Warmup before second Attempt From a 590 to ???

My target is to complete the exam before end of November. I don't think I will be having any more patience(both physically and mentally) to fight against the GMAT beyond that.

Thank you for the wishes....I really need them.

I am yet to re-analyze my mistakes from last night's MGMAT Free CAT exam. Planning to do that in the morning.

I have changed y verbal strategy slightly for this round of prepartion.

Before even starting on OG12(Fortunately I didn't go thru this book for my first exam) and Verbal Review, I will go thry MGMAT Sc book end to end. The idea here is to first get to understand the topics that will be tested in the GMAT. This book really provides very minuate details - that can easily be ignored if we are not careful. Here is one example that I understand only today after going thru MGMAT Chapter 2 -

Use THAT OF / THOSE OF wisely. Hum what does this mean? Here are two examples -

The GMAT Score I see in my dreams is [THAT OF] 750(THAT OF really sounds crazy in this sentence. But the point to take away here is that 750 itself is a GMAT Score. So THAT OF is NOT NEEDED in this sentence. )

Now consider another example.

The person I met yesterday resembles [THAT OF] a great politician. (Here A great politican is definitely a person. So usage of THAT OF is unnecessary.

See it this way -

The face of a person I met yesterday resembles [THAT OF] a great politician. (Here face of a person CANNOT BE A great politican Instead the face of a person CAN BE the face of (THAT OF) a famous politician. Hence THAT OF is very much needed in this sentence.

Now coming to the plan, I am averaging 1 1/2 day per Chapter. So by Sep 10 I should be able start working on OG 12 - SC. Let me see how this plan works out.

I am planning to have the same approach for RC and CR.

snipertrader,

Thank you for the suggestion. I already did OG 11 during my first attempt. So I am afraid I might pick answers correctly probably because I remeber the correct ans choice(yes I believe I have good remembrance power ) rather than by knowing the concepts correctly. This way I feel, I will not be able to find my real weakness.

OG 12 is new to me(I assume there are lot many repeats from OG 11) but still, it might judge me where I am. Once I am done with OG12, I might go back to referring OG 11 questions(provided I have that much time)

OG 12 has only 30% of new questions. Some but they are sprinkled all over and hard to pick out. Manhattan has a list of all new questions on their site (link from this post: the-official-guide-for-gmat-12-merged-76806.html.

Here is a secret - OG 10 has the least repeats between all of the OG's. You can pick it up pretty cheaply (if you have access to Amazon or similar)

The only weakness of OG 10 is that it has overlaps with PowerPrep (previous version of GMATPrep).

Franklin,

Thank you for the attachment. After I did some googling, I realised that OG 10 is worth to add to my investment of GMAT Prep books. So I ordered the book. Hope your attachment will definitely help me understand the Verbal concepts.

I am not too worried about Quant because I am quite confident I can pull my Quant score to atleast 49 even if I have to fight the GMAT today. What ever help / preparation I am needing now is ONLY for verbal.

I need to improve from lower 20's to atleast upper 30's. How nice to have some magic spell for this.

Today, my prep progress is not that satisfactory. Still it is ok. Finally I have completed all the OG -12 SC questions. And my hit rate is around 75%. (104 correct of 140). I tried to do 20 questions at a time with timer set to 30 min(90 sec per question). My worst performances came in 61 - 80, 81 - 100 and 121-140 questions. I feel most of them are related to Verbs / comparision / construction. I know I need to go thru Verbs and Comparision. To build the accuracy in Construction, I think I need to practice more of similar questions. Never mind, I still have OG 10, OG 11 and verbal review. Ample matierial to practice. One thing that I did notice is - there were couple of questions in which the ans choice are differing by Infinitive phrases, ING phrases or that clauses. All these choices seems correct and was unable to pick the ans with confidence. So I need to understand abt these difference in a better way.

Once I go thru my pending tasks on SC, I will revisit all my 36 wrong answers and find out if I will able to hit them right.

I have gone thru CR Bible for Resolve the Paradox. With that, I am left with Strengthen and Assumptions chapters before I take up my MGMAT CAT2. For CR, what I realized is that, earlier when I was attempting CR's I am going by my instincts while picking the ans(I say to myslef - "probably this might be the ans"). But after going to CR Bible, I understand what a stimulus is stating and based on the question type, how do I need to look at ans choices. In this way, I now say with confidence " This is the ans". Anyhow, this approach will need considerable practice.

