Please give analyis of my prep and how to proceed further.

[Atul_manhattan]

Hi Team,

My GRE score taken a month back: 324
Please give thorough analysis of my preparation as of now. I have taken four MGMAT Tests, three of them taken in last 6 months.
The MGMAT 3 -630-was taken under simulated conditions.
The MGMAT 4 -650-was not simulated. 4-5 hours gap between Math section and verbal Section. Also couldn't complete verbal on time, leaving one question unanswered.
GMAT prep 1: 720, no use analyzing many questions were repeated.
My target score is 750.
About preparation: Have completed all MGMAT guides. 3 question banks yet to complete. Finding MGMAT quant level tough. Worked on verbal. Still facing issues with strengthen questions, evaluation, SC-meaning questions,
Please tell how to proceed further. I have two GMAT official packs (4 tests) as well not attempted.

Regards
Atul

[StaceyKoprince]

Since you saw many repeated questions on the official practice test, I agree that we can't count on that score. So it looks like your current score level is in the 630-650 range. (Really, it's broader than that, since standardized tests aren't exact.)

In order to figure out where to go from here, you'll need to analyze your test results. (Part of getting better is developing your ability to analyze your results—figure out what they mean and what you think you should do about them!)

First, read these two articles:
http://tinyurl.com/executivereasoning
http://tinyurl.com/2ndlevelofgmat

Think about how what you've been doing does and doesn't match up with that and how you may need to change your approach accordingly.
Then, use the below to analyze your most recent MPrep CATs (this should take you a minimum of 1 hour, and probably more like several hours):
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog/2018/07/18/analyze-gmat-practice-tests-part-1/

Use that data to figure out your strengths and weaknesses as well as any ideas you have for what you think you should do. Then come back here and tell us; we'll tell you whether we agree and advise you further.

Note: Give us your full scores—including Q and V—and do share your analysis with us, not just the raw data. Your analysis should include a discussion of your buckets; you'll understand what that means when you read the last article.

[Atul_manhattan]

Hi Stacey,

Thanks for the prompt reply and the insightful articles for analyzing one's progress.
About Mocks tests cores and analysis:
1. MGMAT 4 taken a week back: 650 Q 44-52%ile, V35-76%ile. Found severe timing issue, with twice 4 straight wrong. One left unanswered in verbal.
In quant: 15 wrong with last four wrong due to timing issue. Spent much more time on questions from my difficult area: Geometry. Analyzing wrong questions, observed that in 9, mistakes were due to not carefully reading the questions and jotting incorrect or incomplete info. Can they be easily corrected by practice? I think most of the topics are in great bucket, except geometry and fdp in "prioritize this" bucket. I have started working on these.
In verbal: 14 wrong (7 SC, 4 CR, 3RC). RCs are mostly making up for the time lost elsewhere. Not able to recognize nuances in tough RC Qs. In SC, no consistent approach. 5 out of 7 can be corrected easily. From the same topics have both correct and incorrect. In CR, average time for both correct and incorrect is high, above two minutes. 4 questions have >3 minutes and even one has >4 minutes. Finding issue in solving CRs, mostly assuming things. As some CRs are very difficult, so take much more time for me to understand. Strengtheners, evaluation are in Ugh bucket, others in great bucket. Please help.
2. MGMAT taken 2 weeks back: 630 Q 42-45%ile, V 34-71%ile. Timing issue multiple: multiple 3+ wrongs.
In Q: Mostly careless mistakes, not reading carefully or jotting down incomplete or incorrect info, as i have done in MGMAT. Believe can be corrected by practicing.
In V: one 3+ set wrong. In last phase, had to rush. Wrongs- 4 SC, 5 CR, 6 RC. Strengtheners, evaluation ones- Ugh bucket. Others need to be practiced. Please advise.
3. GMAT Prep Exam Pack 1 Test 1(taken two days back): 720 Q 49, V 40.
Q 25 correct 11 wrong. 9 can be corrected; Issues of carelessness, Geometry. Severe timing issue: last three incorrect.
V 29 correct 12 wrong. 5 CR, 6 SC, 1 RC. CR, a couple already seen questions, but got wrong 2 out of 3. First question in verbal was CR; It took more than 5 minutes. No 3+ questions wrongs continually. CR questions difficult and took much more time. Again strengtheners- 2 wrong. In SC, except one question, which I have not understood yet, others wrong because of careless mistakes.

