770 debrief.docx

7/27/2019 770 Debrief.docx

1/9

I just made an account to post this. I wrote my GMAT on Saturday (29 June) and got a score with which Impretty satisfied. As the title says, I put in a bit less than 3 weeks of actual studying, but nevertheless benefitedfrom these forums during that time (what materials to buy, question explanations, AWA template, etc); hence, Idecided to get out of lurker mode and contribute a debrief for posterity.

Its pretty long so heres a table of contents if you want to skip to certain parts

Table of Contents1. Background2. Materials3. The Journey: Schedule and CAT Progress4. Test Day: Game Plan and How It Went Down5. Strategy Advice (AWA, IR, PS, DS, RC, CR, SC, timing, warming up, scratchpad use)6. Efficiency Advice (getting the most out of your prep)7. Advice on the Finer Nuances (Exercise, Diet, Music, etc)8. Review of Materials (Pertains largely to the difficulty levels of various materials and my understanding of thealgorithm used in MGMATs CATs)

1. BackgroundI finished my undergrad in business this semester and figured I would get my GMAT out of the way before I

started working full-time in the fall. I actually want to go to law school (Ive written my LSAT as well), but somefactors pushed me to also lock in a GMAT score:

it wouldnt hurt to have one in case I want to do a JD/MBA or drop law altogether, given my business degree, a lot of my friends were doing the GMAT, and Ill be working in consulting, so b-school is the bridge more often crossedI was born in a foreign country and immigrated to North America at a young age. English is my 3rd language,but today its pretty much my mother tongue. My math was always quite strong in grade school, being 2-3 gradelevels ahead. I took several math courses in university, but they were much more abstract and not relevant tothe GMAT. In terms of GMAT math, I would definitely have been better at it back in 11th or 12th grade than Iam now.

Initially, I was willing to put in one month of studying, but really wanted to keep the investment to a minimum(2-3 weeks). The very first thing I did was to Google gmat in 2 weeks and saw quite a few guides for such anendeavour, so I knew it was possible to get a good score in this timeframe. I also arranged some chats withpeople I knew who had gotten 99th percentile scores in a similar timeframe. I hope this debrief will help othersout there who plan on tackling the GMAT with a short time frame for prep, but of course I hope its helpful to

anyone whos looking to score well .

2. MaterialsStandard recommendation as per gmatclub (can't insert URLs yet):

Official Guide, 13th edition Manhattan GMATComplete Strategy Guide Set, 5th Edition Manhattan GMAT6 CATs GMAT Prep 2 CATs Manhattan GMATTest Simulation Bookletw/ Marker Excel I tracked everything very rigorously on excel. The data helped me be more

efficient/targeted with my studying. I can probably spit out any stat you askfor example, I did1705 questions in total over the course of my prep, of which 198 were CR.

3. The Journey: Schedule and CAT ProgressHigh level overview of prep was basically 2 weeks to go through all theMGMAT guideswhile regularly doingCATs, at which point PS, RC, and CR were >90% accuracy. This was followed by several days of drilling DS andSC using the OG, and doing my final practice CAT 2 days before game day.

Since I didnt prep for that long, I can actually provide a day-by-day journal of what I did. On any given day, Iprobably studied for 3-5 hours, broken into two sessions (ie. 1.5 hours in the afternoon and 2.5 hours in the

evening). Im very easily distracted/like to look for distractions, so typically studied while onFacebook . Total

study time probably came out to around 80 hours.

This is also where I admit it wasnt technically under 3 weeks if you count from the very beginning. I took my
http://www.manhattangmat.com/http://www.manhattangmat.com/http://www.manhattangmat.com/http://www.manhattangmat.com/http://www.manhattangmat.com/http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=PJTlq5NYqfE&subid=&offerid=239662.1&type=10&tmpid=8432&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.barnesandnoble.com%252Fw%252F%253Fean%253D9780979017582http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=PJTlq5NYqfE&subid=&offerid=239662.1&type=10&tmpid=8432&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.barnesandnoble.com%252Fw%252F%253Fean%253D9780979017582http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=PJTlq5NYqfE&subid=&offerid=239662.1&type=10&tmpid=8432&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.barnesandnoble.com%252Fw%252F%253Fean%253D9780979017582http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=PJTlq5NYqfE&subid=&offerid=239662.1&type=10&tmpid=8432&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.barnesandnoble.com%252Fw%252F%253Fean%253D9781935707707http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=PJTlq5NYqfE&subid=&offerid=239662.1&type=10&tmpid=8432&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.barnesandnoble.com%252Fw%252F%253Fean%253D9781935707707http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=PJTlq5NYqfE&subid=&offerid=239662.1&type=10&tmpid=8432&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.barnesandnoble.com%252Fw%252F%253Fean%253D9781935707707http://www.facebook.com/gmatclubforumhttp://www.facebook.com/gmatclubforumhttp://www.facebook.com/gmatclubforumhttp://www.facebook.com/gmatclubforumhttp://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=PJTlq5NYqfE&subid=&offerid=239662.1&type=10&tmpid=8432&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.barnesandnoble.com%252Fw%252F%253Fean%253D9781935707707http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=PJTlq5NYqfE&subid=&offerid=239662.1&type=10&tmpid=8432&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.barnesandnoble.com%252Fw%252F%253Fean%253D9780979017582http://www.manhattangmat.com/http://www.manhattangmat.com/http://www.manhattangmat.com/


2/9

first CAT one month before the test day and another one a week after that, but didnt actually start studyingcontent until 20 days before the test.

Journal (CATs have been bolded):29 May MGMAT CAT 1: 740 (Q47, V45); -14 on quant, -9 on verbal. Was quite happy with this, but wasafraid it might have been a fluke. Figured Id take another CAT the week after. In retrospect, this 45V is inflated;youll understand when I talk about the algorithm in MGMATs CATs.6 June MGMAT CAT 2: 730 (Q45, V44); -16 on quant, -8 on verbal. Confirmed baseline wasnt a fluke,used the assessment reports to figure out where I needed to improve, and went away for the weekend.-----9 June This is the day I actually started studying, kind of. I skimmed through the RC guide during the car ridehome. I didnt find it useful. I put it away when I got home and didnt touch it again after that.

10 June Went throughNumber Properties guide. Very good content. Went 51/54 on the problem sets.

11 June MGMAT CAT 3: 750 (Q48Q, V44); -12 on quant, -10 on verbal. Happy to see the quant score goup.

12-14 June Went through Critical Reasoning and Algebra guides. This CR guide was a simplified version ofManhattansLSAT CRguide, good refresher. Again, algebra guide had great content. Went 46/49 on the CR

problem sets and 95/98 on the algebra problem sets.

15 June MGMAT CAT 4: 720 (Q48, V40); -13 on quant, -8 on verbal. I freaked out at this Verbal score,which led me to investigate MGMATs algorithms. Discussed under review of materials.

16-17 June Went through Sentence Correction (Ch 1-10) and Geometry guides. For SC, most of the chapterswere very useful. As a fluent speaker, I found chapters 7 (verb tense) and 9 (idioms) were a bit tootechnical/overwhelming, so I just skimmed these chapters. Went 60/62 on the geometry problem sets.

18 June MGMAT CAT 5: 750 (Q48, V44); -11 on quant, -8 on verbal. I got 12/12 on this IR. I guess thatwas a good, but unnecessary accomplishment.

19 June Finished off SC guide and started Word Problems guide. Went 167/184 on SC problem sets.

20 June MGMAT CAT 6: 780 (Q51, V45); -4 on quant, -6 on verbal. This was an exciting result, but Irealized it needed to be taken with a grain of salt given my understanding of MGMATs algorithms. Again, Idiscuss this in review of materials. Basically, I had exhausted MGMATs question bank of 700-800 level questionsmid-way through this test.

21 June Finished off Word Problems guide and went through FDP guide. Went 57/60 on word problemsproblems sets and 67/68 on FDPs.

22 June skimmed the MGMAT IR and Essay guide. Pretty useless. Did 2 RC passages from the OG andapparently nothing else according to my notes

23 June GMAT Prep CAT 1: 770 (Q50, V44); -7 on quant, -8 on verbal. So I didnt get to review this CATbecause my sister closed the program when I stepped away from the computer. I threw a fit and didnt doanything productive that day.

