GMAT Forum
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- pratik
confused and worried!!! please help
well i m a male from south east asia really eager to do well in gmat... at the beginning of my prep i took the tests in mba.com... scored 640 and 660... then after 2 weeks of prep i gave the veritas test and scored 670... and since then i have been preparing well enough.. then last week i bought the mgmat tests and have given 3 of them so far... but i was really shocked to see my scores go down drastically.. 630, 570, 580!!!!!... i am really lost with only 2 weeks to go for my real gmat exam... one major flaw i found in the mgmat tests was that the xm quickly goes onto the 700+ level questions right after the first couple of qs... and since it takes longer to solve these tougher qs one is bound to fall short on time at the end by atleast 5 or 6 qs... i dont think thats the case with the actual gmat where the difficulty level progresses slower... please help me...
- RonPurewal
- Students
- Posts: 19744
- Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2007 8:23 am
a couple of comments.
first, you are bound to experience some variation in your scores. the test actually has a fairly large "standard error" (approximately the same thing as a standard deviation), so that 70% of your scores will be within 30 points of your "true" score. that's a fair amount of variation as it is - that's a 60-point-wide score band already - but think about the corollary: the other 30% of your scores will fall outside the score band. that means that, 30% of the time, you can expect a score that's either MORE than 30 points above your "true" score, or MORE than 30 points below your "true" score.
so, don't freak out about a couple scores that are lower than normal. when you have a large sample of practice tests, you will have outliers.
or:
some days you get all the lights red.
--
a couple of responses to the points you've made in your post:
* TIME MANAGEMENT IS YOUR PRIMARY ISSUE at this point.
when you take your next mgmat practice test, you should set the quant section to a per-problem time limit, such as 2:30 or 2:35 per problem. (it's ok to go above 2:00, which is the average time per problem, because you will solve a fair # of problems in under two minutes.)
our algorithm mirrors the real gmat algorithm fairly closely, so this isn't a "major flaw".
there is, however, one important discrepancy between our practice tests and the official test: our tests (currently) don't contain experimental questions. this is a hugely important factor, because experimental questions are of random difficulty levels, and so will average around 500-600 (intermediate) level. this means that if you're a 700+ student, the experimentals will, on average, be substantially easier than the problems that "count". the resulting difference will save you some time on the real test - but nowhere near 10-12 minutes (the equivalent of 5-6 questions).
as stated above, there will be somewhat more of a time crunch on these tests than on the actual gmat, mostly as a result of the lack of experimental questions.
BUT
5-6 questions is a LOT. if you're leaving 5-6 questions blank at the end of the test, then the problem lies mostly in poor time management, not in the design of the exam. it is therefore imperative on you to improve your time management.
here are some specific ways in which you can do that:
* use a hierarchy of strategies in problem solving
namely:
PLAN A = try to work out the "textbook solution" to the problem.
if you can't figure out the textbook solution, or if you hit an impasse of some sort, then IMMEDIATELY BAIL and go to plan b:
PLAN B = see if you can use a number-plugging technique.
there are 3 kinds of these: plugging in a selection of numbers (for data sufficiency problems), plugging in your own numbers for undetermined quantities (the VIC method) (for problem solving problems), and plugging in the answer choices themselves, if the answer choices are numbers (also for problem solving problems).
if that doesn't apply, then you should IMMEDIATELY BAIL and go to plan c:
PLAN C = process of elimination / estimation / intuition / educated guessing
if that doesn't work, then just guess randomly, and MOVE ON.
you should pretend that you have a serious attention deficit: if a technique isn't working, don't continue hammering away at it. change up your technique, according to this hierarchy.
* make sure you have OPENERS for problems
at some point, you should run through all the quant problems in the o.g. in a couple of hours - about 20 seconds per problem. in this drill, don't actually do the problems; just say how you would start them.
that may sound weird, but you MUST get to the point where you have an "opener" (a way to START the problem) for each and every problem within the first 15 seconds or so.
* never, ever, ever practice problems untimed
never.
ever.
you shouldn't even bother working out the solution to a problem once your stopwatch has passed 3 minutes or so: a solution that takes 4-5 minutes isn't any better than no solution at all. remember, this test is not about how many problems you can get right; it's about how many problems you can get right within the allotted time. those are 2 very different things indeed.
the actual test also features precipitous increases / decreases in difficulty at times, especially near the beginning (at which point the test is doing its best to calibrate your ability).
remember: our tests will require your time-management game to be incredibly tight - probably a bit more so than the actual test - but, once you've tuned your time management to the point where you can handle our tests, you should be able to NAIL the real test.
first, you are bound to experience some variation in your scores. the test actually has a fairly large "standard error" (approximately the same thing as a standard deviation), so that 70% of your scores will be within 30 points of your "true" score. that's a fair amount of variation as it is - that's a 60-point-wide score band already - but think about the corollary: the other 30% of your scores will fall outside the score band. that means that, 30% of the time, you can expect a score that's either MORE than 30 points above your "true" score, or MORE than 30 points below your "true" score.
so, don't freak out about a couple scores that are lower than normal. when you have a large sample of practice tests, you will have outliers.
or:
some days you get all the lights red.
