Need Help - GMAT

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Need Help - GMAT

by chiru458 » Mon Feb 02, 2015 8:02 pm
Hi,

I'm Chiru and this is the first time I am posting in this form looking for some serious help. I am an Indian who studied in a Non-English medium school during primary & secondary schooling.

I'm an Engineering Graduate and Quant has always been my strength. I usually score atleast 49 in Quant.
I prepared for GMAT in the year 2010 (that was 5 years back) and had taken after 3 months of study. I scored 570 (Q50, V19. AWA 5.5. Integrated Reasoning section was not there at that time.) in my first attempt. I was not at all disappointed after seeing the score because I knew I was going to hit the score around that figure as I hadn't seen any great improvements during my preparation. I didn't want to take actual GMAT again unless I know by heart that I had improved in my verbal section by changing the way I prepare.

Last 5 years had passed so quickly because of my consulting assignments in Oracle Singapore and couldn't really focus on my GMAT again. Now I am desperate to crack GMAT with 700+ for better reasons in life.

My weaknesses in Verbal are
1) Poor Vocabulary -> In CR & RC questions, I don't understand some of the very critical words, which push me to guess the answers and get them wrong.

2) Reading Comprehension -> English passage reading was always boring to me because of the topics discussed. I am trying to change it over the past few months by engaging myself into reading, could it be Straight Times News Paper, The Economist magazine, or Novels. If I am familiar with the topic I understand 90% to 95% of the content and I get almost all the questions correct unless I cannot understand a very critical word in answering the question.

3) Sentence Correction -> I could apply most of the concepts (Redundancy, Subject-Verb Agreement, Parallelism etc.), which I learnt well in questions but when it comes core grammatical concepts such as Idioms, missing verb, complex sentence construction I get most of the questions wrong.

All these weaknesses are the result of my Non-English medium background however I am now desperate to change my result of GMAT. I believe with my logic, hard work, never give-up attitude, confidence I can learn the skills required to crack GMAT.

Appreciate if someone who is strong in verbal can study online with me to improve my GMAT score in verbal section by atleast 15 points to hit V35 score consistently.

My personal Email ID: [email protected]
Location: Singapore
Everyday Target: 20 SC, 20 CR, 20 RC questions from various sources.

Interested candidates, please mail me or reply to this in the forum.

Regards,
Chiru

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by [email protected] » Mon Feb 02, 2015 10:03 pm
Hi Churi,

If you've started studying again, then it would be a good idea to see how you score on a practice CAT. You can download 2 for free from www.mba.com; a FULL practice CAT takes about 4 hours to complete (and it would be good to see how you handle the IR section). With those scores, we'll have a better sense of your current skills and what you'll need to focus on. If your Quant skills are still strong, then you're clearly going to need to focus on the Verbal section. Beyond just doing practice problems, you're going to need to learn Verbal tactics and pattern-matching skills.

When are you planning to take the GMAT?
When are you planning to apply to Business School?

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by chiru458 » Mon Feb 02, 2015 10:25 pm
Hi Rich,

Thanks for your response. I will take practice CAT from www.mba.com site over this weekend and share my results.

I had taken VERITAS PREP mock exam (without any preparation) last weekend and scored 620 (Q49, V25), IR: 11/12 questions were correct. When I analyzed my verbal section from that test, 12/17 SC, 10/12 CR, and 2/12 RC questions were correct.

When are you planning to take the GMAT?
Resp: My plan is to take GMAT before last week of April'15 or latest by May'15, if I can hit 670+ consistently atleast 3 times.

When are you planning to apply to Business School?
Resp: Taking one step at a time. Need to get my GMAT magic score before I can think of business schools.

Regards,
Chiru

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by [email protected] » Tue Feb 03, 2015 6:48 pm
Hi Chiru,

When taking your practice CATs, it's important to take the ENTIRE CAT (including the Essay and IR sections) so we can see how fatigue effects your performance.

With the Verbal results you described on your last CAT, I'm curious if you have any pacing problems in the Verbal section? Do you have to guess on a bunch of questions at the end of the Test just to finish on time? Do you ever "dump" an RC passage just to move past it?

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by chiru458 » Tue Feb 03, 2015 7:19 pm
Hi Rich,

Thanks for your time. As mentioned, this weekend I will take the complete CAT from the site to compare my results.

