GMAT Strategy

I gave my GMAT today and I ended up scoring a dismal 560 (Q 48, V20). I've been putting efforts to improve my abilities in SC and CR for the last couple of months but sadly it didn't convert to a good verbal score.

I need some specific advice regarding my poor verbal. The materials I used:
1. MGMAT SC guide
2. PowerSCore CR bible
3. OG 12

I invested quite sometime on getting the basics right for SC and CR but somehow I felt that I didn't have enough practice to apply what I learned. I took MGMAT and GMAT Prep tests and following are my scores
MGMAT 1 (Q45, V24)-- Before reading MGMAT SC / PowerScore CR
MGMAT 2 (Q50, V30) -- A month later after doing one round of MGMAT SC (first 8 chapters) and Weaken, strengthen, conclusion, assumption topics in CR
MGMAT 3 (Q48, V34) -- 15 days later, another round of first five chapters of SC
GMAT Prep 2 (Q47, V23) -- This was kind of a shock, I thought I was improving in verbal


Unlike quants, for which I had sufficient practice and good timing (Did OG 12 twice, Kalplan 800, MGMAT Number properties, Equations& VICs, Word problems), I struggled with verbal since I didn't have practice. I was trying to get the concepts right and I mislead myself to believe that I can pull it off on the test day.
Another mistake, I thought Reading Comprehension won't need much of attention and I practiced only few RCs from OG and nothing at all.

I seriously want to reconsider my strategy for verbal and would need some guidance in getting the appropriate practice material for SC and CR as I felt CR bible and MGMAT SC doesn't have enough GMAT like practice problems. Also, any good resource to improve my RC understanding - I got to know that reading passages without a proper strategy won't help much.

Please help me!!
I'm more than committed to improve my verbal in next 45 days, that is when I'm planning to have my next GMAT appointment.

Lot of people have trouble in verbal part including me. We can improve it. What about your RC performance ? How did you come to conclusion that you are making more mistakes in CR/SC alone ? Take your GMATPrep and see your RC mistakes. Anything > 4 is a trouble. RC is one section where you make more continuous mistakes if you don't understand the passage, its a real trouble because the more continuous mistakes the score drops drastically and you won't get difficult questions in CR/SC even though you can solve them as the test is adaptive. Anything more than 4 - you are making more than 1 mistake in every RC. We get 3 RCs with 3 questions each and 1 RC with 4 question (this might change but 90% this is the case).

That being said, you should now check your RC performance.
If its low then for the next 45 days practice atleast 3 RCs a day and review them thoroughly. It takes almost 15 to 20 mins to review one RC, finding why the wrong answers are wrong and right answer is right. Don't find the right answer, try to eliminate the wrong answer while answering. Always in verbal try to eliminate instead of finding the right ones. Side by side practice SC/CR. Spend half an hour for quants and practice few pblms in your weak and strong areas or flash cards/error logs.

Check out Ron's free videos on how to work on RCs. They will help you a lot. Different people use different strategies, try out everything and get on with the one you get more accuracy.

Thanks sam2304.

I was never good in RC, even in my practice tests I always had trouble comprehending the difficult passages. Although I was able to answer almost all the questions for the easier passages but the number of correct responses for a challenging passage would come down drastically (some times getting only 1 out of 4/5 right).

I thought I can offset the weakness in RC by a strong SC and CR but I realized the SC questions weren't that tough as compared to what I practiced from OG12, Verbal guide, Kaplan 800 and MGMAT. Suprisingly, I had trouble in CR questions which I had a tough time after eliminating 2/3 responses.

The SC questions which I came towards the end were pretty straightforward and I presume its the result of my dropping score from incorrect RC and CRs.

Do you have any suggestions for CR and RC practice content/material? I must admit I put CR and RC at the end of my list and couldn't practice much for the same. I really want to make a difference in my verbal score next time.

Thanks again, looking forward for your reply!

OG is the best. Try to get OG10 from the net. Search for it. It has got some 50 passages and 250 CRs. That will be enough. You should solve and review them effectively.

And check this site as well. It has complete list of OG questions from all versions.

https://www.aspiranthunt.com/gmat/2010/0 ... questions/