Feeling Discouraged & Like I'm Not Using My Time Efficiently

Question

I am using Target Test Prep to study after trying out a bit of Veritas Prep and The Economist GMAT tutor. Do you have any advice for using time more efficiently? I am spending more than double 2 mins/question (sometimes as long as 10 minutes); on the plus side I am either a few percentage points below the accuracy target or above the target. I've been using Kaplan tests to try to gauge improvement; two weeks ago, cold with no prep, it was Q35 and yesterday it was Q38. My verbal score on the cold/no prep exam was a disappointing V38 and I didn't bother to take the verbal section again because I haven't studied for it at all except a few Sentence Correction lessons and tests. I expected higher on Verbal because in the past (but >5 years ago), I scored in the 94th percentile on the GRE Verbal section. I believe there's substantial room for improvement if I actually study for the verbal section, but I'm so focused on quant right now since it is such a weak area.

The main reason I feel discouraged and feel like I'm not using my time efficiently is that I've spent ~6 hours/day on average over the last two weeks or so and I've only gotten through the Quant Essentials, Linear and Quadratic Equations (not the hard level chapter tests), some of the new Sentence Correction questions and the lessons for Number Properties.

My biggest struggle is factoring expressions and equations, especially when it involves complex fractions. I just don't see the patterns and wind up solving the wrong way and having to start over; it's just not clicking. The skills seem foundational to many of the other topics so I am worried that I'm never going to get to where I need to be (Q48). I've considered hiring a tutor but they are so incredibly expensive and I don't know what they could possibly teach me in just a few hours, which is the most I could afford.

I have ~4 months until I need to take the GMAT so I am looking for advice on how to move forward in a way that is more efficient. Any advice you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

ShankSouljaBoi · Answer

All great things take time . Please be patient, don't stress yourself out . GMAT is also a test of balancing emotions, so meditate and workout,, if possible ....
Best ~

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

First off, things seem to be going well! You've gotten through 2.5 modules in just two weeks, which is a very nice pace. Regarding how to move forward, your path is quite simple. I want you to keep following the TTP study plan and make sure that you complete the entire course, in full. If you can do that, there is no reason why you can't knock the GMAT out of the park on test day. Also, if you have any additional questions, feel free to reach out to me directly. I've got your back, my friend.

AndrewN · Answer

Mother of Dragons, if you have 4 months or so of prep time, then that is more than enough to go through the Target Test Prep course and allow the material to sink in. Let go of this notion that you can all of a sudden grasp what you need to just by putting in so many hours at a time. If there were a linear ladder to climb simply by logging hours, then many more students would be earning perfect Quant scores. Let the lessons sink in. Watch the videos more than once if you need to, or pause them to solve a step for yourself before hitting play again. To be honest, you are probably getting so worked up while watching the lessons, wondering what you are missing that others seem to get, that you probably are missing some important information, information that will allow you, with practice, to work through Quant questions more efficiently. Even perfect-scoring test-takers—including Marty Murray himself—stress the importance of taking your time to comprehend a question and concept. Stop fussing about the timer. You have a few months to improve. Timing can come later. Build a strong foundation first. That is exactly what the Target Test Prep platform is designed to do: give you the tools to break down even the toughest Quant questions. Just give it time to work.

Best of luck with your studies. I think you will be in fine shape once you engage with the lessons instead of seeing them as a chore to complete.

- Andrew

Best of luck with your studies. I think you will be in fine shape once you engage with the lessons instead of seeing them as a chore to complete.

- Andrew

DaenerysTargaryen · Answer

Thanks, Scott and Andrew!

Andrew, first of all, thank you for the proper title greeting. Perhaps I just imagined it, but I loved the sass in your reply and I am already thinking differently about my prep tomorrow based on your feedback.

Scott, thanks for replying directly to my post and giving me some encouragement on my progress. At some point, I will be in touch about tutoring when I am further along!

Thank you both again! (is that correct for an SC problem!?)

AndrewN · Answer

Yes, I thought  khaleesi  might be too formal. Perhaps the sass came unwittingly from putting myself in a Tyrion mindset. In all seriousness, though, I hope you see your prep as an  opportunity . With each question studied, you have the potential to grow that much closer to your goal. I would be lying if I said I had always approached my own prep this way. It is easy to become impatient. But when I slow things down and really focus on the question at hand, on the logical underpinnings of a concept, I notice I start to get better at those types of questions. Efficiency then comes with practice, just as I suggested earlier.

You should be in good hands with Target Test Prep. There is a reason so many people leave positive reviews on this site and elsewhere.

