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Need help with GMAT score improvement!

by stairclimber » Sun Dec 13, 2015 2:59 pm
Hello,

I have been trying to break the 700 barrier forever now and I am just unable to break it. Any help with my situation will be very much appreciated! I have my GMAT in about 4 weeks.

I took GMAT two times now and both the times I got 660. V29 and Q50, both the times. I like the consistency but not the verbal score. I took once in November 2014 and recently in September 2015. During my recent test, my AWA was 6 and IR was 8. So, I just want to improve my Verbal and I am at a loss as to how I can do that.

During my last exam, I did not have time and I was rushing through the verbal section because I was behind schedule by like 8-10 mins. I remember that I pretty much guessed the answers to one full RC passage and I am not very good at RC. While studying, I took the GMAT Prep's CATs and I got 680 and 710. I never had issues with time although I barely make it in time, most of the times (for verbal). I think that I need online practice where I can monitor my time a lot (instead of paper books). Any suggestions on that front?

What do you think I should do differently this time around?

Thank you very much for your help!
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by MartyMurray » Sun Dec 13, 2015 10:54 pm
Actually, to get better at handling verbal question, you may not be best off concerning yourself with time at this point. You may be better off taking however long it takes to achieve high hits rates when doing verbal questions of all three types.

I mean, do SC, CR, and RC questions, taking as long as it takes to CLEARLY see why all four wrong answers to each are wrong and the right answer is right. You need to get going at noticing key details and seeing the logic of what is going on in questions and answer choices.

If you are not that good at handling the questions, probably seeking to just do them more quickly will not work out.

You need to develop skill and form first, and then speed, and actually if you are skilled and have good form, you will naturally find the answers pretty quickly.

To work from a screen rather than from paper, which idea is a good one, you could buy the GMAT Prep question pack, you could buy an ebook version of the OG, if you don't already have it, and use the online question bank that comes with the OG, you could buy an ebook version of the Verbal OG, and use its question bank, or you could use online question banks such as the Veritas Question Bank, here, https://www.veritasprep.com/gmat-question-bank/.

Just be clear that you need to get good at seeing logic and key details and at hacking your way to right verbal answers.
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by stairclimber » Sun Dec 13, 2015 11:36 pm
Thank you very much for the reply, Marty!

I have some data on that front. While preparing for GMAT the second time, I used e-GMAT and Grockit questions, primarily because at that point I had used up all my OG questions.

Is it a good idea to do OG questions again, but more meticulously this time?

While preparing I found that my accuracies on all the three sections hovered around 60%. My ability also hovered around 60% with CR being the best followed by SC and then RC. I noticed that there was an inverse correlation between my accuracy and the level of difficulty. I was getting all the easy questions right, about 70-80%of the medium questions right and about 30% of the hard questions right. No matter what, I just couldn't get the hard questions right which I believe is necessary to break the 700 barrier and I need to be consistent with those hard questions. I am going to test that statistic again, now that I am just starting to prepare studying.

Is it a good idea to just do the hard questions this time? If so, is there a good source for something like that? I definitely want to log my time statistic also while I am doing that although I might not be focused on time, at least for the next weeks while I try to get the logic and accuracy down.

Any tips on how I can improve that?

Thanks again for your time and replies, experts! I really appreciate it.

Stairclimber.
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by MartyMurray » Mon Dec 14, 2015 12:21 am
Given your hit rate, redoing the OG questions more meticulously might make sense, especially if you were to somehow focus on harder ones or on ones you didn't get the first time.

For more official verbal questions you could buy the GMAT Prep Question Pack or an e book version of the Verbal OG. Don't be buying paper books because of anything I say. I am so not into using destructive, bad karma paper.

For some more rather good RC questions, sign up for the Veritas Question Bank. Getting their RC questions right often requires really being careful to note the difference between what you might at first think a passage says and what it actually says.