Please advise on increasing Q to 50 and V to 46 and comment on the analysis.

Regards
Atul

[Atul_manhattan]

Hi Stacey,

I wrote whole analysis two days before according to the manner you describes in the articles. I didn't received any mail as notifications, nor any trace of it is in this forum post. Please reply what happened, the whole analysis took me more than 5 hrs.
Please reply.


Regards
Atul

[StaceyKoprince]

I'm sorry. Someone tried to post spam on this thread just before you posted your longer post—so both the spam post and your longer post were stuck in the spam filter. I've reinstated your post.

(For future though: Always write stuff in your own offline file first! You don't want to lose stuff to the vagaries of the Internet!)

Let's start with big picture. Your goal is 750 and you are at about 650 right now. I would set your next (intermediate) goal at about 700. You're at about Q42-44 and V34-35, so I would aim for about Q46-47 and V 38-39 next.

Also, it is extremely difficult to score 46 on V—I would not set that as your goal. 99th percentile starts at a score of 45 and even our own teachers rarely score above 47 on V. It's more reasonable to aim for a V score of 42 or 44 (for some reason, they don't assign a score of 43 on V). A score of Q50 V42 is in the 750 range overall.

I think most of the topics are in great bucket, except geometry and fdp in "prioritize this" bucket. I have started working on these.

What's in your bucket 3 (get wrong faster)? Everybody has stuff in bucket 3—even me / 99th percentile testers. If you don't put stuff in bucket 3 (or only do so reluctantly / don't put much in bucket 3), that tells me that there's some work to do on your mindset.

It sounds like some Geo topics should be in bucket 3. Which ones? I personally hate all 3D geometry. I might try something cube- or box-related if it doesn't look too hard, but anything else 3D and I bail immediately. (Cylinders...yuck.)

in 9, mistakes were due to not carefully reading the questions and jotting incorrect or incomplete info. Can they be easily corrected by practice?

Yes! What steps do you think you can take to read more carefully in future and to jot stuff down correctly and completely? It's not enough just to tell yourself "Do this in future." You have to build habits that will make it automatic, so you do it every time.

For example, our UPS (Understand–Plan–Solve) process for quant can help you. Most people either go straight to Solve or are rushing so much to get to Solve that they don't do what they should to Understand and Plan. So you could, for example, jot down UPS when you start a new problem, then put your pen on the U of Understand—so you can't just start solving right away.

The Understand step has three tasks: Glance, Read, and Jot. Glance is to see whether anything jumps out at you at a glance. Is there a diagram? Do any parts of it look especially complicated? If it's PS, what form are the answers in—real numbers, variables, etc?

Then Read...thoroughly. Some people Read and Jot simultaneously, but I'd suggest that you don't do that, since you are making mistakes at both of those stages. Read first. Then Jot. (Do NOT start to Solve! Just jot down what's on screen.) Then proof what you jotted down—so look back and forth between the screen and your scratch paper to check that it all matches (or even hold up your scratch paper next to the screen).

Next, Plan. Here, there are two tasks: Reflect and Organize. Maybe, during your Glance, you noticed that the answers were real numbers that were somewhat spread apart. As you Read, maybe you noticed that the problem is "loose" enough that you can estimate, since the answers are spread out. So now you Reflect—do I want to estimate? How heavily can I estimate?

Or maybe you jotted down two different equations. You Reflect and think "I'm going to solve these two equations using the elimination method" and then you Organize the equations—write one above the other, for example.

Once you have everything ready, then you Solve. The extra time you spent up front will do three things for you:
(1) You'll be able to Solve more quickly than you otherwise would have.
(2) You'll make fewer mistakes.
(3) You'll actually know when you should NOT Solve—you should just guess and move on. If you don't actually Understand, or you can't actually come up with a good Plan, then you want to guess at that point. You never get to the Solve stage in this case.

