GMAT Strategy

Hey Mary,

So, as you may have guessed, I'm not going to be able to tell you anything massively surprising/interesting. But it will be the truth.

You've already described yourself what your problem was. It wasn't preparation (your practice tests are generally a pretty good sign of where you'll score on the real test), it was execution. On test day, it sounds like you had pacing problems, and you didn't actually use your skills. All the studying in the world won't help someone who goes into the test and does the questions the same way they did them (more or less) before they started studying!

Now here's the good news. You don't need all that much studying. What you need is to activate your skills on test day. Honestly, there's no such thing as "exhausting" material--or at least, not in the way most people think. Reset all the Manhattan tests. Go through the OG one more time, doing timed sets of questions. For example:

Random Math: 20 questions, 40 minutes.
Verbal: 7 SC questions, 7 CR questions, 2 RC passages: 40 minutes

Make sure you can stay on pace and testing. Do that for a week or so. Then, start taking the tests again. They'll be new enough that they will still be useful (believe me). Even if you recognize a questions...even if you remember the answer...just do it. Act like it's new. Activate your process. Make sure that every practice test you take is under the most realistic possible circumstances (you don't live in NYC, do you? Because you could come to our practice test center if you did...) in terms of timing, distraction, location, etc. By the time you go into that testing center again, you want it to feel like some old thing you've been doing forever.

Hope that helps! Don't get discouraged; you're much closer than you think!

-t

i received a private message about this thread.

you say you've been studying for the test for 6 months, maybe longer.
... and that's probably the issue: you are studying way too much for this exam. if you do way, way too much studying, then the most likely effect on your verbal score will be negative.

basically, the deal with CR and RC is this: the total amount of knowledge that you need for CR and RC problems is exactly zero. there's not a single fact that you have to memorize/recall/know, nor are there recognizable "templates" or "patterns" in the problems.
as a result, there's only so much productive studying you can do in those two areas. basically, all you can do is this:
1/ Achieve a general understanding of how each major task works;
2/ Understand the general mentality with which you should (or shouldn't) approach each major task;
3/ Get to the point where that is actually your default mentality.
... and that's it. once you've done these three things, there's really no more "preparation" that you can do for CR and RC; from that point onward, it's a matter of thinking and reasoning.

the problem with studying for too long is that, eventually, you are going to get bored and start trying to find "patterns" or "rules" that solve the problems. once that starts to happen, any further studying of RC or CR will actually have a negative effect on your score, because these faux "rules"/"patterns" (which don't, and can't, actually solve the problems) will start to crowd out the thought processes that actually do solve the problems.

so, basically, if you've been studying for that long, the first thing you need to do is step away from the test (esp. the verbal section) for a while. then, once you return, you should concentrate only on the types of things i've mentioned here -- since that's really all there is.

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here are some other posts i've written on this idea:

https://www.beatthegmat.com/580-re-take- ... tml#480613

https://www.beatthegmat.com/my-gmat-new- ... tml#538788

https://www.beatthegmat.com/last-2-weeks ... tml#473730

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good luck.