Feedback on study plan

[RAHULZ400]

Here are the details from the ESR report:

Verbal
Score- 27 -47th percentile
Critical Reasoning - Score 28 - 49th percentile
Reading Comprehension - Score 27 - 48th percentile
Sentence Correction - Score 28 - 51st percentile

Overall Verbal Time: 1:49
Critical Reasoning: 1:56
Reading Comprehension: 2:08
Sentence Correction: 1:06

Percentage Correct (Questions broken in 4 sets)
First Set: 75%
Second Set: 57%
Third Set: 43%
Fourth Set: 38%

Performance Over Time:
First Set: 2:05
Second Set: 1:58
Third Set: 1:49
Fourth Set: 0:50

Quant:

Score- 48 -69th percentile
Problem Solving - Score 49 - 74th percentile
Data Sufficiency - Score 47 - 59th percentile
Arithmetic: Score 49 - 73rd percentile
Algebra/Geometry: Score 47 - 61st percentile

Overall Quantitiative Time: 2:06
Problem Solving: 2:09
Data Sufficiency: 2:01
Arithmetic: 2:12
Algebra/Geometry: 1:57

Percentage Correct (Questions broken in 4 sets)
First Set: 100%
Second Set: 57%
Third Set: 71%
Fourth Set: 57%

Performance Over Time:
First Set: 1:45
Second Set: 2:39
Third Set: 2:42
Fourth Set: 1:14

I guess in both sections I was trying to catch up with time in the last set especially quantitative. Took time in the middle section which resulted in not so perfect finish. Though my approach was to do each question carefully and as I mentioned there were couple of questions which I was about to solve correctly but finally had to guess since couldn't arrive at the correct answer. In quantitative especially by 15th question I was almost 5 minutes ahead of the target time but somehow lost that lead and did not realize.

Based on this kindly advice what should be my action plan to go above 700 (especially in verbal) in my next attempt if I am looking to write the exam in another month or so. Don't know why score dropped so much and that too in all the three verbal sections, despite scoring V38 and V42 in last two mocks.

[StaceyKoprince]

The GMAT is a "where you end is what you get" test—the scoring is not based on your average performance across the test. So your score dropped because, by the end of each section (especially verbal), your performance dropped.

On the verbal side you can see a significant downward trajectory in percentage correct for the final two quadrants. Couple that with the 0:50 average timing for the final quadrant, and I know what happened: You had to start rushing just to get answers in before the section ended. You missed most of the questions—and remember what happens on the GMAT when you miss questions? It gives you easier ones. And then you kept missing even the easier ones, because you literally didn't have time to address them...and that just continues (and even accelerates) the downward spiral of your score. Since the test is a "where you end is what you get" test, your score dropped significantly, the section ended, ...and that was what you got.

What you really need to work on most is your timing—which really translates into your executive reasoning. You cannot continue to take the test with the mindset, "I can get this one right...I just need more time!" That's the business equivalent of saying, "We can make this product work! We just need to spend more money!" At some point, you're going to run out of money and drive your business into the ground.

The test is putting you into this situation on purpose. The test writers actually do want to see whether you have the presence of mind to distinguish between good and not-so-good "investment opportunities" and whether you have the business discipline to say no to the poor opportunities—either because your odds of answering that question correctly are lower or because it will cost too much time to get to the right answer or both. I could come to you with an investment opportunity that absolutely guarantees a 10% return—guaranteed! Absolutely no risk!

Oh, but I will keep your money for 30 years. And it won't be 10% annually. It'll be 10% period, over the entire 30 years.

Probably not so interested in giving me your money now, huh? Even if you haven't yet identified some other investment to make with that money, you're still going to pass up this "opportunity," because you can be pretty confident that something better will come along.

That scenario is the equivalent of, "I can get this right but it's going to take me 4 minutes." The return you get is literally not worth the investment that you need to make (your time).

In quantitative especially by 15th question I was almost 5 minutes ahead of the target time but somehow lost that lead and did not realize.

I can guess how that happened. It's back to your mindset again, as well as how the test works. You were doing really well. You got 100% right in the first quadrant—that's amazing! And you were even under time (1:45 average). Remind me, what happens on this test when you're doing really well?