Verbal:

First, no single question (on Q or V!) is ever worth 4 minutes—even if you get it right. I would literally rather have you get it wrong in 1 or 2 minutes than right in 4 minutes. Read this:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog/2013/06/03/what-the-gmat-really-tests/

And then this
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog/2016/05/26/develop-a-business-mindset-to-maximize-your-roi-on-the-gmat/

And finally work your way through this:
http://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog/2016/08/19/everything-you-need-to-know-about-gmat-time-management-part-1-of-3/

That mindset stuff is all for both Q and V, by the way.

For V timing, it sounds like you're saying in general that you are faster at RC? If you are naturally faster at one question type, then it's okay for another question type in the same section to be a bit slower than average—you just need to make sure that your speed isn't causing careless mistakes on the faster type.

You've given me various numbers of correct vs. incorrect—but that doesn't give a complete picture. As the CAT analysis article discussed, you really have to look at that data in conjunction with time spent and difficulty level. You also had to rush at the end of your second-to-last MPrep test, so that skews the # wrong data point—eg, if those last few on which you rushed were mostly one type, then that explains why you had more wrong of that type.

For CR, you put Strengthen and Evaluate in bucket 3. Great—next time, guess immediately on those (guess the same letter for each one). Then you won't have to rush at the end of the section, and when you do want to spend an extra 30 seconds on a problem that's worth the investment, you'll have the time. (Later, if you get better at CR, you can consider whether to move Strengthen to bucket 2. But not Evaluate—leave that one in bucket 3 forever.)

SC is where you have the most opportunity—you found lots of items that you feel comfortable correcting there. For mistakes that were due to speed or not reading carefully, I have the same question as for Quant: What do you need to do to change your process so that you minimize the chances of those types of mistakes in future?

If I were to show you a particular difference in answer choices but NOT show you the full problem (or even the full answer choices), would you be able to tell me which rule is probably being tested? You can probably do this for some things right now (eg, "has" and "have" would be a pretty straightforward split), but you can also probably get better at this. The splits, or differences in the choices, are the major clues that (should immediately) tell us what rules we need to think about / apply for that choice. That will help with both your speed and your accuracy.

For Verbal in general (and especially SC for you), always do this analysis when reviewing:
(1) Why was the wrong answer so tempting? Why 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?
(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?

RC sounds like your strength. You can save time there to spend elsewhere, but you never want to rush so much that you cause yourself careless mistakes—so what do you need to do on RC to make sure that your process is solid / consistent enough? When you do make a careless mistake, why did you make it? And what can you change to not make it next time? For example, if you discover (as I have!) that you made a mistake because you thought you remembered a certain detail and answered accordingly...only to realize that you didn't remember the detail fully and fell into a trap, then you can train yourself to *always* find the proof in the passage before you answer any detail question (as I now do!).

Do that whether you got it wrong or right—even if you got it right, there's usually one wrong answer that wasn't as obviously / immediately wrong as the rest...so call that the tempting one and run it through the analysis.

Next steps. You didn't mention the Official Guide in your first post. Do you have one of those books? That's a good way to get additional practice and analysis between practice tests. The analysis you do (after you try the problem) is really how you learn how to get better.

Since you've been through the strategy guides once, I would start by doing mixed, timed practice sets (randomly chosen—anything goes, just like the real test). Use this series to help set up and analyze these problem sets:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog/2017/03/07/practicing-sets-of-gmat-problems-mimic-the-real-test-part-1-of-3/

Then, based on your analysis of those problems, go back into your strategy guides for content or strategies as needed. So if you realize, in your review, that you don't know certain geometry rules well enough, go back into that chapter (though remember, as always, that some things go in bucket 3 and you don't need to spend time studying those things!). Or if you realize that you don't feel comfortable test cases or working backwards, ditto go back into your guides to learn about that strategy again.

Target both things you noticed in this test analysis and anything else you notice in your continued analysis of problem sets. After a few weeks, when you feel that you've actually made progress on these things that you've identified, take another CAT and repeat the process with whatever that new list of things is.

