I just Beat The GMAT!

Hi,

I took the GMAT a few weeks back and got a 660 (Q 51/V 28/AWA 5/IR 5). I am extremely disappointed with my verbal score. I would like to hear any inputs on how best to tackle the GMAT in my second attempt (November mid).

I did go to a private tutor and most of his materials were questions taken from official guides. The materials given by him were very good and I used to do each problem within 2 minutes. I also did Grail/Manhattan/OG material separately.

While studying I didn't have much of a problem with either Quant or CR.
My accuracy in RC was consistently bad until a couple of weeks before my GMAT. I am not sure if the accuracy improved because I started getting better at RC or if I was more familiar with the passages.
My accuracy in SC improved considerably and reached a stage where I was getting only 2 SC questions wrong per mock exam. About two weeks before my Test I stopped studying SC. Instead I started doing Quant & RC.

I gave my MGMAT mocks one week prior to my GMAT and was very pleased with the results (considering the fact that they are known to be tougher than the real GMAT)

MGMAT 2 680 - Q46 V36 (18/08/2013)
MGMAT 3 710 - Q47 V40 (27/08/2013)
MGMAT 4 690 - Q46 V38 (29/08/2013)
MGMAT 5 720 - Q47 V41 (31/08/2013)
MGMAT 6 730 - Q50 V39 (01/09/2013)

GMAT PREP 2 760 - Q51 V40

Exam Day

On the exam day, AWA, IR & Quant went pretty well. Once I started my Verbal, I found the sentence correction problems very "unfamiliar". I was unsure about the answers I marked for many SC questions. I tried maintaining the 2 minute/question time limit, but by the time I reached the 20th question I was lagging behind. I ended the Verbal section a minute ahead of time, so I think I might have gone through the last 20 questions a bit too fast at the expense of my accuracy. RC passages were not easy. Even as I was doing my verbal, I was getting a feeling that it was going very bad.

I am not sure where I went wrong in my preparations. I would like to give a second shot by mid november.

Can anyone give any insights on how to approach Verbal and what could have possibly gone wrong? I have never got a V 28 in any of my mock exams. I guess there was Exam Stress and I didn't sleep that well the day before my exam. But I don't know if I can blame it completely on those factors. Any inputs welcome!!

Thanks.

Hi sarangjn,

Your Quant score seems to be inline with your mock tests, however your verbal score is indeed very surprising! A drop of almost 10 points below your average verbal score. I'm just curious to know, were all the mock tests taken in 100% exam conditions? (all IR & AWA sections attempted with the regular breaks taken in between). There are many debriefs out there which point to this issue. Another reason could be taking the mock test not far apart with each other and the actual GMAT. I'm no expert on this, but just my 2 cents worth

Regards,
Vivek

Hi Vivek,

Firstly, thanks for your reply.

I must say my verbal score was very very surprising. Even on my worst day, I was getting a Verbal 34-35. I didn't prepare for the AWA till a couple of days before the exam. Almost all mock exams except my GMAT Prep 2 and MGMAT 5 & 6 were taken without the AWA. So wrote the AWA only for my last 3 mock tests. I did take IR in all my mocks. I took regular breaks too. So only difference is the AWA part.
I did take other mock tests prior to my MGMAT mocks. Just didn't mention it in my debrief. I used to get my score in the range of 680-740 in them.

My only concern right now is that I don't want to end up getting a similar score on my second attempt (November 3rd week).

I am planning on doing more SC questions and do 4 hour continuous RC sessions so that I am prepared to sit and concentrate for a long duration. I can see from my second round of preparations that I am getting almost all SC questions right. Ironically, that is worrying because it doesn't explain why I found many of my GMAT SC questions tough.

Any suggestions on my second round of preparations are most welcome!

Thanks.

Firstly, I would want to say a 660 is a great score on the first attempt, especially a 51 on Quant! It is unfortunate that verbal did not match up to the mock scores.

I believe in Verbal its harder to 'forget' answers than in Quant. RC is most people's weaknesses so maybe you would want to work on new questions and base your accuracy on that.

Regarding SC you are giving all of us a scare because of the unfamiliarity that you mentioned. I remember another member (manpreet) mentioning the same experience. I wonder if experts can shed some wisdom on this subject.

Hi, sarangjn!
Just want you to know that you are not the only one here with this issue. I took my GMAT today and got an awful 640 (Q 49/V 28) I have never had such a low verbal score in any of my mocks. And I had the same experience with SC questions on the test day! I think that at almost all of my SC questions I had to choose between two answer choices both of which looked proper for me. CR were OK, but RC were tough not because of hard passages, but mostly because of hard questions. And I also think that the anxiety and stress have played a big role in my verbal score as well.

