I just Beat The GMAT!

First of all Hi to everyone in this forum..

Let me start my story.. I am one of that kind who lurks in the backgroud,browsing through all the posts on this forum .I am a non native speaker of english with an engineering backgroud. I am an average student who always cares less for marks and more for the content. But now the time has come to care for score and I wasn't able to reach my target of 700+. I gave my GMAT test yesterday and scored real bad - 600(Q45,V27) . I feel so much depressed and frustated. I have put all the hard work that is possible and still it's fruitless. Studying 10 hrs a day for 4 months proved to be worthless. I booked my slot for GMAT again which gives me around 1 month in my hands. Here are the materials that I used for my preparation:

Quant :
OG12 (Did it thrice)
Kaplan 800(Did it thrice)
Gmat old question papers
Questions in BTG forum.

Verbal:

Manhattan SC guide
Sahils notes
OG12
1000SC
Kaplan 800 verbal
Princeton review material
Power score CR bible
1000CR
I have done everthing mentioned above atleast thrice.

And here are my sample test scores :
manhattan test 1 : 640
Manhattan test2: 710
Manhattan test3: 600
Manhattan test4: 720
Manhattan test5: 690
Manhattan test 6: 610
Quant Verbal Total
800Score1/July 19: 29 (26/37;47%) 25(20;29%) 450
800Score2/July 20: 43(30/37;90%) 22(19;23%) 550
Kaplan1/July21: 31(16/37) 22(c18) 510
800Score3/July23 36(24/37;76%) 30(26;50%) 560
800Score5/july25 34(23/37;64%) 23(21;26%) 490
800Score6/July26 41(24/37;64%) 37(30;83%) 640
800Score7/July27 35(23/37;44%) 25(23;38%) 510
Princeton review1 40(30/37;90%) 29(22) 570

GMATprep1 : 640
GMATprep2: 730

If you see the above scores- there was a lot of flucuation in my test scores. By the end of my preparation, all my material is exhausted and I had nothing to do but just keep giving tests( I did one per day).

Now, I really dont seem to find a way... Can anyone of you try to explain me where I am going wrong ? Do I need to follow any different strategy or need to prepare from any different material ?
I am all ready to sacrifice anything for my dream score.. Kindly please help me!!

Doing OG 12, Kaplan 800 twice and thrice is a something different than reviewing the wrong questions twice. Can you elaborate on the quality of "Doing" instead of quantity?

-What new patterns of mistake you learnt when you did OG 12 second time?
-What was lacking in first study of Kaplan 800 and OG 12 which you were able to learn when you did both two three times?

Ultimately, GMAT comes down to pattern recognition the more patern you learn more score in verbal goes up.

Verbal 27 mean like many students this is the area where patterns are missing or practice is needed.

In RC:
-What is the success rate in questions of inference?
-What is the success rate of questions starting with "The passage suggests...."

In CR:
-What is the success rate among boldfaced arguments asking about role played?
-What was the success rate during practice in questions asking about "Resolve the paradox" or "Resolve the discrepancy" or "most vulnerable to criticism EXCEPT?"

In SC:
-Apart from traditional grammar rules of GMAT (agreement, pronoun, verb, modifiers, logical predication, rhetorical construction, Diction, Concision and idioms) are you aware of proper application of punctuation marks such as comma, apostrophe, semi colon, colon and em dash?

Let's break your preparation down a little bit further:

-How active reader you are when it comes to RC passage? Do you kind of imagine the limitations and scope of passage, while reading actively, through answering following questions:

1. What passage's idea is specifically about and what is exactly NOT the part of that idea?
2. What additional detail may ruin the scope of idea in passage?

ONE SCENERIO:
If a 400 word passage talks about some statistical details of "High School Students" and "School Students" and "Students" and questions of this passage are about a specific type of students then how many times does it happen that you overlap the details of "students" with "High School students" and "School Students"?

-Due to rush, did you choose some answers in RC questions on basis of terms available in passage and in answer choice?

Hi Victory_Gmat,

Thank you for your wonderful reply. Whenever I practice questions from OG 12 or Kaplan 800, I review the solutions to avoid wrong answers and mark the questions numbers in an error log. Next time, I first start with problems in error log and later the remaining problems. The accuracy is almost 95% for 3rd iteration.

-What new patterns of mistake you learnt when you did OG 12 second time?
Most of the my mistakes are from Word problems and number systems . I take more time(around 1 min) to understand the question and once understood I will be able to solve the problem.
-What was lacking in first study of Kaplan 800 and OG 12 which you were able to learn when you did both two three times?
Understanding some concepts was lacking in the first study. I got myself strong in these areas in the second study.
Ultimately, GMAT comes down to pattern recognition the more patern you learn more score in verbal goes up.
Yes!! You are right. I am able to recognize any pattern given in OG,but the problem comes when a new pattern comes up.
Verbal 27 mean like many students this is the area where patterns are missing or practice is needed.

In RC:
-What is the success rate in questions of inference?
-What is the success rate of questions starting with "The passage suggests...."

These are type of questions which I feel very tough and my success rate lies somewhere between 50% - 60%.Is there any way to get strong in these areas?

