Marty Murray wrote:Mallika, you handle language well in what you are writing here. So it's intriguing that you are not scoring higher on verbal.
One thing that jumps out at me is that you said you got demoralized by your performance on the Veritas questions. You can't let anything demoralize you. You can learn to score 800 on this test. It's just a matter of developing some skills, and given at least the language skills you have demonstrated here, along with some of the things you have said, it sounds as if, along with skills, much of what you need to develop is confidence. So when you have trouble you need to somehow have that energize rather than demoralize you.
When I started doing coaching I worked with a bunch of SAT students. Some were scoring high already and some were scoring not so high. I was amazed at how clear it was that the ones who were scoring lower could by just changing some things score much higher, and I have seen someone's score jump dramatically just from changes in attitude and confidence. For one thing, if you are really getting answers right, and then marking them wrong, wow, there's a path to an easy score increase right there. That's great.
Then if you could just stay a little calmer, more points, work a little faster, a few more points. It all adds up and you score goes up nicely.
Anyway, did you do more Veritas questions after those first sets? Those questions are pretty good, and if you learn to do them you will have gotten pretty good at doing what it takes to rock verbal.
The Veritas CATs are also pretty good, some of the best out there, so you might want to try the free one first and consider buying more. By taking CATs one can get accustomed to the time pressure and the stream of questions and just by doing that you might solve some of the things you have mentioned. Imagine if doing GMAT questions were a job and you did it five days a week. After a while it would be no big deal and you would pretty much always get them right.
So that's the theme here. By developing skill and understanding, you can score as high as you want. So stay confident and keep figuring out how to do that.
Hi Marty,
I know what you mean. I should not be suffering in Verbal, and I know with a little more care, I can increase my score there.
I think it is my pace in Quant and RC that is robbing me of precious time and also confidence.
No, I haven't tried Veritas prep after the last time I did some questions.
At this stage I think I have some Geometry left to do and also some Sentence Correction.
I also have IR and AWA to look up.
And I need to practise in parallel.
I need to hit 730 at least.
How long do you think I should give my prep at this stage..?
And what should be my strategy at this point..?
I am so thankful I took the mock yesterday, I was planning on pushing it to the next week.
But wow this is a reality check!
Many thanks,
Mallika
