InfoPrep Strategies
Welcome to this video in which I’m going to be telling you what to do if you need to retake the GMAT.
OK, so I get it.
You’ve already spent 250 dollars, you’ve spent many months of your preparation and perhaps you have even missed out on your deadlines for some of your dream schools.
And I know that can be a pretty crappy place to be. So in this video, I’m going to be giving you, 5 actionable strategies that have worked in my experience of teaching this GMAT test. So hopefully you are able to apply. And in the end, I also have something special for people watching this video. So make sure that you stay till the end and watch the strategies that I have for you.
So the first thing that you need to realize is that you have perhaps hit a plateau. I’ve seen that students usually get around a Quant 48 or 49 and in the verbal section they will get anywhere between 33 to 35, right. So then they take tests they are getting somewhere in the 650 to 700 range but somehow they are not able to muscle past the 720 /730 barrier. Somehow that 760 seems very elusive, right.
So if you are in such a scenario the first thing you need to realize is that what you did in terms of your preparation so far was you are going through an improvement phase. Now, what happens in an improvement phase. You take up a topic you learn about it you solve a bunch of questions and now voilà you know more about the topic.
And guess what is going to happen now if you solve a question on let’s say a topic like parallelism, you did not know parallelism, now you know parallelism, great, your scores are going to improve. But what you need now is to look at the problem with a fresh pair of eyes. So where you are right now- If you are in the 600 zone is you are actually at an optimization phase and what happens in an optimization phase is you need to look at questions that you have solved and try to look at it from a perspective of learning what is stopping you from getting ahead.
What is it about that question that you did not know. What was right about the wrong answer choice that tempted you. What looked wrong about the obvious right answer choice that is the incremental difference that you are going to get when you solve more and more questions.
Here is the second tip. Please solve only official questions and there is a reason why I am saying this. See you have to understand that the nature of GMAT is such that it’s very precisely calibrated which means if you were to take the GMAT on a Monday and if you were to take the same test on a Wednesday, The difference between your scores will be around plus-minus 30 points right. This is actually the published standard deviation according to GMAC on their website.
Now what it really means is GMAT can produce such accurate results only when they create standardization of these questions which means a particular influence question right has to be of a particular standard. Correct. That’s how I am going to be able to guarantee the sensitivity of this scale that I’m using to measure you. Because of all the questions that you want to see on the GMAT, you have 31 questions in Quant and you have 36 questions and verbal. So its only 67 questions. In fact, only you know no lower than that which is actually used to measure your scores.
So for that reason, if you forget everything else and you remember one tip please make sure you remember this one- solve only official questions. If you have run out of OG, go to verbal review or go to Quant review.
GMAT has also got a new book called advanced questions. My recommendation is to grab a copy of that. And the biggest source you want to have are retired GMAT prep exam packed questions. You’ll find a lot of them on the Internet. We also give it to our students. So in case, you have access to those questions that should be a gold mine for you.
So the third tip is when you’re solving these questions these official questions right. Don’t really worry about what is right or what is wrong. That’s not really the point over here what you are also looking at is when you’re analyzing the question and that’s where you want to be spending a lot of your time. Right.
When you analyze the question, try to figure out one of two things-
A) Try to see a larger pattern, right, for example, if it’s a critical reasoning question you can ask yourself what he’s really doing is he’s giving incomplete information and it’s a strengthened question. So somewhere in the answer options, he’s asking us to complete it. I’ll give an example in C.R. you’ll see a lot of questions that test you on the law of demand and supply. Correct.
So there is some official question that tests the catch of a particular fish that went down but the prices remain the same. Why. Well because the demand fell down. So now you need to look at all other options that are going to go and tell you why the demand fell down.
You won’t believe this particular pattern that I’m telling you is repeated across many official questions to identify that. Second, they also have very strong reasons to eliminate wrong answer options especially answer options that fall into these classic traps. Since we are on the topic of CR out of scope is a classic trap but a lot of times people don’t know how to use it out of scope. So it’s very important that when you’re analyzing you’ve figured out how to build your skills in these two aspects.
B) Eliminating answer options faster. And, what it all amounts to is building a certain sense of anticipation because the person scoring a 760 really has that right. He’s able to figure out what the question is really testing him on correct. So when you start reading a reading comprehension passage you kind of know where the passage is going to lead you to, right.
So it says well that was a conventional theory that believed in something and then the second paragraph starts with the dreaded word however and then it goes on to say something different. If you have a sense of anticipation you kind of know what you might really want to do. What kind of questions is gonna throw at you? And that is how you actually get ahead in this optimization phase. The fourth step is a lot of times when you look at analyzing you probably are headed to a forum like GMAT club or Beat the GMAT or you pick up a book like the official guide and look at the explanation order. So what is going to really help you write in this attempt, is going to be enhancing your self-awareness. Correct.
Asking yourself what does it that this question is really trying to do. How do I approach it?
And all of that happens right here in your head. You can’t externalize the problem. So if you are stuck somewhere trust me the answer is not with any person or with any book or any course. A lot of times, it just means you know you just need to think a little bit more.
Stay with the problem and really try to extract the maximum juice that you can get from that particular question.
And the last tip is if you are self-aware, this one should be easy which is, don’t try to gun for an 800. Okay. Your goal is not to get to 800 on the GMAT. Right. What that means is if you are self-aware, correct, you will realize that I can make a few mistakes, right, and I can still do very very well on the GMAT. For example, if I score a Quant 50 and a verbal 40.
I’m going to get a GMAT score of 740 a score at which possibly no school is going to reject you based on your GMAT scores at least right. So what you need to score a 50 or 40. Correct.
You can make three or four mistakes and in each section and still comfortably get to a 740. The question is-
Which are those you know three or four questions per section?
Who is going to decide for you?
If you are going to guess that control is with you if you are going to spend two and a half minutes unnecessarily on the question and end up marking an answer it’s not called guessing. It’s called giving upright. GMAT has control so it’s important that you take control you guess. I would rather want you to score a 740 consistently rather than take the test.
Change your strategy every time and go for this 800 score so I hope these five steps were useful to you and as promised we have something special which is you know in case you are a read taker, please apply for your ESR, which is the Enhanced Score Report.
And, if you write to us you know I am giving the details below. We will actually schedule a call with one of our experts and we can actually go through your ESR and possibly help you predict what might have happened on the day of the test because really if you have taken the GMAT that’s the only thing that we have as a source of truth right. I hope you like this video. Please like this video in case you found this content valuable. Share it with your friends and any questions about the GMAT, please go ahead and write it in the comments below. Thank you.
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