If you are interested, here is my plan for now:

I'm planning to work mostly on my reading comprehension skills. To improve the skill, I am considering doing 1 LSAT passage per day with detailed review. Consider debriefs of two non-native speakers from Uzbekistan who scored extremely well in the verbal section due to working with LSAT passages:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/770-q50-v45- ... 31620.html
https://www.beatthegmat.com/760-q51-v42- ... 56645.html

As for SC, I have no Idea what to do... it seems like we have to change our approach to the SC questions. I am thinking about taking a prep course.

I have already exhausted MGMAT CATS, OG (I've done all verbal questions at least twice) and, of course, GMATPrep CATS.

I would also love to here some expert suggestions on how to improve verbal score in one-two months.
I am with you! I believe with a proper approach and hard work we can push our verbal score to a 40+ level!

Hi sarangjn,

I have attempted GMAT twice. My first score was 640 - Q49, V29 but in my second attempt I was able to get a 38 in verbal (though I was getting a better score in mocks). I can share with you how I prepared for my second attempt.

Before I start, I'd like to emphasize that what worked for me might not work for you exactly as we might have different areas of strengths/weaknesses. But still hope it might be helpful.

In my first attempt, everything was a shot in the darkness as I had hardly prepared and given very few mocks. Verbal was bad and I hardly remember anything from the exam. I knew some SC rules but used to do SC questions intuitively. I thought I was ok with CR. And RC was a problem for me, as I am a slow reader and was not able to do the questions under 2 mins. completing verbal also used to be a problem.

As I was preparing for my second attempt, I realized something about RC - you have the opportunity to get 3-5 questions correct in a row if you improve this section. So I started taking the time to read the passage thoroughly and tried to answer questions faster. To make up for the time, I aimed to finish 1 SC question in 1 min. This is actually possible! I used to practice 30 SC in 30 mins. I practiced a lot of SC rules, revised them every ~2 weeks and aimed to complete these in a min so that I have more time for other type of questions. For CR, I used to take more than 2 mins easily per question. But I was comfortable as I was saving time in SC. Do not have a specific strategy for CR, I just used to practice a lot of questions.

My advice to you would be to identify your areas of weakness and work on them as well as brush up your strengths. I've heard LSAT questions are tougher than GMAT (was not able to get around to doing them) so think would be very helpful to do them. Another suggestion would be to make sure that you are not familiar with the questions in your mock tests. I knew almost all the questions on GMAT Prep which did not help me during my mocks as timing and accuracy differ when all the questions are new. Lastly, would suggest you to do as many 'official' questions as possible, especially closer to the test date.

With your quant score, you can easily go up to 740-750 if you pull up your score to 40 in verbal. Best of luck! Hope I was able to help.

Cheers!

Here is my two cents on RC passages. Don't aim for the 2 minute target on each question. Spend an extra few minutes reading and really comprehending what the passage is about. If you do that you, should have no problem answer the 3 or 4 associated questions in 30-45 seconds. I scored a 40 on the verbal section and that's how I approached most RC passages.

Wow. I am in love with this community. A big thanks to everyone who has replied here.

@Rich: I had not taken any of those CAT's earlier. Although there were many questions in GMAT prep2 (760, two days before my GMAT) that I was familiar with. Regarding MGMAT CAT's, apart from a very minute proportion of questions, most questions were new to me.

I had prepared for the GMAT very well and I didn't leave any stone unturned (or so I thought). That is why it is worrying to me because I don't want to do the same things again and end up with the same score.

The LSAT papers for RC & CR is something that I had not done earlier. So I will definitely do that. I will try doing it for 4 hours straight with timed breaks.
As many people have said earlier, RC is very very important. Getting 3-4 questions wrong continuously can really screw your score.

@"Hoping for the Best" : Thanks for your advice. Can you tell me how long it took you to get that jump from V29 to V38? I am actually almost thorough with most SC rules (except some idioms & some rules in Tenses). I hope I can do a similar miracle!

@Vags Thanks for those debriefs. I was so exhausted by the time I reached Question 20-25 in Verbal that I don't remember anything from my Verbal. Although I do remember that I too had the same problem in SC. Each question had about 2 possible correct answers.

@Faraz I don't think you should get scared. Many people have done well in verbal too. So take our debriefs as exceptions!! All the Best!

I am planning to write my GMAT in about 50 days (if I am not able to prepare by then,I will postpone it). I do want to get a 720-730+ score. I am planning to spend about 4/5 of the time for Verbal and 1/5 for Quant. For SC, I plan to do SC 1000 and any other material that I can get hold of. For RC & CR I will start with the LSAT papers.
Can anyone suggest if this is fine? Is 50 days enough to improve my score (around 2-3 hrs a day on weekdays & 5-6+ on weekends)?

