I just Beat The GMAT!

720: Q45 75%, V45 98% AWA: 6.0

Although I may retake because my quant score is below the 80th percentile, I think a write-up may be of value to two types of test takers - 1) visual learners and 2) people who traditionally score low in the verbal portion of standardized tests.

First of all, let me say that I am STOKED to have scored above a 700. If I were to have taken this test cold before I started studying for it, I am pretty confident I would have scored less than a 550. How do I know? I actually have quite a bit of proof to back up my claim.
1) 3+ years ago I took the GRE. I had studied rigorously for 2 months. On that test, my scores were by far not very exceptional. In fact, my verbal score was around a 460. Shows I've come a long way there. After I took the GRE, I took a couple weeks to study for the GMAT. I already had some portions of the test covered from my GRE studies (e.g. problem solving, reading comprehension, critical reasoning - note: this is when CR was on the GRE). So I had 2+ months of related study put down for the GMAT and I came out with a 590.
2) This time around, after studying for the GMAT for 2 months, I took a GMATPrep test and scored a 600. Once again, I was not far from an average GMAT score. Thus, I am pretty confident that if I were to take the test cold, I would have probably got an average mark.

Second of all, may I be of hope to those people who are not scoring high in verbal. Like I said above, I was scoring in the 460's on the verbal sections of the GRE and SAT. Furthermore, I was a finance major in college and I scored well on the GRE's quant section so I thought my performance on the GMAT would be reversed - high quant and low verbal. I also thought that the barrier to me doing well on the GMAT was going to be verbal. Perhaps that was the motivation I needed to break down the proverbial wall (note: nice little play on the term proverbial), but I had no clue I would shoot that far past my barrier. I'll touch on my approach a little later in this write-up, just know here and now that I am not a verbal wiz. The 98th percentile score is coming from a below average Joe.

Patience, Perseverance, and Humility
I'll admit, when I started studying for the GMAT this time around I was extremely cocky. I thought to myself, "a 710, come on, that's weak, I could probably knock down a 710 right now!" I had no proof to backup the claim, it was merely my ego trying to push aside the fact that I would have to put in some hard time to do well on this test. At first when studying, I was extremely figitty and I had a hard time focusing on my practice. I would want to race through the problems with the belief that if I had answered a problem correctly ONCE, then that will guarantee that I would answer the same problem correctly in the future. FALSE! But even though I intuitively knew that, it felt like my ego or pride wouldn't let me face the facts. So if you are in a similar situation, give it time to pass through. It took me 2 months to gain respect for the test and a steadfast resolution to learn all I would need to know for the test. Although some may not want to hear this and would rather play off the test prep process as "it's just a test and nothing more," I can honestly say that I am a FAR more focused person now. I can sit at a table studying something for 2+ hours and not feel anxious. It's a huge plus.

I'll slice this review two ways - first, I'll give a breakdown of how I approached the test as a visual learner, and second, I'll address how I approached verbal. I think many other reviews cover the particulars of quant quite well. I am normally very strong in math, so I don't know what happened there. But at any rate, I'll go pretty shallow in my review of quant.

Lessons Learned - A Visual Learner's Approach
When it all came down to test time, my desk was stacked a solid 3 inches high with papers layered in perpendicular sets, each set addressing a single topic on the test (e.g. problem solving, sentence correction). My review sessions in the last few days before G-day consisted of 30-minute mental visualizations of all topics. In those papers sitting before me on the table was a trash-compacted knowledge base of all I would need to know. Review sessions of all test sections crushed from 2+ weeks in 30 beautiful minutes, without the loss of any value. As if like a picture book, I could kick back in my living room chair and thumb through the sheets visually seeing the solution to every problem type I had encountered in OG and other sources. A wise sage on a GMAT forum once said that it is possible to take the GMAT without being afforded the luxury of paper. "How could that be possible?" I pondered. After a nice 3.5 hour jaunt through a GMATPrep test armed with nothing but my visual mind, I realized the sage was right. Most quant problems, perhaps 90 percent plus, can be solved mentally, and all verbal problems can be solved mentally. May I temper this mad chatter now by saying that if you are NOT a visual learner, then you may want to not heed this advice. Moving on ... As a visual learner I needed a few things to be successful on the test - a quick mental recall of GMAT principles, a visual understanding of the question, and a visual solution path. If I couldn't visually see the problem, the principle(s), and solution, then the problem looked like a landfill with the answer lying somewhere in the heap.

