Verbal - Emergency !!! How to Improve ?

This forum is dedicated to our GMAT Avengers study group. Connect with fellow test takers and stay up-to-date with the latest Avengers' news. Experts are free to contribute in answering questions.
This topic has expert replies
Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Sep 13, 2015 9:23 am

Verbal - Emergency !!! How to Improve ?

by beckb » Sun Sep 13, 2015 9:30 am
Hey
Jus gave my Gmat
630 Q48 V28 :(

I have gone thru all materials
OG - Manhattan- Power score Bible for Cr

Also did a program with Magoosh.

Previously had a Verbal score of 19 and after this rigourous prep got a V28.

All my mocks V28 remains stable.
How to improve it further ?
Byju gmat /e gmat / Crackverbal ??

User avatar
Legendary Member
Posts: 2131
Joined: Mon Feb 03, 2014 9:26 am
Location: https://martymurraycoaching.com/
Thanked: 955 times
Followed by:140 members
GMAT Score:800

by MartyMurray » Sun Sep 13, 2015 9:24 pm
beckb wrote:I have gone thru all materials
OG - Manhattan- Power score Bible for Cr

All my mocks V28 remains stable.
How to improve it further?
Hi beckb.

While it's a little challenging to determine what you need to do to increase that verbal score without more information, in general what I see when a person's verbal score is stuck is that the person has not fully grasped what the questions are really testing or has not figured out what it takes to get right answers.

For instance, in SC, people often get the impression the getting right answers is all about applying a set of clear rules, when actually, while the rules are useful, there is much more to getting right answers than just applying those rules. In fact often people who score high in SC don't even know that many of the rules. In one case, a guy I have been working with completed a full GMAT Prep course and so knew all kinds of SC rules and concepts. He would approach an SC question by looking over the answer choices to find which rules were being broken, only to get the question wrong because maybe meaning rather than grammar rules was what mattered in that case. In order to get more right, he had to reduce his reliance on rules and pay more attention to the overall meaning and effectiveness of the sentences.

In CR, scoring high require an attention to detail beyond what many people are using. Often people just look at answers and choose one that "seems right." Other times people eliminate answer choices that seem too weird or don't have an obvious connection to the question. The truth is that often the weirdest answer is the right one. So in order to get CR questions right, especially more difficult CR questions, one has to go beyond applying basic strategies to really noticing details and fully understanding the logic of arguments, questions, and answer choices. For example, I have seen people miss CR questions because they were not paying attention to every word in arguments or answer choices. One word can make all the difference, and when these people realized what they were doing and changed it their scores rapidly increased.

In RC, one does not really need to learn much about strategies or concepts to get right answers, but one needs to be have effective methods for reading the passages efficiently, and one has to be super careful when going though answer choices to notice whether the choices being chosen really reflect what is said in the passage.

Overall, GMAT verbal is not really an English test. It is a reasoning game that requires clear vision and attention to detail. So the upshot is that one can learn rule after rule and concept after concept and still not score high on the verbal section of the GMAT until one develops the key basic skills necessary for getting right answers.

Also, in preparing for verbal, people are often focused on reading the explanations to question after question. While there is some value to doing this, I tell them that way more important than understanding the explanations is understanding what processes they need to use in order to get the right answers.

The key question is "Knowing what I already know, how can I get this one right?"

So there are some things for you to consider. With some more information, we may be able to give you additional insight.

Are you finding all of verbal equally challenging or are you doing better at answering some question types than you do at answering others?

Is timing an issue?

When you do verbal practice questions, do you tend to always do them on a timed basis or have you done much practicing on an untimed basis?

I am not all that familiar with the resources you mentioned, but whatever resources you use, you may have to go beyond learning concepts and rules or applying the recommendations they provide to honing basic skills like the ones I described above.

A nice thing for you to realize is that the vision and reasoning skills you have been using to score high on the quant section are applicable to verbal too. It may be that you just need to make some connections and see some things you haven't.
Marty Murray
Perfect Scoring Tutor With Over a Decade of Experience
MartyMurrayCoaching.com
Contact me at [email protected] for a free consultation.

GMAT/MBA Expert

User avatar
Elite Legendary Member
Posts: 10392
Joined: Sun Jun 23, 2013 6:38 pm
Location: Palo Alto, CA
Thanked: 2867 times
Followed by:511 members
GMAT Score:800

by [email protected] » Sun Sep 13, 2015 10:57 pm
Hi beckb,

First off, a 630/Q48 is a good overall score (it's a bit below the 80th percentile overall), so it might be enough to get you into your first-choice Business School. From your post, you don't seem happy about this score though, so we can talk through how you can continue to study. I'd like to know a bit more about the work that you've done so far:

1) How long have you studied?
2) How have you scored on each of your practice CATs (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores)?
3) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
4) What is your goal score?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
Contact Rich at [email protected]
Image

Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Sep 13, 2015 9:23 am

by beckb » Sun Sep 13, 2015 11:09 pm
Thanks for your input Murray !
And yess Rich - I have been preparing full time for the past 2 to 3 months .
Even in my mock gmat , scores used to fluctuate between 630 and 650 with a consistent V28 and Q48 to Q50.

I have possibly exhausted all possible

resources to study for the exam.

I am planning to retake my Gmat in another 40 -50 days
And apply to coll by Nov end

Goal score is a 700 minimum - having 2 years work ex ; am looking at maximising Gmat score to have a better chance .