Crossing my fingures for MGMAT CAT 2. Targetting for a score of atleast 650 with 45 + in Quant and around 35 in Verbal.

Not so convinced with my preparation for the last couple of days........Still struggling to complete Verbs & Comparisions chapters from MGMAT SC and Strengthen & Assumptions from CR Bible. Man....Verbs and Comparision have lot of depth in them. Each statement in these chapters is a golden statement.

Yesterday, I was going thru some of the forums on Infinitives Vs Gerunds. Really found some useful information. Now I feel I am confident on these usages.

Tomorrow I am planning to take MGMAT 2. I would be in a better position,If I have completed these topics. Never mind, I don't want to postpone the CAT exams because they convey my weak areas. Let me hope for the best.

For this long weekend, planning to coomplete these pending chapters, and try reattempting all my 36 SC questions that I made wrong. Hope I will have good number of hits atleast this time.

Hum....it's so annoying to see the screen - "THE PAGE CANNOT BE DISPLAYED" when you are seriously in the middle of a CAT exam. So far, not even in a single attempt did MGMAT CAT let me take the exam simulating a real environment. Once it said that I am done with the exam when I still have around 15 min or so. And today when I am taking my second CAT exam, after completing 6 q in verbal, THE PAGE CANNOT BE DISPLAYED screen is shown. It really is frustrating me a lot - that I am not able to complete one CAT exam so far in the simulation environment.

I guess I will have to wait until MGMAT site takes me to the CAT test again. Now even the home page is not displayed in my machine.

OK....finally I am able to complete MGMAT CAT2. The result is almost close to what I was hoping for atleast a total of 650.

Total - 650, 45 (Q - 77%) and 34(V - 72%)

PS - 12 correct & 10 wrong (55%)
DS - 7 correct & 8 wrong (47%)

SC - 11 correct & 4 wrong (73%)
CR - 6 correct & 8 wrong (43%) ( ??? )
RC - 7 correct & 5 wrong (58%) (Ok I can take this)

Overall, I am happy with my score. Very realistic to what I was hoping.

I feel Quant is way too tougher than GMAT. Ofcourse, I am NOT AT ALL practising any Quant questions except for the CAT exams. So my quant is not picking up. But it is still ok. Probably one or two weeks from now, I will refresh my Quant skills and that should help my quant score. Until then, quant is NOT my concern.

I will have to go thru the Verbal and find out why I made the mistakes and what can I do to stop them from recurring.

My target is - by end of MGMAT CAT 6, I should be hitting 700+ overall with Verbal close to 40+. Let me plan my preparation for acheiving this target.

Do anyone know what should be the hit % approximately in SC / CR and RC in order to hit a raw score of 40+. And how close is MGMAT verbal when compared with GMAT Verbal?

I went thru the mistakes that I made in SC and I realized that all the 4 mistakes are careless mistakes. One tip that I learnt w.r.t Sc is that, when you are dealing with ans choices, look at the portion of the sentence that is not underlined and see if it can give you some clues of what could be the possible ans coices. This way you can eliminate atleast 2 to 3 ans rather than bluntly going thru each of the ans choices.

Still I am not very confident on some of the topics of SC - Verbs and Comparision. Next few days, I will concetrate on these topics, and complete the exercises in MGMAT SC book and reanalyze my mistakes from OG 12. Later on move on to OG 10.

One other thing that I noticed is that, mistakes made in the first 15 questions brings the difficulty level of the questions down. . Say in the beginnning we start off with 500-600, then 700-800 for the next 3 assuming that all 4 are correct. Next if we make one mistake, the level drops to 600-700 questions. One more continous mistake will bring the level to 500-600......Also I read somewhere that raw sore is partially dependent on the number of tough questions that we ans. This means until we start the section strong, there is no way we can face 700 questions. In my second MGMAT CAT exam, there are 7 wrong ans in the first 15 questions. And after that, most of my qestion are in the range 500 -700. Once in a while there was spike of 700-800 question and immediately droped to 500-600.

So one other target that I am setting for my self is, reduce the number mistakes as much as possible in the first 15 questions(This might mean to say, I might take more time but I will have to be cautious here.

