GMAT Strategy

Hello Everyone,

I have been preparing for the past 3 months and I am down to the last 3 weeks of my preparation before I take Real GMAT. My quant is strong hand and I am scoring currently Q49 in most mock tests. But my verbal is around only V35 and it is most if not all due to RC. RC is the culprit for my bad verbal score. My SC and CR accuracy is very good around 85% irrespective of difficulty level. Can you guys please help me or suggest me what to do with the RC. I have done so many passages and practice but it doesn't get better.

I have started reading tough post from scientist,washington post,new scientist and guardian. Either I am doing something really wrong or RC is not made for me. I am really feeling low.My accuracy in RC is below 40% and sometimes I get 4-5 RC questions wrong in a row. Any help will be highly appreciated.

Thanks,
Sunny

Hello Sunny,
You may make a practice of solving 5 RC daily in timed conditions. There are plenty of materials available-Aristotle RC Grail is really good. You may also solve the later questions of OG. After solving the RC sets analyse the mistakes. Read the solutions thoroughly. Results will show in 10 days

You need to refine your approach in order to see a change in your results. You have been practicing for a while and just more practice is not going to bring the kind of improvement that you are looking for. What you need to do is to see reading comp in a different way. You have to understand that 75% of the questions reference specific parts of the text and so you can go back to the text for these (and in most cases you should go back to the text). With the number of questions that you are missing you are either not going back to the text or you are not doing so very effectively.

What you must do is to organize your reading so that it complements the answering of questions. You may be reading for too much detail or pushing through and not understanding. Please read this article now, and the continue with the rest of this post when you are done with the article. https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2012/08/ ... prehension

Once you have read the passage properly and can go back to the proper paragraph efficiently, it becomes a matter of finding the right part of that paragraph in order to find the answer. Use the question stem to guide you. The question stem on many questions is a paraphrase of the passage and provides an easy way to locate the proper portion for you to reread. Be sure to read above and below until you have answered the question. Once you have the answer, you will find that the correct answer choice is a paraphrase of the text.

In sum:

Read the passage the right way.
Return to the text whenever you can.
On other questions like "primary purpose" use process of elimination.

You can do the first several passages untimed as you work on your accuracy with the new techniques.

Remember, your goal is efficiency with the answer choices. That is where you save time. You do not save time by skimming the passage or by neglecting the question stem. Your goal is to work with the passage and the question stem and then move rapidly and confidently through the answers.