GMAT Strategy

First, I guess this approach is not for everyone, maybe especially non native speakers, but I think anyone can learn from what I have been doing to consistently score 50 to 51 on the verbal section of the GMAT.

I'm posting this partly because I am amazed by two things I am seeing

One of them is the number and depth of strategies I see people applying when doing GMAT verbal questions.

The other is the fact that people can score well above 40 on the quant section and do pretty well on the AWA and somehow still get smoked on the verbal section. It seems to me that if someone has the reasoning skills and vision to rock GMAT quant and the language skills to write a decent essay that person should be able to rock verbal too.

Also, I have seen people actually get worse at verbal as they study. So that's interesting.

So here is what I have done to generate high verbal scores.

For one thing, I don't use any notes. Maybe notes are helpful to some people some of the time, but I am not sure they are for everyone. For me taking notes when doing GMAT verbal is a distraction and an unnecessary use of time. Having said that, the one thing that does seem necessary is tracking answer elimination. Even there I don't use notes. I do that by holding up my hand. The thumb and fingers represent answers A through E. As I eliminate an answer, I fold in my thumb or a finger. No pencil. No looking down from the screen. Simple. Gets the job done.

For critical reasoning questions I learned the major types, such as weaken, strengthen, bold face and inference. I learned that an answer to an inference question has to be necessarily true given the information provided in the prompt. I learned to look for premises, assumptions and conclusions. That's pretty much it.

When doing CR questions, I read the prompt and then the question. Then I go to the answers. I don't much care about negation or other strategies. I just look for the logic of the argument and the answers and see how things line up. Three or more of the answers are usually pretty obviously wrong. One or two are possibly right. I figure out which is the best and choose it. No mess, no fuss, the question's done.

The truth is that most of what it takes to get CR questions right is being careful, detail oriented and very logical. Maybe getting them right also takes determination. Yup, when you get down to those last two choices, sometimes it can be challenging to figure out which is the right answer. So being super determined that you are going to get it right can be key to succeeding.

Reading comprehension is similar. I learned a few tricks, maybe two, that I don't even remember to list here.

When doing the questions, first I read the passage, noticing the details in passing and taking an interest in what is being said. Maybe as I'm reading I notice the form of the passage and the function of the paragraphs. I don't read the first question before I read the passage, because I don't want to worry about the question or read the passage in a way that's biased toward answering that first question.

Then I go to the questions and just very carefully look to the passage for answers. The thing I had to learn in order to rock RC is to be extremely careful and detail oriented. That's it. There is no substitute for being careful. I guess I have strategies to a degree, but they involve basic things like looking for details in an organized way, making sure I have found the right details and eliminating answer choices.

Sentence correction is a little different from the other two in that there are certain rules and things that one has to know to answer the questions. My strategy for getting good enough at SC has been to figure out what rules and idioms I need to learn and to learn just enough to get most of the questions right most of the time.

Here are most of the rules I got clear on.

- Parallelism Of Lists and Parallelism Related to Connecting Words and Expressions

- Subject Verb Agreement

- Use of Tenses

- Placement of Modifiers

- Use of Quantity Words

- Restrictive Versus Non Restrictive Modifiers

I realize there are more rules that I am somehow consciously or unconsciously applying, but those are most of the ones I really worked on to get them clear in my mind.

I did have to learn, and unlearn, some idioms, and went over some idiom lists to get them straight. When there are idioms with which I am struggling I do web searches to find out about them, using both GMAT sites and non GMAT resources to get information.

Beyond that, I have done many sentence correction questions and noticed what was giving my trouble. Anything I get wrong usually turns into a little research project.

Even when doing SC though, I find that care and attention to detail are key. All the rules and all the knowledge of idioms are useless unless you are super careful in applying them. So in answering SC I just go over the original and the choices and eliminate choices with decision points. My fingers are my elimination tracking tool, and I get the choices down to one or two and stay super intent on making sure I choose the right one.

In addition to learning about sentence construction, I learned about some tricks they use when writing SC questions, such as putting into a sentence a whole bunch of stuff that separates key sentence elements that you need to connect in order to get the answer.

I wasn't getting enough SC questions right. So sometimes my verbal sub score would come in at 50 or 49. So I hung around these forums and picked up a few more key things. Now I should score 51 more consistently. I don't know every possible thing about SC, but I know enough to get enough right.

As I have indicated, one thing that seems really important in getting verbal questions right is sheer determination. I think I get them right because I am determined to get them right. Determination is most important when I get down to those last two possible answer choices. I would be easy to then let up and choose the wrong one. In fact maybe determination is the most important aspect of my GMAT verbal strategy.

So anyway, that, along with doing PLENTY of practice questions to hone my skills, is pretty much it.

In a way I don't know that much about GMAT verbal and somehow I do fine. Yes I am a native speaker and yes I do have some methods and strategies that I am using, but what I am doing is not super sophisticated and is even related to the way I use logic and attention to detail to do quant questions.

Is my approach for everyone? I guess maybe some people, maybe especially non native speakers, need or prefer more structure to their method of handling GMAT verbal.

At the same time, there is a point here. I see people struggling with verbal. They are learning all kinds of stuff and still their scores are not where they want them to be. My thinking is that maybe they aren't seeing the forest for the trees. Maybe the things that matter most, like seeing logic, paying attention to details and being super careful and determined are getting lost in the mix of strategies, rules and ways of taking notes.

So whether my approach is pretty much just what some need or it can be an aspect of more structured plans, I hope this can be helpful to people in their quests to rock GMAT verbal.