Mood swings

I've been going through a lot of mood swings these days. Don't know whether its got to do with the GMAT date fast approaching soon and my target score still not reached in those practice tests. Also, work has been hectic of late, with new issues coming up everyday. I had planned to take a few days off before the exam, but another important family event has come up within two weeks of my GMAT date and I would have to take vacation for that. All my leave plans went for a toss! Talk about Murphy's law!

Status on OG-12

I have 80 PS questions and 40 DS questions to be done on OG-12. I'm going to work simultaneously on OG Math Review, because my target is to complete the OG-12 by the end of the week and atleast 150 questions from OG Math review by the end of this week. Next week will be spent of doing the remaining 150 questions from OG Math review and I will be focusing on the error logs and verbal. I've been ignoring verbal for a long time now.

Beat the GMAT Practice Questions

Beat the GMAT practice questions were my first exposure to timing on the GMAT. I was leisurely browsing the BTG forum when I came across the link and decided to sign up for the BTG practice questions. I got the shock of my life when I found that I was getting only 2 DS and 5 PS questions right out of 20 questions. I tried SC, CR and RC and fared a little better.

BTG questions are not something you can blindly work on. After you get a good grasp on your study topics, these are the questions to attack. They are mostly moderate to difficult questions, so if you are looking for practice in this range, check them out.

So, there's so much material on GMAT, with so many forums, so why BTG practice questions? Quality questions in a timed enviroment with a record of how you're faring. The best thing is that the questions you've worked on, are not repeated. There are text and video explanations to all questions, which can help you improve your strategy to approaching a problem.

Also, BTG practice questions has a good review option. You can filter by section, subject or question number and check out your performance over a day, a week, two weeks or see how you've fared on all questions.

To check it out, click here!

Progress in day 16 - OG Set 8

PS - 9/15 - 60% mistakes: 121, 123, 124, 129, 130, 133

DS - 6/15 - 40% - mistakes: 121, 122, 123, 124, 128, 129, 132, 133, 135

Knewton CAT 2 - 670 (42Q, 41V)

Quant still needs a LOT of work! Took this test right after giving the GMAT Prep, since I wanted to check where I stand on a fresh test.

GMAT Prep I - 740 (46Q, 46V)

This score must be skewed, since I'm taking this for the 3rd time.

OG-12 - 240 questions later

I've completed 240 questions on PS and DS from the OG-12. So far, I've made 26 mistakes on PS and 38 mistakes on DS. My percentages:

PS: 94/120 - 76%

DS: 82/120 - 68%

Progress in days 21, 20 and 19 - OG Sets 5, 6 & 7

Day 21

PS - 12/15 - 80% mistakes: 81, 82, 83

DS - 8/15 - 53% - mistakes: 76, 83, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90

Day 20

PS - 12/15 - 80% mistakes: 97, 98, 102

DS - 10/15 - 66% - mistakes: 94, 97, 98, 101, 105

Day 19

PS - 12/15 - 80% mistakes:106, 113, 116

DS - 9/15 - 60% - mistakes: 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 120

Knewton CAT 1 - 640 (38Q, 42V)

I took the Knewton CAT 1 today. 640 is an improvment over the 590 a few weeks back. On reviewing, I saw that I had made a lot of silly mistakes and also there were a few problems for which the approach was wrong. I made 7 mistakes in DS and 5 mistakes in PS. On two questions, I didn't even read the question properly and made mistakes in DS. Should be careful next time. Verbal was a breeze, in contrast with the passages of Kaplan. On the whole, Knewton was not a stressful experience. As I mentioned earlier, I'm not reviewing the verbal mistakes, but focusing only on quant.

Kaplan CAT 1 - 570 (36Q, 32V)

I took the first Kaplan CAT from the CD. Did a really bad job on verbal, since I took it too lightly and only later did I realize that I hadn't being paying attention to timing. Had to guess on a whole RC passage and 2 other questions.

Progress in days 25 and 24 - OG Set 4

Did 60 problems in two days. Scores dropping. Must be because I'm working on 600-700 range problems now.  My scores for OG-12 set 4:

PS - 20/30 - 66% mistakes: 48, 49, 50, 56, 60, 63, 66, 67, 69, 73

DS- 20/30 - 66% - mistakes: 48, 49, 56, 61, 62, 64, 65, 70, 72, 73

Progress in days 27 and 26 - OG Set 3

Could only complete the 50 problems in two days. Still in the red zone. Would really like to get over 85% in both, to consider myself in the safe zone.  My scores for OG-12 set 3:

PS - 20/25 - mistakes: 27, 28, 38, 39, 41 - 80%

DS- 20/25 - mistakes: 24, 27, 32, 37, 41 - 80%

Progress in day 28 - OG Set 2

PS - 10/10 - 100%

DS -  7/10 - mistakes: 11, 14, 18 - 70%

CR - 10/10 - 100%
SC - 9/10 - mistakes: 14 - 90%

RC - 14/14 - 100%

Change in Strategy - Over to Quant

I was thinking about my GMAT performance and the fact that I hadn't taken a single practice test the whole of last week, when I realized that I haven't being paying attention to the area I was weak in: Quant. I like verbal, especially SC and CR and I keep working on them when I have free time. This isn't going to get me anywhere. When I see people with 47Q thinking about a re-take since their quant score isn't above 80%, where would I be, with a quant score in the higher 30s or lower 40s? So I will work on 25 PS and 25 DS on the OG-12 and then, only after I've covered the entire quant sections in the OG-12 and the entire OG Math Review, will I go back to verbal. Right now, I'm not worried about my timing on verbal. I manage to complete the verbal section with about 30 minutes to go. Though I'm not as accurate as I would like to be, I can live with it for now. Here is my percentage in the Manhattan GMAT CAT 1 and 2 that inspired this decision.

