Strategy for the next 3 days (Test on Thursday - 12th Jan)

[zaarathelab]

Hi Stacey

I love your posts on time management and stress management. Somehow, I am still struggling with both these aspects on practice tests.

My break-up of scores are as follows -

2nd Jan, 2012 GMATPREP -1 : 730 (Q49, V40) - Mostly because I'd seen/done most of the questions(Courtesy forums, OGs, etc)

3rd Jan, 2012 MGMAT CAT-2 : 650 (Q45, V34)

4th Jan, 2012 MGMAT CAT 3: 680 (Q47, V36)

5th Jan, 2012 MGMAT CAT 4: 670 (Q44 V37)

6th Jan, 2012 MGMAT CAT 5: 660 (Q45, V35)

(Pls note that all the above tests were taken in the classroom of a coaching center with strict time conditions. All breaks were strictly followed as per actual GMAT. Only MGMAT -1 was written with the AWA section, largely due to time constraints.)

Planning to take MGMAT CAT 6 tomorrow. Not planning to take any tests in the last two days.

Actual GMAT score (2.5 years back - 600 (Q48, V24))

I am having major issues with my quant timing. I know that I am conceptually sound as I can do all the questions from the CATs during an untimed review session. I make careless mistakes, especially in arithmetic: Addition/Subtraction/wrong sign when transferring LHS to RHS, etc. Also, I end up double checking my answers because of these calculation mistakes.

2 questions -

1. What should I do in the last 3 days? Especially for the timing and careless error part? I am planning to just review my notes, logs for each OG -12/11/10/Supplement/GMATprep question that I've made for the Quant and Verbal section.

2. How much tougher/easier are the MGMAT CATs compared with GMATPreps or the actual GMAT? I am asking this because I found the Quant section, the CRs, and the RCs to be tougher than GMATpreps, but i've also heard, in the recent past, that quant on the gmat has become tougher.

Pls guide me

Zaara

[StaceyKoprince]

And today's 12 Jan. I hope the test is going / went well! (As you have probably already figured out, it takes time to get a response on the forums - sometimes you can get a response the same day or next day, but usually it's multiple days.)

I wouldn't have helped much anyway, not in the way that you wanted. As a general rule, you should NOT try to fix major weaknesses or make any major changes in the last few days (the last week, really). Your strengths and weaknesses are what they are, and there's not a whole lot you can do in just a few days. Rather, you want to do a high level review of everything and try to relax as much as you can. (Easier said than done!)

You don't mention a goal score, so I don't know whether your practice tests are in line with your goal. Your scores seem generally to be in the mid-650 range (discounting the 730 test because you'd seen repeats), so that's a reasonable expectation for the real test - though I am concerned that you didn't do the essays on those practice tests. Sometimes, though not always, skipping the essays gives people an artificial score boost (because they're not as tired for the multiple choice).

The other thing that concerns me is your mention of major timing issues. I hope everything goes well today and we don't have to have a future conversation about this because you got the score you wanted - but for others reading this, if you are having major timing issues, postpone your test. The risk is too high that you will have a "crash and burn" scenario - better to fix the timing problems before you get in there.

Now, hopefully you don't need any more advice, but just in case, here's an article on timing:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... anagement/

Most people find the quant on the real test to be either similar to ours or a little easier. Most people find verbal to be about the same or a little harder. (I think a lot of it, though, is perception, based on your own strengths and weaknesses.)

Okay, well good luck - let us know how it went!

[zaarathelab]

Dear Stacey. I scored a 530.

Yes it happened to me 2 days ago.

What happened more than 2 days ago is as follows:

1. I've taken the GMAT twice before, scoring 600 on both attempts
2. I left my job to prepare full time for the GMAT. In fact it's been more than 3 months since I left my lucrative job as the business head of a startup.
3. I have taken professional help from a GMAT coach who has scored a 700+ on the actual GMAT on 4 occasions.
4. I stuck to the OGs (10,11,12,verbal review both editions), solving all questions at least 3 times. I maintained an error log(excel sheet) for all the questions i attempted in the last 3 months.
5. I took MGMAT tests(for the first time) in the last 10 days before the actual test and had consistently scored in the 650-680 range on the 6 tests.
5. I took the GMATpreps and scored 730 on GMATprep1 and 760 on GMATprep2 (Gmat prep 2 was two days before the actual test).

Test day:

I was extremely calm as i knew that i had prepared a lot for the exam and had consistently scored well on the practice tests.
Essay section went off really well, in fact the best among my 3 attempts ( i scored 5/6 on both my attempts earlier).