- Andrew

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

My pleasure. I'm here if you need me.

Let's do this!!

DaenerysTargaryen · Answer

Thanks, Andrew/Hand of the Queen! I went off-plan and made flashcards of almost all the TargetTestPrep content and I'm now diving into the chapter tests. Seeing that there's nothing really scary in the rest of the content has settled my nerves a bit and makes it easier to slow down and spend time on the questions, plus now I have what I think are really strong, comprehensive flashcards for studying that I will only add to as I uncover gaps in understanding through the questions.

I do need some advice. When is it time to find a tutor? I'm still struggling with complex fractions that have variables in linear and quadratic equations and it's causing me not to hit my target chapter test scores that the program recommends hitting. I've reviewed the questions closely and it's just not demystifying the same way other question types are -- I did a GMAC practice test to set a baseline from now on (660 - Q37, V44 -- targeting 730 - Q45, V45) and just from reviewing the TTP content without applying it yet, I was able to quickly understand why I got questions wrong and how I would solve those types of questions in the future. But I'm still hitting the same wall with with those linear and quadratic equations that have variables in complex fractions.

Also, and I just asked this in a different post but wondering if you have an opinion. Can you point me anywhere that has a good take on how to improve verbal score? I'm very close to my target, but I haven't started studying for that section yet and don't want to neglect it. Do you just do practice questions and learn grammar rules? I've read you can try to do regular critical readings of dense material (The Economist GMAT Tutor suggests reading The Economist, how interesting). I'm curious if you have any insight you could share. Thanks!!

AndrewN · Answer

So, we cross paths again, My Queen. Since you have enlisted the services of Target Test Prep, those video lessons can serve as a virtual tutor. If you find yourself in a 4-6-week window prior to your test date, you have gone through the course, and you still feel as though you need assistance, then that would be the time to request extra help, in my view. It is my understanding that Target Test Prep has in-house tutors—I seem to recall having read a post in which someone offered praise for Jeff after working with him—and since I would expect them to be the most familiar with the content of the Target Test Prep course, I would probably start there.

As for your Verbal baseline, that is quite remarkable. I would not be surprised to see you end up with a tip-top score in the section, as long as you have enough time and dedication to practice. Although you could purchase a guide from, say, Manhattan Prep to improve your conceptual understanding, you might get just as much out of carefully tracking your mistakes across official practice questions. You need not read  dense material  to improve your reading ability if you are performing at such a high level already. (I think that advice might be more fitting for a second-language learner of English or for someone more accustomed to reading texts, food labels, and video game packaging than the types of passages the GMAT™ likes to draw questions from.) What you ought to find particularly beneficial are the explanations (to official Verbal questions) that others have provided in the forum. Both Experts and non-Experts alike have some remarkable insights to offer to cover the gaps left by many official explanations. Some of my favorite responses come from  GMATNinja ,  VeritasKarishma ,  DmitryFarber ,  generis , and  daagh , among others. Given your relative strengths and weaknesses, you should probably focus more intently on Quant, but at the same time, you never want to assume that things will go your way on Verbal. A little practice a few times a week—perhaps ten- or twenty-question sets two or three times a week—should help you hone your skills.

If you have further questions, you know how to reach me. (It is my pleasure to serve.)

- Andrew

DaenerysTargaryen · Answer

Hi  AndrewN  -- hope all is well. I've come for solace, hoping for your continued generosity. I am still working through Target Test Prep. They recently changed their analytics page and it now shows how much time I've spent on the platform - 340 hours. It feels pathetic to have spent so much time only to get through ~2.8k practice and "example" quant problems. I'm nowhere near being able to actually execute the problems in ~2 minutes. I just took an Overlapping sets "hard" difficulty level test and got a 55% after only getting one wrong across all the easy and medium questions. Of course, the target is 60% or higher for that difficulty level, but it's just a huge time investment to still feel stupid. This event incited my post.

I started some of the new "pre-launch" Verbal questions and I find them to be unusually difficult compared to the official Verbal practice questions. I had hoped this meant that perhaps the easy/medium/hard difficulty levels assigned in the Quant section are harder than they are labeled, but  ScottTargetTestPrep  said in a post he wrote that they are, unfortunately for me, not.

I feel like pushing through the last 700 questions or so of the TTP Quant course and then focusing on Verbal + one daily TTP-generated practice quant test to focus on weak areas. Any thoughts on that approach? I'm not sure of the best platform to use for Verbal. I have access to TTP ("pre-launch" Verbal does not yet have Reading Comprehension), Veritas Prep and The Economist when I panic-purchased several courses in a short period, very unbecoming of the Mother of Dragons, at a time when I thought I was applying to my program in January, but I now have the luxury of another 4 months until I need to take it.