24-26 June Studying was getting boring. Main focus these few days was on drilling DS and SC questions fromthe OG. Did 100+ DS and 50+ SC questions during this period. I did MGMATs question banks for numberproperties and geometry as those were my weakest sections. I also did the last 10 questions in the OG for PSand CR, but found them too easy (and didnt miss any), so I didnt bother drilling those. In addition, I made sureto do 1-2 RC passages each day. They also seemed easy, but I wanted to make sure I didnt go a day withoutdoing RC this close to the test. I went 50/51 on these passages. On 25 June, I also did a GMAT Prep CAT 1.5.Since I didnt get to review my previous CAT, I decided to do just a timed verbal section to see what kind of SCquestions I was getting wrong. Was annoyed when I got repeat questions from the previous CAT (Im assumingtheres a limited bank of hard questions). Finished the section in under an hour. Got a verbal score of 44, made 6mistakes.

27 June GMAT Prep CAT 2: 760 (Q50, V42); -6 on quant, -6 on verbal. At this point, I was REALLY bored

of studying and just wanted to write the real thing. I rushed through this CAT and finished both sections withwell over 10 minutes to spare. The verbal score was lower than I would have liked, but didnt really bother me atthis point. I did a genuine practice AWA essay (up until this point, Id just been fooling around during the 30
http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=PJTlq5NYqfE&subid=&offerid=239662.1&type=10&tmpid=8432&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.barnesandnoble.com%252Fw%252F%253Fean%253D9781935707653http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=PJTlq5NYqfE&subid=&offerid=239662.1&type=10&tmpid=8432&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.barnesandnoble.com%252Fw%252F%253Fean%253D9781935707653http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=PJTlq5NYqfE&subid=&offerid=239662.1&type=10&tmpid=8432&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.barnesandnoble.com%252Fw%252F%253Fean%253D9781935707653http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=PJTlq5NYqfE&subid=&offerid=239662.1&type=10&tmpid=8432&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.barnesandnoble.com%252Fw%252F%253Fean%253D9780980178258http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=PJTlq5NYqfE&subid=&offerid=239662.1&type=10&tmpid=8432&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.barnesandnoble.com%252Fw%252F%253Fean%253D9780980178258http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=PJTlq5NYqfE&subid=&offerid=239662.1&type=10&tmpid=8432&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.barnesandnoble.com%252Fw%252F%253Fean%253D9780980178258http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=PJTlq5NYqfE&subid=&offerid=239662.1&type=10&tmpid=8432&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.barnesandnoble.com%252Fw%252F%253Fean%253D9780980178258http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=PJTlq5NYqfE&subid=&offerid=239662.1&type=10&tmpid=8432&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.barnesandnoble.com%252Fw%252F%253Fean%253D9781935707653


3/9

AWA minutes). I gave myself 25 minutes and typed it up in notepad so that there was no spell check. I thencopy pasted the essay into MS Word: word count was 618, Flesch-Kincaid level was 14.0, and there were a fewtypos.

28 June Watched A LOT of YouTube. Re-watched the Hangover (first one, of course). Did a couple OGquestions for each section throughout the day to keep the wheels spinning.

4. Test Day: Game Plan and How It Went DownGame Plan Given how my prep had gone, I had a pretty defined game plan for the day. I knew exactly what Iwas going to eat, what songs I would listen to, and exactly what would happen during my breaks. I would set upmy scratchpad during the tutorial at the beginning, and get by the AWA and IR without exerting too much effort.My goal was to make 0 or 1 mistake on PS, RC, and CR, and hope for the best on DS and SC. Was aiming for50+ on quant and 44+ on verbal for a 760+ score.

How It Went Down My test was at noon. I had French toast and peanut butter at 10.30am. Cut up someapple slices and packed Gatorade. Did a couple questions from the OG to warm up. I arrived at the test centre30 minutes early. I had 2 slices of apple, listened to my pre-selected pump up songs, and drank some water. Itwas a busy day for the test centre, so I started about 10 minutes late.

AWA I got a straightforward prompt related to profitability. I threw down my template, picked 3 flaws, and free

wrote for a while until I figured Id passed 600 words. Proofread the essay, and had some time to spare, so I satthere and took a mini-break.

IRmy IR section was very straightforward. Definitely easier than MGMATs and a bit easier that the one thatcomes with GMAT Prep. I managed to solve every question with about 3 minutes to spare, so I took anothermini-break before submitting my last question.

Break 1 ate 2 slices of apple, went to the bathroom, drank 50mL of Gatorade, chilled in the waiting room, andwent back in with 20 seconds left in my break.