In CR:
-What is the success rate among boldfaced arguments asking about role played?
These questions too are tough for me and success rate lies between 50%-60%..How much ever I practice, it doesn't go up
-What was the success rate during practice in questions asking about "Resolve the paradox" or "Resolve the discrepancy" or "most vulnerable to criticism EXCEPT?"
My success rate in these kind of questions is around 60%-70%
In SC:
-Apart from traditional grammar rules of GMAT (agreement, pronoun, verb, modifiers, logical predication, rhetorical construction, Diction, Concision and idioms) are you aware of proper application of punctuation marks such as comma, apostrophe, semi colon, colon and em dash?
This area is one of the most unpredictable area to me. Sometimes I strike a a success rate of 80% and sometimes around 50%. So, I find some difficulty to access my weakness in this area.I always try to implement the rules mentioned in manhattan SC .While implementing the rules I kindda messup and finally end up with a wrong answer

Kindly suggest me some way out...Is there anything that I am missing ?

Hi Victory_Gmat

I have answered to your questions in BOLD to facilitate better reading..
-How active reader you are when it comes to RC passage? Do you kind of imagine the limitations and scope of passage, while reading actively, through answering following questions:

1. What passage's idea is specifically about and what is exactly NOT the part of that idea?
2. What additional detail may ruin the scope of idea in passage?
Firstly, I am not an avid reader. I take more time to understand the passage. If a passage of 400 words is given, I take atleast 3 min to read the complete passage and understand. When I see the verbal's statistics in terms of time, 3 RC's will take around 27 min i.e 9 questions in 27 min.(I knew its very bad ).I try to finish the remaining questions in the time left and sometimes end up uncompleted. Given this time, yes - I will be able to find what additional detail may ruin the scope of idea of passage or what exactly NOT a part of that idea

ONE SCENERIO:
If a 400 word passage talks about some statistical details of "High School Students" and "School Students" and "Students" and questions of this passage are about a specific type of students then how many times does it happen that you overlap the details of "students" with "High School students" and "School Students"?

-Due to rush, did you choose some answers in RC questions on basis of terms available in passage and in answer choice?
The answer to this question is a definite YES. This is what I do in these kind of passages. I try to look up some terms available in the passage and mark the answer.99% - What I marked is WRONG. I dont know what to do when these kind of passages surface..

Thanks for helping me to acess my weak points.

For Bold faced role played (BFRP) questions:

Basically in order to master these questions one must understand what is the purpose of verbal part of GMAT? Who are GMAT makers? What element in one's ability GMAC wants to test so they ask Bold faced questions asking about the role played?

-What is the purpose of verbal portion of GMAT?
Unlike other admission tests the verbal part of GMAT is to see potential of reasoning, analytical capacity, ability to make sound judgments and reason them with most convincing justifications, ability of comprehend the compressed material where one must not only be able to read between the lines but also look at a high level view, low level view which actually contains elements, ability to infer, ability to look at the scope, ability to characterize upon need and ability to compare, contrast, illustrate, evaluate, examine the various elements in changing circumstances. These abilities are essential to success of a Graduate Management Student and of a Manager because what managers are expected to do in their life is to DECIDE, plan, coordinate, control or manage in a broad view.

Now let's put above purpose into the methods of CR questions:
-When they ask for Bold faced argument asking for the role of argument, GMAC is testing your ability to see a high level view. "High level view" can be characterize as if one is looking down to earth from a satellite where he can see the continents, countries and ocean but can't see the roads, highways, and small lanes . They test your ability to look at the argument as a whole to:

-Compare
-Contrast
-Challenge
-Describe
-Evaluate
-Examine
-Establish
-Criticize
-Illustrate
-Support
-Refute
-Conclude
-Claim
-Dispute

For Instance, many times the answer choices in bold faced role played (BFRP questions where B = Bold, F = Faced, R = Role, P = Played) are as follows:

-The first describe the evidence and second challenges the position which an argument seeks to establish.
-The first is claim that argument disputes and second is conclusion that is based on the claim.

The problem which majority of people face is that we use the general or high level meaning of terms like contrast, dispute which most of the time proves to be wrong. In order to nail down these questions one must have a clear definition and ability to differentiate between the meanings of these terms:

-Compare
-Contrast
-Challenge
-Describe
-Evaluate
-Examine
-Establish
-Criticize
-Illustrate
-Support
-Refute
-Conclude
-Claim
-Dispute

-Who are GMAT makers?

GMAT makers are the people who have tons of Data available for analysis and to look at the performance of thousands of test takers around the world and find out what is lacking most in test takers to success in not only in Business school but also in managerial careers. As a result various types of questions are tested in GMAT such as Bold faced role played and others.

-What element in one's abilities GMAC wants to test through BFRP questions?

GMAC wants to see the ability to look at the argument as a whole and figure out whether arguments contain:

-An argument and an evidence to support that argument
-A claim and an evidence to prove that claim or any other set of elements.

In continuation of previous post about BFRP questions, How one should differentiate between "examine" and "evaluate" same thing goes with "Describe" and "Explain"?

When these terms are used in BFRP answer choices it is important to take the context of arguments and NOT take the general sense which takes to wrong answer choice. If two arguments are presented undermining each other so this may be the case of "First contrast and second establish" or "First disputes and second concludes" depending upon the words used by author.