![\"Manhattan](\"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2018\/04\/maximize-learning-official-gmat-problems-part-1-stacey-koprince.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Guess what?\u00a0You can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free\u2014we\u2019re not kidding!\u00a0Check out our upcoming courses here<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n When was the last time you read a solution to a problem, thought to yourself, \u201cYep, that makes total sense,\u201d set it aside\u2026and then realized a week (or 3 days!) later that you had no idea what you\u2019d read or that you couldn\u2019t replicate that solution yourself?<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019d guess most of us have had that happen within the past week. ?<\/span>\u00a0(Maybe I should give that a frustrated-face instead of a smiley!) What\u2019s going on? How come I understand it when I read it but I can\u2019t later remember \/ recall \/ reuse what I (thought I) understood? And, more important, how do I get to the point where I <\/span>can<\/span><\/i> remember \/ recall \/ reuse that information?<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s exactly what we\u2019re going to talk about today.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to read something and feel that you understand it, but there are two caveats:<\/span><\/p>\n (1) You may not <\/span>really<\/span><\/i> understand all of the nuances, or<\/span><\/p>\n (2) You may really understand but not be encoding the information into your brain in such a way that you can recall it again later.<\/span><\/p>\n These two things both come from the same source: <\/span>You didn\u2019t figure this out for yourself<\/span><\/i>. It\u2019s much harder to understand, remember, and be able to recall something when you\u2019re just passively listening to or reading that information. When you\u2019re actively involved in figuring stuff out, you\u2019re embedding the memories much more solidly into your brain.<\/span><\/p>\n But do you see the contradiction here when you\u2019re working on problems? If you already knew how to figure it out for yourself\u2026 then you wouldn\u2019t have needed to look at the solution in the first place. <\/span>\u2639<\/span><\/p>\n You\u2019re going to turn solutions into your own private tutor.<\/span><\/p>\n A good tutor doesn\u2019t just tell you what to do. A good tutor figures out how to give you exactly the hint you need exactly when you need it\u2014enough to get you \u201cunstuck\u201d but not so much as to give away anything that you really can figure out for yourself.<\/span><\/p>\n You\u2019re going to use the solutions as your own private tutor: a series of hints to help you figure out everything you can on that problem. Also, you\u2019ve probably already noticed that the official solution is always perfectly correct, but not necessarily all that\u2026 approachable. So you\u2019re going to crowdsource solutions to official GMAT problems. You can Google the thing, you can look it up on various study forums, and you can use test prep company solutions (for example, Manhattan Prep\u2019s GMAT Navigator platform, which provides written or video solutions for Official Guide problems).<\/span><\/p>\n Before we dive into how to use those resources to learn from these official GMAT problems, I want to talk about one other thing: doing the problems in the first place. (After all, you have to do them before you can learn from them!)<\/span><\/p>\n There are a few principles to follow when doing problem sets:<\/span><\/p>\n (1) Do a block of questions, not just one at a time.<\/span><\/p>\n (2) Mix them up! The real test mixes everything up, too.<\/span><\/p>\n (3) Time yourself.<\/span><\/p>\n (4) Make decisions as though it\u2019s the real test. <\/span><\/p>\n (a) Don’t pause your timer or allow yourself to spend way longer than you\u2019d want to on the real test because you\u2019re \u201cjust studying.\u201d Make the decision you would want to make on the real test. If needed, guess and move on.<\/span><\/p>\n (b) You do have to pick a specific answer in order to move to your next question\u2014as on the real test. Don\u2019t let yourself skip this step because you\u2019re \u201cjust studying.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Follow this link for more on <\/span>creating problem sets<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n When you finish the problem set, first look back over the official GMAT problems. Were there any that drove you crazy because you felt like you <\/span>should<\/span><\/i> know how to do them, but you couldn\u2019t quite remember?<\/span><\/p>\n Right now, before you look at the solution (or even the correct answer!), feel free to try any problem again, untimed, and to look up anything you like in your study resources. It\u2019s like an open-book test! If you had an idea but it didn\u2019t quite work out, see whether you can figure out why.<\/span><\/p>\n When you get stuck and need a more directed hint, look up the correct answer. Don\u2019t do any more than that! Now, look back at the problem again. Does knowing the correct answer give you any ideas? If so, again, take whatever time you need to explore that idea and look up anything you like in your study materials. (If the correct answer doesn\u2019t give you any ideas, that\u2019s okay\u2014it doesn\u2019t always work.)<\/span><\/p>\n Got stuck again? Start to review the solution\u2014but STOP the moment you find yourself thinking \u201cOh, there\u2019s a good idea that I hadn\u2019t thought of!\u201d Use that idea to push yourself as far as you can (again untimed and again open-book). When you get stuck again, pick up where you left off in the solution, but stop again whenever you see something that gives you an idea. (We call that moment an \u201caha!\u201d moment, by the way. Something suddenly clicks in your brain: Aha!)<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ve gone back to a single solution 4 or 5 times before I reach the end. This takes a lot longer than just reading \/ watching the solution\u2014but, by the time I reach the end, I\u2019ve taken the necessary action to really understand what I\u2019m doing and I\u2019ve created the necessary memories to be able to recall the material later on. That\u2019s the entire point of studying, so the extra time is well spent!<\/span><\/p>\n This definitely happens\u2014and it\u2019s a really good clue of a different kind. We\u2019re going to discuss this in the second half<\/a> of this series. For now, try the above. Set aside any solutions that aren\u2019t \u201cclicking\u201d and join us next time to learn what to do about those.<\/span><\/p>\n Good luck and happy studying!\u00a0?<\/span><\/p>\n Can\u2019t get enough of Stacey\u2019s GMAT mastery? Attend the first session of one of\u00a0her upcoming GMAT courses<\/a>\u00a0absolutely free, no strings attached. Seriously.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Guess what?\u00a0You can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free\u2014we\u2019re not kidding!\u00a0Check out our upcoming courses here. When was the last time you read a solution to a problem, thought to yourself, \u201cYep, that makes total sense,\u201d set it aside\u2026and then realized a week (or 3 days!) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[873,929,52871,930,2],"tags":[53327,53326],"yst_prominent_words":[53868,54040,53635,53781,53706,55049,55042,53634,55041,55044,55046,53704,55047,55045,55043,55048,55050,53786,53784,53867],"class_list":["post-15666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-for-current-studiers","category-gmat-prep","category-gmat-strategies","category-gmat-study-guide","category-how-to-study","tag-maximize-learning","tag-official-gmat-problems"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15666"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16637,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15666\/revisions\/16637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15666"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=15666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWhy do I forget half of what I\u2019m studying?<\/b><\/h4>\n
So what do I do?<\/b><\/h4>\n
Okay, I\u2019m ready. How do I make the solutions give me \u201chints\u201d?<\/b><\/h4>\n
What if the solution gives me no ideas?<\/b><\/h4>\n
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\n![\"stacey-koprince\"](\"https:\/\/cdn2.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2015\/06\/stacey-koprince-150x150.png\")
<\/a>Stacey Koprince<\/a>\u00a0is a Manhattan Prep instructor based in Montreal, Canada and Los Angeles, California.<\/strong>\u00a0Stacey has been teaching the GMAT, GRE, and LSAT for more than 15 years and is one of the most well-known instructors in the industry. Stacey loves to teach and is absolutely fascinated by standardized tests.\u00a0Check out Stacey\u2019s upcoming GMAT courses here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"