Hi carolinabrah,

Congrats for your great score. I am having trouble getting my Verbal score up from V34. I have attempted GMAT thrice (650,690(Q49/V34),660(Q47/V34)) and my Verbal scores have pretty much stayed the same. I have done quite some practice including OG, Veritas Prep Question Bank, Manhattan Strategy guide for SC and Powerscore CR bible. I have also given over 20 CATs (11Manhattan, 7 Veritas, 4 GMATPrep).

One of the issues I have is while I practice Verbal questions, I do pretty well, but during the exam, my focus is lowered by the time I reach verbal after solving IR and Q. I clearly see that I can dissect the problems better when I am doing verbal only than during the exam - due to which my ability to answer well during exam is diminished.

Can you give any tips into improving my ability to maintain focus during verbal? I thought giving a lot of tests would build my stamina, but that has really not happened.

Any tips/suggestions would be appreciated!

If you think the issue is solely focus (which I doubt), you could try adderall. If the issue is that you're not a native English speaker, that's a much more difficult problem. You would have to take a much more long-term approach toward improving your ability to understand English. You would have to read books and study grammar in depth (not just GMAT books designed for people who already know English).