Quant section:

Now here comes the shocker. I could easily solve most of the questions. In fact, i don't think i got a single question wrong from the first 10 questions. I could see through the DS traps and calculate and find the answers to the PS questions. I got 3 Probability, P and C questions - 7th, 20th and 27th question (approx).
After completing the section, I thought i'd done well and was pumped up for the Verbal section. Somehow, I felt that this was the best quant section I had ever given - not in terms of difficulty (it was tricky) but in terms of the way i was able to solve it. Since I had a 48 on both my earlier attempts, I was pretty sure of getting a 49+ in this attempt.

Verbal section:

This section too went off smoothly, though i felt RC was a bit tricky. I hadn't scored less than 35 on the verbal section in any practice test in the last 3 months. Oh and yes, these practice tests were under strict time conditions and I had taken them at my coach's house to avoid any home advantage.

After the verbal section, I was given a research section (12, questions, 30 minutes). At the time of test registration, i was told by gmat that there would be an 'unscored' research section at the end of test and that a 'surprise' would await me at the end of the section if i attempted this section seriously. This section was given to only those test takers who had taken a date between 3rd Jan and 12th Jan. Since i was very tired after the 4 hour grind, i half-heartedly attempted the 'unscored' research section.

After finishing the test, I received my score - 530 (Q36, V27). I looked around to see if this was my score and not somebody else's. It was my score.

I am not too sure about what happened to me - whether it is a testing error or a poor judgement of my abilities;I would like to think that it is neither of the two.

I took the decision to take the GMAT 3 years back and have been at it since then.

Dear GMAT,

You might have knocked me down, despite the best of my efforts. But, i'll be back.

[StaceyKoprince]

5. I took MGMAT tests(for the first time) in the last 10 days before the actual test and had consistently scored in the 650-680 range on the 6 tests.
5. I took the GMATpreps and scored 730 on GMATprep1 and 760 on GMATprep2 (Gmat prep 2 was two days before the actual test).

Do not do this again. You burned yourself out in the days leading up to the test. It is very easy to study too hard / do too much in the week before the test and then you are mentally fatigued by the time you take the test. You may not notice, because mental fatigue is different from physical fatigue - you don't necessarily feel tired. But you can feel "slower" - it takes longer to comprehend when you're reading - and you also feel more impatient - you just want the test to be over, you're sick of making decisions and answering questiosn, you almost feel like you don't really care anymore.

Plus, you would have been even more mentally fatigued because you did not do the essays on the practice test. You started the quant section more than an hour after you were used to starting the quant section. And when you started the verbal section, you were normally used to being finished or almost finished with the entire test!

In fact, i don't think i got a single question wrong from the first 10 questions.

I guarantee you 100% that you did not get the first 10 questions right. NOBODY does because the questions would just keep getting harder and harder. Think about it - after a few questions, you would start to get really hard questions, and if you got those right too, you'd start to get nearly impossible questions. Is that what the questions felt like?

No. You said you solved them easily. Unfortunately, that means that you were making mistakes - some of the questions were likely a lot more complicated than they seemed, but you were missing the complications. So you thought you were right, but you had actually already missed something.

Okay, so what are we going to do? Both quant and verbal went down significantly, so this wasn't just one section going poorly. In particular, your strength (quant) went down significantly. Your description of that section as "easy" tells me that you were likely missing small details that would make the questions harder, and then you'd get those questions wrong, which would actually lead to easier questions. So some of the questions really were easy (for you) and some were ones where you were making careless mistakes.

Why were you making so many careless mistakes? I would bet that part of it had to do with stamina, as I discussed above. You also mentioned some issues with stress management in your first post. Can you describe more how you feel / what happens in terms of stress / anxiety? That would also likely lead you to make more careless errors.

Finally, you knew that you were having both timing problems and careless error issues before you went in - you said so in your first post. Just so that you know for future: don't take the test if you have either major timing problems or significant careless error issues (or both). When those problems exist, one common outcome is a big score drop, unfortunately.

What about verbal? Have you been having timing problems on verbal? Have you been making lots of careless mistakes?

Read that time management article I posted in my last post. It usually takes people a good 4 to 6 weeks to fix timing problems, so expect to need some time for this.

p.s. the unscored research section is for the new version of the test that's going to launch in June. It doesn't count toward your score. The potential "surprise" was that they randomly choose some participants to win a refund of the test fee - as long as you do really try to do a good job.