Oh, right: Your reward is to get even harder questions. And harder questions are...harder! They take longer. Some of them are too hard to do at all and some are too hard to do in an appropriate timeframe. But your mindset allowed you to get sucked into spending a bunch of extra time (on at least some questions that were too hard anyway). Once you mess up that timing too much, you'll be on a downward trajectory and it's really hard to recover from that.

The good news is that, while Q might have been hurt somewhat, it mostly held up. So you do need to do some tweaking there, but you don't need to make huge changes.

Verbal is another story—you're going to need to completely re-case your mindset there in order to be able to perform at the level at which you are capable of performing.

I'm going to stop here. In my last post, I told you that I suspected the issue was timing / decision-making. Your new data confirmed that—but you ended your most recent post by saying that you still don't know why your V score dropped so much. So my first concern is making sure that you fully understand what this data means and that it is making very clear why your V score dropped. And my second concern is making sure that you fully understand what you need to develop: The Executive Reasoning mindset, not the Old School mindset.

Explain back to me what you think this all means. Include any ideas you have for what you think you could do help yourself better develop this Executive mindset. I am also going to re-link something I gave to you a while back:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... -the-gmat/

Watch (or re-watch) the webinar before you reply.

[RAHULZ400]

Post going through the webinar and your insights I understand that I would need to be careful when it comes to investing time and mental energy on a question. Now usually I do find it hard to probably let go of a question immediately if I encounter one in the first half of the section mostly because doing well on the first half generally in most cases would position you well to get a good/great score. So I am cautious about this and avoid guessing, especially in the first 10 questions. Now post the first 10-12 questions I think I should make a decision soon if I need move ahead and guess on a particular question.

Another reason I I believe why I end up mismanaging time is perhaps due to the fact that I have covered all the possible topics and concepts on both Quant and Verbal and even with slightly challenging/less weighted topics such as probability/combinations/some variations of inequalities/coordinate geometry/rate based questions I have done a fair amount of practice based on mock CATs and exercises both on official/manhattan guides and gmatclub. So even when I see a question from these topics my instinct tells me to go ahead and give a shot. The only scenario where I feel I would make a guess would be when there are variations/long worded problems from such topics which post reading I have no idea, however post my official GMAT I am not sure if there would be many hard questions which would warrant an immediate guess. Overall I think I would need to quickly gauge if I can attempt the question in the appropriate time. So probably have to work on the point of distinguishing between the hard and not so hard questions as you highlighted in the webinar.

Another issue I find is that at times when I decide to approach a question what happens is that after some time the approach I used did not lead me anywhere and then I see if I can use the alternate approach else I guess on the question. So I think I need to probably guess and move ahead if my first approach itself took me more than 2 minutes. Will there be a scenario wherein I can use the alternate approach without compromising much on the target time.

Overall I believe I usually lose the lead just around the middle of the section as I am able to complete the first 10-15 questions in the appropriate time or even with a lead if all goes well and I do not get stuck. I have tried to follow the timing matrix as provided in the manhattan guide (gmat roadmap) for both verbal and quant. I think I also need to decide when I should be checking the elapsed time as per the milestone.

So I would like to have your insights on this.

Apart from the time management now that I am seriously planning for a retake and have started making strategies and revising a bit please advise me what should be the approach if I need to go beyond 700 in my retake. Let me know if I shall take this in a month's time frame?? Since I have exhausted all official material shall I go through the guides again and analyse each question especially for verbal because there I really need a boost and reach to a score near 40. For quants if I work on gmatclub 700+ questions (gmatclub tests) apart from revising stuff from notes/guides will that suffice to reach Q49-50. I am also left with 100 odd questions of gmat question pack. Shall I also purchase gmat exam packs for mocks since I believe now I need to only take only he official Mocks. So overall just advise if at all I book my appointment in a month what shall be the right approach to utilize my time and efforts?

[StaceyKoprince]

mostly because doing well on the first half generally in most cases would position you well to get a good/great score. So I am cautious about this and avoid guessing, especially in the first 10 questions. Now post the first 10-12 questions I think I should make a decision soon if I need move ahead and guess on a particular question

It's a myth that the earlier questions are worth more than the later ones. Do not wait to start implementing this mindset. Do it right from the first question!

