Can't get over 43 in Quant! concentrate on Verbal instead?

Question

Hi guys,

I am less than 3 weeks away from the exam date and I need your advice!! Preferably from your personal experience.

Bit of background - I am pretty good at Verbal, got 40 in GMATPrep and consistently hitting 90% accuracy in OG / Kaplan. I don't think there is too much room for improvement with RC and CR but am thinking about studying harder for SC as I only average 70% on SC. I keep stuffing up idioms but that's because I didn't pay any attention to this when going through MGMAT SC.

My original intention was to improve my quant score from 40 to a 48 by test date but after 5 weeks of studying, I seem to be stuck on 43. So far, I have repeatedly gotten 43 on the MGMAT quant section (70%) and even though I think I've been a bit unlucky with the question types (i'm weak with probability and it so happens I keep getting them on MGMAT), the fact remains that I'm probably not going to improve to a 48 in such a short time. Hell, I'd be happy to just improve to a 45! But even that seems a long way off.

My aim is still 700. I don't really care if my quant score stays at 43 on the actual test as long as I can somehow manage an overall score of 700.

So given the time constraints, my questions are:
(1) Should I take a chance on quant and accept 43 is what I'll probably get and focus my attention on absolutely perfecting verbal?
(2) Can I improve from 43 quant to a 45 or 46 in less than 3 weeks? And more importantly what do you suggest I do? What study material should I look at? The biggest problem I've gpt is time.. often I know the way to solving a problem but the clock gets the better of me.

Outside of those 2 questions, please feel free to comment if you think it helps.

Much appreciated!

jpr200012 · Answer

Do you have the MGMAT Word Translations book? If so, I think you have plenty of time to do their chapters on counting and probability.

mustdoit · Answer

Dont worry !!! with consistent 43 in MGMAT you should easily score around 47-48 in real test. I was also in the range of 45-46 but ended up scoring 51. Dont worry !!! cheer up and enjoy !!! Keep smiling because thats what the Gmat Hates !!!

Romaster · Answer

Really? Can anyone else confirm this as their experience as well? I actually thought MGMAT is slightly easier than the real thing.

Thanks mustdoit! I hope you are right man.

mustdoit · Answer

There are 100s of places where you can surely confimr that MGMAT level is way beyond that of actual gmat. But yes one thing to note is that they are an excellent practice source. Mark my words.....prepare and practice GMAT club tests and MGMAT tests for quant thorougly and you are in for Q49+.........

Romaster · Answer

Thanks man! You have given me probably the biggest injection of motivation for quite some time!

Just completed a third MGMAT quant section and got 43 yet again. 3 in a row now! I seem to somehow always finish poorly ie run out of time and see my score dip from 80 percentile back towards the low 70s. I'm not sure what I can do to address that???

I will refrain from taking anymore tests for now and focus on verbal. I will keep everyone posted.

Thanks again.

ramgmat · Answer

Mustdoit,
Thanks for this info! I was so down just like Romaster...Been scoring 44-45 consistently in MGMAT.
Checked my mistakes and figured out that in most of the problems where i was going wrong involved tedious calculations or the problem was a bit tough for my standards.
This really peps me up!
Will keep posted of how things turn on when i take the GMAT Prep tests!

Experts could you please give us your opinions.
Thanks

redjam · Answer

This is good to hear. I have an engineering background yet I'm always short on time on the MGMAT Quant sections. I was really starting to get worried. Hopefully I can take my 46 to a 51, in the real exam too.

dokiyoki · Answer

Have you taken any full lenght GMATprep yet ? It should most accurately reflect your Quant score. MGMAT Quant is supposed to be more convoluted and a bit more difficult compared to GMAT prep.

Dreamy · Answer

Did you practice more for quant after the mgmat tests?

shaselai · Answer

i would take that statement of 43 into 47-48 with a grain of salt... it differs person by person so dont be too giddy just because it worked for someone else. error log is key here (no one else here mentioned...)

Womiwom · Answer

There are numerous posts about MGMAT Quant being more difficult than that of the real GMAT, so I would say that there is some validity to what mustdoit said. I can't say from personal experience, as I'm still working through the MGAT Series. My quant isn't that good, but I can already see an improvement from where I started to where I am at now. Good luck when you take your test!

jpr200012 · Answer

I agree. The score estimator on this site shows a +/- 40 between MGMAT and the real test. If you are not good at counting/probability, it would be wise to learn it now while you have time

Gacarva · Answer

Just my 0,01 from personal experience.

You should take one official gmatprep exam to have a clear view of where you stand. Mgmat tests are different form the real thing. I was scoring 45-46 in mgmat and was very happy with it because everyone says mgmat is more difficult, after that I just managed to score 40 on the gmatprep.... I just find the real thing very different from mgmat and cannot figure out what am i doing wrong, i guess the real thing is trickier...... So it can be different for every person...... take the gmatprep and take it from there....

vwjetty · Answer

I would take all this with a grain of salt. It's different for everyone. It would be best to take the MGMAT and then take a GMATprep CAT to potentially compare these claims. For me, I cannot say that the MGMAT quant is any different from that of the real one. However, what I can say is that the MGMAT verbal seems easier than the real one.

shadow · Answer

the general consensus seems to be that the MGMAT is more difficult than the actual GMAT in terms of math. does this apply to everyone? no, very few things in the world apply to each and every person.

the main problem with the MGMAT is that its questions take, on average, longer to complete than the typical GMAT math question. as a result, you're left with a short amount of time at the end to answer your remaining questions. i dont think i scored higher than a 44 on my mgmat math, but i managed to do ok on the real test. your best bet is to take a full length gmat preptest and see how you do there.

Michmax3 · Answer

I studied with mgmat for a while...was only getting 43's on 4 practice exams too. Then I took gmat prep practice test and got a 48. I know this is only one example, but I found the gmat prep to be a lot easier. I'm taking the second practice exam tomorrow and will let you know if turns out to be the same. You should try taking one of the official practice tests to see if you find the same thing.

kissthegmat · Answer

Try gmatclub test for quant!

Posted from my mobile device

Lethal · Answer

Overall I found the GMATPrep quant to be less challenging than MGMAT. The MGMAT questions seemed to take longer and it was harder to finish in 75 mins. I am focusing on the problems from the OG12 and gmatclub math tests from now until my official test on Oct. 5th since they seem to be more like what I'll see on test day.

Romaster · Answer

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this discussion.

I've dug up some old threads on this very topic and the consensus seems to be that MGMAT is harder. At the very least it takes longer to complete and is more convoluted. This is exactly the problem I have - TIMING. Particularly towards the end as I'm anxious to finish the test.

I took GMATPrep 1 and only got 40 but that was nearly 6 - 8 weeks ago before the intense prep. I will take GMATPrep 2 closer to exam date. Perhaps another fairly accurate indication is my score from OG12. I managed 88% accuracy in PS (230 Q's) and the majority of my mistakes were silly errors as opposed to not knowing the way to the answer. Usually DS is my relative weakness in quant so it will be interesting to see how I go with that. Overall, I feel much better about where I am and will continue to aim for 48+ on the real thing.

On a different note, I wasn't particularly impressed with MGMAT verbal. Their CR questions threw me off and are sometimes structurally different to OG. I can't really tell if they are easier or harder as Verbal is pretty intuitive to me but definitely take your MGMAT verbal scores with a grain of salt.

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