Hello Stacey,

I was wondering what your thoughts are about my strategy for preparing to retake the GMAT. I took the MGMAT 9-session course recently, and I completed all of the coursework. I did not score well on the actual test, but I believe that, at this point, content is not really an issue for me. I do believe, though, that I lacked stamina going into the test.

While following the course syllabus, I did the OG problems listed at the end of each Strategy Guide. But, my approach was:

1) Do a question within 2 min (or 1 min for SC questions),
2) Flip to the answer explanation and check my answer / read the OG explanations.

So I was doing a question and checking a question - until I finished up the entire OG guide. I never actually trained myself to do sets of questions. This kind of "flashcard approach" help me to internalize the concepts really well, but it did not put me through test-like conditions. During the actual exam, I was so mentally exhausted by the time I got to question #20 for each section.

So, this time around, I am redoing the OG 11th guide, but I am doing sets of 20 questions in 40 minutes. So far my accuracy rate has been around 90%, but I expect that rate to drop a bit as I get towards the end of each section and attempt the hardest questions. Does this sound okay to you? I think my main issue is stamina, not GMAT content. Please let me know if there is something wrong with my approach.


Thanks.

That sounds like a great plan - and I'm glad you're thoughtful enough to think about what went wrong the first time around and to change things up this time.

I would mix up the sets a bit more though - don't just do questions 1-20 in 40 minutes. Instead do questions 1-5, 51-55, 101-105, 151-155. Get the idea? Do a mix of difficulty levels in each set, because that's what the real test is going to be like. (If you're going for a 700+, then drop the first 25-50 questions entirely from your to do list.)

Also, mix up the question types. Get half your questions from DS and half from PS. Or 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 for verbal.

Also, have you contacted the office to schedule a Post Exam Assessment? After taking the official test, alumni can sign up for a free debrief to figure out how to prepare for the next attempt (assuming they want to take it again!). If not, send an email to studentservices@manhattangmat.com right away. You'll have to fill out a form and it can take a few days to get you scheduled.

Keep us up to date here, too, and feel free to bounce your study ideas off of us! Good luck!

so Weird. I was just going to ask a similar Q the OP asked. I did only the OG during class for assigned HW's. I intentionally left out the V Review and Q review books. Now I was going to do in sets of 10/15 RC/SC/CR each. Stamina is really really important and Stacey your idea of mix & match SC/RC/CR sounds great. I will start from first Q in CR, last Q in SC and mid to first and mid to last in RC with a set of total 15 Q's. Not only stamina, the ability to switch from SC to RC to CR with a high accuracy of correctness is key and not getting strained. Also, the V section is the last on the test and by that time, the test sucks a lot of juice out of us.

FYI - RC is the one section that is not in order of difficulty. The questions there are just grouped by passage, with a mix of questions from easy to hard for each passage. So you can just select the RC passages in order.

I also met with a GMAT tutor (not affiliated w/ MGMAT), who told me:

"While you're taking the test, pretend you have 5 get-out-of-jail-free cards to use per section."

His point was to give myself 10 extra minutes per section (from guessing on 5 questions) and feel much more relaxed during the entire exam. I feel like that could help a great deal, but it can also give one a false sense of security. How do you feel about that mindset, Stacey? I agree that it may be pretty self-defeating when one goes into the exam stressing out big-time over the timing per question.

Thanks.

Stacey, Are you sure the RC passages are in order of difficulty in the book? I assumed harder to understand passages are toward the end, but they could have easy questions associated with them as well.

MGMAT Alumni - I actually tell my students almost the same thing. The idea is that you're going to have to guess on something like 5-7 questions per section because, no matter how good you get, the test is going to give you some questions that are just way too hard for you.

Now, that doesn't actually give you 10 extra minutes. First, it takes time to figure out that this is one you just can't do. Second, I don't want you to literally just pick something and keep going - I want you to take some time to cross off wrong answers before you pick (otherwise known as making an educated guess). I absolutely do NOT want you to go over the normal time allocated to that question, however - and, if you can, maybe even shave off 15 or 30 seconds.

Jimmy - you asked if I was sure that they ARE in order of difficulty - I think you forgot the NOT there? The passages themselves are actually not rated. A passage can (and does) have a whole range of questions, from easy to difficult. You'll get the questions most closely associated with your scoring.

Good point - thanks a lot for the advice, Stacey. Btw, since I've been doing longer sets of questions with the OG, 20-25 at a time, I've realized that the questions actually get pretty difficult. It's very different from doing one question at a time and reviewing the answer before moving on to the next question. I would encourage MGMAT to emphasize that going forward in the 9-session classes. I always felt like I could nail the most difficult questions in the OG during my previous round of prep work - now I have a new level of respect for the true difficulty level of a lot of the OG questions. I have some work to do on this...

Thanks again.

Good points all around. In the course, we do recommend doing "chunks" of 6 - 8 questions, one after the other without stopping to review between questions. After the set is done, then you can review the problems thoroughly. Stamina is a key component to success on the exam, and this is one way to build it. Also, in the two weeks leading up to the official exam, we recommend doing "mini-GMATs" not unlike how Stacey described in an earlier post in this thread.

It's good to hear the feedback that we should emphasize this more. Thanks and good luck with your studying!

Rey