Re: your second paragraph, recast it this way. Let's say that you're an investor in the tech field. You know all about every tech field out there—you've got lots of experience.

Does that mean that, when someone approaches you with some kind of tech investment, you give it a shot? After all, you know about everything in this space.

Of coures not—you don't invest just because the opportunity is presented to you. That would be absurd. You invest only when you have weighed the various factors and decided that the potential ROI is worth the risk.

The problem right now is that you're judging everything (or almost everything) worth the risk because you are weighting the chance of getting something right much higher than you are weighting the resources (time, mental energy) that it would take, and you are not actually taking into account the risk that you would get this one wrong even if you spent 10 minutes on it. If this were a real-world investment, you would never make your decisions that way.

So I think I need to probably guess and move ahead if my first approach itself took me more than 2 minutes. Will there be a scenario wherein I can use the alternate approach without compromising much on the target time.

Again, think of this from an investment scenario. You're investing in a company. They tell you, "We could use strategy A or strategy B, but we think strategy A is better, so that's what we're going to use." Great.

They use it. It fails.

Now they come back to you asking for more money to try strategy B. Would you pay more to try the second-best strategy, especially knowing that the first-best already failed?

If you choose a strategy but realize 30 seconds in that the other strategy is better, then it's fine to switch to the other. But don't try an entire strategy and only then try another.

Just try the one that you think is best—one shot. That's it.

Note: If you realize after trying the entire strategy that you should have used the other one in the first place...still don't try it NOW. For all you know, the only reason that other one seems better is that you now know the first one didn't work—those aren't great odds. Guess, move on, and internalize the lesson that, next time, you want to make a different choice. Oh, and then (later) try that question again with the other strategy to make sure it really does work.

Okay, big picture. Your Q is already in the high 40s. Mastering the mindset should hopefully help you get up to 49-50 consistently, but yes, the V side is where you need more work.

If you can get Q to 49-50, then you would need to hit V 35-36 to get to 700. (And higher will get you further, obviously.) I can't tell you what time frame or what # or type of question will be enough, unfortunately—there are too many individual variables involved.

But I think I can say, based on the data you've provided, that if you can fix this mindset and not run out of time in the fourth quadrant, that should help you to get at least halfway from your current V score (27) to your goal (35+). And maybe further, since your practice tests have been a lot higher.

Your percentiles were similar for the three question types, so you'd want to work fairly equally on all three—though if you think one area is easier for you to learn for whatever reason, then you can concentrate some extra time / attention there. I would start by going back to your most recent practice tests and diving into the questions to analyze where things went wrong. I would look not just at the ones you got wrong, but also the ones that you got right.

On the ones you got right, make sure that you didn't get lucky at all—you 100% knew what you were doing. See whether you can articulate, out loud, how to think your way through the problem, including why the wrong answers are wrong and why the right one is right. Pretend you're explaining it to someone else. If you can do that without getting turned around (you'll hear it if you don't really know what you're saying), then you know you were good on that problem.

If, on the other hand, you're not really sure how to explain, then you know that you have something to learn. Go learn whatever that thing is. If it's a grammar rule, return to your grammar book(s). If it's a process or strategy for CR / RC, return to those study materials. If it's more a logical thing (maybe you don't really understand how a particular answer fits into the argument), check the official solution (or our solution on Navigator, if it's OG). If that doesn't help enough, try googling it to see other explanations.

If you get something wrong, then you'll need to decide whether this is something that you can learn to get right or whether you did legitimately get it wrong and you'd probably get it wrong again next time, too. If the latter is the case, then how could you have recognized the low ROI opportunity sooner so that you could have guessed faster?

If the former, then you're looking to understand:
1) Why was the wrong answer so tempting?Wwhy did it look like it might be right? (be as explicit as possible; also, now you know this is not a good reason to pick an answer)
2) Why was it actually wrong? What specific words indicate that it is wrong and how did I overlook those clues the first time? (Look up anything you like in your books re: rules, strategy, etc.)
3) Why did the right answer seem wrong? What made it so tempting to cross off the right answer? Why were those things actually okay; what was my error in thinking that they were wrong? (also, now you know that this is not a good reason to eliminate an answer)
4) Why was it actually right?