Any comments on my analysis? Is this something valid?

A long weekend passed off in no time. And now I am sitting here wondering where were my 3 days. Obviously there is not much of the preparation happened during these days. I am almost done with OG 12 SC questions and also MGMAT SC chapters. I still have to go thru the MGMAT SC exercises and I started revising my questions of OG 12 where I made the mistakes. (One thing that I did notice is that I am struggling to make the choices when the underlined portion is real long. Should I have lot of practice / patience in nailing them? ) Never mind, so far so good with SC.

I thought after going thru CR Bible, my CR skills should improve. But it turned out the other way. Need to reanalyze where I made the mistake and correct it before time runs out. RC is still not in my radar or preparation. But I feel, CR skills are helping me a bit for RC as well. So for now, I will have to live with it.

For my next MGMAT CAT3, the plan is to sharpen my CR skills in important qyestion types - Must be True, Mainpoint, Weaken, Strengthen, Assumptions and REsolve the Paradox. I am also planning to brush up my quant skills. (Until I see a score of 49 in Quant, I don't feel poewred up for the GMAT rematch). Final target for MGMAT CAT3 is 680 + with Quant around 48 and Verbal in upper 30s.

Oh By the way, I am planning to take my first GMAT Prep on Sep 19th). I really hope to see a 700 + in that attempt. (My view is that - avg of GMAT Prep1 and GMATPrep 2 (first attempts) might be the closest score that one can expect in the real GMAT). So if I get a score of 700 + in my GMAT Prep 1, I will book a date in the Mid of Oct. Let me see how it goes......

Hussain15,

My personal opinion is that the raw score is not solely dependent on the number of wrong ans but dependent on the number of correct ans that belong to a higher difficulty level. And higher difficulty questions does not pop up until you reduce number of wrong ans.

I am planning to take GMAT Prep 2 week from now. YOu can visit this thread on 18th to see my results.

Last couple of days were not productive at all w.r.t to my preparation. But I was under the impression that my SC is much better - atleast close to 80% hit rate. But all that confidence is shattered today when I started working on OG 10 SC. I thought that the first couple of them might be bit simple(just as OG 11 and OG 12) But from the first 40 questions itself, there are quite a number of repeats some from OG 11 and I think some from OG12 as well). I made 11 mistakes out of 40 - This means my hit rate is only 72.5%......... I am wondering - if my first 40 itself gave me only 72 %, what should I expect in the next sets of questions. Even for the ones that I answered correctly, some of them not very sure in picking the ans - just went by the ear.

I started feeling as if something is really NOT correct with my SC preparation. I cannot afford to score fewer hits in this section atleast. Now I am bit worried to attempt my MGMAT CAT 3 exam(which I am planning to take on 9/12 and I am targetting at upper 30's in verbal)

Anybody who ever are reading this post, an information - there are around 268 practice questions -ample number of questions to practice. So I would suggest practicing OG 10 as well for your preparation.

Today, I have taken MGMAT CAT 3 exam. Results are NOT to my expectations. Here is the break down

Total - 670, 47(Q - 81%) and 34(V - 72%)

PS - 14 correct & 8 wrong (64%)
DS - 7 correct & 8 wrong (47%)

SC - 14 correct & 1 wrong (93%)
CR - 7 correct & 7 wrong (50%)
RC - 4 correct & 8 wrong (33%)

My target before the exam was a 680 with around 48 in Q and upper 30's in Verbal. None of them is met. So kind of neutral in my feeling w.r.t to this attempt.

Two positive things that I can see -

1. My overall score is on the upward trend - (630-650-670)
2. My SC is at 90% + hit rate.

Negatives -
1. Even though my SC hit rate is 90%, I am not completely satisfied since none of the questions are in the range of 700-800.(Most of them at only 600-700 range). Still, I can take it as a positive sign.
2. My opinion is that first 15 questions lay the path for the overall score. So doing them correct is very very imp.I made nearly 6 / 15 questions in Q and 7/15 in verbal incorrect.So this is not a good sign at all. Because of this, the difficulty level for the questions was not in the higher end. I have to keep an eye on this.
3. CR and RC are still fluctuating a lot w.r.t to hit rates. There is no consistency that I can see. Probably that might be because I am not practicing them a lot, nor am I fully aware on how to tackle them.