AWA
Please, please just get this out of the way up front. How? There are several templates on this site. Check them up, create your own, and memorize it. Plain and simple. It may be a lot of memorization, but I'd say it's better to not stress one bit about this on the actual test and be fairly confident that you'll a 5+. I don't know my AWA score yet, but I am 99% sure it is a 5.5. Why? It seems like structure is 90 percent of the battle. So get your template down early, and practice the AWA on every practice test you take. By the time you take the real test, you'll have your template memorized and you'll probably have a couple examples you used on practice exams ready to use on the real test.

Creating a Visual Approach
Instead of going through the long arduous process that I went through to get to this approach, I'll cut to the chase and lay down what I see now that I am at or at least close to the promise land.

QUANT
OK, I lied, a bit of contrast will help. Before I took the test, here is what it looked like to me -

Before: Quant consisted of a plethora of "math" problems that assessed your ability to act like a calculator and add, subtract, multiple, and divide, and tested you knowledge of a bunch of oddball smart people problems that asked weird things like how many factors are in 420 (when do I ever calculate THAT in real life!). The universe of potential math problems was as big as the milky way and as varied as all the stars in the galaxy.

Now: It is possible to shine light on 90 percent of the math problems that will be on the actual test and there is a finite number of math principles and problem types that are tested. The number of problem types probably stands somewhere between 125 and 175. As you get into the higher echelons of difficult quant problems, then the frequency of "common" problem types dwindles. I think that is what hurt me the most on the actual test. When practicing on GMATPrep, I was consistently scoring around Q49. On the actual test, I saw many problem types I had never seen before.

Several of the pros on this site have accurately stated that you should know how to approach every OG quant problem. That is absolutely true! So, what is the practical application of that for a visual learner. For me, I went through the OG 11 guide and answered all the quant problems. After going through all of them and seeing multiple angles of the same core problem type, I was able to identify the core principles that were being tested. One of my mistakes in the beginning was trying to create a solution for EACH problem. Mistake in my book. Each problem addresses 1 or more principles and tests your knowledge of the principle in a finite number of ways - i.e. problem types. I learned that I needed to identify all problems that tested a set number of principles in a single problem type. I found that in OG 11, most of the time each problem type has 2+ questions related to it. The next step is boiling down a solution path that would allow you to quickly and correctly answer all variants of that problem type. If it is taking you longer than 2 minutes to answer a question, then you haven't identified the core principle and solution path. Once I understood this process and I saw a good amount of the universe of GMAT quant problems, I started creating visual representations of the core principle and solution path. I would visually draw/write out the structure of a single problem type on a single piece of paper. By having a concise visual representation of how to analyze a problem and mentally figure out the solution, I was able to study all OG principles quickly, and retain more of what I learned.

Sign Posts
If you are looking for sign posts to measure your progress in quant, I would say below captures a few that I used for myself.
1) You know the solution path to all OG problems - I had created a single sheet visually representating all problem types.
2) You can mentally answer all OG problems - Call me crazy, but I worked to the point where I could mentally solve all the OG quant problems in less than 2 minutes. This may be a bit extreme.
3) You score a Q49+ on a GMATPrep test without the use of paper - For a visual learner this is helpful to do while practicing and I can't say whether I should have rested more on this in the actual test. I was strong mentally solving all problems in OG 11. On the actual test I did quite a bit of writing. Knowing that most problems are mentally solvable, it may have been to my favor to do more mental math. I'm not advocating this approach for the actual test, but know this - mental training like this has some clear benefits. One, you should be able to identify the core principle on each problem. Two, if you get down to the last 5 questions in quant and you have 5 minutes on the clock, you can flip on mental mode and have a shot at knocking them down fairly accurately. This point illustrates a good principle - at the very least, it is a second method to use if you freeze up solving problems with paper.

