Stuck in Studying; help

[Melie19]

So i'm taking another crack at the GMAT and i think i'm doing pretty good in my studying so far; i'm taking the practice exam every 3 weeks, and i'm TRYING to review the practice exam after (very time intesive) as well as keep moving through the study guides.
Here's my question:

I'm taking another practice exam this saturday (my second). Should i finish reviewing my 1st practice exam or focus on getting through more of the books????

Thanks in advance!!!!

[StaceyKoprince]

If you haven't yet finished reviewing your first exam, you're not yet ready to take your second exam. But let's define what we mean by "review."

There are two levels of review you need to do:
1) high level - run the assessment reports and see what the global trends are (strengths and weaknesses across question types, content areas, and timing). Do this the day after you take the practice test and use it to set up your study plan for the next few weeks.

2) in-depth review of the individual questions. Spread this out over the 3 weeks and review specific categories of questions according to your study plan. If you noticed that you're struggling with timing on word problems and you set aside a few days to work on this, review those test questions then (in addition to going back to the relevant chapters in your strategy guide and doing new OG questions in this area). Use what you find to know what to study in the strategy guide and what to test yourself on in terms of new questions from OG.

Note that you aren't going to review every last little thing. Cross check your weaknesses with your knowledge of the things that are more vs. less commonly tested and plan your time accordingly. Areas that are infrequently tested aren't worth much review time. (And if you aren't sure what's more vs. less commonly tested, just ask!)

[Melie19]

Stacey

Thanks so much for getting back to me; you rock! I appreciate the direction and hopefully that will help me as I continue moving forward. I did an yesterday and noticed a few things; for instance, i do pretty good in SC, and yet i was still combing through the SC book, whereas i tend to bite the dust in CR and RC, especially on inference...

Here's my issue though: Sometimes i feel that if i don't study it all; i'll miss something or forget key things in a certain area. I don't want to forget; i've been reviewing my flash cards every day to prevent that, but now that i've seen the assessment, i KNOW i need to move on to CR/RC and past number properties booklet and on to the other topics...are there any other methods to making sure i don't "lose" the information i just learned???

And oh yeah, i'm definitely asking; can you give me a quick breakdown of what's more or less commonly tested??

Thanks much!!!!!!! :)

[StaceyKoprince]

Schedule a day a week for review, but do move on to new stuff, and make sure you keep good concise notes about what you want to review when you do need to review. Flashcards are a great idea, as is a log of what you studied on a particular day and what you struggled with that day.

As you get further into the material, you should also incorporate blocks of questions that don't just test what you're working on that week - they should test everything you've worked on so far, including what you're working on this week. Schedule a day a week for this too. That gives you 4-5 days a week to spend entirely on new material.

Also, as you noticed, it's important to take a look at the data to gauge your strengths and weaknesses - sometimes we get a skewed sense of priorities if we only go by how we feel about things.

Finally, the most commonly tested stuff (I'll do this by chapter in our strategy guides):
SC: parallelism, modifiers, comparisons, sub-verb agreement, verbs, pronouns (in that general order)
CR: weaken, find the assumption (top two), strengthen, draw a conclusion (next most common two)
RC: pretty much what's there: main idea, specific detail, inference
math:
all of number properties
basic algebra and equations (basic, exponential, quadratic)
translating words to math
inequalities specifically with respect to DS statements (knowing what you can and can't tell from the inequality)
percents, fractions
rates and work, ratios, averages
triangles and circles