Quant the beginning was shaky here. It was taking me longer than it should have to solve the easy PSquestions and DS felt rough. I was 5 minutes ahead of the clock after 10 questions so I took a little breather tocalm myself down. Everything was smooth after that, but I had a weird feeling in the back of my mind Id

screwed myself a bit because I wasnt getting any hard questions. I hypothesized that Id made some dumb DSmistakes in those first 10 questions that dropped my estimate and I was fighting back up for the remainder ofthe test. I finally got some challenging questions for the last 3 questions. I knew I got them all right, so washoping the recovery was enough to get me back up to 50 or 51, though I knew there was a chance I might havelanded in the high 40s. Id say PS went mostly according to plan there was only one problem I couldnt solveand had to guess on. Since I seemed to be climbing up the scale and didnt get hard questions until the end, Ifinished the section with about 5 minutes to spare, so took another mini-break before submitting my lastquestion.

Break 2 ate 2 slices of apple, went to the bathroom, drank 50mL of Gatorade, chilled in the waiting room, andwent back in with 40 seconds left in my break.

Verbal the whole section went very much according to plan. I got 2 long RC passages, so had 14 RC questionsin total. Im fairly certain I got them all right. For CR, there was one question where I was split between two

choices 60/40 and Im fairly certain I got the rest of the questions right. For SC, I was finding the splits well andcatching the tricky pronoun and modifier questions, but there were still a few I was uncertain about. I was doing10 question blocks in 16-18 minutes, took a 1 minute break after question 20 just to calm myself down, andfinished with about 5 minutes to spare.

Score as I was doing the biographical section, I felt good about my verbal performance, and was a bit worriedabout whether I had recovered sufficiently to have a strong quant score. When I went to the score screen, I wasrelieved to see the 50Q and 770 total. Shortly afterward, I felt like I would have gotten a 51Q if I wasnt shaky atthe start, which would have given me 780. That said, the counterargument is that my verbal could have just aseasily been a 44, and there really is no discernible difference above 760. I honestly prefer having scored50Q/45V than a 51Q/44V because I really wanted the 99th percentile in verbal, so Im satisfied with my results.

5. Strategy Advice (AWA, IR, PS, DS, RC, CR, SC, timing, and some

other stuff)AWAits not worth putting much study time into prepping for the essay. I put in 4 hours of prep the 30 mins


4/9

during each of my 8 CATs. Basically what I did for the first few CATs was put together my template, then for thenext few CATs, I practiced free writing my paragraphs. I wrote real essays for my last 2 CATs. When I realized Icouldnt retrieve my essay in GMAT Prep, I wrote my essay in notepad for my final CAT. For my template, I usedthe one posted here: (can't insert URLs), but made the sentence structures more complex and used biggerwords so my intro and conclusion had a Flesch-Kincaid level over 13.5.My strategy was to identify the conclusion of the prompt and pick 3 flaws really quick. Then I would dump mypre-written intro and conclusion while thinking about my body paragraphs. This would take about 5-7 minutes.Then I went and did free-writing for my body paragraphs, which entails me writing the topic sentence of theparagraph and then typing whatever came to mind for 5-6 minutes. So the whole writing process would take~20 minutes and that would put be over 600 words. I purposely used very long modifiers and complex sentencestructures to drive up my word count and Flesch-Kincaid level, as I believe those are the two main drivers of theessay mark.

IR having gone through countless case studies during undergrad, I found IR to be very straightforward. Even ifthats not your background, I think the prep you put in for quant and verbal are sufficient for IR, so there is noneed to prep IR separately. The IR sections you write during practice CATs should be more than enough to getused to the question types. For instance, after doing a couple IR sections, for a table question, youll get a knackfor recognizing immediately which column you need to sort to get the required answer as quickly as possible. Iwould also say dont over-rely on the calculator. For a lot of table and graphics questions, the answer choices areso far apart (ie. 10%, 20%, 40%, 55%, 70%) that theres absolutely no need to use the calculator. Same thing

with finding medians and means of two different data sets. Most of the time, its pretty obvious what the answeris without using the calculator.

PSon quant, this is definitely the place to gain points. I think its very realistic to aim for 100% accuracy forPS. Its a standardized test and every question is written to be solvable within 120 seconds, so the difficulty levelhas a ceiling. Learn the concepts that you need to know (MGMAT is sufficiently comprehensive), develop comfortwith your toolkit, and be confident when you approach problems.

