GMAT Strategy

Hello all,

I am a silent member of this forum. But today i want some advice from you all. i prepared for the GMAT for 1.5 months and ended up with this horrible score. I was consistently scoring more than 660 in all the tests I took. Can you please help me how to improve my score to 700+ within a month ?

My scores in MGMAT and Prep :

Prep 1 - July 24th - 660 M - 49 v - 34
MGMAT 1 (long time back)- May 28th - 640 M -47 V -31
MGMAT 2 -AUG 12th - 680 M - 47 V-35
MGMAT 3 -AUG 19th - 690 M - 49 V-35
MGMAT 4 -AUG 20th - 700 M - 47 V-38
MGMAT 5 -AUG 27th - 670 M - 45 V 36
Prep 2 - Aug 29th - 710 M -48 V -38

Since my last exam was just before the real test which I took on Sep 1st , I thought i would score around that mark.And I never scored less than 30 in verbal.But the verbal section in the GMAT pulled down my score heavily. How can I improve my verbal score ?

Things I have noticed in the GMAT in my Verbal section :

1.) Got a lot of CR. I am generally strong at S/W/A types of questions but not that strong in the minor question types. But I got 10-12 questions of the minor question types and 3-4 questions of strengthen and weaken. Didnt get even a single assumption.
2.) got less than 10 SC questions . Is this possible ? or maybe i didnt notice them .
3.) Got 4 RCs and out of which 2 are huge. I generally get an accuracy of 80-90% in business and science related RC but when it comes to Women emancipation , the accuracy comes down to 50%. I think I have a mental block here.

In case you want more info about my test then I am ready to share.

Thanks
Vijay

To answer one of the easiest questions in your post, CR, SC and RC all appear in fairly equal proportions. You'll never see just 10 SCs in a GMAT - you must have miscounted.

Verbal is clearly a weakness for you, but since you have not mentioned any of the materials you've used for practice/any particular weak spot, I can't really help you that much except maybe provide some general tips.

You should use official questions as the basis for your practice: buy the OG 12 if you haven't already and the OG supplement for verbal as well. Some good books for verbal:
- MGMAT SC guide
- PowerScore CR Bible (good for both CR and RC if you ask me)
- LSAT sets (see some attached here) - good for advanced practice

Good luck!

Thank You DanaJ,

Materials used for verbal preparation :

1. Manhattan SC- for SC
2. OG11 and Verbal review for CR and RC.
3. Manhattan CR

I just saw the tips for RC in Novas RC. I couldnt practice much due to the lack of time. But I have analyzed all of the tests I have taken and found that I got only 1 question right out of the 10 questions in resolve a paradox. I got around 5 questions on this model in the main GMAT. How can I improve in such particular areas ?

Another question . I got 2 questions in the exam which have only 1 sentence and the question asks which of the following args can best help to evaluate the above . I have not faced such unique questions before . Where can i find such questions ?

Thanks
Vijay

I think you'll find that the PowerScore CR Bible is quite the superb book for CR practice. It has two distinct chapters dealing with "resolve the paradox" and "evaluate the argument" questions.

"Resolve the paradox" is basically a question in which two apparently conflicting pieces of information are provided and you are supposed to choose the option that helps explain this. Your correct answer will provide a direct link between the two. Trick answers will almost inevitably deal with just one side of the argument.

Here's an example of such a question. Two contrasting pieces of evidence:
- Europeans had pellagra
- Native Americans didn't even though they ate maize too
The correct answer resolves the paradox by pointing out a clear, distinct "detail": Native Americans cooked the maize in a "better way" than Europeans.

The "evaluate the argument" type should not scare you. I treat these questions as an weaken/strengthen question, a type that merges both types. The key is to find the question to which an answer of "yes" or "no" will make the argument stronger or weaker. Check out this post for an amply discussed example.

You will be able to find such questions by either buying the CR Bible or by searching the CR forum for keywords.