Now on to verbal.

VERBAL
When I saw my verbal score I pretty much laughed. Are you kidding me! I SCORED IN THE 98 PERCENTILE ON VERBAL! Me! The guy who scored 460's on the SAT and GRE. Let me be clear if the point isn't yet - I SUCKED at reading comp and sentence correction in the past. I was that kid in high school who went to the "smart" people who scored high in verbal on the SATs and asked in wonder as if I was asking a guru, "how did you do it? I mean in reading comprehension, how do you know what the right answer is?" As for critical reasoning, I didn't suck as bad, I scored a little above average on the GRE, but nothing you'd bring home to mom. I was hoping to clear my eyes at least so that I could barely see above the verbal wall and let my quant score do the fighting, but, MAN, verbal was my good 'ole wing man.

Now, here is what my advice will and won't do. I hope my experience at the very least inspires you to strive on. I can offer you my advice, but I'll be honest, I don't have a silver bullet that anyone can load into their testing arsenal. I know what my silver bullet was, but it may be different for you.

Contrast - then and now

Then: When I started studying for the test again six months ago, I approached each problem the wrong way. The common theme of my error was that I would try to see how EACH answer choice COULD be right. In other words, since I couldn't see a difference between a clearly right answer and a wrong answer, each answer choice just looked like a different shade of grey. That's why I also thought high verbal scorers were so miraculous. "How could you see that that answer was a darker shade of grey!" I would ask. Here is what I would do - For sentence correction problems, I tried to look for a common grammar element that was present in 2+ problems, then try to eliminate answer choices from there. I have seen on this forum that some people use that approach, but for me, that was no good. Too often, as I got into "harder" problems, the trap lay right in that approach. "Oh, look, this answer choice is using passive voice, it must be wrong!" In my book, this is a poor approach. Although there are commonly tested grammar principles, what is more important is meaning. More about that below. Furthermore, sometimes it will look like a grammar principle is tested, when in fact it isn't (e.g. the use of the word "despite" or "although"). For critical reasoning ... (pause) may I quickly say that I really enjoy these problems and I truly mean that. Although I wasn't great at them at first, in due time the correct answer choice may be one of the clearest to predict out of the other types of verbal problems (i.e. SC and RC). ... (play) I bounced around between the answer choices, question stem, and statement more than a bouncy ball shot at 1,000 mph in a zero-gravity racket ball room. OK, that's a bit exaggerated, but I would constantly jump around because I thought that each answer choice COULD be right. In fact, I tried to make each one right. I liken my ability to pick the right answer to the probability a person can pick the right type of toy car from the bottom of a 2 foot pool of mud water. It ends up taking ~4 times as long to pick the right one because you pull up each one and examine each answer for the same amount of time. For reading comprehension, haha, this was always that ugly beast in the closet I never knew how to take down. I would read the passage AS FAST AS POSSIBLE because there is no other way to finish with enough time unless you SPEED through each passage. I would then go to the question stem, read it five times, jump back to the passage and BLAZE another visual trail around the passage a few times, jump to the answer choices and, after all that work, think that every one of them COULD be right. So, I'd hop back on my horse and speed around all parts of the screen again and ultimately pick the answer choice that had the most words that matched the words in the passage. All this was TOTALLY wrong.

I wanted to capture my old approach just in case you can relate in any way. Alright, so here's how things look now.