GMAT/MBA Expert

User avatar
Elite Legendary Member
Posts: 10392
Joined: Sun Jun 23, 2013 6:38 pm
Location: Palo Alto, CA
Thanked: 2867 times
Followed by:511 members
GMAT Score:800

by [email protected] » Sun Sep 13, 2015 11:15 pm
Hi beckb,

Since it looks like your Official Score is 'in line' with your practice scores, but your score goal was 700+, then why did you take the GMAT (instead of pushing back your Test Date so that you could continue to study?)?

Thankfully, you still have plenty of time to study before November; the Verbal section of the GMAT is just as predictable and standardized as the Quant section is, so you CAN train to score at a higher level.

While you may have exhausted the resources that you already have, there are LOTS of different GMAT resources that you can use during your studies, so we just have to find the right one(s) that will help you to raise your Verbal score further. Many Test Takers who use a 'book-heavy' study approach end up getting 'stuck' at a particular scoring level and it's likely that this is what has happened to you. You'll likely need to invest in some new non-book resources, and learn/practice some new Verbal tactics.

1) What 'steps' do you go through when dealing with a typical SC, RC or CR prompt?
2) Do you have to rush through a bunch of questions at the end of the Verbal section (just to finish on time)?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
Contact Rich at [email protected]
Image

Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Sep 13, 2015 9:23 am

by beckb » Mon Sep 14, 2015 12:01 am
I had been rescheduling my Gmat for almost 6 months and it was a drag.
And I started giving my mocks a week before my finalised date . Wanted to reschedule again but with a time bracket less than a week , I was bound to lose my full money. Thus I took a chance.

My Sc n Cr I get approx 10 qns wrong and in RC I completely lose track of it , I have no patience to read the passage and I end up getting 0 answers right . So RC is my biggest weakness.

I did take a program with Magoosh with which I improved my Verbal from V19 to V28.

But from V28 to V30+ seems to be a herculean task for me.

User avatar
Legendary Member
Posts: 2131
Joined: Mon Feb 03, 2014 9:26 am
Location: https://martymurraycoaching.com/
Thanked: 955 times
Followed by:140 members
GMAT Score:800

by MartyMurray » Mon Sep 14, 2015 3:54 am
beckb, what you said about RC pretty much tells the story. You lose patience. You even went ahead and took the test before you were ready, because you lost patience.

So, this is not about your needing to learn new concepts or other GMAT stuff. In order for your verbal score to go up, you need to change your basic approach and psychology.

You can keep using different preparation materials, but going over more "stuff" will change little.

Your main focus probably has to be on changing, at a very basic level, the way you respond to the challenges of GMAT verbal.
Marty Murray
Perfect Scoring Tutor With Over a Decade of Experience
MartyMurrayCoaching.com
Contact me at [email protected] for a free consultation.

User avatar
Legendary Member
Posts: 2131
Joined: Mon Feb 03, 2014 9:26 am
Location: https://martymurraycoaching.com/
Thanked: 955 times
Followed by:140 members
GMAT Score:800

by MartyMurray » Mon Sep 14, 2015 7:50 am
There is one simple thing you can do to increase your hit rate and score on GMAT verbal. Slow way down.

I strongly suggest doing the following.

Start with RC and take your time. I mean take as long as it takes to read the entire passage and get most if not all of the questions right. If it takes half an hour to read one passage and answer four questions correctly, then that's what it takes.

From what you said, doing things this way will probably be pretty painful, but you need to work this way.

Repeatedly seeking to quickly read the passages and answer the questions has not gotten you to where you want to be. The thing you need is to learn to get right answers. Without the skills to get right answers you don't have what you need to get the score you want, and it is VERY difficult to develop those skills when working quickly and much easier to develop them when working slowly. You need to develop form first, and then speed.

There is even an emotional aspect to getting right answers, and if you are doing questions on a timed basis, you will pretty much never even deal with that emotional aspect, because you will run out of time and so be let off the hook.

So slow down and figure out how to get right answers consistently. Once your hit rate untimed is 85 - 100%, then you can think about speeding up.
Marty Murray
Perfect Scoring Tutor With Over a Decade of Experience
MartyMurrayCoaching.com
Contact me at [email protected] for a free consultation.

GMAT/MBA Expert

User avatar
Elite Legendary Member
Posts: 10392
Joined: Sun Jun 23, 2013 6:38 pm
Location: Palo Alto, CA
Thanked: 2867 times
Followed by:511 members
GMAT Score:800

by [email protected] » Mon Sep 14, 2015 9:23 am
Hi beckb,

From what you've described, there are a number of different 'issues' that need to be dealt with before you take the GMAT again.

1) When taken correctly, FULL-LEGNTH CATs are a great way to measure your progress and pinpoint weaknesses in how you're approaching the GMAT. You should plan to take one every 1-2 weeks. From what you described, you didn't start taking them until 1 week before your Official GMAT - THAT was a mistake. It's also not surprising that your scores were 'clustered' - you didn't give yourself any real time to practice and improve between when you took your CATs and when you took the Official GMAT.

2) Reading Comp makes up approximately 1/3 of the questions in Verbal section. To score 700+, you cannot afford to have a big 'weak' category, so you're going to have to practice for RC.

3) Since the Verbal section of the GMAT is so predictable, there are tactics and 'steps' that you can go through to consistently handle the question types that you'll face in that section. Since you weren't able to define the steps that you do use, it makes me think that you aren't using any standard approaches (in basic terms, you're working through the answers and picking the one that 'sounds good' - which is NOT a strategy).

4) You have to decide what matters more to you: continuing to do things 'your way' or making the necessary changes to score at a much higher level on the GMAT. It doesn't sound like you've taken the task of dealing with the Verbal section very seriously; you seem to be trying to avoid doing the work that is necessary. If you're ready to start doing that work, then I can certainly offer advice that will help.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
Contact Rich at [email protected]
Image