Okay, so now - what to do?
Note: Your study plan changes over time as you improve. You may want to read this article in order to help you figure out how to adjust as your skills change:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/02/09/developing-a-study-planWe need to fix the timing problem in quant. First, if you don't already, you need to make sure you know your timing benchmarks and you're checking yourself periodically while taking the test. Here are the benchmarks for quant:
Q10: 55 min left
Q20: 35 min left
Q30: 15 min left
Also, here are the general timing guidelines by question type (for all questions):
Quant - about 2m; max of 2.5m
SC - about 60-75 sec; max of 90 sec
CR - about 2m; max of 2.5m
RC - about 2.5m (short) to 3.5m (long) to read; about 1 min for general purpose questions; about 1.5 to 2 for everything else
Next, you need to develop the ability to cut yourself off when necessary and, for that, you need to learn about how long one minute is without looking at a watch or stopwatch. If you don't have one already, buy yourself a stopwatch with lap timing capability. (The one you got during the course, does have lap timing - do you still have that stopwatch?) When you go to do a set of problems, start the stopwatch but turn it over so you can't see the time. Every time you think one minute has gone by, push the lap button. When you're done, see how good you were - and whether you tend to over or underestimate. Get yourself to the point where you're within 15 seconds either way on a regular basis (that is, you can generally predict between 45 sec and 1min 15 sec). Note: at the same time that you are using the stopwatch to time this "1-minute" thing, also use the OG Stopwatch (in your student center) to track the total time spent on each question.
Now, how do you use that when doing problems? If you're not on track by one minute*, make an educated guess and move on. (The general idea is that if you're not on track by the halfway mark, you're unlikely to figure out what's holding you back AND have time to do the whole problem in the 1 min you have left.)
* For SC, 1min is well beyond the half-way mark (we're supposed to average about 1m15s here), but you can almost always eliminate at least some choices on SC in that timeframe. Once you've got that "I'm around the 1min mark and I'm struggling" feeling, go through any remaining choices ONCE more. Pick one. Move on.
Also, because you tend to go too quickly on DS as a result of spending more time on PS, I've got another rule for you: if you finish a problem (especially DS!) in less than 1 minute, do the problem again. The whole thing. Right from the beginning. In general, check your work on DS. Make sure you're writing everything down. These things will all help you slow down, work more methodically, catch your mistakes, and just generally improve your performance on DS.
You can do the above exercise with any number of problems - a set of 1, 5, 10, however many. Start with smaller sets and work your way up.
It typically takes people at least 4 weeks and often 6 weeks or longer to get good at this, so that's part of your answer for how long you might need to re-take the test. The overall rule is, simply, that you don't want to take the test again until you can take an MGMAT or GMATPrep practice test under full official conditions and score at or above your target score.
When finished with a test or problem set, classify the "too long" questions into two categories:
(1) questions I really can learn to answer correctly in a MAX of 2.5m
(2) questions that I'm unlikely to answer correctly in a MAX of 2.5m
For the 1st category, make yourself actually write out how you can solve correctly in that timeframe. Do whatever needs to be done (re-reading a strategy guide, memorizing a formula or rule, doing extra practice problems) to get better and faster at whatever that is.
For the 2nd category, figure out when you should have pulled the plug and why (somewhere around the 1 min mark, but what was / should be the actual "ah ha!" clue for you that told / should tell you, "this one isn't going to work for me"). Then, brainstorm how to make educated guesses on problems of this type. Reinforce by practicing how to make educated guesses on other problems of the same type in future.
Note: there should be a lot of questions in category 2; in fact, of the "way too long" questions, chances are more of them will fall into category 2 than category 1. Most of the time, the mistake is in not giving up when you should.
In terms of content, start with buckets 3 and 4. For bucket 5, for now, just be quicker to cut these off and make an educated guess. Over time, you can work these in (though note: of those in bucket 5, Algebraic Translations is the most important category - the others aren't as frequently tested on the real exam).
On verbal, I'm not worried about the timing for now - we'll just keep an eye on it, but it's fine for now. I'm most worried about SC. I spoke too soon in my last message when I said I agreed with your buckets - your SC buckets don't show your weaker areas. For instance, modifiers and verbs were both at 0% correct in the expected timeframe, but they're not showing up in bucket 2.
Because we tend to have only 1 or 2 questions in each category on a single test, you may want to run this report while including your last 2 tests so that we can see a bit more detail. For instance, on parallelism, you have 1 right and 1 wrong. If we combine that from your 2nd-to-last test, is it still at 50/50? Does it go up or down? Let's dig in a little deeper here, because we do know that SC is your weakest verbal area.
Also, let's talk about process for SC. This is the general process:
Read the original sentence all the way through.
If you happen to spot anything problematic, examine. If it's an error, cross off A. Then scan the other choices vertically, at the same point as that error you found (do NOT read the whole answer choice), and cross off any others that repeat the same error.
Repeat the above until you've dealt with everything you happened to see on your first read-through of the original sentence (note: sometimes you won't see anything on the first read-through!).
Then, do a vertical scan of the first word of each choice. If you can identify the potential error based on the differences you see, deal with it. If not, do a vertical scan of the last word of each choice - same thing. After that, do a vertical scan starting at the beginning of each choice.
If you notice a difference when scanning but you don't know what error that difference might signify, keep going - look for a different split.
If you've dealt with everything you know how to deal with and you still have more than one choice left, pick something and move on. Don't agonize over it - just pick and go.
Is that what you're doing? Or are you falling short anywhere?
If I were to show you a particular difference in answer choices but NOT show you the full problem (or even the full answer choices), would you be able to tell me which rule is probably being tested? You can probably do this for some things right now (eg, "has" and "have" would be a pretty straightforward split), but you can also probably get better at this. The splits, or differences in the choices, are the major clues that (should immediately) tell us what rules we need to think about / apply for that choice. That will help with both your speed and your accuracy.
Take a file or notebook and make two columns. On the left-hand side, write down the name of a particular grammar error (eg, subj-verb agreement). On the right-hand side, write down what the splits tend to look like for that type of error (eg, nouns that sometimes include "s" and sometimes don't; verbs that sometimes include "s" and sometimes don't).
When you get bored with studying SC, switch over to CR Weaken for a while. Review the CR Weaken lesson in general and also spend some time studying wrong answer types.
Answer these questions:
- why was the wrong answer so tempting? why did it look like it might be right? (be as explicit as possible)
- why was it actually wrong? what specific words indicate that it is wrong and how did I overlook those clues the first time?
- 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?
- why was it actually right?
So, start with the above, and continue to check back in here. Post your progress and ask additional questions as you go along! (And, of course, let me know if you have any questions about the above.)
