GMAT Strategy

Hi akhilsuhag,

The OG (and the Verbal specific OG) are great sources for practice questions, but they're not designed to teach you all of the little secrets and patterns inherent in GMAT questions (both Verbal and Quant). Are you interested in additional practice questions or are you interested in learning tactics that will help you to improve your accuracy?

Since you've had this account for some time, I have to assume that you've done your fair share of studying. How do you perform during your FULL-length CATs?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Hi akhilsuhag,

A V41 is above the 90th percentile, so I'm curious about how you scored on the other sections of that CAT? Also, what is your goal score?

If you've been performing at that Verbal "level" for some time, then I don't think that you need a lot of additional verbal practice. At that level, the GMAT scoring algorithm gets really "sensitive", so the little mistakes make a big difference in score. On this last CAT, when you got a Verbal question wrong, how often was it because the question was just too hard and how often was it because of a little mistake (or because you narrowed it down to 2 choices and 'guessed' wrong)?

It could very well be that you don't *need* more questions, you need to examine what you're missing and just slightly change your approach.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Hi akhilsuhag,

Most of the CRs you posted were fairly standard, but a couple did have some "quirks" to them - the logic/style of each are such that you can count on seeing the same basic ideas/patterns on Test Day. This ultimately means that you now have to train to think with the same logic that the GMAT writers use. You have to get out of the habit of "narrowing it down to 2" and get into the habit of predicting what the correct answer will probably say (or at the very least, talk about in general).

If you can answer the questions from my prior post, then I'll be happy to offer some suggestions.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Hi akhilsuhag,

From your last post, if I understand you correctly, you have scored Q49-50/V38-42 on at last 2 recent CATs. To raise this score level HIGHER, the simple answer is "don't make any silly/little mistakes ever" because that's really all that's left to "fix."

There is still one factor that hasn't come up in these posts: have you made the necessary efforts to make these CATs as realistic as possible? Did you take the ENTIRE CAT? Did you take these CATs at the same time of day as your Official GMAT? Did you take these CATs under Test-like conditions? Did you do ANYTHING that doesn't mechanically "line up" with what will happen on Test Day? Etc.

I ask the above questions because at this scoring level the GMAT becomes really "sensitive" to little mistakes. A handful of little errors in DS or SC (for example) could significantly impact your score. So if you practice under conditions that don't match the Official Test, then on Test Day these errors have a higher likelihood of occurring.

With these last 20 days, there are 3 things that I would suggest:
1) Do everything in your power to make your last few CATs as realistic and Test-like as possible.
2) A full review of all of your Verbal questions, with an emphasis on understanding the patterns/logic of the prompt.
3) Your Verbal practice has to become more about predicting the correct answer in advance and less about "narrowing the answers down to the correct answer."

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich