I just Beat The GMAT!

Congratulations! Good luck with your applications!

bvn wrote:Thank you very much Rishi

I got 33% in all 3 level of difficulty.

Thank you for your advice, I will review thoroughly as you advised. It seems I did not pay enough attention the map.

Did you set time for each passage? I set 2 minutes for each question, and always do not have enough time to answer all 3 question following a passage.

33% accuracy level in the low difficulty level passages of RC99 isn't encouraging.This indicates that your understanding of the written text isn't probably good enough.
Improving your comprehension levels of passages is a task which takes time.
If you're not planning to take the GMAT immediately, I'd suggest that instead of practising passages, you start reading article in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, TIME etc. Read about as varied topics as possible. In addition, you may want to go through the Recommended books forum of beatthegmat and read books from there.
Doing all this will be incredibly helpful in improving your RC skills and also to an extent in improving your CR and SC skills.
When do you plan to take the GMAT,by the way ?

Hi,

I went thru yr debrief , yr verbal score is really enviable.

I started my prep somewher in Aug 2010 end, my first manhattan diagnostic test scores was 520 ( V25, Q 36)

Later second test i took last month where my score for manhattan test was 580 ( V 30 , Q 40 ).

Now, first wht i did in last two months

1) Started with SC, and have reached to an efficiency of around 75% in OG last pool of some 50 Questions, accuracy of CR has somewhat improved ( 50% to 60-65% )and am trying to improve it more. RC is pathetic at an accuracy level of 50%.
My focus area for the first month ( Aug 7 days + Sep ) was purely on SC.

2) Oct and Nov i tried to improve over quant and CR and RC.

In CR , i have started gaining confidence , but in RC my confidence is very law , i have also found RC 99 drill and will work on the same too.

Now my concern is what should i do for RC and CR ?
in Quant i know my weak area is DS and am confident that i wil nail it , but i am not gaining the confidencd that whether i will get the same kind of comfort level with RC an CR after giving due time or not.


I am planning to appear for my gmat in Jan , but now i sometimes think that should i appear for the same or should i give some more time to improve on CR and RC...

how much time do you think ideally is required to reach to an accuracy of 80% in RC an CR , if you can just share yr experince of imprivofing your score in RC an CR in terms of accuracy level , it would be a agreat help

What do you think should i do ... should i work again on the strategy of tackiling RC and CR or should i work more on practicing the same....

Thanks very much for your approach to help th forum memember

thank

I have the same issue. My GMAT is scheduled on Jan 15th.

winner's attitude wrote:Hi,

{quote]
Now my concern is what should i do for RC and CR ?
in Quant i know my weak area is DS and am confident that i wil nail it , but i am not gaining the confidencd that whether i will get the same kind of comfort level with RC an CR after giving due time or not.


I am planning to appear for my gmat in Jan , but now i sometimes think that should i appear for the same or should i give some more time to improve on CR and RC...

how much time do you think ideally is required to reach to an accuracy of 80% in RC an CR , if you can just share yr experince of imprivofing your score in RC an CR in terms of accuracy level , it would be a agreat help

What do you think should i do ... should i work again on the strategy of tackiling RC and CR or should i work more on practicing the same....

I think you'll be really able to improve your performance ,if you're able to relate and apply the concepts in real world instead of mechanically practicing heaps of questions .
Especially for Critical reasoning, what matters is not how many questions you've practiced,but rather how well you have groomed your CR skills .
Ask yourself whether you apply the CR skills you've learnt in your daily life . If the answer to that question is a "yes",that means you should be able to tackle the CR questions easily. However,in your case,the answer to that question, will probably be a "no".
One of the reasons why people are not able to do well on CR Is that they try to do CR mechanically. That is they try hard to understand an argument,try even harder to find the assumption ,conclusion etc . Though that may be helpful ,however that will not help you improve your accuracy beyond a level and will not give the calmness you require to tackle higher difficulty levels of this ilk.
So what is the solution ? Let me suggest you an experiment .Try this and report back your feedback here after sometime. While having conversations with people or while you're evening thinking to yourself, try to spot assumptions,conclusions ,or flaws in the arguments . Once you've found out,say an assumption, ask yourself how would the GMAT word this assumption.
Initially, you will find this method a little daunting(and if you find it daunting,that is an indication of the fact that you really need to work on your CR skills). However, as you progress, you'll realize the beauty of this method. In fact,after some days you'll be analyzing and enjoying this process and you'll be really looking forward to nail the CR questions because your understanding of the arguments,assumptions etc would have progressed to an altogether different level and the concepts would have become second natured to you.

I'm sure that the experiment above would help you and instead of getting intimated by CR questions ,you'll actually look forward to tackling them!

Thanks Rishi .. Going to try this method definitely

@rishiraj

I hv started with the approach suggested by you... and i am sure this will help me.... will keep you updated abt the same

thanks very much for sharing your views..

all the best for your applications.

cheers

rishi raj wrote:

bvn wrote:Thank you very much Rishi

I got 33% in all 3 level of difficulty.

Thank you for your advice, I will review thoroughly as you advised. It seems I did not pay enough attention the map.

Did you set time for each passage? I set 2 minutes for each question, and always do not have enough time to answer all 3 question following a passage.

33% accuracy level in the low difficulty level passages of RC99 isn't encouraging.This indicates that your understanding of the written text isn't probably good enough.
Improving your comprehension levels of passages is a task which takes time.
If you're not planning to take the GMAT immediately, I'd suggest that instead of practising passages, you start reading article in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, TIME etc. Read about as varied topics as possible. In addition, you may want to go through the Recommended books forum of beatthegmat and read books from there.
Doing all this will be incredibly helpful in improving your RC skills and also to an extent in improving your CR and SC skills.
When do you plan to take the GMAT,by the way ?