Would love your thoughts, as always!

-DT

Jon316 · Answer

I feel the exact same way ...

DaenerysTargaryen · Answer

Sorry to hear that  Jon316 , what has been your approach to the GMAT?

AndrewN · Answer

Hello, DT. I am sorry to hear that your frustration continues. It is good to see, however, that your performance on Easy and Medium questions is level with where you need/want to be. Your plan sounds rooted in disappointment and anxiety, to be honest. Do you have to go through 700 questions to complete your training for the GMAT™? Of course not. Sometimes letting go is not the right choice for ease... I have worked with two clients recently who have expressed similar frustrations with the platform. Does that mean it is not worthwhile? No. It just might not be the best tool for  you  at this point. If someone had paid me for 340 hours of tutoring, you had better believe that person would feel more comfortable with anything the test might throw at them than you appear to be. I am not knocking TTP as a learning tool, and neither do I doubt its effectiveness, given the ranks of positive reviewers on this site and elsewhere. However, the thoroughness of the platform may work against it for some students, and if you think that getting through the rest of the course will automatically make you test-ready, then you have another thing coming.

If you have purchased access to other online learning modules, then you should explore them further to see what may resonate with you in Verbal. My guess is that TTP will prove to be more of the same: exercise after exercise designed to whip you into shape. But maybe you need a nudge in the right direction, a tip ahead of time, without working through questions, and either Veritas Prep or The Economist could provide such guidance. (I am unfamiliar with exactly what you get with access to any of these platforms, but I have read good things.) Verbal is also different from Quant in that there are fewer rules to cover and a lot more technique to discuss. You might find  this debrief  to be of interest. This 770 scorer outlined how he spent very little money to end up where he did, and you know what? He credited two  free  online resources as those that had helped him the most: GMAT Ninja videos on YouTube (for Verbal) and All You Need for Quant, a mega-thread posted in topic-by-topic format, by   Bunuel  .

Keep an open mind. The job of any TTP rep is to sell you on its products. (I would do the same if I had a 5-star product that had taken thousands of collaborative hours to develop.) But to each his... er,  her  own. What may work for someone else may not work the same for you. This is true of TTP, Veritas Prep, The Economist, a tutor, or any other resource. But you seem frustrated, and that has got to go before you make genuine progress in the next phase of your preparation.

I hope that helps, My Queen.

- Andrew

Jon316 · Answer

I guess it's probably similar to what everybody is doing. Taking the practice test, developing a study plan, joining some study groups. I'm just super nervous.

DaenerysTargaryen · Answer

Jon316  That sounds normal. Have you taken your first practice test yet to see where you're landing?

AndrewN  Thank you for the continued feedback. The TTP course has not given me the results that one could reasonably expect based on their marketing. I think the course relies heavily on self-selection of those who are already doing well or those who are performing so poorly that reaching anything in the 40's is a win in their eyes. That is just a cursory observation based on the reviews I have read and my own experience with the platform. I am writing my own, thorough review for imminent release.

I will check out these free resources in addition to the OG. I really appreciate the incredible advice and support that you have provided!

-DT

AndrewN · Answer

Hello, DT. I am sorry to hear that TTP does not seem to be working out for you. To be clear, I am not faulting the TTP curriculum. Nor am I faulting you. No online learning module, print guide, tutor, or test prep company will work optimally for every person. I urged you in the beginning to stick with the platform because its thoroughness may not lend itself to immediate gratification on the part of the learner. But you gave it a go, and you still sounded stressed and unsatisfied, so I urged you to make a change.

I hope that some of the resources I have pointed you to prove useful in your continued preparation. If you have further questions, feel free to ask.

