GMAT Ninja Study Plan Week 9

Question

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 test assignments : 1. Full mba.com test #2, including AWA and IR. Remember: always practice like it’s test day , and keep honing your test-day reset routines if you need them. 2. “Fake quant test” using Official Practice Questions 1 (formerly the GMATPrep Question Pack 1) available for purchase at mba.com. Here’s how to set it up: Select 31 medium & hard quant questions, and do a roughly even mix of DS and PS. Select “timed”, and set a limit of 62 minutes. Select “exam mode.” The questions don’t randomize properly, unfortunately. But it will feel somewhat like an actual exam. 3. (Very optional) “Fake verbal test” using Official Practice Questions 1 available for purchase at mba.com. Here’s how to set it up: Select 11 CR and 12 SC questions from the software, in “exam mode.” If your goal is 40V 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 13 RC questions – from 3 or 4 passages – from the OG or GMAT Verbal Guide or the LSAT. Do NOT use the mba.com software for RC – you’ll get far too few questions per passage. Set an external timer for 65 minutes. Yes, this is FAR from perfect. But at least these are official questions, in roughly the same quantity as the actual exam. 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. You’re roughly one month from freedom! You’ve studied every significant quant topic. Now, it’s time to concentrate on practice exams and on getting your mind right for test day. The quant homework list is going to be thin from now on -- just some mixed practice sets from the OGs, and that’s it. If you need remedial work on quant topics, you can always indulge in that if you need to. But by now, you shouldn’t have any game-changing weaknesses in any particular quant topic area. 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. GMAT OG PS #151-175 2. 6th set of 25 DS questions from the GMAT OG (the exact question numbers will vary depending on which edition you’re using) 3. 7th set of 25 DS questions from the GMAT OG 4. (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 huge piece of advice: don’t overreact Imagine, for example, that you miss three geometry questions on a practice test or OG set. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re bad at geometry: maybe the geometry 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 geometry (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 a wise investment. 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 quant topics from previous weeks are giving you trouble, whatever you need is probably in this playlist . 3. If you’re STILL making careless errors, this algebra video describes a process for approaching ALL quant questions, starting at the 1:01 mark ; if you’re feeling inefficient, the video on Developing a Flexible Quant Mindset is still a good fit. And 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. 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 page numbers will 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, given 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 Do the 4th 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 some resources that might help: Beginners’ guide to CR YouTube video on how to approach CR All GMAT Ninja CR resources More full CR explanations than anybody should ever read A whole lot more YouTube videos The most crucial SC topics are behind us, and now we’re nibbling at minor things. Any topic-based practice (on countable vs. non-countable modifiers, for example) will help only a little bit, and should be considered optional. In other words: we’re roughly a month from the end of the study plan. Our remaining topic areas might be useful, but they won’t be transformational. Hopefully, your SC performance isn’t TOO far off from what you’ll need for your target score. If you’re still a long way from where you want to be, you might consider taking an extra week to concentrate on your weaknesses – and possibly your overall approach to SC – because Week 13 isn’t so far off now. Week 9 SC homework 1. (Optional) Watch this video about countable vs. non-countable modifiers or this older one 2. (Very optional) If you’re wondering about idioms, this article is for you. 3. Do the 5th set of 25 SC questions from the GMAT Official Guide (the exact question numbers will vary depending on which edition you’re using) Need more SC help? Please don’t go crazy watching extra videos or reading piles of extra articles – the really important stuff is baked into the study plan. But in case you need them, here are links to more SC resources than you’ll probably ever need: All GMAT Ninja SC resources on GMAT Club Beginner’s Guide to SC GMAT Ninja’s 18-video SC course Links to all of the old live GMAT Ninja verbal videos More SC explanations than you could possibly want to read You’ll get tired of reading this, but IR and AWA are always optional in this study plan. Why? Nobody really cares about them. Spend your time elsewhere, please.