You will want to work with some new material, but I also think it's good to go back to your older OG material. Something didn't fully stick the first time around with at least some of that material—so there's some deeper analysis to be done there. I would start with older material and really dig in / get used to the analysis process I described above. As you feel more comfortable with that you can use new questions to test yourself.

If you are at the point of having to see repeated questions on the CATs that you currently have, then yes, you should consider buying the additional official practice CATs.

Finally, in terms of timeframe, I know I said I couldn't tell you exactly how long "should" be enough time—and I still can't—but I will say that if you can fix your mindset issue, then you will be most of the way there. That issue can be a really hard one to fix, though—some people take a really long time and some people are never able to fully make the switch. Just be very hard on yourself about getting into the investment mindframe: If this were happening in the (equivalent) investment world, what would I decide right now? And when the logical decision is NOT to invest, follow it.

[RAHULZ400]

Hi Stacey,

I have my GMAT scheduled for 21st April. I have been preparing and revising concepts all this while post my first attempt. I purchased exam packs and scored 650-700 with 690 being highest. In some other practice tests I have been scoring Q49-50. I improved my RC and SC by constant practice getting 35-40 scaled scores however CR is still on the lower side especially the questions based on assumptions. I am right now just writing mocks over the weekend and reviewing them in the subsequent days. I am not quite comfortable with pre-thinking strategy but try to use it if i can. I mostly rely on conclusion and eliminating options. I have 1 exam pack test left that I think I should write this weekend. I need to get my verbal from 30-35 to over 35 to cross 700. I am planning to take 3 days off from work before the exam.
I am actually supposed to travel for work to US for 3 months in May (12th) hence wanted to get done with the exam. However since I am not getting 700 in my mocks still I am in a dilemma whether to postpone the exam or not. Kindly advise me on how to approach the coming days in order to ensure I cross 700 on the test day and your opinion on postponing the test. I actually really want to get done with the test and focus on other priorities now.

[StaceyKoprince]

You have been taking those exams under full official conditions, yes? If so, and you reachd 690, then it's possible that you will hit 700 on the real test—you're in the range. (No guarantees, of course.)

Next, you have heard about the test change (that it's getting shorter)? Our practice exams were updated on Thursday, so you can try ours under the new testing conditions, if you like. It might be the case that a shorter exam helps you (or it may not make much of a difference).

Take a look at your older exams in our system—some people have a pattern of doing well for the first 2/3 or 3/4 of the exam and then having a drop-off (mental stamina issues or timing issues) towards the end. If you have this pattern, first see whether there were timing issus contributing to the dropped performance. If so, then that issue would likely exist even in the shorter exam. If, though, your time was fine but you just started making more mistakes towards the end because you were getting tired, then you might find a little bit of a boost on the shorter exam. (And try a shorter practice test to see!)

You mentioned wanting to get this done before May 12th. Given how close you are to 700, if I were you, I think I would keep the test date on the 21st—consider it basically a test run. Hopefully, you get what you need and never have to think about it again. But, if you don't, you'll still have time to take it again before you go to the US; you have to wait 16 days, so you'd have time in the last week before you go. (Also, it's fine to take the real test three times. It costs more money, of course, but the schools don't care if you take it three times. So I'd think of it as just: Are you willing to pay potentially an extra USD250 to have a shot at maybe being done with it on the 21st? Or would you rather save that money and postpone a couple of weeks to feel more confident?)

It's just important to make sure that you don't burn yourself out in the few days before the test day, though. Take a look at this:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2016/09/ ... mat-part-1

[TashiM555]

Hi, where are you finding mid term tests on student center?

[StaceyKoprince]

Which tests are you talking about? There are mid-term and final assessments associated with the Foundations of Math (FoM) guide. We don't label anything else a "mid-term" specifically.

The FoM assessments are located on the same page with all of the other FoM problem sets. If you're in our old student center, this is on the FoM page. If you're in Atlas, look on the left-hand toolbar under Question Banks for the FoM question banks.

Have fun!