What I realised from my Mock exams is that, it is NO good if you are comfortable in one session and not in other sessions. Even though, I have certain comfort level in SC, it is not doing any good since I am not able to get equal level CR or RC questions and on top of that, the consequent mistakes that I do in CR / RC is bringing my difficulty level of SC also low. My next plan is to concentracte the entire of next week on CR power score bible and OG questions. And if time permits to go for some practice on RC as well.

Target for my MGMAT 4 is - an overallscore between 680 - 700 with Quant in Upper 40's and Verbal in upper 30. Depending on my comfort level, I might go for my first GMATPrep next week(Sep 19th). Based on this score, I will decide whether I would like to take the rematch in next month or in Nov.

One other thing that I wanted to mention, I tried following time just to make sure I am within the time limitations.

Q# Quant Time Verbal time
5 -- 66 -- 67
10 -- 56 -- 58
15 -- 46 -- 49
20 -- 36 -- 40
25 -- 26 -- 31
30 -- 16 -- 22
35 -- 06 -- 13
40 -- 0 -- 04

Thanks Bipolarbear. But the progress is really not so convincing because I read that MGMAT has a deviation of +/- 50 points. That still takes me to just the border of 700. This being my second attempt, I am definitely targettting for more than avg for most of the Elite schools - that means to say I am targetting around 720 - 750 +.

Currently my SC is on par. (Atleast 80%) but this is not helping me to pull my verbal score because my CR and RC are the major drawbacks. For this week I am planning to concentrate on CR OG and little bit of RC. Depending on my GMATPrep that I am planning to take this week end, I will decide on my D-Day . So sort of bit nervous to see the GMATPrep result at the same time, anxiuos to find where I stand in the match.

I am able to do good on SC from MGMAT CAT exams because the concepts tested in SC questions are more similar to what they said in MGMAT SC book.(Probably this might be one of the reasons why my SC is almost 93% in my last CAT exam) I am not sure how far this will help me w.r.t real GMAT. I feel MGMAT CAT CR questions are bit different from OG questions. Atleast OG questions,you can bring down the choices to 2 but I feel MGMAT CR questions are bit tough. So crossing my fingers for GMATPrep. RC- I still have no comments since there is no real preparation yet.

OK.....This weekend is going to be a first step towards the D - Day - Deciding day. I am planning to take my First GMATPrep. If the score is above 700, then my D-Day will be Oct 13th. If the score is not 700+, then date will most likely be in Nov.

Sort of feeling nervous already....... Nevermind......It is now or never sort of the position. So I will have to go with it.

Still no good practice on Quant. But I am confident on my Quant skills. Hope they will not let me down. SC is ok. But CR and RC are still far from reachable. One thing I learnt from my last couple of days - Have the basics right and practice more. But I still question, why people refer to practising LSAT / GRE RC & CR passages. They are way too much for GMAT prep level and without knowing basics what is the point in practicing the tougher ones. So I gave up doing any of the RC and CR passages from LSAT execrcises.(Ofcourse I didn't even think of doing any)

For the next two days - plan is to revise my MGMAT CAT Verbal portion, atleast 50 - 75 questions each from CR and RC from OG 12. Until I pull my hit rate to a little higher rate, I cannot be in the upper 30's in my verbal. Hope this plan will work out positive.

Today I was planning to take my GMAT Prep 1 and based on the result, decide on my D-Day. But somehow I wanted to postpone it by one more day. I have never practiced any of the Quant questions in almost 5 months other than the 3 MGMAT Cat tests. And I didn't even review my mistakes nor referreshed my basics. I definitely don't want to take a GMAT Prep with my unfinished preparation work and then shatter my confidence level, which is one of the crucial factors in GMAT success. So decided I will refresh my basics(notes that I already prepared during my first attempt) and do some OG questions - to have a feel of quant. Most likely I will be taking the GMAT Prep tomorrow.

I completed my OG 12 PS questions - 230 questions - and I can say there are only handful of them that are either tricky or hard. Rest all are less than 700 level. So if anyone is targetting for 49+ in quant, then we need to look for other sources. (Still my hit rate is only 86 % on PS. I am sure I might have made some silly mistakes - which are correctable. I will go thru all the wroung ans once I complete DS questions (170 in total) as well.)