My process: read a question, know exactly what its asking for, go to scratch pad, and solve. Once I had ananswer, I looked for it in the answer choices, double checked that Id solved for the right thing, and moved on. Ifmy answer wasnt once of the answer choices, Id double check that I solved for the right thing and double checkmy calculations. If knew right away what I needed to fix, Id redo the question, but if not, then eliminate answerchoices and go for an educated guess, but hopefully it doesnt get to that.

DSI found this to be tricky. Its important to have a systematic way of approaching these questions theMGMAT AD/BCE method was good, but sometimes its easier to tackle statement (2) before (1), so stay flexible.This is one question type where I think volume helps. The more questions you see, the more quickly youll knowhow to approach any given problem, like whether you should develop the question beforehand and how to pickhypotheticals. The hardest aspect was developing a way to think incredibly abstractly and flexibily so that youpick examples that are representative of a spectrum of cases (if youre familiar with math proofs, think withouta loss of generality). Realized that for DS problems, certain topics are emphasized more than others, such asodd/evens, positive/negative, geometry, inequalities, etc.

RC this is the question type where prep will have the smallest impact. I found the GMAT RC questions to testmore fundamental understanding and not as much inference as the LSAT. For instance, the GMAT has lessemphasis on contrasting views and didnt ask anything ridiculous like if the passage had one paragraph addedto the end, which one of the following would be the first sentence of that paragraph. Given this, I think theimportant thing in RC is to invest the time upfront to UNDERSTAND the passage. Do everything you can to makesure you understand it. You should not skim ever. You should read every single word. Take notes to forceyourself to read actively. If your eyes went over a sentence and you didnt understand 100% what that sentencesaid, re-read it until you understand. If you truly understand a passage, youll answer every question in about 30seconds, so its worth investing the time upfront.

CR read the question stem first and then the prompt. Most important thing is to focus on the conclusion. Afteryou read the prompt, if someone were to turn off your screen and ask you what the conclusion is, you should beable to restate the conclusion immediately. Eliminate wrong answer choices instead of looking for the right oneits must easier to do that at the higher difficulty levels. If the conclusion is clear in your mind, choices with nobearing on the argument are very apparent. Youll likely be left with 2 answer choices. Compare eachindependently with the conclusion, not with each other. After doing that, one of the answer choices will seemvery obviously right.

Many prep books say you should have an idea of what the right answer choice should be before reading theanswer choices. At the higher difficulty levels, I disagree. Yes, this works for 500 and 600 levels questionsbecause its so obvious. Doing so lets you get through early CR question in under a minute. However, having a


5/9

preconceived answer before reading the choices will hurt you with more difficult questions in both accuracy andtime. Since there are so many alternative explanations to an argument, there are too many possibilities for youto get stuck on a certain choice. Furthermore, sometimes reading the answer choices will make you realize thatyoud overlooked an aspect in the prompt because you either missed a word, or you previously thought it wasinconsequential. This is often seen with adjectives like crimes vs serious crimes, and time periods. When aquestion begins by saying in the last x years, that might seem like background info at first, but in fact timecould turn out to be an important aspect of the argument. Hence, you should approach answer choices with anabstract idea of what youre looking for and keeping an open mind. If its a weaken question, think I need tolook for something that might break a premise or assumption instead of something specific like what if not allstudent play guitar? This will help you distinguish poor answer choices from relevant ones.

SC Here, you make a lot of gains initially, but I think it requires quite an investment to master. Kind of like theEnglish languagedead easy to learn, impossible to master. Once youre extremely comfortable with the majortopics (subject-verb, parallelism, pronouns, modifiers), youll have made most of your gains in accuracy. The restof it is nuanced topics like idioms and a lot of subjective rules where youre learning GMAT grammar, and notnecessarily English grammar, so I didnt feel it was worth it to burn time doing that. Even if you had 100%understanding on that, youd probably still be prone to mistakes due to some questions having such poorlywriting sentences that you interpret its meaning differently from the correct answer choice. Hence, I just madesure I was getting most of my RC and CR right, and just hoped for the best with SC.

