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What is the best way to study for the quantitative reasoning section?
Quantitative Reasoning - best study tool?
- Thread starter Divineimpetus
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In Quant reasoning, just like the other sections, there are certain topic areas that is bound to show up, guaranteed!
Use all the available DAT resources, however I do recommend going back and dig through some old high school, yes you heard me right, textbooks and work on the word problems. Do explect word problems, and prepare for those. The specialized test review books don't always provide enough practice to math problems, and sometimes, especially the word problems involving rates (ex. bob does this in 10 minutes, jill does this in 50 minutes, when will they both accomplished this task. Or... Dan is 5 years older than Moe. Moe is younger than Bart. How old are they in five years. You get my drift?) No DAT prep material has provided sufficient explanation, and practice for these kind of word problems, I recommend going through past text books and do them, do the example problems, do the practice problems, just do them!
I also looked at GMAT math review books, but those questions are slightly different, in fact harder. I do recommend this Kaplan Math Review book which they publish as a general tool for all standardized test.
If your weakness is word problems, like me, then I recommend hammering on those in your practice. You want to do the ones that you don't know how to.
Use all the available DAT resources, however I do recommend going back and dig through some old high school, yes you heard me right, textbooks and work on the word problems. Do explect word problems, and prepare for those. The specialized test review books don't always provide enough practice to math problems, and sometimes, especially the word problems involving rates (ex. bob does this in 10 minutes, jill does this in 50 minutes, when will they both accomplished this task. Or... Dan is 5 years older than Moe. Moe is younger than Bart. How old are they in five years. You get my drift?) No DAT prep material has provided sufficient explanation, and practice for these kind of word problems, I recommend going through past text books and do them, do the example problems, do the practice problems, just do them!
I also looked at GMAT math review books, but those questions are slightly different, in fact harder. I do recommend this Kaplan Math Review book which they publish as a general tool for all standardized test.
If your weakness is word problems, like me, then I recommend hammering on those in your practice. You want to do the ones that you don't know how to.
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DrTacoElf said:
I would like to add the GRE math prep book was excellent as well.
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Totally agree with Dr.TacoElf. Kaplan is good for basic QR review and test questions, and AceTheDAT is great for the off test questions. Topscore math practice test are really good too. Best adivce I can give is, get your hands on as many practice tests as you can. I ended up taking about 12 different practice tests and got a 21 on QR ( after making a 14 the first time with only 2 practice tests). good luck
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I disagree slightly with edkNARF. I don't think it is that critical to know your trig identities. What's there to know? sin^2 +cos^2 =1 ? If that's the only one then the answer is 1.
In any standardized test, the goal of the makers is to be consistent, and to spread the participants, because the TEST MAKERS NEED TO HAVE A STANDARD DEVIATION CURVE OF TESTEES. With that being said, the questions will range in difficulty. To do well, you need to make sure you know the basic questions that is guaranteed to occur, then if time allows... learn the more difficult concepts. This is true with the trig identities. In my opinion, trig identities is considered to be difficult, and most people will miss it. My test never even had trig identities.
The same concept is true with other portions of the test, and other standardized tests - say OAT, or MCAT.
Good Luck!
In any standardized test, the goal of the makers is to be consistent, and to spread the participants, because the TEST MAKERS NEED TO HAVE A STANDARD DEVIATION CURVE OF TESTEES. With that being said, the questions will range in difficulty. To do well, you need to make sure you know the basic questions that is guaranteed to occur, then if time allows... learn the more difficult concepts. This is true with the trig identities. In my opinion, trig identities is considered to be difficult, and most people will miss it. My test never even had trig identities.
The same concept is true with other portions of the test, and other standardized tests - say OAT, or MCAT.
Good Luck!
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Divineimpetus said:
I think the best QR stuff is Math for Standard Exams by Cliff Notes and then a simple trig like Trig for Dummies. I also used GMAT and SAT (yep SAT) review workbooks. I used Topscore by scholarware.com for practice and scoring. I did great on the QR. I went and answered the questions I knew FIRST, then used the marked button (exactly like I did on the Topscore cd) and went back to the harder ones as I had time.
see you there!
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As someone mentioned earlier, you don't need to memorize all the trig identities. Although there are a limited number of identities (other complicated ones can be derived from these), to be able to memorize these and recall them while doing trig problems requires lots of practice. If a problem is meant to test your identities, it can be very messy and difficult to solve. Some can take you hours or days to solve it. Fortunately, DAT doesn't test you those. So no need to try to memorize those identities.
On the other hand, I would recommend you memorize sin and cos of special angles (30, 45, 60, 90). Better yet, try to obtain these values from the unit circle. On top of that, of course, you need to know the definition!
Good Luck!
On the other hand, I would recommend you memorize sin and cos of special angles (30, 45, 60, 90). Better yet, try to obtain these values from the unit circle. On top of that, of course, you need to know the definition!
Good Luck!