Thank you very much Rishi, I will retake the GMAT in this December.

How do you tackle the RC with alot of jargons, on various topic like: Mitochondira, ... I do ask question when I read, try to read actively, but still got distractions. Sorry if this is an stupid question.

bvn wrote:
Thank you very much Rishi, I will retake the GMAT in this December.

How do you tackle the RC with alot of jargons, on various topic like: Mitochondira, ... I do ask question when I read, try to read actively, but still got distractions. Sorry if this is an stupid question.

Well ,well..that is not a stupid question at all.That is a problem which most of us face.The solution to this problem is to skim through jargon laden information. Not get emotionally attached to the text. While reading the passage, we kind of get sentimental that we need to read and understand each piece of data,fact and jargon. The difference between a test taker who scores highly and the one who doesn't score well is probably the able to not get emotionally attached to the data.
By the way, bvn,do you take breaks after reading a particular paragraph or do you keep pushing yourself hard to the next paragraph? I think that is again a differentiator. You need to relax yourself after every paragraph .This relaxation period can be as small a pause as 3-5 seconds ,but it will do wonders.

Thanks a lot,rishi for your guidance. After reading your replies to people's queries, it's not difficult to see why you have such a great score.
Would be glad if you can please help me out with this problem : When I do the questions under untimed circumstances, I get the questions right but when I do the exam I somehow seem to get even the easy questions wrong and I realize this when review the exam. Any tips or suggestions ?

msrrautela wrote:Thanks a lot,rishi for your guidance. After reading your replies to people's queries, it's not difficult to see why you have such a great score.

Thanks. Glad that I can be of some help to people here.

Would be glad if you can please help me out with this problem : When I do the questions under untimed circumstances, I get the questions right but when I do the exam I somehow seem to get even the easy questions wrong and I realize this when review the exam. Any tips or suggestions ?

Well, that's a problem which we all face. Don't we ? If you'll analyze any test,you'll see that you could have probably gotten a lot more questions correct than what you have got. It happens with everyone and the ability to reduce the damage is what separates a low scorer from a high scorer.
Firslty,let's see why we don't perform to the optimum level on the exam ?

1. Anxiety : Anxiety during the tests gets the better out of you. You'll have seen that our adrenaline starts pumping more if we come across some difficult question . And the worse thing is that even after getting done with that question,we seem to have a high "anxiety" level which continues throughout the test lowering our performance. While anxiety to a certain level helps you remain focus, but the overdose of it proves counterproductive.

2. Fluctuating concentration level : One thing I use to observe with myself while taking the test is that I used to try concentrating on the questions too hard and used to move from one question to the next expecting the same level of concentration. After having observed this and seeing the futility of this way in which we approach the test, I realized that instead of trying to be a superman and ending up like a fool, let's do the test assuming that I'm a human who cannot concentrate for long stretches of time.

So I started taking short pauses after every 4-5 questions. Initially, I thought that this would waste my time but then when I saw that I am doing the test at my optimum level after taking breaks of 5-10 seconds frequently, I started following this strategy which really did wonders.It also incredibly helped me to reduce the anxiety level which used to build up now and then during the test.
Try to follow this strategy and let me know if there's any improvement.

hey rishi u indeed did beat the gmat
i plan to take up private tutoring for gmat. can u recommend me some gud tutor .tnx

forbidden wrote:hey rishi u indeed did beat the gmat
i plan to take up private tutoring for gmat. can u recommend me some gud tutor .tnx

Hey ,
I'm afraid I don't have any pointers for a private tutor. MGMAT does private tutoring but they charge something in excess of $200 per hour.
You'll find some other private tutors here on the forum. Just put your query on the "GMAT Strategy" forum and I think you may get some pointers there.

rishi raj wrote: Well, that's a problem which we all face. Don't we ? If you'll analyze any test,you'll see that you could have probably gotten a lot more questions correct than what you have got. It happens with everyone and the ability to reduce the damage is what separates a low scorer from a high scorer.
Firslty,let's see why we don't perform to the optimum level on the exam ?

1. Anxiety : Anxiety during the tests gets the better out of you. You'll have seen that our adrenaline starts pumping more if we come across some difficult question . And the worse thing is that even after getting done with that question,we seem to have a high "anxiety" level which continues throughout the test lowering our performance. While anxiety to a certain level helps you remain focus, but the overdose of it proves counterproductive.

2. Fluctuating concentration level : One thing I use to observe with myself while taking the test is that I used to try concentrating on the questions too hard and used to move from one question to the next expecting the same level of concentration. After having observed this and seeing the futility of this way in which we approach the test, I realized that instead of trying to be a superman and ending up like a fool, let's do the test assuming that I'm a human who cannot concentrate for long stretches of time.

So I started taking short pauses after every 4-5 questions. Initially, I thought that this would waste my time but then when I saw that I am doing the test at my optimum level after taking breaks of 5-10 seconds frequently, I started following this strategy which really did wonders.It also incredibly helped me to reduce the anxiety level which used to build up now and then during the test.
Try to follow this strategy and let me know if there's any improvement.

Thanks a lot ,rishiraj for the detailed response. I can actually relate to every bit of what you said in the points.
Thanks a lot once again for the great tips. I'll try to implement these and am sure that these will help in improving my accuracy.

How do you figure out the effiicency level? (Sorry never took the gmat prep or prac test)