Manhattan GMAT Number Properties - Score

Score of the OG-12 and OG - Quant Review problems in the Manhattan Number Properties Guide.

Problem Solving - 50/67 - 17 wrong - 74%
Data Sufficiency - 37/54 - 17 wrong - 68%
Total - 87/121 - 34 wrong - 71%

Progress in week 12

I had a few hospital visits to make over the weekend for my family and was only able to complete the OG problems related to Number Properties listed in the Manhattan GMAT Number Properties guide. I'm happy to say that I'm done with Manhattan Number Properties (the whole of it, not one single problem left out)! I postponed the practice test yet again. Will take it end of June, when I'm done with the revision of the Manhattan GMAT guides. I'm working with Fractions, Decimals and Percentages (Book 2) of the Manhattan guides.

Kaplan Premier Program - RC

I got the worst score in RC today. 32/50. 64%??!!!  Well, what can I say? Serves me right for not paying enough attention to RC.

MGMAT - Number Properties

I worked on all the chapters in Manhattan GMAT Number Properties except for the chapters that reference to Official Guide questions. I'm going to start with that now. I came across something I didn't know. If you do all the Manhattan Guide questions that reference to OG, Manhattan GMAT says that you will end up doing all the questions in the OG. That would be one way of identifying the areas that need work.

I have a very short attention span, and I find that too much of anything makes me yawn. I've decided to make a small change in my plans and work on quant in the morning (when I'm alert and wide awake) and verbal in the evenings (when I'm tired and half asleep). Also, I mustn't do reading comprehension just before bed. It would be a good idea to start with Reading Comprehension in the evenings, I find it so hard to concentrate on the long and dull passages. CR and SC are better, because they are short passages/lines and make for easy reading. So my suggestion, from my experience, is start with RC, continue with CR and end with SC.

Kaplan Premier Program - CR and SC done

I'm through with SC and CR on Kaplan Premier Program. I scored 42/50 in SC, the same as I had on CR. I went through the answer choices (ALL the answer choices and why each choice other than the correct one was wrong). Honestly, I didn't like this at all. I mean, if I got it right, what's the point? Anyways, I trusted the better judgement of Kaplan, which insisted that all the choices should be evaluated (who knows if you got it right by fluke?) and went on with it. I figure that it might not have been such a boring task if I had reviewed the answers in batches of 10. I'll do it this way for RC.

Started with Kaplan Premier Program

As I mentioned earlier, Manhattan GMAT books are compact. Not that the material is trivial, but I find them quite handy to carry around unlike the OG-12 or the Kaplan Premier Program book. My plan is to work on the Manhattan GMAT books in the mornings and work on the Kaplan followed by the OG books in the evenings. I started with Kaplan and went all the way upto critical reasoning. Now, I'm working on the sentence correction section. I did the 50 problems in the CR section, scoring 42/50. 8 wrong. Then I gave those 8 another shot. I went wrong in 4 of the 8, which means these were not careless mistakes, but concept errors. Need to review the errors and move on to another 50 in SC and the RC passages.

I know I've been putting off taking the practice tests and the waiting could last forever, if I wanted to prepare myself fully before I take the test, but I've decided that I would be taking it on 11th June, 2010 (coming Friday), and face the music.

The weekend is almost over and the climate is awesome in Chennai(a rarity), but I'm stuck with reviewing the errors in CR and going through all the CR questions and the answers again. Can anyone think of a worse way to spend the weekend? I'm waiting to get the GMAT over with so that I can get on with life and go for swimming, learn Spanish and Italian, work on my French, do yoga without cribbing about how much time it takes, sign up for treks, take up volunteering, cook better food instead of watching the clock and travel lots!

Progress in week 13

Working on Manhattan GMAT Number Properties. Done with the first 5 chapters  in this book. Also, I got two notebooks, to take down important notes from the Manhattan GMAT books. People, it's not interesting to take down notes after you are done with all the chapters. I should have taken down notes as and when I completed the chapters, instead of waiting all the way till the end. My goal for the weekend is to complete the Number Properties book. I've already gone through all the Manhattan GMAT books till the advanced sections. So this should not be too difficult.

Progress in week 14

I managed to go through the inequalities chapter in Manhattan GMAT as Anagha suggested and completed it. It always bothers me when I leave stuff unfinished. There's a nagging feeling in my mind. I'm revising the Manhattan GMAT guides now. The thing I liked about these guides is that, it is easy to go through one chapter at a time in small time slices, say half an hour. So I find it worth doing just before I start for work or during lunch or when I'm really tired, but want to study something that's not too loaded with information. My strategy is to do the revision of the MGMAT guides in the mornings and work on OG in the evenings. When I read the experiences of so many others who have given the GMAT, the two takeaways were

1. Study the MGMAT guides thoroughly (at least thrice).
   
2. Start with the OG after this and do the problems in the OG (at least thrice)
   

There are people who have done the revision of the Manhattan GMAT guides and OG for 7 or 8 times. With only 90 days to go, I don't have that kind of time and I believe that the above strategy is good enough.

Inequalities – Help!

Yesterday, I was going through the chapter on inequalities, to refresh my memory and it turns out that I promptly fell asleep! Without having read a full page. So people, if anyone out there is reading this, please suggest some interesting material to master this one.

Progress in week 15

I managed to accomplish very little this weekend. Completed the SC, CR, RC and AWA on Princeton Review and moved on to the warm up test. This has 20 questions in Maths and 20 questions in verbal and each section has to be completed within 30 minutes. I scored only 10/20 in Maths and 15/20 in verbal. On reviewing the Maths again, found that 5 out the 10 wrong were careless errors. What was I thinking? On the other hand, verbal was quite accurate. When I repeated the questions I got wrong, I found that I got them wrong again, which indicates concept error. Atleast, here's something I can work on.

Progress in week 16

I completed the Kaplan Math Foundations book this week. Working on Princeton Review, Cracking the GMAT. Completed the first 12 chapters in Princeton Review. It's light and fun reading, exactly the kind of book that would give you a feel for what the test is about. Since I'm done with the Maths part in the Princeton Review book, I'm going in for verbal now. I've heard good reviews about the verbal strategies in this book, so it should be easy to get the verbal part done.

Done with Geometry

Finally! I've covered Geometry and Co-ordinate Geometry and am working on Algebra now. This is something that I'm good at, so expecting to complete the two chapters in a day. Then, I will have to write down all the formulas for the chapters covered so far, and revise the chapters again, so that I get a decent score on my first practice test. 

The thing about practice tests, or any tests for that matter is that I get quite depressed when I score badly. So I keep putting off taking the test infinitely. One of the reasons I started blogging is to give myself a slight nudge in the direction of these tests.

Stumbling on Happiness

Happiness! That one feeling towards which all our actions are directed...Dan Gilbert, ceaselessly entertaining, explains in his book, why we could be sadly mistaken in our predictions of our happiness. Imagine that! You might be dead wrong in what you think could make you happy. On the brighter side, what you think could break you, might not be so bad after all :-)

Progress in week 17

Last week, I started with Geometry and as I followed my study guide, I was swamped with all the formulas from Geometry and decided to work on a book that would explain things better. I am almost done with Geometry chapter on the Kaplan Math Foundation book now and find that I'm actually enjoying it! However, because of this, the rest of my study plan has taken a hit. There's no point in rushing if things are not clear. I'm doing Co-ordinate Geometry from the same book and a few chapters in Algebra are remaining.