Timing was not an issue as I could complete my quantitative section under 65 min and verbal section in 75 min without leaving any questions unanswered. I did write the AWA section but not by spending full time instead initially read the argument and formulated/articulated my thoughts, typed those points as bullet points and moved on to IR section. In that VERITAS PREP Practice test definitely quantitative section was easier compared to verbal section.

In verbal section, I hit continuously RC questions (2 passages - around 9 questions) after my first 8 questions of SC & CR. Since the topics were unfamiliar, I thought I was spending too much of time and tried to complete the reading of the passage however the content I grasped was very limited. I guess all the questions went wrong in those 2 passages. After 7 questions another RC came and the topic was familiar to me and I could get 2 of 3 questions correctly.

Had I got all SC & CR questions correctly or atleast 95%, I am sure the score would have reflected in a better manner however I got 95% CR correctly and 70% SC correctly. I don't want to read too much into one mock exam and jump into conclusions because my preference is to get consistent results in verbal section (atleast V35 all the time like my quant).

Regards,
Chiru

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by armaan ahmed » Wed Feb 04, 2015 5:15 am
Hi Chiru,

First of all let me commend your usage of English in general, it's near flawless and who can say that you went to a vernacular medium school!

As far as GMAT Verbal is concerned, a point to note is - although is a cliche, but not understood as much - it's a test of GMAT English, not English. Now, what's the difference? Well, GMAT English is American English and GMAC tests a candidate's understanding of business English, especially the ability to differentiate the unambiguous option from the ambiguous ones. We have seen people coming from even ICSE boards, where English and literature have a lot of emphasis, struggle with GMAT English. Even the vocabulary part is something that most people need to work at.

Now, addressing your three specific weaknesses under following heads:
1) CR: It's more of a logic than English. In fact, in some other competitive exams, the CR part of GMAT could pass as a section separate from English. The key is to understand the flow, break the sequence/problem and see through the dependencies/dots to connect.

2) SC: Now, this is the core English grammar part. It needs near strong basics, which can be built from carefully selected material, and practice. The key is to use standard material. There is umpteen material available in market for which two different authors may have different answers for same question.

3) RC: I totally agree that the kind of material that we tend to read in general is quite different from what the passages in competitive exams are. But, here again, be conscious that you are practicing from near standard material, not specially difficult and intense passages. With good practice from standard passages, you will soon start to approach 75% accuracy.

4) Vocabulary: Now the perception at times is that this leads to an uneven playing field. But it is far, if not very far, from truth. Stronger vocabulary does help to read through the same text relatively faster. But, when it comes to answering the questions, very few questions in GMAT are set in such a way that there answered can be determined basis the vocabulary. There are tricks and tips (and with good practice, sometimes students even derive their own!) to get a sense, eliminate and choose an option that coherently fits into the picture.

We appreciate your never-give-up attitude and second that with strong logic and practice, these weaknesses can be overcome.

Thanks,
Armaan

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by chiru458 » Sun Feb 08, 2015 6:52 am
Hi Rich,

I took one of the practice tests from GMATPrep software that I downloaded from www.mba.com today and here are my results.

It's another disappointing 590 however I know exactly where it went wrong. I scored Q49, V21, IR scaled score 7.

I started off well with my AWA followed by IR. IR was tough in GMATPrep compared to other mocks I have seen.

Quant Section: First 8 questions were pretty easy in Quant. After that tough questions started coming. Spent some extra time to solve the questions as I hadn't brush-up my math skills on Probability, Mixtures, formulas around Spheres, Cylinders etc. for over 3 years. Could solve many problems correctly and I finished my Quant section well under 75min. Took a break for 5 min. before I started by Verbal.

Verbal Section: I started this section very slowly to get correct answers to as many questions as possible initially. After 16th question got my first RC. It was a tough passage with unfamiliar content (attached the screenshot) and I had spent over 15 min. to read, understand, and answer questions to this passage. Another passage came after 26th question. I took less time relatively to answer this one and moved on to other SC and CR questions. By the time I finished 33rd question, I was left with 10 min to answer remaining 8 questions. As expected 2 back to back RCs came from 34 to 40 questions in verbal section. I had no other choice but skip the first passage after 33rd question, thinking I may get more SC and CR questions however when another RC showed up I was really frustrated. Spent remaining 9 min to answer the last passage followed by last SC question.