Thanks!

Hi sarangjn,

For SC you could try out some additional prep materials from GMAC:
GMATPrep® Question Pack 1
GMATPrep® Exam Pack 1

Additionally I would like to quote a piece of advice I found would be useful in my case:

Think of the test as a marathon. What would happen if you ran a practice marathon every day during the week before your real marathon? You'd completely tire yourself out. Next time, no practice tests within 5 days of the real thing. The day before, no more than 2 hours of study. The day before that, no more than 3-4 hours of study. Rest before the test.

- By Stacey (MGMAT Instructor)
https://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/pos ... tml#p54328
https://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/pos ... tml#p82087



Regards,
Vivek

Hi sarangjn,

I took the first attempt in Dec last year and second attempt in Sept this year. I sort of started my prep again in July this year and did not study in the first 6 months, so you have an advantage over me

Best of luck!

Hi Ron,

Thanks for replying. Also, thanks for clearing so many of my doubts through various posts of yours both in BTG and in MGMAT forums!

I will go through each sub topic so that I can give you a clearer picture. I will skip Quant because I seem to have studied it correctly.

SC

I studied the rules initially using a SAT book-"Maximize your writing score" to get a good foundation and then went onto Grail. If I ever had a doubt while solving an SC problem, I used to google it and if I learnt any addition rule that you or some other MGMAT instructor might mention, I would add that to my rulebook. I went through OG, GRAIL and other materials that I had (all were authentic GMAT questions).

While solving these questions at home, I would almost always know which rule is being tested as I read the question (& the options). I think my approach is to first see if any blatant errors are there. If I can find an option which corrects all grammatical mistakes, I would choose it and go ahead. If I can't solve a problem, or if I cant narrow down to the right option, I would go for the option with the "least errors" according to me. Or else skip. 8/10 Questions were of the former type while 2/10 would be of the latter.

Strengths and Weakness: I know that I am not great with "Idioms" and "Tenses". As a non native speaker, I have to mug up the Idioms (something I am not good at). I get confused sometimes when subtle variations in tenses appear in the options.
Also when it is a long sentence which is not fully underlined: I tend to read each option from the beginning ( even the non underlined portion), because I feel I might get it wrong if I read only the underlined portion each time. I am not sure if that is the right way to do such problems.

On the GMAT day, for almost all questions, I couldn't narrow down to one right option. I couldn't point to the option which I could confidently say " satisfied all GMAT rules". This was what worried me, because I rarely used to end up in such a situation.

Note: When I meant GMAT rules, I am including "meaning clarity" too in it.

Going forward, I am almost out of new material. I think I will solve SC 1000 (which I didn't do earlier as I had heard it has a few questions which are wrong) and then do all my old material.

RC

RC is the toughest part for me and has been my biggest weakness. I am always unsure of RC answers. It has been my weakness from the beginning of my preparations up until now! My RC accuracy is high when I am solving the initial passages. But if I am doing RC for 1 hour, my accuracy keeps decreasing as time increases!

Again I have practiced from only authentic GMAT RC questions. Ideally I would like to understand what the author is trying to convey and also get a big picture of the passage. But with tough passages, I lose my bearings and I feel like I have just read the passage without understanding anything. I practiced plenty of RC passages (timed such that on average I solve 1 Q/ 2 minutes) and used to get about 1 in 5 questions wrong. The wrong answer would mostly be due to not understanding a part of the passage clearly. If I take out extra time to solve an RC passage I am sure I would get almost all correct. So, it is not that I can't solve RC, but that I don't do well under time constraints! Something that I have to work on.

On the GMAT day, I really don't remember any of my passages nor do I remember how I solved them. I don't think at that time I really applied any of my months of preparation into solving them. For example, I don't think I tried to understand the "tone" of the passage while reading it. I do remember getting worked up because of my SC performance and not understanding the passages.

RC is something which I am not able to crack with various different approaches. I don't write down anything while reading. I do read some lines 2-3 times till I understand. If I don't understand I move on. I try to look for contrast words in the passage which might signify a change in the tone. But all said and done, I don't think I applied all of this on the actual GMAT day.

I am planning to do LSAT papers to try improve my RC and also other materials that I might have already done earlier.

CR

CR has been the easiest of the three sub parts of Verbal. I felt I could solve the CR questions relatively much better than the other two. I plan to do LSAT papers for CR too as I have run out of every other source that I had.

I am planning to give my second attempt in 40 days. Can you give me any inputs on how to proceed? Also, what is your take on LSAT papers? Would it be good to improve RC/CR?

Thanks!