong and the correct answers were correct. So, you have to go beyond choosing what "sounds right" and learn to clearly see the logical reasons why one choice is better than all of the others.
 
As for the third aspect of getting Sentence Correction questions correct, what you do, the main thing you have to do is be very careful. You have to make sure that you are truly considering the structures of sentences and the meanings conveyed rather than allowing yourself to be tricked into choosing trap answers that sound right but don't convey meanings that make sense. You also have to make sure that you put some real energy into finding the correct answers. Finding the correct answer to a Sentence Correction question may take bouncing from choice to choice repeatedly until you start to see the differences between the choices that make all choices wrong except for one. Often, when you first look at the choices, only one or two seem obviously incorrect. Getting the right answers takes a certain work ethic. You have to be determined to see the differences and to figure out the precise reasons that one choice is correct.
 
To improve what you do when you answer Sentence Correction questions, seek to become aware of how you are going about answering them. Are you being careful and looking for logic and details, or are you quickly eliminating choices that sound a little off, and then choosing the best of the rest? If you choose an incorrect answer, consider what you did that brought you to that answer and what you could do differently to arrive at correct answers more consistently. Furthermore, see how many questions you can get correct in a row as you practice. If you break your streak by missing one, consider what you could have done differently to extend your streak.

As with your Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension regimens, after learning a particular Sentence Correction topic, engage in focused practice with 30 questions or more that involve that topic. As your Sentence Correction skills improve, you will then want to practice with questions that test you on skills from multiple Sentence Correction topics.
 
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.

I realize that I provided you with a lot of information, so feel free to reach out with any further questions.

Good luck!

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