Now: I haven't measured this figure, but I would say that now I probably could formulate in my head the correct answer for all verbal problems about 85 percent of the time. For the other 15 percent, I have a pretty solid idea of what the correct answer will look like. The fact is that verbal problem answer choices do NOT come in shades of grey and you should NOT feel that every answer COULD be right. The silver bullet for me was developing the ability to accurately formulate the correct answer choice a high percentage of the time and being able to cut right to the chase to find it. In the past and also at first on practice tests, I would be rushing to answer the last 5 answers with 5 minutes left. On the actual test, I had 6 minutes to answer the last question, and I correctly answered it with 5 minutes left. Before I started studying for the GMAT I was not a speed reader. In a classroom of 30 students in high school, I would be one of the last 5 to finish reading an assigned passage. Am I a speed reader now? I'd say no in the true sense of the term "speed reader". Can I quickly scan a passage now, yes. But is speed reading the key to doing well? No. What it took for me to get to this point was to learn how to read deliberately. I visualized myself as a runner running down hill at the start of race, but in my quarky little visualization, everyone else was a wee bit slower than me. I, therefore, rushed past people, brushing them aside. Reading deliberately means to have a designated intent as to what you are looking for. It means to understand what you are reading so that you can use that understanding to answer a question. Each verbal problem type has its own set of criteria for which you read. We'll pick apart each of those. It was actually really strange, on the actual test, no problem seemed hard. Unlike on the quant section where I could feel problems get harder, verbal didn't have that same effect. In fact, all the problems seemed simple all the way through. I say that so that, just as Morpheus said to Neo in the Matrix ... (replay scene) ... Neo, "so you're saying that I will be able to dodge bullets?" Morpheus, "no Neo, I am saying that when you are ready, you won't have to." (back to real life) There were only a couple problems I was torn between two answer choices, but for the rest, I was pretty confident I got them right. Since I scored a V45, I probably got around 3-4 wrong, so I wasn't perfect, but I had an accuracy percentage above 90, which ain't too bad.

SC
Unlike King Solomon in Ecclesiastes where he starts off the book by saying, "Meaningless, meaningless, meaningless!" may I say the key to SC is "Meaning, meaning, meaning!" SC comes down to meaning, but it requires an understanding of all GMAT commonly tested grammar rules. I progressed in SC by first learning all the principles tested, then focusing on reading a SC question to ascertain its meaning. This is what I mean - some people will say to learn SC principles so that you can identify what principle is test in SC, then use your knowledge of that principle to whittle down the answer choices to the correct answer. This is in fact wrong. Learn the principles so that when you read a problem for its meaning you'll know what the correct use of grammar would be. OK, here is how that learning process works. What I used was Manhattan GMAT's (MGMT's) SC book. Awesome book!!! I read through this book three times and did all of the questions it references. After reading this book I thought that since I now knew each problem type - modifiers, parallelism, idioms - then I could identify what problem type is being tested and deploy my knowledge of that problem type to find the correct answer. Since this is the way MGMT's SC book is structured and partially conveyed in the book's instruction it may lead a test taker to believe that a "problem-type" approach should be used. This is false though. This was the impression I had. Mind you, it is no fault to MGMT that this is the impression that is conveyed because it is slightly hard to teach the next rung up above this level, but I believe that that is where you need to be to do well in SC. Once you know the grammar rules, learn how to read for meaning. I think this example illustrates the concept well (Note: I made this problem up) - "researchers have found that individuals are capable of ... and of ... and able to ... and that they ... and discovered." Different words in the non-underlined portion parallel parts of the underlined section - found:discovered, that individuals:that they, capable:able, of:of. If you were to answer the problem by first identifying that parallelism was being tested, several answer choices may be parallel to some part of the non-underlined portion; however, there is only ONE answer choice where the parallelism makes sense. This principles is true over and over again. A question that has modifiers in it may have multiple answer choices that seem to make sense, but the broader part of the WHOLE question must make sense. This is also true for who the subject is in the sentence. The problem shouldn't hide the subject at the end, the subject should stand bold and tall early on in the sentence. Furthermore, the subject should match the action that is being performed - e.g. Is the mouse doing something or is the mouse's brain doing something.

So it is all nice and dandy to know that you have to read for meaning, but the question now is, how do I get there? I started off by learning the core princples from MGMT SC. When I learned that wasn't enough, I started reading 800_Bobs explanations (he's on another forum - I think we all got goodwill towards other forums, so I hope its all good I make that note). He breaks down a good number of myths - e.g. the GMAT tests the difference between compared with and compared to. Through his explanations you'll also learn how to read for meaning.

