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Sun.Gireesh
- Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Sat May 30, 2015 10:49 pm
Greetings to all the BTGMAT readers,
24 years, Indian, Male, non-native English speaker, 2.5 years experience. I have been preparing for GMAT for the past 6 month since New Year, my New Year resolution being I somehow have to beat the GMAT this year. Though like most of the GMAT writers I have an aim of getting 700+ on the GMAT.
The materials that I used for reading:
- OG version 13
- Nova's GMAT prep course
- 1000 DS, 1000 PS for practice
- In the last week I got Manhattan 8 books series
Being a full time worker, since January whenever I get time on a day to day basis, I have been working out Math for about 30 mins to 1 hour a day. On weekends, I used to read verbal for about 2 - 3 hours. This routine continued for three months until March last week. I then realized that I am not gaining pace in my reading and once I book for GMAT, I will get seriousness to read. I was pretty confident at that time that I can do fairly well on GMAT. So on March 22nd I scheduled the test on 30th May 2015 and informed for a weeks' leave at my work place so that I will have a good 7 days for full fledged preparation before the exam. I put hold for almost all entertainment activity from when I booked GMAT.
After scheduling the exam too for almost 7 weeks, I concentrated fully on Math and I was pretty confident that I will be able to do well on math. Until 23rd May, I never took even a full time practice test, though I will solve math problems from OG and 1000 DS and 1000 PS and I will score fairly well (for every 20 problems that I solve, I used to get about 17-18 correct).
Exactly one week before GMAT, I took the first practice test on the GMAT prep software and I just scored a 470 (Q43 V13) and got a mini heart-break. At that point of time I realized that I realized that I am very weak on verbal and I somehow had to correct it. I believed that I still had time to do so.
I was just able to naturally solve math and I assumed that in the same way even verbal can be solved instinctively.
For entire next three days, I concentrated on verbal sections one each day. If I was reading SC, and a section in SC (say subject-verb agreement), and then immediately solve the topics related to it, I was able to fairly solve it, since I knew where to look for errors. But then if I was given a pool of 25 questions, I was not able to solve.
I was irritated that I did not give equal importance for verbal and quants for the past 6 months and had to make it up somehow within next two days. I fully concentrated on verbal, though from different sources, I was not able to make it up.
In my second practice test a day before test, I scored 550 (Q44 V21). I still hoped to get around 650 (Q44 V35) on the actual test.
On the test day, I was bright and was expecting that the luck would favour me. I knew I will do well on the quants section. I had a good sleep the day before and was relaxed when I sat for the test. Since I can type at the speed of over 60 words per min, AWA was simple and I had no troubles. I always fell short on time on IR and quickly tired to solve all the problems. I completed the section with about a minute reminding. I took the first break and was feeling optimistic. I made sure that I did not lose my enthusiasm and kept saying to myself that I will nail this exam. I used one minute extra of my break and still I had no trouble in Math. Question after question I solved with patience, though I burned a little over 3 minutes on couple of questions, I was able to finish the section comfortably. All my practice for past 6 months came handy.
I took the second break and still was feeling optimistic since I did well on quants. When I sat for verbal, I started to struggle right from the second question. For each and every question I faced dilemma on which option to choose. Only a couple of RC went smooth for me. Every SC was a struggle looking for parallelism and subject verb agreement; I could just narrow it down to 2 or 3 options for every question.
The final score read a sad 560 (Q43, V24, IR 5).
Though spending a $250 again is a bit too high for me, I am planning to rewrite in October/November again. I am going to take a two month off from reading in June and July and will restart from August. Please suggest how to improve verbal, since a Q43 V43 score is a 700, I hope to achieve that feet.
Please suggest me how to crack the verbal section.
24 years, Indian, Male, non-native English speaker, 2.5 years experience. I have been preparing for GMAT for the past 6 month since New Year, my New Year resolution being I somehow have to beat the GMAT this year. Though like most of the GMAT writers I have an aim of getting 700+ on the GMAT.
The materials that I used for reading:
- OG version 13
- Nova's GMAT prep course
- 1000 DS, 1000 PS for practice
- In the last week I got Manhattan 8 books series
Being a full time worker, since January whenever I get time on a day to day basis, I have been working out Math for about 30 mins to 1 hour a day. On weekends, I used to read verbal for about 2 - 3 hours. This routine continued for three months until March last week. I then realized that I am not gaining pace in my reading and once I book for GMAT, I will get seriousness to read. I was pretty confident at that time that I can do fairly well on GMAT. So on March 22nd I scheduled the test on 30th May 2015 and informed for a weeks' leave at my work place so that I will have a good 7 days for full fledged preparation before the exam. I put hold for almost all entertainment activity from when I booked GMAT.
After scheduling the exam too for almost 7 weeks, I concentrated fully on Math and I was pretty confident that I will be able to do well on math. Until 23rd May, I never took even a full time practice test, though I will solve math problems from OG and 1000 DS and 1000 PS and I will score fairly well (for every 20 problems that I solve, I used to get about 17-18 correct).
Exactly one week before GMAT, I took the first practice test on the GMAT prep software and I just scored a 470 (Q43 V13) and got a mini heart-break. At that point of time I realized that I realized that I am very weak on verbal and I somehow had to correct it. I believed that I still had time to do so.
I was just able to naturally solve math and I assumed that in the same way even verbal can be solved instinctively.
For entire next three days, I concentrated on verbal sections one each day. If I was reading SC, and a section in SC (say subject-verb agreement), and then immediately solve the topics related to it, I was able to fairly solve it, since I knew where to look for errors. But then if I was given a pool of 25 questions, I was not able to solve.
I was irritated that I did not give equal importance for verbal and quants for the past 6 months and had to make it up somehow within next two days. I fully concentrated on verbal, though from different sources, I was not able to make it up.
In my second practice test a day before test, I scored 550 (Q44 V21). I still hoped to get around 650 (Q44 V35) on the actual test.
On the test day, I was bright and was expecting that the luck would favour me. I knew I will do well on the quants section. I had a good sleep the day before and was relaxed when I sat for the test. Since I can type at the speed of over 60 words per min, AWA was simple and I had no troubles. I always fell short on time on IR and quickly tired to solve all the problems. I completed the section with about a minute reminding. I took the first break and was feeling optimistic. I made sure that I did not lose my enthusiasm and kept saying to myself that I will nail this exam. I used one minute extra of my break and still I had no trouble in Math. Question after question I solved with patience, though I burned a little over 3 minutes on couple of questions, I was able to finish the section comfortably. All my practice for past 6 months came handy.
I took the second break and still was feeling optimistic since I did well on quants. When I sat for verbal, I started to struggle right from the second question. For each and every question I faced dilemma on which option to choose. Only a couple of RC went smooth for me. Every SC was a struggle looking for parallelism and subject verb agreement; I could just narrow it down to 2 or 3 options for every question.
The final score read a sad 560 (Q43, V24, IR 5).
Though spending a $250 again is a bit too high for me, I am planning to rewrite in October/November again. I am going to take a two month off from reading in June and July and will restart from August. Please suggest how to improve verbal, since a Q43 V43 score is a 700, I hope to achieve that feet.
Please suggest me how to crack the verbal section.