--
a couple of responses to the points you've made in your post:
* TIME MANAGEMENT IS YOUR PRIMARY ISSUE at this point.
when you take your next mgmat practice test, you should set the quant section to a per-problem time limit, such as 2:30 or 2:35 per problem. (it's ok to go above 2:00, which is the average time per problem, because you will solve a fair # of problems in under two minutes.)
one major flaw i found in the mgmat tests was that the xm quickly goes onto the 700+ level questions right after the first couple of qs...
our algorithm mirrors the real gmat algorithm fairly closely, so this isn't a "major flaw".
there is, however, one important discrepancy between our practice tests and the official test: our tests (currently) don't contain experimental questions. this is a hugely important factor, because experimental questions are of random difficulty levels, and so will average around 500-600 (intermediate) level. this means that if you're a 700+ student, the experimentals will, on average, be substantially easier than the problems that "count". the resulting difference will save you some time on the real test - but nowhere near 10-12 minutes (the equivalent of 5-6 questions).
and since it takes longer to solve these tougher qs one is bound to fall short on time at the end by atleast 5 or 6 qs...
as stated above, there will be somewhat more of a time crunch on these tests than on the actual gmat, mostly as a result of the lack of experimental questions.
BUT
5-6 questions is a LOT. if you're leaving 5-6 questions blank at the end of the test, then the problem lies mostly in poor time management, not in the design of the exam. it is therefore imperative on you to improve your time management.
here are some specific ways in which you can do that:
* use a hierarchy of strategies in problem solving
namely:
PLAN A = try to work out the "textbook solution" to the problem.
if you can't figure out the textbook solution, or if you hit an impasse of some sort, then IMMEDIATELY BAIL and go to plan b:
PLAN B = see if you can use a number-plugging technique.
there are 3 kinds of these: plugging in a selection of numbers (for data sufficiency problems), plugging in your own numbers for undetermined quantities (the VIC method) (for problem solving problems), and plugging in the answer choices themselves, if the answer choices are numbers (also for problem solving problems).
if that doesn't apply, then you should IMMEDIATELY BAIL and go to plan c:
PLAN C = process of elimination / estimation / intuition / educated guessing
if that doesn't work, then just guess randomly, and MOVE ON.
you should pretend that you have a serious attention deficit: if a technique isn't working, don't continue hammering away at it. change up your technique, according to this hierarchy.
* make sure you have OPENERS for problems
at some point, you should run through all the quant problems in the o.g. in a couple of hours - about 20 seconds per problem. in this drill, don't actually do the problems; just say how you would start them.
that may sound weird, but you MUST get to the point where you have an "opener" (a way to START the problem) for each and every problem within the first 15 seconds or so.
* never, ever, ever practice problems untimed
never.
ever.
you shouldn't even bother working out the solution to a problem once your stopwatch has passed 3 minutes or so: a solution that takes 4-5 minutes isn't any better than no solution at all. remember, this test is not about how many problems you can get right; it's about how many problems you can get right within the allotted time. those are 2 very different things indeed.
i dont think thats the case with the actual gmat where the difficulty level progresses slower...
the actual test also features precipitous increases / decreases in difficulty at times, especially near the beginning (at which point the test is doing its best to calibrate your ability).
remember: our tests will require your time-management game to be incredibly tight - probably a bit more so than the actual test - but, once you've tuned your time management to the point where you can handle our tests, you should be able to NAIL the real test.
- pratik
thanx Ron so much for your invaluable advice. Just to inform u abt my progress, I took another test 2day and my score was 680. This time I made sure I completed the test well in time. I had to guess only 1 qs in QA and 2 in Verbal. The biggest thing i have now realized is how seriously u can get penalised for not completing the sections and i will surely work more on my time management skills and try out your mehtod in problem solving.