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. Keep reading…
How far are you from your target score on quant? If you’re 5+ points away from your target quant score, I worry that time is running out on you. But…
How many careless errors did you make on quant? If you made more than one silly error on quant, then your main problem is probably sloppiness – not necessarily a lack of skill. Even a small handful of silly mistakes can cost you 5+ points on quant. 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? Geometry? Annoying algebraic data sufficiency 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.
How far are you from your target score on verbal? If you’re 5+ points away from your target verbal score, I worry that time is running out on you, and you might want to pause the study plan to do some extra work, potentially even on your fundamental reading skills. But…
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. In particular, I don’t necessarily mind a weaker performance on SC at this stage, since you’re more likely to make a big leap on SC in the final month than to pull off a similar jump on CR or RC. If your verbal errors are relatively balanced, that might take more time to fix.
Look for signs of stubbornness. If you’re spending more than 3 minutes on individual quant, CR, or SC questions, you’ll need to learn to let go. Time is a scarce resource on the GMAT, and spending 3+ minutes isn’t an efficient way to use it (unless you’re doing the first question of an RC passage).
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’ve done test #2 before. 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 repeated tests are always at least somewhat inflated – and you’ll struggle more with timing on a brand-new test than you did on this one.

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

Medium quant questions: 80% is solid, 90% or above is excellent if your goal is a high-40s quant score.
Hard quant questions: 50% is solid. 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 really don’t need to be in order to hit a 47+ on quant.
Careless error rate: < 3%. If you made one silly error, that’s OK. 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 36 official questions in 65 minutes. So take the benchmarks with a grain of salt.
Medium CR & SC questions: 80% is good, 90%+ is excellent if your goal is V40.
Hard CR & SC questions: 50% is good, 70%+ is AWESOME if your goal is V40. No, really: you can miss a TON of hard questions on the GMAT and be in great shape.
OG RC questions: 80% is a decent benchmark, but it depends on exactly which questions you selected.
CR & SC questions that took 3+ minutes: none, please. No SC or 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: This is a question of discipline and mindset. Learn to let go! Remember: the test is designed to make you miss 30-50% 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 bank: 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 700 or even a 740. 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 high 40s, 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 (#1-3 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 (#4 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.

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 (items #1-3): 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 #4): 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, 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.
Accuracy on (optional) LSAT CR & RC sets: if your goal is a 40V or above, we want to see 80% accuracy on LSAT CR and RC. If you need a check on your progress, it’s not a bad 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 a 40V if all is well on SC. 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 if you’re getting demolished, you’ll definitely want to check out this video about the factors that can lead to GMAT verbal struggles. If fundamental reading skills are an issue, this article and this one will give you some ideas for how to improve over time.

SC+

Our approach to SC has been to encourage slow, steady progress over time. Why? Well, there’s a limited supply of official SC questions, and it’s not wise to binge on them. So each week, we’ve basically told you to be patient with SC.

Now that you’re about a month from your exam, it might be time to be… less patient, in a way. If you’re a long way from your goals, now is a good time to consider pausing the study plan. If you’re fairly close to where you want to be on SC, don’t worry: four weeks is plenty of time to improve a little bit. It’s just that it’s not usually enough time to improve a lot.

In other words: be honest with yourself about where you stand on SC, and pause the plan if you need to.

Benchmarks for Your Week 9 SC Results

Accuracy: 90% correct is serious cause for celebration, and 70-90% is still completely solid.
Speed: 50 minutes or less (for 25 questions) is good. At this stage, if you’re much slower than that, I’m getting worried.

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

Be prepared to spend more time in the coming weeks if you’re struggling. If your SC is lagging way behind your quant, CR, and RC skills then you’ll want to allocate more time for SC in the next few weeks – and you might even want to pause the study plan if you’re REALLY far from the benchmarks.
Be careful not to spend TOO much time reviewing individual SC questions. A little bit of time on individual questions is OK – especially if SC is one of your biggest remaining weaknesses – but every SC question has its own unique qualities that you might not ever see again. A better approach is to focus on your underlying skills first, and then come back and redo the questions you missed later. Stay aware of the fact that it’s easy to burn HOURS on a small handful of SC questions, and that might not be the best use of your time.
If you’re sure that your SC fundamentals are nowhere close to where they need to be: then you could spend extra time with SC videos (such as this full GMAT SC video course), but don’t automatically assume that learning more grammar is the answer – it’s only one small part of SC.
If you’re slow on SC questions: it’s soul-searching time. If you’re slow on ALL verbal questions, then maybe reading speed is a problem, and that’s really hard to fix. But if you’re slower on SC than RC or CR, you’re probably not consistently identifying the EASIEST ways to eliminate answer choices. This video on getting your priorities straight or this video on how to approach SC are probably familiar to you already, but might be worth re-watching. I promise that if you master the processes in those videos, your efficiency will improve – but I also understand that it can be hard to master those processes.
If you’re struggling on hard, meaning-based SC questions: well, that happens to all of us. Don’t overreact: you might be in GREAT shape, but some meaning-based questions will always feel hard, no matter who you are. This video on meaning-based SC questions might help if you want to do a deeper dive on the hardest questions, but you should consider it very, very optional.