Here is my mental process now for SC - mind you, I am not a pro like VP_Jim or 800_Bob, but this mental process worked well for me. The subject of the sentence should be as far to the front of the passage as possible; the subject shouldn't be chopped up by two leading modifying phrases - that is WAY too confusing; do you see some redudancy - e.g. "attempted to try" deploy Yoda in this case, "do or do not, there is not try" in other words it is redundant to attempt to try something just attempt it; a non -ing modifier is modifying the noun before it; an -ing modifier is modifying the action the subject is doing in the preceding clause; pronouns gotta match their antecedant (i.e. the noun they are replacing) in quantity - don't let prepositions fog your eyes as to what the noun is, cut out that preposition and find the noun; "Balance the scales" between two things that are being compared - e.g. visible equipment and unobstrusive equipment, one dark and now light (note: these one's used to be a thorn in my side, but once I started to feel how the two things needed to balance, wrong answer choices started looking clearly lopsided).

Here are my thoughts while I read an SC problem (this is as if I am reading a problem): Who is doing what? Modifying phrase - does that make sense, is the noun modified or the phrase before it? OK, the noun is modified, saying it this way would make most sense. OK, a pronoun is used (jump back to find the noun) yep they agree. I see that the non-underlined portion after the underlined portion is using past tense, does "had" need to be used in the underlined portion, yep, sure enough, it was an action that was performed before a previous action.

Out of all three types of verbal questions, SC is my weakest subject still. On most practice tests, if I got 4 verbal questions wrong, 3 of them were SC. So I am not perfect, but I went from getting ~8 easy SC questions wrong to getting maybe 3 "hard" SC questions wrong. I think to trim my error rate a bit more, it would take a greater knowledge of grammar principles.


CR
Critical reasoning problems are just simply SWEET! If you think about them too, they are really not a "verbal" type of a problem. It is primarily logic and logic is strongly associated to math, so from my perspective, these are really just math problems with words as answers. At any rate, they become quite fun when you get a handle on them. Out of all the notes I developed for each section of the test, I boiled down CR to the fewest pages and smallest amount of scribbled ink. I got this section's study notes down to 6 pages and less than 50 words. Perhaps that was because I had already tackled a plethora of information related to the topic, but nonetheless, this topic boils down to easy concepts. I'll start by explaining how I studied for this section, then talking about what I reviewed in the last couple of weeks before the test. I am truly convinced that if I would have known the latter half of my explanation, that would have sufficed, but I have no way of knowing that now.

I started off by studying Powerscore's Critical Reasoning Bible. Great book! I highly recommend it. I went through the whole book twice. I took copious notes. In retrospect, I would say that the greatest value I got from this book was understanding what question stems are saying. Just in case you are new to the term "question stem", that is the phrase above the answer choices that will govern the type of answer that is best - e.g. "Which of the following, ..." This may sound odd, but one of my biggest problems in the past was not understanding what the question stem was asking for. I would get lost in the 12+ words and have to read it a few times to grasp it. Then, I'd be carrying around a large concept while I tried to answer the problem - e.g. if it asked how X's argument about Y could be weakened ..., I'd repeat that whole phrase in my head as I re-read the stimulus (the first part of the problem). After going through this book learned to simplify the question stem into less than 3 words and most of the time just 1 word - e.g. if it asked how X's argument about Y could be weakened ... this would become "Weaken". That's it. Other problem types include - e.g. "Evaluate", "Strengthen", "Must be True", "Flaw". That was all I carried around when I answered a problem. That cut down tons of time! Instead of taking 20 seconds to understand what the question stem was asking for and still be semi lost, I was able to identify it in less than 5 seconds and I was confident in what I needed to do. If you don't know what is being asked for, you can find the right answer. I'd start here.

After going through that book, I did all the OG 11 and OG verbal CR problems. I also dabbled in LSAT book called, "The Next 10 Actual, Official LSAT Preptests". Although these problem types were more complex than GMAT CR, it was helpful to step outside the bounds of GMAT CR a bit to see how nicely simple and confined GMAT CR problems are. At this point, I was probably still missing ~2-3 CR on practice tests. I needed to step it up.

