8 days to go

Yesterday, I finally finished the questions in Class 14 (Advanced Word Problems & Quant Review) (there were about 130 questions in all, and I started from about question 50). For good measure, I went through the class using the On Demand video, and I also went through the "last minute tips" On Demand video. All told, there was about 6 hours of work.

I didn't get to go through any of the 60 Day Study Plan. Today, I will:

- Go through as many days of the 60 Day Study Plan as possible in the next 2 hours. Realistically I'll only get through 1 or 2 days.
- Attend Class 12 (Combinatorics and Probability) and re-do the wrong/guessed questions again.
- Go through the remainder of the Beat The GMAT Flashcards.

Tomorrow, I'm going through a "run through" of the GMAT. This will include getting up at 6am, eating breakfast, and walking to the exam centre. I'll try to get a sneak peak into the exam centre, but who knows whether they'll actually let me in.


Running tally to date:

• 157 hours of prep work (including going through materials, doing practice questions, attending class, and checking answers and mistakes; does NOT include taking practice CAT exams) since 3 January 2011.
• 6 CAT exams.
• 620 (40Q/35V), 05.01.11 [GMATSim1]
• 610 (33Q/41V), 12.01.11 [800Score1]
• 660 (42Q/40V), 29.01.11 [GMATPrep1]
• 700 (51Q/37V), 26.02.11 [GMATLife1]
• 650 (36Q/44V), 20.03.11 [800Score2]
• 670 (46Q/35V), 03.04.11 [MGMAT1].

9 days to go - final countdown

I took this week and next week off work but I've come down with a cold. Although my preparation will be hampered, I won't / can't make this an excuse.

Progress

Since the last post I have:

- Re-taken Class 9 (Critical Reasoning 2) using On Demand + re-attempted wrong/guessed questions from the first time around. 2 hours.
- Re-taken Class 10 (Statistics & Problem Solving) using On Demand + re-attempted wrong/guessed questions from the first time around. 3 hours.
- Re-taken Class 11 (Sentence Correct 2) by attending class + re-attempted wrong/guessed questions from the first time around. 3 hours.
- Completed Days 8 - 9 of the Beat The GMAT 60 Day Study Plan. 2 hours. As mentioned, I have only completed (for now) the "TO DO" sections, and not the "Additional Reinforcement" sections.
- Gone through the Beat The GMAT flashcards on Sentence Correction and Quant - General. 3 hours.

This isn't too much preparation for 3 days, but I've been sick and for the most part trying to put in 8-10 hours of sleep per night.

Today, I plan to finish (for the first time) Class 14 (Advanced Word Problems & Quant Review), and do a couple of more days of the 60 Day Study Plan.

Running tally to date:

• 151 hours of prep work (including going through materials, doing practice questions, attending class, and checking answers and mistakes; does NOT include taking practice CAT exams) since 3 January 2011.
• 6 CAT exams.
• 620 (40Q/35V), 05.01.11 [GMATSim1]
• 610 (33Q/41V), 12.01.11 [800Score1]
• 660 (42Q/40V), 29.01.11 [GMATPrep1]
• 700 (51Q/37V), 26.02.11 [GMATLife1]
• 650 (36Q/44V), 20.03.11 [800Score2]
• 670 (46Q/35V), 03.04.11 [MGMAT1].

18 days to go; 670 (46Q/35V) for 6th practice CAT - MUST IMPROVE!

Progress

Since the last post I have:

- Re-taken Class 7 (Reading Comprehension) using On Demand + re-attempted wrong/guessed questions from the first time around. 2 hours.
- Re-taken Class 8 (Data Sufficiency) using On Demand + re-attempted wrong/guessed questions from the first time around. 2.5 hours.
- Completed Days 3 - 7 of the Beat The GMAT 60 Day Study Plan. 6 hours. As mentioned, I have only completed (for now) the "TO DO" sections, and not the "Additional Reinforcement" sections.

Work is getting very busy so I am doing a lot of this prep on little sleep and my concentration is definitely waning.

6th practice CAT - MGMAT

I tried out the Manhattan GMAT practice CAT. It was pretty tough and I ended up on 670 (89th percentile) with 46Q (79th percentile) and 35V (77th percentile) splits.

