Where am i?

[sid1979]

Hi MGMAT Experts,

Request your suggestion to evaluate my current status. My MGMAT scores are as follows:
quant verbal total
Free test 47 34 670
cat1 45 32 630
cat2 47 39 700
cat3 48 33 670
cat4 47 31 640
cat5 51 34 690

My target is 730. My exam date is 30-dec-08. Please let me know what will be my plan for the next 1 month to achieve my target. Also should i take the 6th test quickly & then do a retake of all the tests again. Obviously i have to increase in verbal but little bit clueless. I am redoing OG verbal questions.

Please do let me know.

Bye
Sid.

[sid1979]

Hi Stacey,

Please do help me to evaluate my current position. It will be a great help for me.

Waiting eagerly. :cry:

Sid.

[StaceyKoprince]

Did you take the tests under official conditions? (30m each for two essays, 10 min break, 75m for quant, 10 min break, 75m for verbal)

If so, it looks like you're close to where you need to be, though I am concerned about the verbal score fluctuations - ranging from 31 to 39. Do you have any ideas about why your score is fluctuating so much? Are you struggling with timing (maybe the timing was better on the days you got your higher scores)? Are you struggling a great deal with certain question types or grammar rules (maybe you got more of these on the days you got your lower scores)?

Also, you didn't give the dates on which you took these tests. Are they spread out over time (at least a week between tests)? Or did you take them very closely together in time? Generally, it's not a good idea to take more than one test a week (and ideally more like 2-3 weeks). Tests are just a way to gauge how much you've improved from the studying you've done between tests. Simply taking a bunch of tests in a row is not a great way to improve (you can improve a little, but not that much).

Instead, pick apart the last test you took, figure out very specifically what's giving you trouble, and then devise a study plan to tackle those items. Are you struggling with content, technique, timing, or all of the above?

If content, what specifically is giving you the most trouble? (eg, in SC, modifiers and verbs) Include in this category the different types of questions for CR and RC (eg, find an assumption vs. weaken or inference vs. main idea). Go back to whatever your source material is for learning how to do these things and study the "troubling" areas again.

On what types of questions or content areas are you struggling with technique or timing? (Technique is knowing how to identify / categorize a particular type of question and knowing what you're expected to do / answer as you move through the problem.) Again, go back to your source material, and also go back to OG. Go over problems you've already done and think: what would have been the better way to recognize what they wanted or move through the problem / passage in an efficient and effective way?

What kinds of errors do you tend to make repeatedly? Do you miss / overlook important information? Do you get sucked into choosing a tempting (but wrong) answer choice? That sort of thing. Now, what can you do to change the way you do things so that you minimize the chances of making those kinds of errors, whatever they are, in the future?

On verbal, also, make sure that you are doing the following analysis on every single question (even the ones you get right):
- specifically why each wrong answer is wrong
- which wrong answer is the most tempting and why
- how to recognize that the tempting wrong answer is still wrong anyway so you can eliminate it
- why someone might be tempted to eliminate the right answer

Finally, since you're close to having to repeat the tests, here are some 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 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.

[sid1979]

Hi Stacey,

Thanks a lot for your valuable suggestion. Little bit feeling confident to reach myu target score. Well i am posting the dates of my exam.

Free 9/13/2008 10:17 PM EST
CAT 1 9/19/2008 9:38 PM EST
CAT 2 10/10/2008 9:22 PM EST
CAT 3 10/17/2008 8:06 PM EST
CAT 4 10/25/2008 8:44 PM EST
CAT 5 11/8/2008 8:48 PM EST

Also i have followed exam conditions but haven't answered any of the essays. Will that affect the scores a lot.

Minimum gap is 7 days. Generally i used to take every saturday. Well according to my analysis i am weak in SC & CR. RC i am ok as long as i have some understanding of the passage. Mainly Social/politics passages troubles me. But SC & CR are the main culprit. I do agree there is a big fluctuation in my verbal scores. Even i am concerned abt that. The following i have started already.
1) Doing all the verbal questions from OG10 & OG11. (specially SC & CR). As mentioned by you i am trying to figure out the rule behind every question.
2) Visiting my previous CAT exams and checking out the verbal questions again. There are some 300+ questions. I prefer to revise those questions.
3) I have made up my mind that i won't be doing repeat test. I will finish the last exam in first week of Dec. After that will only do GMAT Prep, for the next 2 weeks. As mentioned i will not take any exam in the last week.

Hope all these plan works for me at the exam. :)
Do let me know if any further suggestion.

Bye
Sid.

[StaceyKoprince]

Start doing the essays! The impact is different for different people, but there is almost always an impact for everybody. (And that makes sense - adding an hour of writing at the beginning is bound to make it more challenging to perform well towards the end. You get mentally fatigued.)

I know most people don't care much about the essay score, but you should care about the impact that doing the essays can have on your multiple choice score.

Good luck - let us know how it goes!

[sid1979]

Hi Stacey,

Well today i gave my exam. Result is highly disappointing. :cry: 640 ( Q50 , V26). Clearly verbal is the killer. Also this is my lowest verbal score in all the mock tests that i have given. I am bit shocked. Well it clearly indicates i need to work on verbal. I am not in a hurry. So please advice me how should i proceed further. My target is 730-740. For that i need a 40 in verbal.

Initially the verbal questions were easy & i think i was going strong. Then in the middle part some tricky RCs & CR came. After that i fail behind time. So in the 31st question a big RC came. I skipped it totally by just clicking the answers. There were 3 questions in that RC. After that i regained some time. I am not sure because of this i got penalized heavily. I never got below 30 in verbal. 26 is just not believeable.

So please suggest how should i start for verbal. Quant i am very confident. I will get 49 or 50. So please do help me out.

Sid.

[StaceyKoprince]

Did you do all of the things I discussed above? (take the essays when taking practice tests, analyze the right and wrong answers, analyze the kinds of errors you tend to make, and so on...) And did you assess your strengths and weaknesses, based on all those questions I asked above?

If so, let me know the results of all of those those things!