Timingfor AWA Id say aim to finish the essay under 25 minutes so you can give yourself a mini-break. Most ofus probably type well over 60 wpm anyway, so we can write 500+ words very quickly. For IR, you get anaverage of 2:30 per question. Id say most questions need less than 2 minutes, and theres usually one or twoquestions where you need to spend up to 4 minutes. Always remember that there will be a multi-part question,where timing needs to be treated like RCitll take a while to absorb everything first, but the 2nd and 3rdquestions can probably be answered within a minute. In net, multi-part questions gain you time as youll averageless than 2:30 per question. Hence, you have to keep this in mind when youre checking time. If you get a multi-part at the beginning, you should be ahead of the clock the entire section. If youre a bit behind after question 8,but you still havent done your multi-part question, youll probably be fine.

For quant, remember that your first set of questions is going to be at a difficulty level below your actual ability,so you can gain time here, provided youre maintaining accuracy. I always built up a safety bank of time andalmost never put myself behind the clock. Ifyou do the first 10 questions in 15 minutes, youll have a 5 minute

bank. Knowing this, when you stumble across a challenging problem where you need to spend 3 minutes on it,

you can afford to do so comfortably. Every time this happens, check your time to see how much bank you haveleft. When you feel your bank diminishing, start pushing your pace to build it back up. You should never feel theneed to completely throw a question just to catch up on time. You should have a small bank left as you enterthe last 5 questions (1 or 2 mins), so figure out at that point how much time you can invest for the end.

For verbal, I guess this depends on fluency as that impacts reading speed. I think most fluent speakers donthave too much of an issue with timing. I try to use up the time limits so actually took it a bit slower than I couldhave, and paced around 16-18 minutes per 10 questions. Same thing with quant though, the early questions willgain you time, so you can build a time bank earlier on. This way, if you get a convoluted RC passage or a trickyCR problem where you need to re-read the prompt and sit there and think about it, you know you can afford tospend to the time you need to in order to get the questions right.

Warming up always do warm up questions before a CAT to get the brain clicking. For me this was 3-5 DSquestions before a practice CAT. On test day, I warmed up with 2 PS, 3 DS, 2 CR, and 3 SC. No need forexcessive warm-up, since the IR section is pretty much a warm-up to quant, but still do something.

Scratchpad useknow how youre going to use this guy ahead of time. Practise and refine your setupthroughout your CATs. I set up my scratch pad at the very beginning during the 4 minutes you get to do yourtutorial. My final configuration was as such.Page 1: essay, first few words of every sentence in my intro and conclusion.Page 2: IR, open space.Page 3 7: quant, 8 questions per page for first 4 pages, then last 5 questions on last page. On first 4 pages, Ileft the bottom right empty as extra space as needed.Page 8: verbal. ABCDE writing across the top, and then question number writing down in a column as blocks of10. Right side left empty to take notes for RC.

Attachment:


6/9

File comment: Scratchpad - verbal

V 1.JPG [ 2.44 MiB | Viewed 6664 times ]

6. Efficiency Advice (getting the most out of your prep)Think marginal benefitsThis is where MGMATs assessment reports and keeping an excel spreadsheet paydividends. Decide on some performance metrics. I used accuracy as a proxy for my progress. I know its an

adaptive test, but all else equal, you score higher if you get more questions right. I didnt really see a bettermetric.

Attachment:


7/9

File comment: Accuracy Chart

accuracy chart.PNG [ 21.47 KiB | Viewed 6638 times ]

Study smart and efficiently. Try to gain something out of every hour you invest. Think of your time as a resourceand how you can maximize your marginal gains from each additional hour of study. Apply this concept frommacro to micro. If your splits are 40Q/35V, youll probably have an easier time going to 40Q/40V, as opposed to45Q/35V, so study verbal. If your splits are 45Q/45V, then your gains are going to be made in quant.

Then break the sections down. At the beginning, my PS accuracy was ~70% and DS ~40%. So it was obvious

my DS needed work. In terms of topics, youll see I didnt go through the MGMAT quant guides in order. I didnumber properties first before that was my worst area conceptually. I then did algebra because that was myslowest area.

When I was using the OG, I didnt do PS and CR questions because there was no point. For every PS/CRquestion I did, I could have been doing an extra DS or SC problem, perhaps learning new things, which wouldnthappen from the OG PS and CR problems.

