Quant

[JoshB60]

Hi - I took the GMAT when I was 22 and got a 660. I've always been great with math and struggled with reading. 7 years later I am taking GMAT again. I am 3 days into my journey. My quant was awful on the diagnostic exam -- 4th percentile. I got perfect math score on SAT and nearly perfect on GMAT years ago. I obviously have forgotten how to do the algebra/basics.

Here is my issue:

I am going through the Manhattan layout and I am spending time daily on learning basic math. However, I feel like even a few hours a day and I have a long way to go. Will I be ready in 12 weeks?
I feel as if I am learning these basics and doing the basic book problems but not doing enough real problems. My plan is to just start doing more quant problems from the question bank, although the course does not seem to directly recommend that.

Any tips?

Thanks,
Josh


Edit: When I took the math diagnostic 16 questions quiz at the very beginning of the course, I only missed one or two items. Yet the next day on the GMAT Practice Test 1 I totally failed the quant. Confusing!

[StaceyKoprince]

Welcome to the forums! (Sorry for the delay in reply—I was on vacation last week.)

First, did you finish all of the problems in the section or did you run out of time and leave any blank? There's a huge penalty for not finishing.

Second, even if you did submit an answer for all of the problems, were you rushing? If so, how many problems did that cost you in the end...like 1-2? Or like 4+? That would also have a significant downward effect on your score.

If either of those things happened, then at least part of the problem is likely time management / decision-making (ie, your math skills themselves may not be as remedial as it might feel like based on your score).

Third, even if the timing stuff wasn't an issue, what you're describing is actually pretty common—basically because the GMAT is a "quantitative reasoning" test rather than a math test. You do, of course, need to brush up on your math knowledge and skills, but a quant reasoning approach is also going to help make this smoother.

Let's start with the difference between a quant reasoning test and a math test. A textbook-like math test is more about "brute force"—basically, memorizing a bunch of mechanical steps and then applying them when needed. Most GMAT math problems can be solved this way, but this approach is usually going to take more time and mental effort and also be more open to careless mistakes, due to the way that the problems are constructed.

A quant reasoning test is really testing: Do you understand the theory? Can you think logically about what happens when you apply that theory to a specific scenario? If you can, then you often don't need to do some or even most of the actual tedious calculations. (And this kind of quantitative reasoning is a lot more like what we all do at work and what you do in b-school than what a "textbook math" exam tests.)

When your goal is to integrate all of this theory so that you can really think through the logic of what's going on, it takes longer to start feeling good about what you're studying because it's not just about learning one mechanical skill after another. You have to learn enough to really understand how the bigger picture works. (And you said you're only 3 days in...so give yourself some time!)

What program are you using—on demand? live course? Something else? (Basically, tell me what resources you have access to for your studies.)

I do recommend working at least some on the Foundations of Math (FoM) book—not doing the whole thing, since you only missed a couple, but look through that book for different / non-textbook solution strategies and start learning those, always with the mantra of "What's the least amount of (mental) resources I can expend for a "that's good enough!" return?"

For instance, if you need to calculate 92 / 7, textbook math would point you to long division. But you never have to do long division in b-school or at work because you always have access to Excel. And the test really doesn't care whether you can figure out that 92/7 = 13.14285... (I used Excel to calculate that. )

Rather, the problem is going to be set up in some way that allows you to reason it out. On this one, the answer choices are just going to make you get close, not exact. So what are the two multiples of 7 on either side of 92? 70...77...84...91...98. So the answer is a little bit more than 91/7, which is... count up the multiples: 70 = 10 * 7, 71 = 11... 72 = 12...73 = 13... so 91/7 is a little more than 13. On the GMAT, that's going to be good enough to carry you through the rest of the problem.

FoM will introduce you to those kinds of ways of seeing problems—back of the envelope, logic it out, etc. So I'd skim through each chapter and stop whenever you see something that seems interesting / different than the way you're used to approaching that kind of math.

And as you're continuing on in All the Quant + DI, same thing. Be aggressive about looking for the minimum, quickest, dirtiest path to A, B, C, D, or E. The GMAT never checks your work. It doesn't care how you got there. (And, in fact, it's built to reward the quickest, dirtiest path. If you try to use textbook math throughout, you'll never finish on time.)

Finally, you'll also have Official Guide problem sets throughout your lessons—these ones are full-format problems that let you put all the skills together. So do make sure that you're getting all the way from the initial skill-building stuff all the way to the full-format problems. (Since you're only 3 days in, I'm not sure whether you've gotten there yet.) And make sure to review with our own OG solutions in the Navigator tool; the solutions shown in the Official Guide book are more textbook-focused / really not as useful.

Try out the above and check back in next week (and of course let us know if you have any other questions). And if you are in a program with an instructor, please also reach out to them to discuss / get their advice. Happy studying!