My First Mock Experience

Question

Hi everyone!
Last night I took my first Gmat mock in mba official page. I wasn't expected a high score because it's been a while since I studied for a test. 
My score was just 320: 12 Quantitative, 19 Verbal and 4 Integrated.

In Quantitative I have just realized my principal mistakes:
1) I have just answered most of the questions too fast and sometimes, I don't understand the main clause of the questions. 
2) I have made the operations without verifying.

In verbal my principal mistake was I have read too quickly and, as a native spanish speaker, I couldn't understand some parts of the text or 
the question's options.

In integrated my mistake was that I didn't use my time properly and I took 5 or 6 minutes in just one question! In consequence the final 
7 questions I have just answered without reading anything!

Since 20 days I have been studied with Manhattans books "Foundations of Math" and I feel that I improved a little bit. But now I don't know
how to create a good schedule, should a take a mock once per month in order to verify how much I have improved? should I dedicate a month
of study for each GMAT component?

I plan to take the exam on december and I hope to get a score of 600-650

Thanks for comment!

eabhgoy · Answer

Hey buddy, not to worry as you will slowly improve with time.

I would suggest you buy the online official guides and start practicing like 5-10 questions every day. In parallel continue solving topic wise questions on GMAT club.

So lets say you studied inequalities today. So start by doing sub-600 level questions then move on to 600-700 level and finally above 700. (I would suggest checking questions submitted by  Bunuel  as they are always of high quality and always go for the questions with a lot of responses so even if you don't know how to solve you can have a look at the responses!)
Do this for as many topics as possible. Both verbal and quant.

Keep giving one mock per month to keep a tab on your improvement. I would suggest to give the GMAT official mocks only when ur close to the actual test date, lets say in oct-nov when you are hopefully in 600-650 range.

All the best and keep us posted on your progress.

rohan2345 · Answer

Hi Mozart721, Welcome to GMATCLUB. You should study for around 3-4 months to achieve your score. You should start by taking a GMAT Mock once. You can then now know your weaknesses and can work on them. If you are willing to study dedicatedly for that period, you are sure to achieve your goal. I think you need to solidify you base and adopt a proper technique to answer the questions. I believe you may benefit from taking a GMATPREP course. If you are willing, there are some great GMAT prep companies that can help you with your preparation. In order to make an informed decision I would highly encourage you to go to their websites and try on their free trial and decide for yourself which one do you like better. You try out free access to EmpowerGMAT, Magoosh and TTP as they have great reviews on GMATCLUB. If you are looking for a good course in verbal, I would highly encourage you to consider e-gmat verbal online or the e-gmat verbal live course. They are both amazing courses especially designed for non-natives. They offer almost 25% of their courses for free so you can try out their free trial to decide which one you want to go for. Plus the e-gmat Scholaranium which is included in both the courses is one of the best verbal practice tools in the market. You can easily track your progress in that you can identify your strengths and analyze and improve on your weak areas. I must add that if you are particularly looking to discover and improve on your weak areas in Quant; a subscription to GMATCLUB tests is the best way to do that. They are indeed phenomenal and will not only pinpoint your weak areas but also help you improve on them. Further taking multiple mocks might help. Apart from the GMATPREP, Manhattan GMAT tests and Veritas Prep Tests in my experience have good verbal and Quant section and will certainly help you point out and improve your weak areas. Further another advantage of taking many mocks is to build up your stamina. Apart from the GMATPREP tests, taking practise tests of any major GMATPREP company ought to do that. I would also encourage you to purchase GMATPREP QP 1 for some great additional practice. Lastly, you can check out a very interesting article by Mike McGarry from Magoosh detailing a 3 month study plan https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/3-month-g ... -students/. You will find it very helpful as it gives out a study plan as per your needs. Hope this helps. All the best.

cfc198 · Answer

Investing in an online course will help you master the concepts and keep the schedule organized efficiently. Egmat and TTP are great options for verbal and quants respectively.

Best wishes!

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Mozart721,

Many Test Takers are unhappy with their initial practice scores, but you really shouldn't be. That 320 is just a measure of your skills right now - and you'll improve on that result over time as you learn more about the content, Tactics and little 'secrets' of the Exam. That having been said, raising a 320 to the point that you can consistently score 600+ will likely require at least another 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. With a planned Test Date in December, you have given yourself plenty of time to study - which is good. You might find it helpful to invest in a GMAT Course of some type (either Guided Self-Study or instructor-led).

Before I can offer you the specific advice that you’re looking for, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

1) How type of study routine have you been following? How many hours have you been studying each week?
2) What study materials do you currently have access to?
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

Mozart721 · Answer

Greetings, Ron.

1) How type of study routine have you been following? How many hours have you been studying each week?

Due to my job, I don't have as time as wanted. But I tried to study 1 hour per day.

2) What study materials do you currently have access to?

I have a lot of pdf guides. My idea is to print some of them: I prefered the "old-paper style". Also, I've benn using a lot of apps and podcast related to Gmat.