There has to be a way for you to get the hard questions right. Probably you need to slow waaaaay down and ponder questions for as long as it takes to see which answer choice is right. There is only one right answer and most of the time when you really see what's going on in official questions you don't need the explanation to know which answer is right and why it is. Conversely, if you are picking wrong answers, you are not noticing key things.

In other words, if, for instance, you get an official CR question wrong, you have just gotten smoked by some trick answer that does not really make sense.

To get the accuracy you seek, you can do two things. One of them is to work on each question until you see everything so clearly that there is almost no way to get it wrong. That way you will develop the vision and the analytical skills necessary for achieving a high hit rate. The other thing is to go over every one you miss to figure out EXACTLY what you needed to see in order to get the right answer, and I don't mean read explanations. I mean figure it out yourself. It seems as if sometimes people get the impression that if they just read enough explanations they will learn how to handle verbal questions, but actually what you really need to work towards is getting to the point where the explanations are superfluous.

Maybe you should focus on hard questions the most, although if you are not getting 100% of the medium questions right, then you could work on them too.

Overall, the key to getting hard GMAT verbal questions right is not to use gimmicky strategies or half baked elimination rules. You really need to see what is going on.
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by stairclimber » Mon Dec 14, 2015 5:39 am
Thank you for the detailed tips, Marty! I will give those a shot and seek for more help soon. For now, looks like I have a long way to go. Let me first execute on a few things.
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by DavidG@VeritasPrep » Mon Dec 14, 2015 7:54 am
In addition to Marty's typically excellent advice, I'd suggest the following concrete action steps:

- Make sure you're up to speed on the principles tested in Sentence Correction. Here's our free SC lesson: https://www.veritasprep.com/gmat/free-gmat-lesson/

- Do (or re-do) all the SC questions in the Official Guide and make sure you understand them thoroughly. Post any questions you have here.

- Read voraciously everyday for a few weeks. (Anything challenging will do.) There's research suggesting that the physiology of our brains changes when we read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/ar ... in/282952/

- Consider incorporating some mindfulness meditation, which has been shown to improve standardized test scores. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archi ... on/275564/
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by stairclimber » Mon Dec 14, 2015 9:53 am
Thank you for the tips and links, Dave!
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by stairclimber » Wed Dec 16, 2015 4:48 am
Experts,

I am slowly getting into the groove of studying. Started doing questions and reviewing concepts.

I have some more data regarding my performance and some questions related to that. The first picture below is from my recent test performance while the second one is from a test that I took last year. So, my questions to you are:

1. Should I take any CATs before my exam? If so, how many? I think I can take like 2 or 3 tests, if I have to.
2. I am not sure why my CR dropped so badly. I glad to see that my SC remained the same. So, I will try to concentrate on CR and RC only while trying not to lose SC. Is that a sound strategy?


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Thank you for your inputs!

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by DavidG@VeritasPrep » Wed Dec 16, 2015 6:08 am
stairclimber wrote:Experts,

I am slowly getting into the groove of studying. Started doing questions and reviewing concepts.

I have some more data regarding my performance and some questions related to that. The first picture below is from my recent test performance while the second one is from a test that I took last year. So, my questions to you are:

1. Should I take any CATs before my exam? If so, how many? I think I can take like 2 or 3 tests, if I have to.
2. I am not sure why my CR dropped so badly. I glad to see that my SC remained the same. So, I will try to concentrate on CR and RC only while trying not to lose SC. Is that a sound strategy?


Image

Image

Thank you for your inputs!

Stairclimber
There's no magic number for the number of practice exams you'll want to take, but If your test is four weeks away, yeah, I certainly think it makes sense to take at least a few more tests to both practice your strategies and assess whether they're working properly. If you haven't taken the tests from the exam pack, I'd suggest taking those (and if you haven't completed the Question Pack, I'd do that too): https://www.mba.com/us/store/store-catal ... ction.aspx

(And while your strategy for focusing on CR and RC is sound, try to make horizontal connections between the sections. For example, you are probably well aware of the importance of modifiers in Sentence Correction, but you'll come to see, when analyzing answer choices, that modifiers are also incredibly important in CR and RC - "some" vs "most" vs "all" vs "few" are incredibly important distinctions. Verbal, in general, is about logic and attention to linguistic detail.)
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by stairclimber » Wed Dec 16, 2015 9:19 am
Thanks, Dave.