To summarize:
Questions 1-16 (SC & CR) => Spent 32 min to answer. (15 out of 16 correct)
Questions 17-19 (RC1) => Spent 15 min to answer. ( 2 out of 3 correct)
Questions 20-25 (SC & CR) => Spent 8 min to answer. ( 4 out of 6 correct)
Questions 26-28 (RC2) => Spent 5 min to answer. (Completely wrong)
Questions 29-33 (SC & CR) => Spent 5 min to answer ( 2 out of 5 correct)
Questions 34-40 (RC3 & RC4) => Guessed RC3 and Spent 9 min to answer RC4. (1 out 7 correct)
Questions 41 (SC) => Guessed (wrong)

SC: 12/17 correct
CR: 9/11 correct
RC: 3/13 correct

Lesson learnt from this test.
1) IR in GMATPrep is relatively tough compared other practice tests.
2) Spent too much time on RC1. This resulted in poor time management towards the end of the exam.
3) Spent some time on RC2 however didn't get even a single question correct. This is the killer of today's exam. Wasted time and resulted in poor result (0/3 questions). Need to improve accuracy.
4) Guessed RC3 passage, which had 4 four questions expecting SC and CR questions to follow. Keep track of how many passages came so far and prepare mentally for 4 passages.

Good points to note:
1) Quant proven to be my strength.
2) Accuracy on CR was good in both mock tests attempted so far.
3) SC accuracy improved. Could apply most of the verbal strategies learnt in the mock exam.

There is a lot of difference reading a passage from a news paper or a magazine in comparison with reading a
passage from GMAT exam.

Firstly, the context is abruptly starting in GMAT exam unlike an article in a news paper where the introduction gives a sense of what the context is going to be. This is forcing me to read passage multiple times to get context correctly.

Secondly, strategy applied in reading an article from news paper/magazine to GMAT passage was totally different. I was able to read across lines with ease on a news paper. In GMAT, I was getting more cautious and I am reading each word in relation to previous word. This is not only slowing down my reading speed but also forcing me to read same sentence multiple times.

Finally, concept of answering a question by analyzing each option of the passage will not be present when I read an article from news paper. I guess this can be improved by practicing more passages along with general reading to improve vocabulary and speed.

If I can improve on RC (speed, accuracy etc.) section in GMAT, I could see myself improving my overall GMAT score by at least 60 points. Appreciate if you could refer to some courses or methods to improve my RC.

Regards,
Chiru

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by chiru458 » Sun Feb 08, 2015 6:54 am
Attaching RC from GMATPrep for reference.
Attachments
RC_Screenshot.png
RC Screenshot

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by chiru458 » Sun Feb 08, 2015 7:09 am
It looks to be relatively easier passage however didn't have enough time to complete this during exam.
Attachments
RC4.png
RC4 Screenshot from GMATPrep

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by DavidG@VeritasPrep » Sun Feb 08, 2015 11:05 am
Hi, Chiru.

It looks like there are two things you need to focus on. Fortunately, these things are interrelated. The first is generally managing your time better. Because you can get as many as 5 or 6 questions for a given passage, you want to make sure that if you need to guess to make up time, you're not doing it for a full set of Reading Comprehension questions. A CR here and an SC there, no problem. An individual question within a set of RC questions, sure. But you don't want to have to rush through an entire passage and risk missing 5 in a row. Second, you want to get better at reading these passages in a way that's both strategic and efficient. Jot down key words that allow you to internalize structure, rather than trying to absorb the gritty details.

For example, when you're reading the passage about feminism in Tsarist Russia, paragraph one tell us that we're discussing two strains of feminism, Bourgeois and Socialist. So I'm writing down something like this:

1) Two forms of Feminism:

Bourgeois: individualist goals

Socialist: class > gender

If I get a question about the difference in these movements, I know I'm going back to paragraph one.