MGMAT - CAT 1

MGMAT - Free CAT

Kaplan Section Tests

I have the following section tests to be done:

SC - 1 test
CR - 2 tests
RC - 2 tests
PS - 5 tests
DS - 3 tests

Kaplan Section Tests - Set 2

Started off with the Kaplan Section Test 2 on SC. What's with me? Not getting the level of perfection yet. Of course, Kaplan gave me a tip on where I was making those mistakes.All the in same area! Ugh! Also, another nice feature about the Kaplan tests is that it also gives you an indication of whether you did a switch of the answers, and the answer choice that you switched from. I think that's cool because I can go back and review the questions on which I had to choose between two answer choices (which must have both sounded right).

SC - 19/22 - 86%

Kaplan Section Tests - Set I

Took four section tests from the Kaplan CD and here are the results:

SC: 19/22 – 86%

CR: 14/16 – 87%

RC: 13/18 – 72%

PS: 14/16 – 87%

Progress in Day 29 - OG-12 Set 1

Wow! I've wasted 3 days. 32, 31 and 30. Guests at home. Reminds me of the quote "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans". Anyways, I did the first 50 questions on OG-12, 10 from each section. These were so much easier when compared to the diagnostic, since they were from the easy bin.

PS - 8/10 - mistakes: 8, 9 - 80%

DS -  8/10 - mistakes: 1, 3 - 80%

CR - 10/10 - 100%
SC - 9/10 - mistakes: 4 - 90%

RC - 10/11 - mistakes: 5 - 90%

OG Diagnostic Percentages

Problem Solving - 14/24 - 58%

Data Sufficiency - 13/24 - 54%

Critical Reasoning - 8/17 - 47%

Sentence Correction - 13/18 - 72%

Reading Comprehension - 13/17 - 76%

Progress in day 33

Completed the remaining Diagnostic problems on the OG-12.

PS: 14 Qns: mistakes - D11, D12, D13, D14, D19, D20, D21, D24

DS: 14 Qns: mistakes - D36, D38, D41, D43, D44, D45, D47

RC: 6 Qns: mistakes - D14

CR: 6 Qns: mistakes - D29, D30, D31, D32, D34

SC: 7 Qns: mistakes - D46, D49, D50

Progress in day 34

Couldn't do anything on day 35. Had a ton of office work and was dead tired by the end of the day.

Yesterday, I worked on 53 Diagnostic problems on the OG-12. This is time consuming. However, these results indicate that I need more work on DS and CR. MGMAT and OG results are quite consistent.

PS: 10 Qns: mistakes - D4, D10

DS: 10 Qns: mistakes - D26, D29, D31, D34

RC: 11 Qns: mistakes - D6, D9, D10

CR: 11 Qns: mistakes - D22, D24, D25, D26

SC: 11 Qns: mistakes - D39

Mistake Level - MGMAT Free Test and CAT 1

Though the count of the mistakes in both tests is fairly the same, in the MGMAT CAT 1, I noticed that I'm making more mistakes in the 700-800 range, except for DS and CR where I'm still making mistakes in the 600-700 range. This is one of the best features of the MGMAT tests, where they give a detailed analysis in the score report, so you know exactly where you stand.

	MGMAT Free Test	MGMAT CAT1
Quant
PS: Mistakes in 300-500       PS: Mistakes in 500-600:	0/2 - 0% 1/6 - 16%	- 0/2 - 0 %
PS: Mistakes in 600-700:	5/12- 41%	3/9 - 33%
PS: Mistakes in 700-800:	2/2 - 100%	8/11 - 72%
DS: Mistakes in 500-600:	2/5 - 40%	1/1 - 100%
DS: Mistakes in 600-700:	7/8 - 87%	4/6 - 66%
DS: Mistakes in 700-800:	2/2 - 100%	5/8 - 62%
Verbal
SC: Mistakes in 500-600:	-	0/4 - 0%
SC: Mistakes in 600-700:	3/9 - 33%	0/3 - 0%
SC: Mistakes in 700-800:	2/6 - 33%	4/8 - 50%
CR: Mistakes in 300-500:  CR: Mistakes in 500-600:	- 1/3 - 33%	0/1 - 0% 0/1 - 0%
CR: Mistakes in 600-700:	2/5 - 40%	4/5 - 80%
CR: Mistakes in 700-800:	3/6 - 50%	2/7 - 28%
RC: Mistakes in 300-500:	2/4 - 50%	0/2 - 0%
RC: Mistakes in 600-700:	1/2 - 50%	2/6 - 33%
RC: Mistakes in 700-800:	5/6 - 83%	3/4 - 75%

GMAT Study Update

I'm done with Kaplan Verbal Workbook and I'm in the last chapter of Kaplan Math Workbook. In the Kaplan Premier and Kaplan 800 books, I have the word translations and data sufficiency chapters. Doing those at a time is too disheartening for me. I try not to get upset when I get questions in a row wrong, even while practicing, but this is pretty much what happens when I do Data Sufficiency and Word Translations. I will probably do a few problems a day from both the chapters and cover those chapters during the month.

So after working on the final chapter in the Kaplan Math Workbook, I'm going to start with OG-12 tomorrow. There are roughly 1500 problems (Quant and Verbal) in the OG-12, OG Math Workbook and OG Verbal Workbook. This is going to be my to-do list for the month.

1. OG - 10 PS, 10 DS, 10 SC, 10 CR and 10 RC

2. Grockit - 20 Quant, 20 Verbal

3. Knewton - 45 mins class

4. Manhattan GMAT - Revision. One book per week

5. Kaplan - Few problems from remaining chapters

6. One section test

7. Blog progress daily

Manhattan GMAT CAT I - 650 (41Q, 38V)