Reviewing CATsYou should review CATs the same day when the exam is still fresh in your mind. Dont onlyreview questions you got wrong. It is just as important to review question you got right. You need to understandwhy you are getting things right so you can replicate that process. You can understand why you got somethingwrong and avoid that mistake, but avoiding one mistake doesnt preclude you from making another type ofmistake. During practice tests, you should be flagging every question you arent 100% sure on, this way youll

review questions you got right through an imperfect process or through guessing. Basically, go through theentire CAT from beginning to end. When you get to a question you got wrong, redo the question first beforechecking what the answer is.

Error logand reviewing older exams? Ehhh. I kept anerror logbecause it seemed like a thing to do, but Iwouldnt do it again. I dont really think theres a point in looking backward too much. Honestly, theres 2reasons you make mistakesyou didnt know the concept so didnt know how to approach it, or you made acareless mistake. Theres no need to overcomplicate this. Theres no point to reviewing RC and CR that you didweeks ago. Those questions are too in-the-moment. Old PS, DS, and SC problems you can probably reviewonce down the road to refresh yourself on some concepts you didnt know before (but surely you know them

now ).

Dont overextendif youre tired, stop studying. Studying with a tired mind is inefficient. Youre slower, yourenot thinking well, and youre not absorbing content at your potential. If youre getting tired, take a break or

resume the next day. In school, I always thought pulling all nighters for academics was dumb. Youre better offjust going to sleep and resuming in the morning. Your mind can probably do more in 1 hour well rested than you
http://gmatclub.com/forum/the-error-log-129501.htmlhttp://gmatclub.com/forum/the-error-log-129501.htmlhttp://gmatclub.com/forum/the-error-log-129501.htmlhttp://gmatclub.com/forum/the-error-log-129501.htmlhttp://gmatclub.com/forum/the-error-log-129501.htmlhttp://gmatclub.com/forum/the-error-log-129501.htmlhttp://gmatclub.com/forum/the-error-log-129501.html


8/9

can try to force it to do in 3 hours when its groggy.

7. Advice on the Finer Nuances (Exercise, Diet, Music, etc)Its important to take care of your body while studying for any standardized test. I ran 6 days a week and aterelatively healthy (I usually eat whatever I want, resulting in a lot of junk). Fatty foods slow down the brain, so Itook a bit of a hiatus from junk foods. I also cut out drinking almost completely during the study period, which

was a drastic change from the final year of university. Since I wanted to prime the brain, healthy foods meant amore protein heavy diet, with a lot of fish.

For test day, Gatorade is often recommended because it helps replenish sugar levels, which is important for thebrain. I also read somewhere that its effect on blood pH also reduces your need to urinate. But Im not a sciencestudent so you should probably do your own research. My other source for energy/sugars during the test was myapple. I think any fruit will do the trick. Again, do you own research on this matter. I think diet is an importantaspect of testing. I honestly never felt that tired during my testing as I was always replenishing my energy.

You also need some hobbies/activities/whatever to moderate your mental mood. I usually study with music inthe background. Whenever I felt frustrated or needed to calm down, I would go for a run or play the piano. Ialso pre-selected my music for test day to pump myself up. I think its important for everyone to figure out whatkinds of activities have what effect on their disposition and use that knowledge to keep your studying on track.

8. Review of MaterialsOfficial Guideuse this as a question bank for drilling. If youre aiming for 730+, the questions here are on theeasy side. That said, the way you compensate for difficulty is accuracy and time. If youre a 48+ on quant, youshould probably be getting 95%+ accuracy, averaging less than 90 seconds per question on the OG PSquestions.

They say questions are listed in order of difficulty, but I had a weird experience with DS. Most questions up to100, I could do in my head and get right. From questions 101 to 141, I got 12 wrong. Then questions 142 to174, I got all right. With RC, I think the OG equates difficult with sciencepassage. I guess since theyretesting for fundamental understanding, science passage might be harder to grasp, but its still silly to put 6sciences passages in a row at the end

Nonetheless, the OG is an extremely valuable tool since theyre official questions. It was particularly useful for

SC, reading the official explanation. For something as controversial as grammar, I would not do any non-OG SCquestions outside of CATs.

MGMAT Guidesand Question BanksMGMATs quant guides are very comprehensive. I dont think I did a singleproblem where the concept needed to solve the problem wasnt covered by Manhattan. SC guide was great, CRguide seems okay, and RC guide was useless (as is any RC guide). The difficulty level of the problem sets is low,but I think straightforward problems are good for solidifying concepts you just read through. Question bankdifficulty is also low, with very few 700-800 level problems. I did the number properties and geometry QBs andstopped after that. Average time for questions was 70-80 seconds.

