I just Beat The GMAT!

sarangjn wrote:I studied the rules initially using a SAT book-"Maximize your writing score" to get a good foundation and then went onto Grail.

I don't know what "Grail" means.

If I ever had a doubt while solving an SC problem, I used to google it and if I learnt any addition rule that you or some other MGMAT instructor might mention, I would add that to my rulebook. I went through OG, GRAIL and other materials that I had (all were authentic GMAT questions).

The only sources of "authentic GMAT questions" are the OG, the OG supplement, and the GMAT PREP questions.
Again, I don't know what this "grail" thing is. But, unless that's a nickname for some archive of GMAT PREP questions, that's not an official source. GMAC has not published anything except for OG/OG supplements/GMAT PREP.

In any case, what you've written here is most likely part of the problem -- you made an enormous "rule book".

One of the primary purposes of the SC section is to test a few major topics, with lots and lots of minor topics to distract you.

In particular, if you can identify and resolve the following 6 issues EVERY TIME they show up on the test ...
... parallel structure
... pronouns
... subject-verb agreement
... modifier choice (= picking from among different modifiers)
... modifier placement (= choosing the best location for one modifier that's moved around to different places)
... overall sentence structure
then you've accomplished 95% of what you need to accomplish.

Because those themes are so important, it's unwise to spread yourself too thin if you haven't completely mastered them yet. If you try to study 100 different things, you'll have pretty much zero improvement.

While solving these questions at home, I would almost always know which rule is being tested as I read the question (& the options). I think my approach is to first see if any blatant errors are there. If I can find an option which corrects all grammatical mistakes, I would choose it and go ahead.

Don't do this. Do not "hunt" for errors in the original sentence.

Think about it: If you could "hunt" for errors and actually find them, then you could simply do the same thing for each answer choice. You'd find all the errors, and you'd never get any SC problems wrong.
That's not what happens, so this strategy isn't effective.

Essentially the only people who can successfully "hunt" for errors are professional editors and writers of the English language. Everyone else should just quickly read the original, get the intended meaning, and then move on to comparing the answer choices against one another.

On the other hand, if an error jumps out at you when you read the original, then, sure, you should notice it. But you should not hunt.

Strengths and Weakness: I know that I am not great with "Idioms" and "Tenses". As a non native speaker, I have to mug up the Idioms (something I am not good at).

In its current form, the GMAT no longer tests obscure idioms. The only idioms still tested are extremely common ones (e.g., "between ... and...", "more ... than ...", "as much ... as ...", and so on) -- in other words, idioms that you're guaranteed to know if you have had decent exposure to the English language.
So, you don't need to study lists of idioms.

If you're doing problems from the OG verbal supplement and/or older editions of the OG, and some obscure idiom factors into a problem, you can safely ignore it.

I get confused sometimes when subtle variations in tenses appear in the options.

You don't need to understand subtle variations in tenses. If tenses are important in a problem, the differences will be BIG differences, and the errors will be BIG errors.
Like putting cause after effect. Or expressing simultaneous things in different tenses. Or something else like that.

If you see "subtle differences", then they are there to distract you. (In many instances, two or more different tenses are ok in the same context.) In that case, just look for another issue that's easier to resolve.

Also when it is a long sentence which is not fully underlined: I tend to read each option from the beginning ( even the non underlined portion), because I feel I might get it wrong if I read only the underlined portion each time. I am not sure if that is the right way to do such problems.

If you're just randomly reading through all the words, then, no, not great.

If you have a specific split/difference/issue in mind, and you're reading specifically for a context that helps to resolve that issue[/b], then this is excellent.

Remember that you should always be looking for something specific. At no point should you ever just be reading randomly through a cloud of words, hoping that an error falls on your head.

On the GMAT day, for almost all questions, I couldn't narrow down to one right option. I couldn't point to the option which I could confidently say " satisfied all GMAT rules". This was what worried me, because I rarely used to end up in such a situation.

First of all, there's no such thing as "GMAT rules". This is just normal standard written English.
The GMAT tests a very narrow range of English language issues, but there's no "weird GMAT rules". Everything they test is completely standard usage. (In fact, any point of usage that's in debate, or that varies among different English dialects, won't be tested.)

Second, this doesn't seem like a viable strategy.
You shouldn't be "looking for the choice that satisfies all the rules". You should be ...
... finding differences in the choices
... looking at one difference at a time
... eliminating WRONG choices.

You'll go much further by eliminating what's wrong than by trying to "satisfy all the rules".

Going forward, I am almost out of new material. I think I will solve SC 1000 (which I didn't do earlier as I had heard it has a few questions which are wrong) and then do all my old material.

Don't use 1000SC. The only good questions in there are stolen from GMAT PREP. Hundreds of them are completely wrong, and will teach you things that are wrong.

Just go back through the OG and GMAT PREP questions.