Now look at how paragraph two starts. The transition word, "However." This signals that the logical flow of the passage is about to change directions. Now, I'm going to get commonalities between Bourgeois and Socialist strains. Maybe I'll write something like this:

2) Similarities:

- paid labor
- balance labor and motherhood
- main goal: emancipate Russian populace

That's more than enough. So my notes are about structure. Shifts in flow will be signaled by transition words. If I get a detail question, I can go back to the passage to find it. No need to reread every word. I only care about broader themes when I'm taking notes.

Now when you're reading other material to improve on RC, practice looking for those transition words and thinking about how to encapsulate structure by focusing on a few phrases per paragraph.

Then, during your next practice test, see if this technique allows you to work through the RC passages a little faster. See if guessing occasionally on CR or SC will allow you to preserve enough time so you don't have to rush through a full passage. Keep refining your strategy until you're seeing results on practice tests.
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by chiru458 » Sun Feb 08, 2015 3:52 pm
Hi David,

Thanks for the 2 points highlighted to focus on from next time when doing Verbal Section.
1) Time Management
2) Reading passage in an effective manner as highlighted.

I totally agree with these 2 points and will surely follow your tips to improve my verbal score. After all, I am looking for an expert help to score at least V35 consistently.

For a moment, let's look at the same paragraph from my view instead of an expert view. It's natural to think when the content of the passage is not changing how can the view be different. It definitely does in the way information is perceived. I really want your help in this.

First Paragraph:
Two dominant currents were identified in Russian women's movement.
(a) "Bourgeois" Feminism. (b) "Socialist" Feminism.
"Bourgeois" focus on goals => Education, Career Opportunities, Legal Equality.
"Socialists" focus on goals => Class, rather than Gender.
Couldn't understand words "Oppression", "Emancipation" but that's still fine to make some meaningful context based on what author is discussing and move on to next paragraph.

Second Paragraph: Started with "however", so immediately a "U" turn from what was discussed in first paragraph. So author is now taking about shared underlying beliefs.
1) Paid Labor - Principal factor to attain Emancipation. Good that author explained definition of "Emancipation" in this line. So I tried to look at the last sentence of previous paragraph to see if I made similar assumption or not.
2) Difficulties women faced - When Paid Labor and Motherhood combined.

Suddenly another piece of information given "In fact, at the First All-Russian Women's Congress in 1908, most participants advocated maternity insurance and paid maternity leave, although the intense hostility between some socialists and bourgeois feminists at the congress made it difficult for them to recognize these areas of agreement."

Even now when typing this reply couldn't understand what does this sentence means with respect to similarities explained just before this statement in the paragraph. From my view, I already missed a crucial information as I couldn't relate this statement to anything I read prior to this.

Questions I asked to myself at the time of reading this statement.
(1) Is the author talking about similarities or goals or giving another view?
(2) Who are the participants referred here (socialists and bourgeois or any other)?
(3) Don't know the exact meaning of "hostility". I heard of "hostile environment, hostages etc.". Tried to relate as much as possible.

Similar problems I faced while reading last statement "Finally, social feminists and most bourgeois feminists concurred in subordinating women's emancipation to what they considered the more important goal of liberating the entire Russian population from political oppression, economic backwardness, and social injustice."

Understanding 60% of the passage content correctly and missing 40% of the passage content, kept me at a stage where I couldn't proceed further to attack questions. I tried to re-read the whole paragraph one more time however the result didn't change. This was the biggest mistake as I wasted lot of time trying to read the same passage twice. Then I started to attack the questions, which definitely consumed more time because of lack of clarity on the complete passage itself.

The only good part I felt when I reviewed the answers was at least 2 out 3 questions in this passage were correct for the time invested to understand this passage unlike the next passage where time was also consumed yet not even a single question I answered correctly.

I need to understand only one thing here. "Is it a difficult passage in general from sentence construction perspective taking last 2 statements of the paragraph or Am I finding it difficult because I was trying to understand 100% before I can answer the question like how I generally do in case of a CR and a quant question?

Please help to answer this question alone. This will give me a direction to improve my RC score and accuracy.

Regards,
Chiru

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by [email protected] » Sun Feb 08, 2015 4:15 pm
Hi Chiru,

The results from this Verbal section point to a few 'issues' that you need to work on.

