Stuck at 530, Please help!

Question

Hello guys, I have been studying ever since November of 2015. I would really appreciate it if people can give me some advises on how to study and what to study. I'm taking my Gmat in exactly a month. I was studying for an hour a day from November to March. From April to now I have been studying about 6 hours each day. I did all the problems in both OG 2016 and 2015. I am working on verbal and quant review books for the past few days. I have created three sets of flashcards, one for verbal (mostly SC grammar rules, modifiers, parallelism), one for Quant and another one for idioms).

Books & materials used
Entire Manhattan Gmat set
OG 2016
OG 2015
Official Quant and Verbal review 2015

Manhattan CAT exams (With essay and IR)
510, Q39,V21
500, Q38,V21
530, Q39,V24
530, Q39,V24
520, Q36,V25 (guessed on a lot of quant problems, because i was out of time)

For some odd reason i just cant seem to get a 40+ on quant! 
Based on my assessment report from Manhattan. It shows that the average difficulty of questions that im getting right for each topic are all in the 500s, and the ones that i get wrong are all in the low 600s range.

My goal is a 650, is that possible in four weeks?

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi dave1234,

Your scores are all 'clustered' in the low 500s. Assuming that you took these CATs in a way that 'matches up' with what you'll face on the Official GMAT, then we have to assume that this is your current ability level. While I certainly think that you can make some big improvements to these scores, you're likely going to need MORE than one month of additional study time to learn the necessary Tactics and hone your skills to get to that much higher level.

Since you've taken just the MGMAT CATs, I'd like to see how you perform on one of the Official GMAC CATs. You should plan to take one of those CATs (with the Essay and IR sections) sometime soon (perhaps this weekend) so that we can see how that performance matches up to your others. Assuming that score is in the range of your other scores, then I would suspect that you would need 2 months of consistent, additional study time to hit your score goal, which would mean that you would have to push back your Test Date (or pay to take the GMAT more than once).

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

HiLine · Answer

Stop everything you are doing. Clearly, it is not working and you are wasting official GMAT practice questions.

Have you stopped everything you're doing?

Great.

Now, how have you been practicing? Did you ever practice without timing yourself? How is your accuracy when you are not under time pressure?

Posted from my mobile device

dave1234 · Answer

Hi Rich, thank you for replying. I will take the offical GMAC CAT early next week and let you know how i do on it. If i spend more time studying each day, would i be able to get at least a 600 by the end of this month?

dave1234 · Answer

Stop everything you are doing. Clearly, it is not working and you are wasting official GMAT practice questions.

Have you stopped everything you're doing?

Great.

Now, how have you been practicing? Did you ever practice without timing yourself? How is your accuracy when you are not under time pressure?

Hi HiLine, thank you for replying. I have stopped doing problems in the offical GMAT guide. I have practiced without timing myself. For questions that are in their 500 range i can usually do them easily, but when it comes to questions that are in their 600-700 or 700-800 range its either i know how to do them or im completely stuck. I was thinking about doing all the problems in this forum that are in their 600-700 range then 700-800 range. Just to practice and familiarize myself with common techniques that are required to solve problems that are in their 600-700 and 700-800 range.

HiLine · Answer

So after encountering more difficult problems that you cannot solve, do you look up the answer and figure out why you could not answer it correctly? Do you try to "pre-think" the answer before considering the answer choices for each question?

Posted from my mobile device

Posted from my mobile device

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Dave 1234,

Based on your practice test scores and the amount you have already studied, I think that a 150-point increase in 4 weeks will be difficult to achieve. To make the jump you need, (in both quant and verbal) you first must solidify your foundational knowledge; only then will you be able to attempt mastering more advanced material . New knowledge tends to be based upon a solid understanding of earlier concepts. And without solid knowledge, you are merely burning questions.

I see that you have been relying heavily on the Official Guide as a primary study resource. This reliance may be the reason your quant and verbal scores have plateaued. The Official Guide is a great resource for practice because it has official questions from past GMATs; however, the Guide does not provide enough questions on each topic to provide full exposure to all the important issues on the actual test. Additionally, the questions are presented in a random order, so it’s challenging to use the OG for targeted learning.

Thus, your next move should be to find a study resource that allows more focused learning and practice of one topic at a time: e.g, sentence structure or good reasoning practices for verbal; number properties or rate problems for quant. For example, if you are learning about percents, you want to make sure you learn everything possible about percents, e.g., percent less than, percent greater than, variable percents, percent profit, percent change. After that, be sure that you practice a lot of questions (50 or more) just on percents. The results of that practice will help you to determine how well you have mastered that particular topic. Following this study strategy of targeted practice should help you to improve both your verbal and quant scores.

Once you feel you have fully learned all the important GMAT topics, but not before, start taking Official MBA.com tests, as those exams provide the most accurate exam experience and use the most accurate scoring algorithm. You can start with the  two free exams . After that you can purchase  exam pack 1  and  exam pack 2 
 
Also, read  my article  that provides some actionable steps that you can follow to help achieve your GMAT score goal.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi dave1234,

From your last post, it sounds like you're changing the 'parameters' of how you're going to study and your score goals. A score goal of 600+ in 4 weeks will still take some serious effort, but is considerably easier to achieve than a 650+ score in that same time. It's important that you not confuse "quality" of study with "quantity" of study. The consistency in your scores shows that your current approach to this Test will likely earn you a score in the low-500s on Test Day - even if you choose to put in more study time using your current materials and methods.

Beyond likely needing MORE study time than you've allotted, you'll need to learn/practice some new Tactics, which will likely require that you invest in some new study materials.

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

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Stuck at 530, Please help!

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