GMAT Strategy

Hello everyone,
I have booked my gmat for Aug6, and i gave the first practice test on GMAC .. scored 650 .. 47 Quants and 34 verbal .. please suggest means of improvement ; i am looking to score about 730-750; and given that i am indian the major area of improvement is verbal .
Thanks
Debrup

Well, you have lots of time, so I think that's a good thing. Here's what I would do.

Quant- You are doing pretty well already. Figure out what your weak areas are and attack them. Use the MGMAT guides to enhance your fundamentals and then take 10-12 GMATClub tests to bring you abilities to the next level.

RC- Read something every day. Read an article or two from The Economist or WSJ every day and try to act like each article is a GMAT passage. Think about the main message and how each paragraph relates to the overall passage. Try to read a practice passage a day as well. The key here is consistency.

CR- Use the Powerscore CR Bible and read through it 3-4 times. From here, you just need to do practice problem after practice problem. You should start to pick up on patterns in how the questions are asked and see the same types of answer choices over and over

SC- Use the MGMAT SC Guide. Then practice a lot to make sure you have everything down cold. Try to get to the point where you can do each question in a minute or less so you can save time for the more time-consuming RC and CR sections.

Integrated Reasoning- Can't help you here as I never took this section. Good luck.

With the kind of score you are looking to achieve I highly recommend hiring a tutor to help you identify your strengths and weaknesses. I agree you need to do work every day.

in Reading Comp certainly read all you can, but don't jsut read it, summarize it and ask yourself questions about it - learn to read critically, not study or simply intake information.

For Critical Reasoning learn to differentiate the question types and what is needed to both read the passage and elminate answers for every type.

For Sentnece Correction: Start with 6 main rules of grammar - get familiar with them and know how to spot them - train yourself in what to look for. then start adding on other minor rules that will help in specific situations.

Best of Luck and feel free to ask any additional questions.

@becky and IJR :- thanks for your inputs.
There is two key points that i forgot to mention:-
1. I had about 10 mins left on each section when i completed the test.
2. I have completed 90% of OG v 12 .

For the last couple of days i have been trying to assess where things went horribly wrong:-
1. quants :- solved the average question in less than 30 sec ; and as expected got some of them wrong. root cause :- exam time anxiety

2. data sufficiency :- did not read some of the questions too well and hence answered a E when it should have been a C ; and in some cases did not assume B could work out as well when it seemed the first choice was obvious.

3. comprehension :- the timer freaked me out so i was going by the 108 sec rule that i have; if you cant do it by 110 sec take a guess and pass on.

HORRIBLE strategy i realized later.

4. critical reasoning :- easily the part where i perform worst. but did not do as badly as i thought i would. I am just about getting in the groove to getting the strengthen, weaken question right. need some help with assumption questions.

5. sentence correction :- not doing too badly but yes as always taking risks and paying up badly for taking risks. the other problem with sentence correction is the subtle differences between indian english and american english; have to start adapting to american english.

To sum it up i never made it to the 700+ questions so consistency is the key and yes hopefully the next time ; exam anxiety will be much lesser.I am writing another practice test next week, please keep the suggestions flowing

@Becky: Thank you for your post - what are the "6 main rules of grammar"? Sorry if I should know this already...

goodkarma wrote:@Becky: Thank you for your post - what are the "6 main rules of grammar"? Sorry if I should know this already...

May be this. I am not sure as well Let's wait what she has got to say.

1.Parallelism
2.Pronoun error
3.Sub Verb agreement
4.Modifiers
5.Comparison
6.Tenses

Yes, the 6 rules Sam posted are the ones I would start with.

@IJR :-
Powerscore and MGMAT are working wonders ; have been doing much better than last week, thanks for your input.Although some inputs regarding RC would be highly appreciated.