My scores in quant and verbal seem to have been see-sawing since my first practice CAT. On one test I'll go pretty well on quant and poorly on verbal, only to switch around in the next test. At least my percentile ranges are stabilising now - I just need to kick both quant and verbal into the mid 80s to early 90s in terms of percentile and I should be sweet.

All of this sort of hits home one important message - I have to just put aside time every day to practice. I have surges over the weekend and it's not doing my preparation any favours. I have forgotten a lot of stuff that I learned weeks (even months) ago, although re-doing the lessons using On Demand has helped.

Let's see if I can get up to Day 15 on the Beat The GMAT 60 Day Study Plan by the end of the week. That would be ideal.

Running tally to date:

• 138 hours of prep work (including going through materials, doing practice questions, attending class, and checking answers and mistakes; does NOT include taking practice CAT exams) since 3 January 2011.
• 6 CAT exams.
• 620 (40Q/35V), 05.01.11 [GMATSim1]
• 610 (33Q/41V), 12.01.11 [800Score1]
• 660 (42Q/40V), 29.01.11 [GMATPrep1]
• 700 (51Q/37V), 26.02.11 [GMATLife1]
• 650 (36Q/44V), 20.03.11 [800Score2]
• 670 (46Q/35V), 03.04.11 [MGMAT1].

26 days to go

Since the last post I have:

- Re-taken Class 5 (Sentence Correction) using On Demand + re-attempted wrong/guessed questions from the first time around. 2 hours.
- Re-taken Class 6 (Geometry) using On Demand + re-attempted wrong/guessed questions from the first time around. 3 hours.
- Completed Days 1 and 2 of the Beat The GMAT 60 Day Study Plan. 3 hours. Although I have much less than 60 days to go, I am only going to complete those parts of the 60 Day Study Plan that I have materials for. For example, it plan requires a Kaplan GMAT 2010-2011 Premier with CD-ROM, which I don't have (and nor do I plan to get). Also, I am only going to complete (for now) the "TO DO" sections, and not the "Additional Reinforcement" sections.

Big day today - plan to get through as many more Days of the 60 Day Study Plan as possible, and finish (for the first time) Veritas Prep Class 14 Advanced Word Problems & Quant Review.

Running tally to date:

• 135.5 hours of prep work (including going through materials, doing practice questions, attending class, and checking answers and mistakes; does NOT include taking practice CAT exams) since 3 January 2011.
• 5 CAT exams.
• 620 (40Q/35V), 05.01.11 [GMATSim1]
• 610 (33Q/41V), 12.01.11 [800Score1]
• 660 (42Q/40V), 29.01.11 [GMATPrep1]
• 700 (51Q/37V), 26.02.11 [GMATLife1]
• 650 (36Q/44V), 20.03.11 [800Score2].

32 days to go; 650 (36Q/44V) for 5th practice CAT

Progress

Got most of what I wanted to do this weekend done.

Since the last post I have:

- Re-taken Class 3 (Critical Reasoning) using On Demand + re-attempted wrong/guessed questions from the first time around. 2 hours.
- Re-taken Class 4 (Algebra) using On Demand + re-attempted wrong/guessed questions from the first time around. 3 hours.
- Progressed with Class 14 (Advanced Word Problems / Quant Review). 0.5 hours.

Maybe it is because I've done these questions before, but in both instances I managed to correctly answer most questions that I previously got wrong. Maybe I'm just improving.

5th practice CAT

After a full day of study, I decided to do a Practice GMAT CAT. A bit dubious after my score of Q51 from last time (using "GMAT Life", a Veritas-badged CAT), this time I tackled the 800score CAT which is apparently notorious for its difficult quant questions.

This time I didn't bother with the essays (mainly because it was late already).

I was brought back to reality - I scored 36Q (48th percentile), down from the lofty 98th percentile that I scored in the quant section in GMAT Life. I basically ran out of time with about 7 questions to go and had to make wild guesses on those last few questions.

On the other hand, I managed to score a 44V (97th percentile), up from the 81st percentile that I scored in the verbal section in GMAT Life. I also finished with about 30 minutes to spare (in a 75 minute section). So basically I'm now dubious about 800score's verbal section.

If I somehow manage to combine my best ever performance in the quant section (51Q) and verbal section (44V), I would score around the 770 mark, but my see-saw lack of consistency is instead keeping me between the mid-600s to 700. Given that my 51Q was a fluke (the CAT was too easy), and my 44V was also probably a fluke (I finished with 30 minutes to spare), I will have to work hard even to crack 700.

