Hi, welcome to the forums! I love your positive attitude.
So let's start with: What was different on your 525 test vs. your 445 test? Did your scores drop pretty equally across all three sections, or did some sections drop more than others?
And it sounds like you've completed the free FoM program and are now using the On Demand program. How far into the On Demand program are you? It sounds like you may still be pretty early, given that you just took the first test assigned in that program? (Which is week 1 or week 2)
If so, yes, you're correct that you've set yourself an ambitious goal. The program is typically a 9-12 week program and you have 4 weeks. I fully support you in going for it—I also prefer setting ambitious goals for myself. It's usually also a good idea to have a Plan A (for Ambitious!) and a Plan B (just in case). So just keep that in mind as you go through your studies.
Next, I'll go in the same section order that you did:
QuantDefinite time management issue—ran out of time at the end. There's a serious penalty for having a string of wrong answers in a row. (But I'm glad that you guessed quickly to get answers in at the end, as the penalty is even more severe if you don't answer all of the questions!)
So here's what's jumping out at me on quant:
– There's an almost-7-minute question. No single question is ever worth 15% of your time in that section (even if you get it right—it wasn't worth it).
– #3 took nearly 3 minutes and is labeled Fast Guess. Relabel this one something else. A Fast Guess, by definition, is something that is...fast, like less than 1 minute. (Is this one a lucky guess, maybe?)
– You have 3 careless mistakes and 2 of them were in the second half, including one where you were rushing somewhat.
– You had to rush on at least 5 out of the last 6 questions (and maybe 6 out of the last 7). You likely knew that you were running low on time, so that probably added to stress / distraction. And that led you to miss 6 out of those last 7. That's really going to bring your score down.
Have you retried those problems at the end? Give yourself a normal time limit—can you do any of these with regular time? If so, make a note to yourself: That extra time that you spent on #7-8-9-11 cost you at least some of these problems at the end. (And you got most of 7-8-9-11 wrong anyway, and the one you got right sounds like there was some luck involved.)
Okay, so why am I saying all of that? Because I want you to use this data to help you change your mindset. The data proves that the time management decisions you made were sub-optimal. What can you learn from that? If you could go back in time, how would you change your decisions, given what you know now? Get really specific with "how would you change your decisions"—for example, for each of the "too long" problems, I want you to be able to say, "When X happened or when I realized Y, that's the moment that I should have cut myself off, guessed and moved on." If you can do that, you've just articulated HOW and WHEN to make a better decision next time. If you articulate how and when, then you can actually
make that better decision next time.
Do that same kind of timing analysis yourself for Verbal and DI and tell us what your conclusions are. (I'm asking you to do it because it's really important for you to learn how to analyze the data yourself, so that you can keep doing so throughout your studies. Plus...you want to go to business school. You're going to be analyzing data all day long. Might as well start now!
)
Ok, let's jump to
Verbal.
I struggled with about 6 questions where I didn’t fully understand the goal, misread answer choices, or failed to analyze deeply enough.Is this the right analysis of my mistakes? How should I approach these types of errors?
This is a good start, but let's take it further.
WHY did these things happen? For example: Did you not fully understand the goal because you weren't familiar with that question sub-type? Or because you thought it was a different question sub-type—like, you thought it was Inference but it was actually Assumption? Or because you misunderstood something in the argument? Or you thought the conclusion was X when it was really Y?
When you misread an answer: Did you skip over a word? Did you read the first part of the answer but not actually the whole thing to the end? (This is common—the answer looks good for the first 6 words, but something is off in the last 4 words...except you've already decided it looks good, so you stop paying close enough attention.) Did you read all of the words but misinterpret what it was saying? Why? Did the misinterpretation come from the answer choice itself? Or did you think it was referring to a different part of the passage or argument than it was actually referring to?
That kind of thing. Basically, you want to get to the level where, first, you can explain out loud: Here is exactly why I went wrong on this question. And second, you can explain: Here is what I should have done instead and why.