1) RC is clearly the category that needs the most practice. There are tactical approaches that you can use on every RC passage (regardless of length and subject matter). Since the Verbal section of the GMAT is as predictable and standardized as the Quant section, even the wrong answers to RC questions fall into common patterns. From a practical standpoint, you need to learn to take notes on the ideas that matter and not get too into the "explanation" that occurs in each prompt.

2) Your pacing problems are not limited to RC. From your 'breakdown', it's clear that you spent way too much time on those first 16 questions. Some of this should improve in time, but you have to train to answer most SCs faster than you currently are. You should average about 75 to 90 seconds per SC and average about 2 minutes per CR. If you 'break' these rules early only (and break them too often), then you'll have less time for everything else that follows in the Verbal section (not just the RC passages).

3) As a general rule, you should be able to read through (and take some basic notes on) any RC passage within 4-5 minutes (or less); this will then give you about 1.5 minutes per RC question.

To properly practice all of this, you should be sure to invest in some type of computer-based resources. The physical act of doing all of this work, especially late in the Test, cannot be matched by working out of a book.

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by DavidG@VeritasPrep » Sun Feb 08, 2015 4:41 pm
You've touched on some of the biggest challenges of tackling reading comprehension - when the vocabulary is unfamiliar and context isn't enough, it's going to be very hard to extract the core meaning. So your goal is going to be twofold here: first, to read voraciously and improve your vocabulary. And more importantly, you want to work on accepting that you don't have to understand 100% of what you read in order to understand the structure of the passage. It's also important to remember that you won't necessarily be asked about every aspect of a passage.

Generally, any time you're struggling to understand a component of an essay, you want to assume that the theme has been consistent. Take, for example, the sentence you struggled with:

In fact, at the First All-Russian Women's Congress in 1908, most participants advocated maternity insurance and paid maternity leave, although the intense hostility between some socialists and bourgeois feminists at the congress made it difficult for them to recognize these areas of agreement.

First, we see that "most participants advocated..." Well, that makes sense. This paragraph is about what they agree on. It's logical that "most" of the participants support the same things at this conference. (And we have to assume the author is talking about the aforementioned socialist and bourgeois feminists.) And then, after the transition word "although" we're told that there was "intense hostility" between the two groups. That just means that even though they agreed on some things, they still didn't like each other. So despite the difficult vocabulary, the sentence is reiterating the idea that these two very different groups agree on many things. The big picture doesn't change:

Paragraph 1: differences of two groups

Paragraph 2: similar goals of two groups

When you go back and practice, try to just get the big picture (focusing a little extra attention on the first sentence of each paragraph and key transition words) and trust that you can go back to fill in the details if you happen to get a questions about something you're unclear on.
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by chiru458 » Sun Feb 08, 2015 5:24 pm
Hi David,

Thank you very much for taking your time and replying to my queries. Also I appreciate your explanation on the statement I struggled with.

I am spending 2 to 3 hours daily on reading for the past 2 weeks. I am reading most of the articles published in "The Economist" on weekly basis. Also in parallel, reading "The New York Times" paper on a daily basis. This is mainly to get myself familiarized with the way English is used on daily basis for native speakers of English. Also reading local news papers in Singapore to get used to reading in general. I will try to do the same for the next 3 months by keeping your tips in mind to improve my vocabulary in general and also will focus on improving my reading skills such as speed, tone of the author, summary of the passage etc.

I hope one day I could post the success story of mine like others :)

Regards,
Chiru

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by chiru458 » Sun Feb 08, 2015 5:36 pm
Hi Rich,

Thanks for your suggestions to improve my verbal score. For the next 3 months, I will apply below strategy to see if I can reach to my target score of V35 consistently.

1) 2 to 3 hours reading daily. Articles from "The Economist", "The New York Times", and Local News Papers.

2) Practicing 20 Problem Solving, 20 Data Sufficiency, 20 SC, 20 CR, and 20 RC daily with proper time limits. Review and understand the concepts in each of the questions. Maintain error log and identify similar patterns.

3) Weekly two full GMAT tests from various sources to evaluate my progress. If needed will subscribe to online GMAT tests from sources like VeritasPrep, MGMAT, GMATPrep etc.

I hope with hard work, I can achieve my target score of Q49 and V35 to hit 700 mark in GMAT.

I wish you all the best for your team who is supporting people like me across the globe.


Regards,
Chiru