Now, here is what I boiled CR down to. K, here we go. CR accuracy depends on you knowing how to approach a CR problem and address each part of the question. I found that the best approach for me was to address the problem from top down - read the stimulus, then question stem, then click the right answer. Think of stacking three bricks - each part of a CR problem is a brick. You need to make sure that your approach to each part is strong. If any part is weak, the thing will crumble somewhere.

The Stimulus
Consider each sentence a line of information that is going to build a building (i.e. it is going to make some claim). Just as all buildings are unique, each CR problem is unique. As you build the building (case) with each sentence, you are compiling specific facts that are related to that building. So what I did, was I would read each sentence knowing that each one was adding an important element to the claim the argument was making. You NEVER want to gloss over any part of a CR problem. Sometimes things that are mentioned are not useful in identifying the correct answer, but you should never assume this upfront. (For the audible learners, as I would read a sentence I would think of the process of my reading like a zipper zipping a jacket. I would hear/feel the sound Alright, I know, strange, but it made sense to me. Each line would zip together each part of the argument. Liken it to music. When you play a scale, you start, go up the scale, down the scale, and (in this case) stop. So my tempo in reading was like that. I would read a line. Stop. Digest for a half a second what was said and made sure that I fully understood it. Next line. Read the sentence. Stop. Understand what was said, and zip it together with the last sentence. Understand it. Next line. Read ... and I repeated this till I was done). As a visual learner, by the time I finished reading the stimulus I had a nice picture of what was said. This approach may have taken 2-3 second longer than reading it straight through, but MAN I knew EXACTLY what was spoken about.

One quick important note - the picture you create in your mind of the arguments unique structure is what must be used to develop an answer to a problem. Below, I will talk a lot about formulating an answer before reading the answer choices, but it is VERY important that you ONLY use the "train tracks" built by the information presented in the stimulus. A correct answer will be based on this information.

The Question Stem
From all the Powerscore Critical Reasoning Bible practice, I could read the question stem and in one or two words capture the problem type - e.g. "Flaw". I now knew what I needed to identify in the stimulus. Alright, here is the cool part about CR, (for me, and this isn't scientific), like I said above, eighty-five percent of the time I could actually accurately formulate the correct answer in your head before reading the answer choices. If you can formulate an answer before reading the answer choices, you will be FAR better off. I think this is one of the main keys to CR. I did this visually, so I'll try to explain how I visually saw the correct answer for each problem type -

(You may want to draw out each one in a manner that makes sense to you)

Flaw
One approach needed - "The relationship of the premises cause an unintended result". That is really what a flaw is. The author thought the premises in their argument would fully support their claim, but they are wrong. At first I thought I needed to hone in the premises and see a flaw in the premises, but then I realized that the answer choices normally refer to how the premises lead to an unintended result. You'll see answer choices like, "the author mistook efficiency for profitability ...". I visually drew this relationship as a stack of 2 premises that as a a line bounced downwards off the first then the second, it doesn't hit the conclusion in the end, it falls to the side into a pile of ruble. So what you do is you take your understanding of the argument and think how the premises lead the argument to fall outside of the author's conclusion.

Must Be True (Inference)
(Quick note, if you are scoring high in verbal, you will rarely see these. I saw none of these on the actual exam.)
One approach needed - "The Premises build the answer" There's kind of nothing more to say. Just think of blocks. The premises stack these blocks in a certain way. The resulting way they are stacked is what must be true. Just match the answer choices with the premises.

Weaken
For this problem type, I was able to create constructs (or think of a pig-pen or a block that you would insert into a hollow shape) where the correct answer would fit before I read the answer choices. For this problem type and strengthen problems, it is really important to construct the boundaries for a correct answer. The boundaries should be based on one of the three approaches below. I found that these three approaches are the three main (and perhaps only) constructs that are used for correct weaken problems. What is a construct - a boundary for where a correct answer can fall.
Three approaches needed:
1. "Premises (attack them)" - (out of the three approaches, I believe this is the most common approach needed) - The correct answer weakens a PART of the argument.
2. "Conclusion (undesirable consequence)": The conclusion is in fact not what the author intended. It actually hurts the argument. As you can see, a correct answer choice that needs this approach is pretty easy.
3. "Relationship (it goes the other way)": For arguments that present a cause and effect, a way to weaken it is to switch the relationship.

