I've been preparing for the GMAT for a couple months, and I'm hoping to take it in early December to make the second round admission deadlines. I thought I was in pretty good shape on the quant section and took several practice tests from reputable test prep companies when I first started out.
Unfortunately, none of these practice tests used a CAT algorithm. I had loads of easy questions and only a few that took me more than 2 minutes. But I took a real prep test for the first time yesterday, and now that I'm having 700-800 level questions thrown at me one after the other, it's a real challenge to finish on time. With only five weeks to go, is there anything I can do? I either end up skipping questions I know I could figure out or not finishing in time.
If you want the brutal truth - getting into a high percentile on quant is fucking tough. Much harder than verbal. The quant section's score distribution has a fat tail because the international students dominate it. I'd advize that you take a CAT and see what your actual score is, if it leaves much to be desired...then it's your call. You can get the MGMAT books and start working on your technique, or wait until next cycle. For what it's worth I did really well on the GMAT - I'm not a savant like some dudes here on the WSO, I put in LONG hours and didn't rush it.
I got a high quant score but also had timing issues. I probably skipped like 3 problems but there is a strategy to it. I was timing myself so I could tell where I was and if I was behind. You want to skip problems in the 10-15 range from the final questions. You don't want to be skipping at the end as you want to end strong. Also, when skipping you need to skip every third or something like that that way you can go 2 up 1 down to maintain your position in the algorithm.
Yea, the quant section is definitely no joke. You need to allocate a specific amount of time per question; if you run over a single question's time limit, you need to take a guess and move on. Ideally, you would've eliminated at least one answer choice, so it's not a complete shot in the dark.
During the break before the quant section, I wrote listed out my projected times at every 5 questions in order to help me stay on top of my timing. I would recommend doing something similar during your prep; good luck!
good tip on the that. like 75/43 - 65/38... will try that.
Hey trinks,
Which books did you prepare with? I noticed that MGMAT talks a lot about tricks on solving questions quickly. The harder questions are usually solvable for the average person in 3-5 minutes, but what makes it hard is that you should only use 2 minutes and identify tricks.
Try to study relationships and look deeper at the problem. Don't just memorize how to do math, analyze the problem for an efficient solution. And there are also tricks for crossing out potential answers. Remember that GMAT math tests logic, not math. For what its worth, I got a Q49 on the test.
Good advice.
Thanks for this. I've been using the official GMAT prep resources so far and only just started with the MGMAT books. Is five weeks actually enough time to improve my score through prep?
What BGP2587 said. He always has long winded responses (in a good way, takes a lot of time to help).
Focus on the areas you are weak in. For example, number properties were really tricky for me, so I worked on problems and found "tricks" to solve them in a short amount of time.
Five weeks is plenty of time. I was definitely not a quant guru, and was awful at it at first, but ended up doing pretty well.
Take one MGMAT Cat per week, and the rest of the time, hammer out your weaknesses. Odds are you're losing timing because of a fwe specific types of problems that are taking you 4 minutes. Learn how to do most of those, and you're timing will get a lot better. One thing that really helped me was to forget about timing when I was practicing specific skills. The key is to spend 20 minutes on one problem if you need to at first (again, when practicing), figure it out on your own, and then once you have the process down, learn how to do it fast. For example, I remember I was brutal at RxT problems (with like, the two trains driving towards each other...). What I ended up doing was re-reading the MGMAT book about how to do them, and then spending literally 30 minutes each on a few problems, working through them until I got the system down. Once it clicked, they took me 1 minute each, and timing was never an issue with them. I only got there because when learning the skill, I gave my brain the time to figure it out on its own.
The key is to 1) get much better at your weaknesses and 2) take enough CATs to understand how the timing should feel. There are going to be problems you just can't do in two minutes, so make sure that you're smart enough to realize that. If you're dicking around with a problem for a minute, and haven't gotten much closer to solving it, try to eliminate wrong answers for 10 seconds, and guess. Banking the 45+ seconds with a fwe questions that you probably would end up guessing on anyway will give you that extra 30 secodns on a few problems that you can do and just need more time on. Also, once you take a CAT, redo every problem you get wrong, and those that you got right, but aren't sure how you did it.
As someone else mentioned, splits are huge. Try to stay right in line with your timing splits. The GMAT really is totally a prepartion test if you study enough and study right.
I had the same problem initially. The quant questions can be brutal. MGMAT is great practice. The MGMAT practice exams quant problems are much harder than the actual test. Have you done every official guide practice quant question several times over? That really helped me and was very close to the actual exam.
Suggestions on how to study if I have 2-3 weeks for gmat? I've been using the official guide and I see that Manhattan has a whole set. Is there a particular manhattan gmat book you guys are referring to?
Also, I'm finding that it's kind of hard to "study" for the qualitative segments besides sentence correction/construction. Maybe critical reasoning can be studied, but reading comprehension seems like bit of a moot point, unless English is a second language.
2-3 weeks? Beats the fuck out of me. There are some Will Hunting's on this board and there are a few threads on short prep. Search them out.
As to your second point, to be honest other than Sentence Correction you can't really study for verbal. You can work on your frame work/technique but that's about it. That said, just being very familiar with the questions does help a great deal.
Thanks. I guess I should be more specific - I have been studying, for a little bit but have been slacking. In order to have an opportunity to take the exam twice, I should schedule the first one in about 2-3 wks, which will give me time after the 31 day blackout period to take the exam again if it's not 700 something the first time around.
So I'm not starting from scratch start to finish for 2-3 wks, but I do have some time before I take on a new job or contract to study. So if say there's 18 days x 6 to 8 hrs avg (the rest for applications), I can do 108 to 144 hrs of studying.
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