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 a 40V if all is well on SC. 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 if you’re getting demolished, you’ll definitely want to check out this video about the factors that can lead to GMAT verbal struggles . If fundamental reading skills are an issue, this article and this one will give you some ideas for how to improve over time. Our approach to SC has been to encourage slow, steady progress over time. Why? Well, there’s a limited supply of official SC questions, and it’s not wise to binge on them. So each week, we’ve basically told you to be patient with SC. Now that you’re about a month from your exam, it might be time to be… less patient, in a way. If you’re a long way from your goals, now is a good time to consider pausing the study plan. If you’re fairly close to where you want to be on SC, don’t worry: four weeks is plenty of time to improve a little bit. It’s just that it’s not usually enough time to improve a lot. In other words: be honest with yourself about where you stand on SC, and pause the plan if you need to. Benchmarks for Your Week 9 SC Results Accuracy : 90% correct is serious cause for celebration, and 70-90% is still completely solid. Speed : 50 minutes or less (for 25 questions) is good. At this stage, if you’re much slower than that, I’m getting worried. What Should You Do About Your SC Weaknesses in Week 9? Be prepared to spend more time in the coming weeks if you’re struggling . If your SC is lagging way behind your quant, CR, and RC skills then you’ll want to allocate more time for SC in the next few weeks – and you might even want to pause the study plan if you’re REALLY far from the benchmarks. Be careful not to spend TOO much time reviewing individual SC questions . A little bit of time on individual questions is OK – especially if SC is one of your biggest remaining weaknesses – but every SC question has its own unique qualities that you might not ever see again. A better approach is to focus on your underlying skills first, and then come back and redo the questions you missed later. Stay aware of the fact that it’s easy to burn HOURS on a small handful of SC questions, and that might not be the best use of your time. If you’re sure that your SC fundamentals are nowhere close to where they need to be : then you could spend extra time with SC videos (such as this full GMAT SC video course ), but don’t automatically assume that learning more grammar is the answer – it’s only one small part of SC. If you’re slow on SC questions : it’s soul-searching time. If you’re slow on ALL verbal questions, then maybe reading speed is a problem, and that’s really hard to fix. But if you’re slower on SC than RC or CR, you’re probably not consistently identifying the EASIEST ways to eliminate answer choices. This video on getting your priorities straight or this video on how to approach SC are probably familiar to you already, but might be worth re-watching. I promise that if you master the processes in those videos, your efficiency will improve – but I also understand that it can be hard to master those processes. If you’re struggling on hard, meaning-based SC questions : well, that happens to all of us. Don’t overreact: you might be in GREAT shape, but some meaning-based questions will always feel hard, no matter who you are. This video on meaning-based SC questions might help if you want to do a deeper dive on the hardest questions, but you should consider it very, very optional.

eduardo93fp · Answer

For anyone this far in the study plan i would highly recommend to have a solid pacing plan before starting to take the official mocks 2-6. The plan doesn't emphasize this enough, besides learning to let go you need to have a very specific pacing plan, you can find a lot in different forums or videos, choose one of your preference or create your own but you definitely need one.

My scores in the 4 official mocks that i've taken so far (i'm currently in week 11 of the study plan) are as follows:
- Official mock 1: 660 Q45 V35
- Official mock 2: 620 Q44 V31
- Official mock 3: 610 Q45 V28
- Official mock 4: 700 Q48 V38
The jump to 700 is basically because i managed to finish both sections for the first time, just like me i've read about people gaining more than 100 points by a applying a specific pacing strategy.

Here are some helpful threads in GMAT club:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/new-format-g ... 69682.html
https://gmatclub.com/forum/timing-strat ... l#p1577505

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