Well Ron just to tell u more abt my prep, I have no access to OG probs, any official gmat materials or any of your guides (coz u have only hard copies of it). All my prep for Gmat has been on the basis of my earlier CAT (Common Admission Test, held in India) prep mateirals. I have done a lot of qs from the 1000 SC and 1000 RC. Almost all my prep has been on the verbal front and maths i have literally not prepared nything except qs in the practise tests. I still feel quite confident in maths and hope to score 48-50 in it. On the Verbal front i fell confident abt the CR but my SC is really dicy because i didnt have access to official guide or any other guide, but i have made my own notes on the basis of my practise tests and other free study materials available online.
I am scheduled for 21st Aug... but I am really not sure how to approach the coming 2 weeks.. I know I can score around 720 but the only thing that can let me down I think is the SC part.. can u please advice me... i am also thinking of retaking the 2 GMATprep tests ( i gave those 2 months back).
And Ron i have surely realised now that the error was not in the tests but in my approach towards the tests. thanx a lot!!
Well Ron just to tell u more abt my prep, I have no access to OG probs, any official gmat materials or any of your guides (coz u have only hard copies of it). All my prep for Gmat has been on the basis of my earlier CAT (Common Admission Test, held in India) prep mateirals. I have done a lot of qs from the 1000 SC and 1000 RC. Almost all my prep has been on the verbal front and maths i have literally not prepared nything except qs in the practise tests. I still feel quite confident in maths and hope to score 48-50 in it. On the Verbal front i fell confident abt the CR but my SC is really dicy because i didnt have access to official guide or any other guide, but i have made my own notes on the basis of my practise tests and other free study materials available online.
I am scheduled for 21st Aug... but I am really not sure how to approach the coming 2 weeks.. I know I can score around 720 but the only thing that can let me down I think is the SC part.. can u please advice me... i am also thinking of retaking the 2 GMATprep tests ( i gave those 2 months back).
And Ron i have surely realised now that the error was not in the tests but in my approach towards the tests. thanx a lot!!
- StaceyKoprince
- ManhattanGMAT Staff
- Posts: 9360
- Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2005 9:05 am
- Location: Montreal
It's tough to get better at grammar without some kind of a resource that will teach you that grammar. If there's anything you can do to get our Sentence Correction strategy guide or another guide that will teach you GMAT grammar, do it (but only if you can get it within a few days - otherwise, there's not enough time).
If you can't get a book that actually teaches you the grammar, then you're going to have to do some extra work (and it still won't really compensate for not having good books). We have some old OG questions archived here - you can't post questions about them any more, unfortunately, but you can try them yourself, and then look at the subsequent discussions about how to solve the problem. This won't include the full explanation for every answer choice, but it will give you something. You can do the same thing with our GMATPrep folder. (I wouldn't do this with the MGMAT CAT folder because you don't want to see questions that you haven't yet seen in your own MGMAT practice tests.)
Although the explanations posted here often cover only the specific problem that the poster had with that problem, it's better than no explanations! So you can use that to start to learn some of these grammar rules in a more formal way.
Also, I want to mention one other thing, just to reiterate how bad it can be to run out of time! Any questions left blank at the end result in an automatic 3 percentile point drop per question. (Hopefully you know already never to leave anything blank - but if you didn't know that, make sure you put SOMETHING down for every question, even if it's a random guess.) If you have a couple of questions wrong right at the end, it won't hurt your score much, but if you have 4 or more in a row, you start to see a significant impact - something like 2 to 2.5 percentile points per question (and the effective per question penalty increases as the number of questions wrong in a row gets higher - in other words, the score accelerates downward).
If you can't get a book that actually teaches you the grammar, then you're going to have to do some extra work (and it still won't really compensate for not having good books). We have some old OG questions archived here - you can't post questions about them any more, unfortunately, but you can try them yourself, and then look at the subsequent discussions about how to solve the problem. This won't include the full explanation for every answer choice, but it will give you something. You can do the same thing with our GMATPrep folder. (I wouldn't do this with the MGMAT CAT folder because you don't want to see questions that you haven't yet seen in your own MGMAT practice tests.)
Although the explanations posted here often cover only the specific problem that the poster had with that problem, it's better than no explanations! So you can use that to start to learn some of these grammar rules in a more formal way.
Also, I want to mention one other thing, just to reiterate how bad it can be to run out of time! Any questions left blank at the end result in an automatic 3 percentile point drop per question. (Hopefully you know already never to leave anything blank - but if you didn't know that, make sure you put SOMETHING down for every question, even if it's a random guess.) If you have a couple of questions wrong right at the end, it won't hurt your score much, but if you have 4 or more in a row, you start to see a significant impact - something like 2 to 2.5 percentile points per question (and the effective per question penalty increases as the number of questions wrong in a row gets higher - in other words, the score accelerates downward).
Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep
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