Take 3 GMAT. Shooting for 750+

[sidnair225]

Guys,

I've taken the GMAT twice : (i) 660 (Q48, V33) and (ii) 710 (Q48, V40). I did this over 2-3 months - i.e. Take 1 in November and take 2 in January 2013. I understand that take 2 produced a reasonably good score, however, my target schools have a reasonably higher median score (and most of my peers from the investment banking / PE industry appear to have gotten in on scores that are at least 30 points > than my score). I've decided to invest a little more time before Round 2 applications in January 2014 and take it one more time to get to the elusive 99 percentile (tentatively mid-August to mid-September).

Target Breakdown: Q50, V44

I've spent some time analysing my past results in Quant and Verbal and have diagnosed the following problem areas:

Quant:
(i) Time management - recognizing my ability to solve a given problem ASAP and then either investing more time or guessing and moving on --> any tips to practice this will be super helpful
(ii) Working on advanced concepts and specific problem types in inequalities, geometry and series --> any specific resources you suggest I use?

Verbal:
(i) SC : I need to work on (i) Meaning based errors and timing for such questions (the long-underlined questions) --> Any strategy for this (I've already checked out http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... orrection/)

(ii) RC - need to improve my reading speed. I found that my reading speed is principally responsible for my time-deficit in the verbal section -->any tips will be super useful.

Finally, I wanted to know what a good strategy would be for practice tests. Should I do one every week till D-day or should i focus on target areas exclusively and tackle tests towards the end (i.e. the last 3 weeks). I'll also have to redo my MGMAT CATs, GMAT official tests + perhaps GMAT club tests / score 800? --> any ideas on this will be hugely appreciated!

Thanks a lot!

[StaceyKoprince]

Nice work!

Time management:

https://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/inde ... lly-tests/

http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -to-do-it/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... nt-part-1/

Have you used our Advanced Quant book yet? If not, start there. That book does assume that you know all of the content in the main strategy guides, so you may need to supplement with those if you have any holes in that knowledge.

For SC, you've got my best article already. :) I assume you've looked through all of the articles linked within that one, yes? I'm going to have a new SC book coming out in December, but that's not going to help you now... you'll just have to try to practice using the techniques described in those articles.

Part of the solution, by the way, is going to be letting the worst of those go - make a guess faster and spend that time and brain energy elsewhere.

When you study verbal, do you analyze all 4 of these things:
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?

Most people do only 2 and 4. If you want to get to 44, you have to master 1 and 3. :)

RC: Believe it or not, a lot of RC reading speed is about what not to read - what you should ignore or skim over. Learning how to do this is just as hard a skill as learning how to interpret what you do read!

what NOT to read:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -passages/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -passages/

Putting it all together on a hard passage (series of 3 articles):
https://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/inde ... -passages/
https://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/inde ... m-passage/
https://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/inde ... m-passage/

You can also see some examples of this in OG Archer (if you have access to that program). Take a look at the videos I did for the last two passages in OG13.

For now, a practice test ONLY when you feel you've made substantial progress since your last practice test - which is typically several weeks or longer. No point in spending 3.5 hours if you haven't actually addressed the issues you already identified in an earlier test.

When you get close to the real thing, then you can take a practice test 2 weeks before and 1 week before. Other than that, it's not worth it to take a test every week.

So that gives you maybe 4 to 5 tests to take, something like that. Therefore, you don't need to redo all of those other practice tests - too many.

You can still take both GMATPrep and MGMAT CATs with repeats as long as you follow a few guidelines to minimize the chance of artificially inflating your score via question repeats. First, anytime you see a problem that you remember (and this means: I know the answer or I'm pretty sure I remember the answer, not just "hmm, this looks vaguely familiar..."), immediately look at the timer and make yourself sit there for the full length of time for that question type. This way, you don't artificially give yourself more time than you should have.

Second, think about whether you got this problem right the last time. If you did, get it right again this time. If you didn't, get it wrong again. If you *completely honestly* think that you would get it right this time around if it were a new question (even though you got it wrong last time) because you've studied that area and improved, then get it right this time.

Good luck!