Don't just solve them and move on. Do these things, too:

* Pick ONE type of error (e.g., parallelism, or pronouns, or whatever). Go through 100 problems. Find ONLY THAT ONE ERROR. Don't even bother finishing the problems -- just stay focused on that one error type, and eliminate whatever you can.
This is the best way to gain skill at identifying particular types of errors. (If you just go through and solve entire problems, then you won't get much better. There's too much happening in any one particular problem; you have to isolate things.)

* Look at the CORRECT answer. (The entire sentence, with the correct answer choice inserted into it.)
Be sure that you can justify EVERY construction in that entire sentence, regardless of whether it's underlined.
If there are any modifiers, anywhere, make sure you know exactly how they work and what they are modifying. Then make sure you con write your own sentence with that kind of modifier.
If there are any verbs, anywhere, make sure you know the subject of each verb.
If there are any parallel structures, anywhere, identify them. Also identify why they should be parallel.
Etc.

If you do these things, there will be way more than enough problems in just the OG and the GMAT PREP archive. Way way way more than enough. You shouldn't even need the OG supplement, let alone sketchy third-party sources.

RC

RC is the toughest part for me and has been my biggest weakness. I am always unsure of RC answers. It has been my weakness from the beginning of my preparations up until now! My RC accuracy is high when I am solving the initial passages. But if I am doing RC for 1 hour, my accuracy keeps decreasing as time increases!

Well then, don't do RC for an hour straight.
You won't ever do RC for more than 5 or 10 consecutive minutes on the test, so why would you even do that to yourself? Hmm.

Again I have practiced from only authentic GMAT RC questions. Ideally I would like to understand what the author is trying to convey and also get a big picture of the passage. But with tough passages, I lose my bearings and I feel like I have just read the passage without understanding anything.

The good news is that you don't really have to understand a lot of things. In fact, the GMAT gives passages full of minute details precisely because you aren't supposed to understand every single thing you read.
As soon as you understand WHY a group of details is there... move on. You don't have to understand what all the specifics mean. (If I read every specific statement in an RC passage, it would take me 10 minutes to read the passage.)

On the GMAT day, I really don't remember any of my passages nor do I remember how I solved them. I don't think at that time I really applied any of my months of preparation into solving them. For example, I don't think I tried to understand the "tone" of the passage while reading it.

Tone is not tested on the GMAT exam.

I do remember getting worked up because of my SC performance and not understanding the passages.

Yep. You have to ... not do that.

Your whole universe should consist of the 1 problem in front of you. Nothing else.
If you have the right degree of concentration, you shouldn't even be able to remember the previous problems, let alone think about whether you got them right or wrong. As soon as a problem is off the screen, you should forget about them completely.

I don't write down anything while reading.

... and that's the reason why you "lose your bearings", as stated above.

RC comes after three hours of testing! If you don't write down anything at all, there's no way you'll be able to retain focus, unless you are superhuman.

Don't copy things. But, if you see key relationships, write them down. Write down the main point of each paragraph. Etc.
Ideally, you should have about 15-25 words of notes for each passage.

CR has been the easiest of the three sub parts of Verbal. I felt I could solve the CR questions relatively much better than the other two. I plan to do LSAT papers for CR too as I have run out of every other source that I had.

Don't use LSAT questions. If you use those, you could very possibly get worse at GMAT CR.

Most LSAT CR questions are "hard logic" (if A then B, if not-C then not-B, therefore if A then C) type things. GMAT problems, by contrast, NEVER involve this type of logic.
If you do too many LSAT questions, then at best you'll be developing an irrelevant skill set. At worst, you'll compromise or dilute the skill set that you actually need for the GMAT.

CR is not the type of thing that needs extensive practice.
There's nothing to learn, and no "rules" that can be memorized. It's just a test of whether you (a) understand the task at hand, (b) can think like a real-world person (NOT like a computer or logic engine) about it, and (c) can identify precisely what matters and what doesn't in each situation.
Honestly, you shouldn't even need to go through the whole OG CR section, much less all the other material out there. By the time you get through forty or fifty OG CR problems, you're pretty much set in your thought processes.
If they're working, great!, you don't need to keep plowing. If they're not working, then you'll get worse if you just keep plowing through in the same way; in that case, you need to stop and think about how to make fundamental changes to your thought process.

If CR has been the easiest part, then stop studying it, and concentrate on the things that actually need work.

Just to clarify, are the LSAT RC passages okay to study? Or should I stick to only OG for RC too?

No need for other resources. You don't even need to go all the way through the OG RC. (And there's the OG supplement and GMAT PREP on top of that.)

By the time you get even halfway through the OG RC section, your habits are already set. Doing more RC passages is just going to take the same habits and make them more concrete.
If your approach is working, then it's working -- no need to spin your wheels with excessive practice. If you have bad habits, then excessive practice will only make them worse.

If the issue is that you just can't read the passages fast enough to hang with the timing -- or that you don't understand the words well enough in the first place** -- then you should put GMAT RC on hold for a few months, and just work at developing your general skill at reading English.

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(**)If you don't understand the details -- especially in passages about science and law -- then that's not a problem at all. In fact, the point of including those passages is that you aren't supposed to understand all the details. The test makers want to make sure you can skip over the excessive details and get the main point/purpose.