[Atul_manhattan]

Hi Stacey,

Have written a similar mail a few days earlier, but it didn't got posted on the thread. Hope this time it does.
My Test scores are:
GMAT Prep 1 Exam Pack 1: 720 Q49, V40 May 1
MGMAT 3 630, Q42 V34 March 31
MGMAT 4 650, Q44 V35 April 14
MGMAT 5 710, Q47, V40 May 8
Veritas 1 700, Q49, V37 May 9
Veritas 2 710, Q50, V37 May 10
Veritas 3 680, Q51, V33 May 14
Veritas 4 680, Q49, V34 May 17

I am planning to take test within a month now. I am in last leg of preparation: I am left with 1 MGMAT, 2 Veritas, 3 GMAT Pack tests.
My target is 750.
Your suggestions have proved very helpful. I have improved upon my weak areas. My timing is getting much better. I am completing all sections within or before time. Have better sense of timing.All 3 straight errors have vanished. Have learnt to pass through difficult-for-me problems.
However, improvements in scores are not happening. And feeling at loss, becoz, despite making 8-21 questions straight right, not getting higher levels problems in both quant and verbal.

Please suggest how to take score to 750 in remaining mocks and the real test. Also how to plan for the remaining mocks and the real test, keeping in mind my target score.

Thanks in advance!
Regards
Atul

[StaceyKoprince]

Thanks for reposting. The prior one got caught in the spam filter again, sorry.

You've made really good progress! The difference between a 720 and a 750 does not seem very large—"only" 30 points—but it is incredibly difficult to make that leap. It's far harder to go from 720 to 750 than it is to go from 620 to 650.

Have you taken an official GMAT yet? If the $250 is not a hardship, I actually think you should go do that now—as a dry run. Get used to the testing center and gain the experience. It's a *little* less nerve-wracking the second time, so that will help you when you later take it "for real."

Re: your goal of 750, if you can get Q to 50 and V to 42, you'll be in the 750 range. Ditto if you get Q49, V44 or Q51 V41.

Adding 1-2 points per section is not so much about learning new content as it is about just getting better at taking the test itself.

On quant, 51 is a perfect score, so that's just really very hard to hit. You can (and will) still get some problems wrong at a Q51 level, but you can't get very many wrong, you can't afford careless mistakes, you can't afford to miss lower-level problems, and you can't get too many wrong in a row anywhere on the test. And not all of that is within your control.

If you are making any careless mistakes at all, you've got to be super careful about building processes / habits that will minimize all types of similar mistakes. If you have certain weaknesses that mean you are missing lower-level problems in those areas, you've got to plug those holes. That doesn't mean you have to be expert at everything. It means that you can't miss medium-level questions even in your weaker areas. So, again, if you're noticing that you're ever missing questions that are rated sub-700 level on our exams, or anything rated Medium (or lower) on official practice tests, you've got to go plug those holes.

The knowledge that you're going for a 50 or 51 can make it even more likely that you screw up the timing, though—because you'll hang on to something too long when you really should have guessed and moved on. So you've also got to get really good at spotting when they have tossed something at you that's just too hard / is going to take too long. You're still going to bail (guess quickly and move on) a small number of times (~3); you just want to make sure you know how to make the best possible decisions around when to do that. Examine problem sets and practice tests afterwards in terms of your basic decision-making. Now that you've really looked at the problem / had time to reflect, did you make the right call about whether to do it? If not, why not / how will you know to make a different call next time?

All of the above also applies to V as well, plus you have a little more room for growth on V. (The practical upper limit on score is 45, which is the 99th percentile, although the verbal scale does technically go up to 51 as well.)

One thing to add to V: The stuff I said last time about "why did I find this wrong answer tempting?" and "why was I tempted to cross off the right answer"? The single biggest difference between V40 and V44/45 is the ability to navigate around the most tempting trap answers, and that kind of analysis is the best way to learn how to avoid those.

But really, I'm going to come back to what I said first. If you can afford the extra $250, go take the real thing as soon as you can. Depending upon how it goes, decide whether you want to get the Enhanced Score Report. Then use both your own qualitative data and the ESR quant data (if you buy that report) to decide where to concentrate.