Advise on planning needed after completion of OG once

[Abhi]

Hey!!!!
I took my classes with MGMAT in August 2008. I was travelling from August thru Nov. so had no opportunity to dedicate time for the full on prep for Gmat. Past few days , I could start my Gmat prep back and Now I jus finished the OG 11, The verbal review and the quant review. I used the OG tracker and it worked amazing. Thank to you guys.

My worst case accuracy is as follows:

PS - 86%
DS - 81%
RC - 73%
CR- 71%
SC - 70%

Which I know is not alot. I have 316 problems wrong which I would try to redo in the next 6 days with a set of 50 each day.

I am now wondering what more matrial do I refer and how much more time should I give myself before i go write the exam.

I did 3 test so far:
first test before the class:
MGMAT cat - 420
second in the middle of the class - 570
third like 4 days ago - 590

One thing I have observed is the the timing and pressure in the exams are what I need to get familiar with. I reviewed my test and in that most errors where either silly mistakes or guessed ones...except for the permutations and combinations I din come across more than few problems where I had concept issue.

I want to be 700+ and I want to know what the 700 + people do after they finish OG

resources I have :
everything from MGMAT student center and guides
1000 sc
1000rc
1000cr
7 exams
comprehensive idiom list
kaplan
kaplan math work book
princeton verbal
some material on grammer

I would really appreciate your advise on how to take this forward. I have no idea for where to start with.

Thank you,

Abhi

[JonathanSchneider]

Hey Abhi,

Going over the OG11 and Quant/Verbal OG Review problems you got wrong would be best. Here's what I recommend:

Re-do the problems you got wrong, without looking at the answers. Try to figure out what you did wrong. Where was that careless error? How could you avoid it next time? (neat work, writing the original problem down before you try to solve it, checking your work, etc.) THEN, for the problems you're still getting wrong, look at the answers in the back of the book. But don't stop there. RE-DO those problmes, too. It's important that the last thing you do on any problem be your own work, getting the problem right. This not only helps us to build confidence, but it builds a good muscle-memory feeling for how to correctly approach the problem.

I would stay away from the 1000SC series; I've seen a lot of problems in there that I don't think are very good indicators of GMAT material.

[Thank you but...]

Thank you Jon,
I am working on my error log for the OG material and I think i am doing as you described. Now here is the thing, when I review my results of the exam... I see that I am not able to consistently do a 700 - 800 problems if I get like a couple of them right...does that mean I need to practice some tough problems to able to get a hang of it ????

Also, I did observe that I got 3 combotronics and probabillity questions that I tried to strategically guess as I figured I would waste more time on them. The last exam I think I did better on quant which was like 45 and baaaaaaaaaaaaad on verbal as the second question I got was a loooooooooooooooooooong RC. There on I lost on time but I scored a 580 similar to what I did in previous test.

I losing out on the tough questions. How do I reinforce that????

Thank you for help!

Regards!
abhi

[StaceyKoprince]

When you say you're not able to do 700-800 level problems consistently if you get a couple right - that's what happens to everyone! (Unless you're scoring 750+.) Theoretically, in order to get a 700, you don't have to get any 700+ questions right; you just have to get all of the questions up to and including 700 questions. (I say theoretically because the test never works totally "perfectly" - you'll get some higher level questions right but some lower level ones wrong.)

As Jonathan said, make sure to concentrate on the level you're at right now (plus a bit). Basically, these questions build. If you aren't consistent at, say, the 650 level, then you shouldn't be worrying about the 700 level, because you're not going to lift yourself there if you keep getting 650-levels wrong. Plus, if you're currently around 600 and work to master the 650 level, that will help lift you when you try the 700s. But if you skip directly to the 700s, you're going to find that a much harder transition.

Your most recent score was 590, so you should be mostly concentrating in the 600 to 650 level for now. You should also look at the data to see where you might be scoring even lower (that is, your weaknesses, the areas in which you're maybe only getting things right consistently at a 500 or 550 level). For those, you'll have to start a bit lower. Look for problems that you either (a) can do correctly but can't do in the given time limit or (b) can't do correctly but you feel like you're almost able to do them or you should be able to do them (an honest "should be able to," not a wishful thinking "should be able to").

I agree with Jonathan re: the 1000 series - I don't like those problems. Some of them are fine and are very GMAT-like, but there are also a lot of errors and bad problems. Make sure you time yourself when you do the problems. Your accuracy stats for OG mean nothing if you aren't holding yourself to the average timeframe.

I would also do some amount of balanced studying between your strengths and weaknesses - maybe 60% of time on your weaknesses and 40% of time on your strengths. You have more room to improve on your weaknesses, but it will be easier for you to improve on your strengths, so you want to do some of both.

And I also agree with Jonathan re: doing OG again. I wouldn't just do the ones I got wrong - I'd do them all. And I'd try to answer the questions I listed in this other post when I review the problems: http://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/reg ... t5927.html

[abhi]

Thank you Stacey.

One other thing, i read your post about the AWA. Is this a myth??? that the argument and essay questions comes from the pool of questions at the back of the OG.

My exam is on Feb 7th, 2009. I am a bit nervous about the AWA cuz I am not a great writer but examples is what I am worried about the most. I was thinking if the questions really come from that pool of questions thenI would work on learning the examples on each essay topic.

Thanks for you help.

Cordially,
Abhi

[StaceyKoprince]

Totally not a myth. The essays come from the pool of topics listed in the OG. But there are so many, and the essays are unimportant enough, that it's not a good use of time to, say, memorize the entire topic list. :)

But what you could do is brainstorm the examples for 4 essays a day - take 4 min per essay, 2 of each type, and just brainstorm topics. You won't get through all of them by your test (and you wouldn't remember them all if you did), but you will learn how to brainstorm examples!