Less than 2 weeks left...need advice

[dacat05]

Dear MGMAT Staff,

I currently have 12 days before I take the test and need your advice on how to best spend the next several days.

Recently, I have started to become a little flustered with my study habits. I do not feel that I am getting the most out of my current study plan and start to panic as the days count down.

Currently I am going through questions I got wrong on the OG or questions spent too much time on (> 2 mins for Quant, > 1.5 mins for SC). I try the problems again and then review in more detail. Unfortunately this is a timing consuming process and it leaves me little time to try new problems in the Verbal (Blue book) and Quant Review (Green book). I also try to go through my old MGMAT CAT exams, but feel like tackling all the problems again isn't as beneficial as I thought it would be.

My goal is to score a 700+ on the GMAT. Below are my most recent MGMAT CAT exams for your reference:

CAT 1: 1/17/2011 - Q44, V36 (660) Note: I did not do the essays, but did for the other practice exams
CAT 2: 2/26/2011 - Q43, V32 (620)
CAT 3: 3/5/2011 - Q43, V33 (630)
CAT 4: 3/13/2011 - Q42, V32 (600) Note: Bad pacing; left last question in each section blank
CAT 5: 3/20/2011 - Q45, V38 (690)
CAT 6: 4/1/2011 - Q47, V39 (700)

I think I'm at the tipping point for reaching my goal (last two CAT exams are 690-700). I just need a little extra push to get over the 700 barrier.

Thanks!
Chris

[StaceyKoprince]

Unfortunately this is a timing consuming process and it leaves me little time to try new problems in the Verbal (Blue book) and Quant Review (Green book).

Strike a balance, but don't think that it's more important to try new problems. Most of your learning comes from the review and analysis that you do after you try problems, so I'd rather see you doing more review than more new stuff (though obviously you want to do new stuff too).

Your last two exam results are promising (and thanks for specifying that you did do the essays - that's important). Use the below article to thoroughly analyze that last exam (and maybe the one before it too). Figure out where you could have made better decisions about where to spend your time, where you made careless errors and how you could avoid making them in future, and so on. Don't worry as much about learning a bunch of new stuff right now. Your scores are in range, but you want to make sure you don't slip, so concentrate instead on really nailing everything that you already do know and not letting timing problems cause you to underperform.

http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/02/ ... sts-part-1

If you'd like, come back here and share your test analysis with us (not just the raw data - tell us what you think it means :) and we'll help you figure out what to do about it.

You may also want to take a look at these two articles about what to do for the last 14 days before the real test, just to give you some ideas about your best focus for the next week or so:

http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/08/ ... -game-plan
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/08/ ... -to-review