3) When are you planning to apply to Business School?

On april next year throught MEXT Scholarship.

4) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka or Hitotsubashi universities. It's my dream to study in Japan!

I appreaciate your time for visit my post.

It's time to become a GMAT assassin!

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Mozart721,

I’m glad you reached out, and I’m happy to help. The good news is that you completed the first step by taking a practice exam to get a baseline score. That said, since you scored 320, it’s clear that you need to approach your prep from the ground up so you can individually learn each GMAT quant and verbal topic, starting with the foundations and progressing to more advanced concepts. Additionally, you should refrain from taking any further practice exams until you’ve completed the “learning phase” of your GMAT studying. Assuming that you are following the study plan mentioned above, you’ll be able to track your progress as you practice questions from each topic. With that said, here is some detailed advice you can follow to improve your GMAT quant and verbal skills.

Let’s say, for example, you are learning about Number Properties. First, 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.

Follow a similar routine for verbal. 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. When attacking Reading Comprehension passages, 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, 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. Keep in mind that GMAT Reading Comprehension passages are not meant to be easy to read. So, to better prepare yourself to analyze such passages, read magazines with similar content and style, such as the Economist, Scientific American, and Smithsonian. 
 
Sentence Correction is a bit of a different animal compared to 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 just a test of knowledge of grammar rules. The reason for learning 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. 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 in order 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 is only one correct answer to any Sentence Correction question, there are clear reasons why that choice is correct and the others are not, and those reasons are not 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. It may take time for you to see what you have to see. 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 resulted in your arriving at that answer and what you could do differently in order 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 skills improve, you will then want to practice with questions that test you on skills from multiple Sentence Correction topics.

In order to follow the path described above, you may consider using an online self-study course, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the  best quant  and  verbal courses .

You also may find it helpful to read the following articles about  the phases of preparing for the GMAT  and  developing the proper mindset for GMAT success .

Feel free to reach out with any further questions. Good luck!

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Mozart721,

Many Test Takers who use a 'book heavy' study approach end up getting 'stuck' at a particular score level. From what you describe, you are planning on a book heavy approach, so you'll likely end up needing to invest in some non-book resources at some point. Since you've already acquired some practice materials though, you can get started with those. The OG books are great sources for practice questions, but they're not designed to teach you Tactics, patterns or the little 'secrets' behind the GMAT - for those, you'll need Course-oriented materials. To that end, you should work on the OG a little later on in your studies.

From what you describe, you have limited study time available. If you're studying for just 1 hour a day, then there might be a limit to how much you can improve (and your overall study time will probably be a lot longer than you might anticipate). Can you increase your study time to consistently put in about 15 hours a week?

I suggest that you study as you see fit for the next 2-3 weeks, then take a new FULL LENGTH CAT (with the Essay and IR sections). That score result will give us a better idea of how well you're improving and what changes might be necessary.

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

egmat · Answer

Hi Mozart721 , I understand you have just started your preparation. Achieving a 600-650 is very much possible by giving your studies a proper structure. But, 600-650 is quite broad a range. It is better to aim for a 650 so that you can align the targets in each section and sub-section accordingly and study in a focussed manner. It is fine if you have been out of touch with quant or verbal for some time now. GMAT Verbal is not all about grammar rules. Similarly, GMAT Quant is not all about formula and tricks. It will test you on a few core skills and logical thinking ability. See how Mayank aced GMAT even after he lost touch with academics. Diligent planning and execution led him to get admits from UC Berkeley HAAS part time EWMBA program and Booth's Evening MBA program The first important step is to plan well so that the execution is smooth and effective. Create a Plan This is the first and most important step of your preparation. Using the Personalized Study Planner tool you can create a plan that is personalized to your starting score, target score, strengths and weaknesses. It is good that you know your precise starting levels. You can refine the plan using your inputs . The key takeaways from the tool are, 1. Clear milestones (target percentiles) for each sub-section tailored to your strengths, and weaknesses 2. Estimate of the overall time required to reach your target score and a tentative GMAT date 3. The sequence of study and an estimate of the time required for acing each sub-section You can edit the sequence of study, study hours, off days etc. as per your requirement. Execute and track improvement Planning is only half the work done. You need to stick to the plan and execute it diligently. I am sharing some of the free resources to get you started with preparation. You can get access to a lot more of these videos and practice questions once you sign up for the Free Trial . 1. Verb-ed Phrases - Verbs or Modifiers 2. Pre-Thinking- Concept 1 - Logical Gap 3. Main Point Concept 1 4. Even and Odd Integers 5. Prime Numbers - Part 1 Track your improvement in each sub-section through sub-section quizzes. The ability quizzes in Scholaranium can help you do so and give a detailed analysis of your performance. Mock Tests Mock tests are to be taken towards the end of your preparation after you have learned all the concepts and processes. Learn more about when to take mock tests and how to make the best use of them . If you want to discuss the preparation strategy further, feel free to reach out to us at suport@e-gmat.com or PM me, referencing this post. Regards, Zinnia

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