I have to re-double my efforts and make sure I'm not slipping in either section. I think it's easier for me to slip in quant since that's my weak area, so I will make it my focus from now.

Running tally to date:

• 127.5 hours of prep work (including going through materials, doing practice questions, attending class, and checking answers and mistakes; does NOT include taking practice CAT exams) since 3 January 2011.
• 5 CAT exams.
• 620 (40Q/35V), 05.01.11 [GMATSim1]
• 610 (33Q/41V), 12.01.11 [800Score1]
• 660 (42Q/40V), 29.01.11 [GMATPrep1]
• 700 (51Q/37V), 26.02.11 [GMATLife1]
• 650 (36Q/44V), 20.03.11 [800Score2].

33 days to go

Quick one before I keep going tonight.

Since the last post I have done the following:

- Class 8 (Data Sufficiency): On Demand video + homework. 6 hours.
- Class 14 (Advanced Word Problems and Quant review): On Demand video. Yet to finish the homework. 4 hours.

Also, I have:

- Re-taken Class 1 (Arguments) using On Demand. 1.5 hours.
- Re-taken Class 2 (Arithmetic) + re-attempted wrong/guessed questions from the first time around. I got about half of the wrong/guessed questions right, so I have moved the tags to the bottom of the page. The other half are still to be conquered. 2.5 hours.

Running tally to date:

• 122 hours of prep work (including going through materials, doing practice questions, attending class, and checking answers and mistakes; does NOT include taking practice CAT exams) since 3 January 2011.
• 4 CAT exams.
• 620 (40Q/35V), 05.01.11 [GMATSim1]
• 610 (33Q/41V), 12.01.11 [800Score1]
• 660 (42Q/40V), 29.01.11 [GMATPrep1]
• 700 (51Q/37V), 26.02.11 [GMATLife1].

GMAT booked after 100 hours of prep - the pressure's on

GMAT booked - 45 days to go

This week I got around to booking my GMAT exam. It's schedule for Thursday April 21 at 9.00am. Personally I would have preferred an afternoon or slightly later time but it was not possible with my schedule. I am flying out on Thursday afternoon for what will (by then) be a well deserved break.

Also spent time this week completing the Veritas Prep Class 6 (Geometry) homework (5 hours), as well as Class 5 (Sentence Correction 1) On Demand video + homework (5 hours) and Class 9 (Sentence Correction 2) On Demand video + homework (3 hours). All of this took approximately 13 hours. In real terms it took much longer but I'm not counting procrastinating etc. I am now fairly confident on Sentence Correction. This is a great achievement because it was previously my main area of weakness in Verbal.

My plan over the next week is to finish off the things on my to do list from my last post. In that post I estimated that it would take about 30 hours to finish what I wanted, and that the plan was to be done in 2 weeks, so I'm on schedule. Still remaining on my to do list from my last post are:

Quant:
- Class 8 (Data Sufficiency): On Demand video + homework.
- Class 14 (Advanced Word Problems and Quant Review): On Demand video + homework.

Verbal:
- Class 13 (AWA) On Demand video. There's no homework for this, but I want to, by the end, have a clear template in my head for both AWA essays.

Next steps

After finishing the above, I will move on to:
- Doing some diagnostic tests that come along with the Veritas Prep TrueTrack account to identify my areas of weakness
- Looking at the MGMAT books to build on my areas of weakness
- Re-doing all of the homework questions in Veritas Prep that I initially got wrong / guessed (I have tagged every question)
- Doing more GMAT tests
- Going through OG12 and OGVerbal2/OGQuant2 books in full - referring to Beat The GMAT's 60 day study plan to do it methodically by subject.

Running tally to date:

• 108 hours of prep work (including going through materials, doing practice questions, attending class, and checking answers and mistakes; does NOT include taking practice CAT exams) since 3 January 2011.
• 4 CAT exams.
• 620 (40Q/35V), 05.01.11 [GMATSim1]
• 610 (33Q/41V), 12.01.11 [800Score1]
• 660 (42Q/40V), 29.01.11 [GMATPrep1]
• 700 (51Q/37V), 26.02.11 [GMATLife1].