MGMAT CATsI think everyone knows now that Manhattans quant sections are much more difficult than thereal thing, and this is great. Youve got to do questions that push you beyond the real thing. Its also greatbecause if you manage to control your timing on Manhattans CATs, youll probably be ahead of the clock on thereal thing. For verbal, they had some sketchy/questionable CR and SC questions, but they were rare (one thatpops in mind is they had a sufficient assumption question, which is something you see in the LSATs. But theGMAT only tests necessary assumption, so the question was asking for a necessary assumption, but the creditedanswer choice was a sufficient assumption.) They made their RC longer by making LONG passages. One CATthat I was actually pressed for time at the end, I got 3 RC passages that were each over 70 lines long, andaccompanied by only 3 questions eachyou wouldnt see that in the real test.

My criticism of MGMAT CATs is their algorithm, which wasnt too difficult to figure out. Its based on WHEN youget questions wrong, and not really on question difficulty. Basically, they run a percentile estimate that adjustsas you get questions wrong or right. Then they give the 0-60 score that corresponds to the percentile you endthe test at.

The issue with this is that their CATs overemphasize the last questions of a test. Figuring this out probably hurtme for the real thing as I should have been more careful with the first 10 questions, but never got in that

mindset because the first 10 dont have as profound an impact in a MGMAT CAT. As mentioned earlier, I figuredthis out when I got a 40V on my CAT 4, despite making fewer mistakes than when I got 45V.
http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=PJTlq5NYqfE&subid=&offerid=239662.1&type=10&tmpid=8432&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.barnesandnoble.com%252Fw%252F%253Fean%253D9781935707707http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=PJTlq5NYqfE&subid=&offerid=239662.1&type=10&tmpid=8432&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.barnesandnoble.com%252Fw%252F%253Fean%253D9781935707707http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=PJTlq5NYqfE&subid=&offerid=239662.1&type=10&tmpid=8432&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.barnesandnoble.com%252Fw%252F%253Fean%253D9781935707707


9/9

When I got 45V, I didnt make any mistakes in the last 6 questions, so my percentile estimate stayed at 99%ile.(And this was probably an inflated verbal score). Each time I got 44V, I got either #38 or #39 wrong. I would beholding 99%ile estimate for a string of questions up to that point, the mistake would drop me to 90% or 91%,then getting the last few questions right would push be back up to 97%, and with no questions remaining, thatswhere Id end. When I got the 40V, I had a 99%ile estimate from question 27 to 35, then made 3 mistakes inthe last 6 questions, which left me at 90%ile. I doubled check this methodology with quant, and it was

consistent. When I posted this on their forums, no one from Manhattan replied to my thread .

Finally, the MGMAT question banks are just a bit short of having enough 700-800 level questions. Thishypothesis arose during my CAT 6 my quant section, when I did all 15 of my DS questions within the first half ofthe test. Since I was getting 700-800 level questions since CAT 1, I assumed that by CAT 6, the question bankhad run out of 700-800 level PS problems, so it could only give me DS problems. I checked the difficulty for thequestions for the latter half of my quant section, and they were all 600-700 level questions. Same with verbalas I was doing 700-800 level questions since CAT 1, the latter half of my CAT 6 verbal section were all 600-700level questions. And this is why my accuracy was so high on my CAT 6 and I got 51Q/45V. But since Iunderstood what happened, I knew this was an inflated score.

Nonetheless, these CATs were AWESOME prep and I would strongly recommend these 6 to anyone (and alreadyhave). Im sure its impossible to replicate the true algorithm used by GMAC and every prep companys CATshave their own issues.

GMAT Prep CATs these seem like the most accurate predictor, but have a limited question bank of highdifficulty questions. So if youre a high scorer, you really only get 2 shots at these. If you reset the question bankand do a 3rd exam, youre going to see a lot of repeat questions. If you click end exam whenyoure reviewing,youll lose all your data. Instead, click end review to be able to access the exam again at a later time. Thepractice 90 questions they give with the software are wayyy too easy. I did the DS and SC ones and averageunder 60 seconds per question.

So, thats it! Ive really enjoyed reading the other debriefs, so will probably be trolling these forums for the nextlittle while. Happy to answer any questions anyone has.

770 debrief.docx

Documents