- Andrew

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi DaenerysTargaryen. It’s great to hear from you again. I know that you and Jeff had quite a fruitful conversation about a week and half ago, and from what he gathered, you’ve come quite a long way using TTP! I believe that, if you continue moving forward through the study plan, you will continue to improve. The fact is the GMAT is a really tough exam, and it TAKES TIME to really move the needle. Also, regarding your comment about the “self-selection” of TTP, I honestly would say it's not true. The fact is we have students come to us who are starting at all different levels, and those who start out at relatively low levels are not necessarily satisfied with Q40 or Q41. Many of those students aim to score in the high 40s just as you do. Here’s something else to keep in mind as well. If one TTP user can go from Q42 to Q47, and another TTP user can go from Q28 to Q42, then it stands to reason that the user who went from Q28 to Q42 can, by using the TTP course, get from Q42 to Q47. So, it’s no surprise that many TTP students have achieved just such score increases. For example, one of the all-time great GMAT stories from dcummins (https://gmatclub.com/forum/430-to-710-q ... 12878.html) who improved from 430 to 710 after a very long GMAT journey. Here is also one more from a student who improved from 420 with Q27 to 690 with Q47 (https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-from-42 ... 43473.html) I am pointing out these stories just so you can see that the score increase you are looking for is actually possible (with TTP) and that you are not alone. So, with all this in mind, I’d love to help get you on the right track. Would you please send a screenshot of your analytics page, so I can see your TTP stats and course progress, and we can see exactly what is going on and take things from there.

DaenerysTargaryen · Answer

Hi  ScottTargetTestPrep ,

I appreciate the response. The reality is that I have gone through everything in the TTP program for Quant except the guidance to take the final four CAT exams (holding on this due to poor Quant performance on the first two) and the highest CAT score I have for Quant is a 44 from a 35 to start, so, a decent improvement, but the study plan I paid for has a range of 49-51. As you can imagine, this is a disappointment. It is not from lack of time investment - as your analytics show, the investment has been 380+ hours.

I tried to use your OnTarget Analytics platform to create tests that zone in on weak spots, but the non-custom tests can only be created from lesson-specific questions that group all of your right answers with your wrong answers so it is not feasible to compile all of those wrong answers to create practice tests specific to wrong practice questions in that lesson. To illustrate why this is a problem, a lesson might have 12/15 right. To get to the 3 incorrectly answered questions, I have to choose to take practice tests that generate 10 random questions at a time from the 15 questions available, regardless of whether I answered them correctly or incorrectly. This is unbelievably inconvenient.

Also, in aggregate, the test builder does not work if you have spent too much time on a question in the past. It says I have not completed 300 questions, which your dev team confirmed I have completed and it was the system incorrectly capturing those as incomplete because the duration of time spent on the questions was too high. The duration of time spent on questions is critical, something I wish I could go more in depth on through the OnTarget Analytics or Custom Test Development, but there is a binary option only for selecting custom tests related to time -- those finished in under 2 minutes and those finished in more than 2 minutes. I should note also that the lack of the system's ability to capture questions that "take too long" to answer is antithetical to the advice by your staff that we should not consider time when answering practice questions because accuracy is more important.

I appreciate what TTP has provided - a potential increase of ~8 points in my quant score, but it is painful to see that paired with 49+ marketing.

-DT

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi DaenerysTargaryen,

I appreciate your reaching back out.

So, first off, regardless of your score goal, the first thing I will say is that improving from Q35 to Q44 is a pretty massive quant score increase. So, great work so far.

Second, although you glossed over this, it’s quite important for you to understand that you have completed only a portion of the practice test phase, and this should not be overlooked. I understand that you are not satisfied with your first two practice test scores. At the same time, the data from those tests needs to be strategically used for continued improvement of your skills.

First and foremost, you can use that data to find content gaps and, of course, work on improving the weak areas you find. Additionally, you need to do a thorough analysis to determine exactly WHY you got certain questions wrong and the level of those questions. For example, could you point to a number of incorrect questions and say that you got them wrong because of careless mistakes or falling for a trap answer? These are important questions to ask yourself, because remember, scoring Q44, believe it or not, does not mean you are light years away from scoring Q49. All it takes is a few careless mistakes on a few easy questions for your score to drop 5 points.

My overall point is that you still have work to be done. If you can work hard during the practice test phase (that you are currently in) and milk all the value you can out of the data from these practice tests, I do think you’ll see improvement as you complete the tests.

Also, it’s worthwhile to keep in mind that one thing the GMAT tests is skill in utilizing resources. For instance, a Data Sufficiency question asks you to determine, essentially, whether you have sufficient resources to find the answer to a math problem. Why does the GMAT test skill in utilizing resources? Because effectively utilizing resources is a key aspect of success in both business school and business itself.

In this case, you have sufficient resources for achieving your score goal in the form of the Target Test Prep course and the remaining practice tests you have. Thus, your success in hitting your score goal depends on your utilizing those resources effectively.

With that in mind, I know that you and Jeff plan to chat soon. So, why don’t you two chat further, so you can ensure that you are doing everything you can to effectively use the resources you have and hit your score goal. The good news is that I think you are closer to your goal than you think you are, so with a few tweaks, we can get you exactly where you need to be. If you have any additional questions, feel free to reach out to me directly.

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