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When to take what kind of Ability Quiz

Posted by e-GMAT | Apr 30, 2015 | GMAT Preparation

A 5 min read

As you explore Scholaranium and the feature to measure your probable performance on and preparation level for the GMAT through the feature of Ability Quizzes, you will be faced with the decision to utilize these quizzes wisely so that you can extract the maximum out of them – you will have to decide when and how to use them. To help you out with this decision, we advise the following, basing our judgment on the categories test takers broadly fall in:

I am a retaker starting to prepare again

Retaker (a) – I know where I went wrong in my last GMAT

If you are a retaker and already have a fair idea about which of the three sections (SC, CR, and RC) stopped you from achieving your target Verbal score on the actual GMAT, then:

Take an individual ability quiz in that section:
For example, if sentence correction was the bottleneck in your previous GMAT attempt(s), take an SC ability quiz.
Understand what kind of questions you normally tend to get wrong :
Utilize the Skill Data you get with each of the ability quizzes to figure out the topics in which you are making the most mistakes; for example, are you going wrong in questions testing you on modifiers or parallelism or some other topic (in SC)?
Learn about the difficulty level you are most faltering at:
Knowledge about the difficulty level of the questions you are mostly getting wrong/right is crucial in determining the next steps in your preparation. For example, if you get all the easy questions wrong, then you need to go back and (re)learn the concepts from scratch. Similarly, if you get only the hard ones wrong, then you need to understand the root cause of the mistakes you are making. Is it because you don’t pay enough attention to the sentence structure of a long sentence or is it because you don’t apply the process religiously and tend to get caught in sentences in which the original sentence has a somewhat convoluted meaning? This kind of analysis will help you target the area from which the maximum improvement is likely to come!
Utilize other useful analytics:
For instance, at the end of each quiz, you will also get to know how much time on an average you took to answer questions correctly or incorrectly. If you see that you took too much time marking a question correctly, you know that you still have a gap in your conceptual understanding, which stopped you from making the right choice in the desired time. This could have led to some significant timing issues in your earlier GMAT attempt(s).

Retaker (b) – I have no idea which section(s) pulled my Verbal score down in my last GMAT

If you are a retaker but do not have a clue as to which of the three Verbal sections spelled the doom for you in your last GMAT attempt – for instance, all of them seemed equally tough in the exam –then you essentially fall in the next category. Read on!

I am new to GMAT and I want to know where I stand

If you are new to the GMAT and have no idea about which section you should start with in your preparation or which section you’d need to work on the most in order to achieve your target score, or if you are like retaker (b) above, then:

Take a Verbal Ability quiz and Gauge your performance in all the three sections:
You need to understand which section is most likely to hold back your performance on the actual GMAT – will it be CR, RC, or SC? Accordingly, you will decide from which section you need to begin your GMAT preparation.

The Verbal Ability quiz will also give the first time takers a taste of what it is like to answer questions from a mixed bag of sections. For retakers falling in category (b) above, the maximum gain would be in understanding where their strengths and weaknesses lie in the three sections; they can hence get a much clear idea of what they need to focus on in their preparation.

I am in the middle of my preparation and have finished preparing for one section (CR/RC/SC)

If you have finished a particular section in Verbal, say CR, and are preparing for another one, say RC, then you need to monitor your performance in CR while you build your concept base for RC. Accordingly, you need to take individual CR Ability Quizzes. Doing so will ensure that while you progress in understanding the key concepts in RC, you keep improving in CR or you keep maintaining your edge in it if you were happy with your performance to begin with.

I have finished preparing for the entire Verbal Section

If you have finished your preparation for the whole Verbal section, then:

Take a Verbal Ability Quiz:
See where you stand in all the three sections – together and individually. Once you take a Verbal Ability Quiz, you will be able to have an overview of your preparation in all the three sections. You can use the individual analytics you get for each section to see where you stand in that particular section and aim at improving accordingly.
For instance, if you learn through the Verbal Ability Quiz that your performance in SC is not up to the mark, you can analyse what kind of questions are pulling your score down. If you lack in a particular concept, then

Create a custom quiz in those kind of questions, and see how you are faring in the topic. If you notice that in the custom quiz, your performance in a particular kind of question is great but the same kind of questions cost you gravely in the Verbal Ability Quiz, it is likely that your problem is not concept based – it is strategy based. However, if your performance in the custom quiz is comparable to your low performance in the topic in the Verbal Ability Quiz, then you definitely need to go to the concept file and revise it.

I am at a level where I am happy with my performance – all I need is practice

If you are looking to practice in exam – like conditions in which you get a mix bag of questions from all different sections and of all different difficulty levels, then you need to take Verbal Ability Quizzes. With all the questions available to you in Scholaranium, you can take approximately 10 – 12 Verbal Ability Quizzes, gauging your performance on at least 360 questions!