Unfortunately, I used up both the GMAT Prep exams and I also did all the OG questions. I am thinking of taking a Veritas practice test.

I found a compilation of all the questions in the GMAT Prep software somewhere online. So, I will do those along with Veritas Prep questions from their Question Bank.

Wow, great suggestions regarding horizontal connections and paying attention to detail. I am usually very bad at paying attention to detail and I think that is affecting my performance on Verbal because I am missing a lot of the cues.
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by [email protected] » Wed Dec 16, 2015 9:24 am
Hi stairclimber,

From your ESR, it looks like your pacing on SCs and RCs is 'imbalanced' (your pacing on CR is fine though). Pacing issues don't exist on their own though - they're the results of OTHER issues.

1) What steps do you go through when dealing with a typical SC, RC and CR prompt?
2) How often do you find yourself 'narrowing the answers down to 2 choices and then guessing?'

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by MartyMurray » Wed Dec 16, 2015 10:35 am
Wow, great suggestions regarding horizontal connections and paying attention to detail. I am usually very bad at paying attention to detail and I think that is affecting my performance on Verbal because I am missing a lot of the cues.
Paying attention to detail is the foundation of scoring high on verbal. Don't do that and no matter what else you do your score will be low. Do that and watch your score go up.
Unfortunately, I used up both the GMAT Prep exams
It's not clear from what you said whether you have used up all four of the GMAT Prep exams, which come in two different sets of two, the first set free and the second set paid, or you have used up only the first two free exams. If you have only used two exams, you can buy the other two. Might make sense to mix them with Veritas Tests.
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by stairclimber » Wed Dec 16, 2015 4:47 pm
Hi Rich,

I did not realize that my pacing was imbalanced. Now that you point it out, I am thinking maybe I should have had SC at 1.5-1.6 min instead of 1.76. If that's not the case, can you please explain what you mean by 'imbalanced'?

1. For SC, I typically read the full sentence and try to identify the errors in the given sentence. Using those errors, I work to eliminate the answer choices until I am left with just one. For CR, I read the whole prompt and the question before looking at the given options. Based on the question and flow/transition words in the CR, I identify conclusions, premises, etc., and try to answer the question using elimination. For RC, I am very slow at reading and comprehending RCs (I have my excuses here but they are just excuses!) but I still try to read the whole passage while paying attention to the flow and transition keywords. Since, I am usually pressed for time when it comes to RC, I just guess quickly and move on.

2. For my first attempt, I did find myself 'narrowing the answers to 2 options'. While preparing for my second attempt, I realized that I lacked the concepts and hence tried to fix that issue. So, the percentage of questions where I narrow the answers down to two options has gone down but many times, I just choose a wrong answer now. I am not sure what is going on. I think I am missing the subtle cues or something.

Getting back to recent attempt's ESR, I am actually very surprised that my CR was so low. I always felt that my CR ability is good because of my Quant and logic abilities but clearly the data shows something else. I am not sure what went wrong or what I am missing.

Thanks in advance for your help! Really appreciate it.

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by stairclimber » Wed Dec 16, 2015 4:51 pm
I only used two exams. I have two more. Thanks for pointing that out. I forgot about them.
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by [email protected] » Wed Dec 16, 2015 6:01 pm
Hi stairclimber,

A typical SC should take about 60-75 seconds (with up to 90 seconds for the longer/tougher prompts). This means that 'your way' of approaching SCs is taking far too long and THAT time could/should be spent on RC. The description of your Verbal 'steps' also seems incomplete (and could be more strategic). This is all meant to say that you might have to invest in some new resources and learn/practice some new Verbal tactics to 'fix' all of these issues.

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