50 point variation in GMAT PREP-1 & 2

Six questions wrong in sequence is pretty tough. That can certainly help to bring down your score. And if those were reading comp questions that can actually be even more of a problem.

You could get something like that on the test, but what needs to change is actually your reaction and approach. Rushing is really never a good idea. You have to go at the pace that you can. It is in practice that you improve your pace, not on test day. I would rather see you have taken some time on those 6 questions and gotten at least three of them right and then if you missed a couple of questions later on that would not be as bad.

What is you reading comp strategy? Have you read this article? https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2012/08/ ... prehension

Are you efficient enough at SC so that you can take 2 minutes for each CR and RC question? Which areas give you the most trouble?

David@VeritasPrep wrote:Six questions wrong in sequence is pretty tough. That can certainly help to bring down your score. And if those were reading comp questions that can actually be even more of a problem.

You could get something like that on the test, but what needs to change is actually your reaction and approach. Rushing is really never a good idea. You have to go at the pace that you can. It is in practice that you improve your pace, not on test day. I would rather see you have taken some time on those 6 questions and gotten at least three of them right and then if you missed a couple of questions later on that would not be as bad.

What is you reading comp strategy? Have you read this article? https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2012/08/ ... prehension

Are you efficient enough at SC so that you can take 2 minutes for each CR and RC question? Which areas give you the most trouble?

RC gives me the hardest time among all. I am non native speaker and my reading speed & vocab are not upto par so end up spending most of the time on RC. After 25-30 questions I have to rush to meet the speed. I was usually following the strategy of skipping 1 passage with blind guesses to finish the test.

For SC I have practiced a lot and a lot. A few times only I spend more than 2 min on SC question but usually I finish it before 90 seconds.


Thanks

I am concerned about your strategy of skipping a passage (I assume you mean reading comp passage). You generally only get 3 passages that count and since each question type adapts to you separately you will very often get RC questions that are at or below your level. Why is this bad?

Well if you miss too many questions that are below your level you will get a lower score than you "deserve" if you want to read more about this please read the article E.A.S.I questions on the GMAT at this link https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2012/12/ ... n-the-gmat

If you skip a whole reading comp passage you will undoubtedly miss some questions that you could have gotten right - not good for your score.

I would recommend guessing at a CR question if you had to and keeping the pace up on sentence correction.

Now please let me say something about approaching reading comp. I understand what you are saying about being a non-native speaker of English and the vocabulary being such a problem. What I would say is that you should not focus so much on the particular vocabulary words as much as the context and the organization of the article. You can look to the vocabulary if they ask you a question that relates to it.

One thing I do with students is I have them read an article and summarize it for me using none of the particular subject words. So you say, "People originally believed in theory A, then they found that it did not explain everything about process x, so theory B was developed and it did a better job but there are still some aspects of process x that need to be better understood."

It is almost as if the subject matter is not as important as the context and the flow and organization. So do not allow yourself to get bogged down in trying to "understand" every aspect of the RC passage. I would say that if you "get" what they are trying to say that this is good enough to move to the questions. Return to the passage as needed as I mention in the article Dial the Right Area Code.

You can do it!