Seriously, try saying it out loud. It's really easy to just think, "Oh, I've got it"...when you really don't. But if you try to explain it out loud and you don't really get it, you'll literally hear it—you'll realize that you can't explain. And that will tell you that you still have more* digging to do on what went wrong on this problem. (*More digging, within reason. Sometimes, they're just going to write a problem that's too hard and you're never going to get it. It's ok to just shrug and say, nope, my goal here is just to get something like this wrong faster—so that at least I'm not wasting time on it. And then change your study focus to "When should I have cut myself off and guessed and how will I know when to make that decision next time?"
It's also important, for Verbal, to understand each question sub-type on RC and CR—what's the purpose of this question type, what kind of analysis are they asking me to do, and so on. The curriculum will teach you all of this as you work your way through the program.
You have some questions in your sheet around making passage maps for Reading Comp—if you haven't gotten there yet, you'll learn about that in week 2. There are a few different options, depending on how your brain works, so you'll want to practice with the options to see what feels best to you. One note: A lot of people try to take notes the way they did in school (write everything down and then use your notes to answer everything). Don't do that on the GMAT! the RC passages are "open book"—they'll be sitting in front of you the entire time you answer the questions. So what you're really trying to do is make a light MAP of the passage on your scratch paper, to help you quickly navigate in the actual passage and find the 1-2 sentences that you need to answer each question.
You also asked about science passages—yes, those can be quite tough. I recommend doing some academic-science reading at least every other day (I like Scientific American, but you can use anything that's science-based as long as you're looking for something that's written at the level of an academic paper for university-level students). Read one article or read for about 10-15 minutes. If you have a study buddy, you can each read a different article, then give the other person an out-loud summary / highlights, just 2-3 minutes. Then, you each go read the other person's article and see whether you agree on what the high-level summary should be for that article.
Moving on to
DI.
Would skipping questions like this be a reasonable approach?
100%. For a 615-level score, expect to guess quickly on at least 2 questions in each section (maybe not as many in your strongest section, but definitely in your weaker two sections). In fact, let's go back to the time management stuff I wrote about above for Quant. In all sections or in all sections but your strongest section, you're likely going to have time pressure. So you're basically either going to run out of time at the end of the section and be forced to guess on some questions OR you can choose to guess fast on the hardest ones throughout the section...and then you won't be forced to guess on the last ones. It's definitely better to get to make the choice about WHICH questions you want to guess on—keep that under your control! (And choose the ones that you think are the hardest throughout, of course.)
I was mentally drained by the time I reached this section.
Choosing to guess fast on the hardest questions will go a long way toward helping you be less drained by the third section. Those choices you're making in the earlier sections aren't just about how to spend your time in that section. They're also about how much mental energy you're expending—and your mental energy doesn't renew when you get to the next section.
So it's really crucial to get more disciplined about NOT spending time and mental energy on stuff that's too hard or is going to take too long—because making suboptimal choices will ALSO cost you other questions later in the test.
From your data, I'm definitely seeing that you have a lot of points to pick up across the entire test just by making better decisions about what NOT to do / where to cut yourself off. After that, focus most on these categorizations:
– Careless mistake. WHY did you make the careless mistake? What new habit can you put in place to help eliminate that *type* of careless mistake in general in future?
– Legit Right but also took too long. How can you solve something like this more efficiently in future? What do you need to recognize, learn, practice? Is there an alternative approach that would be more efficient? Whatever that is, practice it.
– Legit Wrong But Get It Now. Ditto, what do you need to be able to recognize, learn, practice, do next time so that you can get this one right (in a reasonable amount of time) next time?
– Legit Wrong And Don't Get It. (For now at least) DO NOT try to learn how to get these right. Instead, learn how to get them wrong faster on your next practice test. What do you need to recognize to help you bail quickly? And then use all that time and mental energy on things from the earlier categories.
If you can make this overall mindset shift quickly (Don't do stuff that's too hard, bail fast on some, go for the easiest / lowest-hanging fruit, make better timing decisions), then you do have a shot at having faster improvement than the average studier. This is easier said than done—it's really hard to change habits that have been trained into you since you were 5 years old! But this is the biggest thing that you need to do in the next couple of weeks (in addition to the obvious things, learning content, practicing questions, etc!) in order to have a good shot at the ambitious goal/timeframe you've set for yourself.
Try the above and let us know what you think. I'm about to go on vacation, but my colleagues will reply and continue to help you. Good luck!!
I truly believe we define what are capable of!