Strengthen
I love these ones because they can sometimes seem hard, but I learned how to answer these and now they are sweet!
Three approaches
1. (Most common) "In Logic" - the correct answer will fall WITHIN the logic that is presented in the stimulus. Here is a super simplified example - Mary is driving a car. She is driving between 10 to 30 miles per hour. Her car is emitting bad things while she drives. ... Correct answer: Mary drove 25 miles per hour. This is one of the most mathematical types of problems because the correct answer falls within the logic that is presented in the stimulus. What I would do with these questions is, after reading the stimulus and question stem, see in my head what the logic is and define the logical boundaries (e.g. large planes make up a large portion of the airports traffic) and then search the answer choices for answers that fall within the logic.
2. "Solidify/Eliminate other possibilities" - These are common in problems that compare things (e.g. large planes make up more traffic than small planes). The correct answer may support the relationship in the logical opposite, meaning they will take a part of the argument and say that it is not the case (note: the word "not" does not have to be used). (e.g. small planes do not make up more traffic at the airport than large planes).
3. "Step UP (uncommon)" - The correct answer fills in a gap (or assumption) in the logic.

Evaluate
These seem pretty common when you score high in verbal.
One approach - "Acts as a premise" The correct answer acts as a premise - if you take the affirmative of the statement and say that it is true, the statement will either strengthen or weaken the argument. The same is true if you take the negative of the statement, it will strengthen or weaken the argument.

Assumption
Two approaches
1. "Injection (into conclusion)" Think collagen in a wrinkled old man's forehead. What I mean is the argument has injected something into the conclusion to make it look smooth. Just compare the premises to the conclusion to find what was injected. For this type of problem, you should be able to predict the correct answer fairly accurately before reading the answer choices.
2. (Much less common) "Relationship is locked" If a relationship is stated, the answer choice will say that the relationship doesn't go the other way.

Boldface
This one's an oddball, but you can still answer it before reading.
One approach - Determine three things: Premise or conclusion, author's stance, relationship to passage and other statement. Boldface problems normally consist of two parts of the stimulus that are bolded and the problem asks you to identify each part's role. Just answer three questions regarding each part - is it a premise or conclusion?, is the author for it or against it?, how does this related to the other boldface section? The answers are stated in the EXACT same way. Also, just know that what words are synonymous with "premise" and "conclusion". Here's the translation chart -

Premise: fact, statement, predication, consideration, evidence, support
Conclusion: conclusion, claim

Answer Choices
By understanding the approach for each part, you should be able to predict the answer choices. I forced myself to have a fairly solid understanding of what the correct answer would look like before I read the answer choices. I've read elsewhere that people go through each answer choice and explain (in their mind while taking the test) why it is wrong to eliminate it. I used to do this too. I found that by knowing the common approaches for each problem (see above), I no longer had to do this. The answer choices stood out as clear as night and day. When I got to the answer choices I would read each one and look for the right answer. I already new what it SHOULD look like, I just needed to find which one it was. I no longer reasoned with each answer. The most time I would spend after reading a wrong answer choice was maybe 2 seconds to say, nope, not it. The only time I would see a bit of grey between two choices was if the test makers were using the nuance of terms to differentiate between a correct answer and a wrong answer - e.g. a premise says "some", but an answer choice says "all". That's the only thing I had to look out for.

RC
I was able to take my accuracy of RC from ~30% to ~99% and I didn't do it through speed reading. What I actually did was slow down. I think after learning how to correctly answer CR problems, I applied that to my approach of RC and it made things a lot easier. I found that I needed to read each line as if the information was important and the author was explaining something. Let's see if I can pinpoint how I balanced speed and comprehension. I tended to lean on the side of comprehension over speed. CR taught me to read and understand so I would do the same with RC. I guess as compared with CR I sped up my speed up a bit for RC, but not too much. I increased my speed to the degree where I could fully comprehend each paragraph rather than each sentence. I knew what case the author was making and I knew the key points the author was using to make their point. A lot of my success in RC came from understanding an author's argumentative structure (once again, CR teaches you this. I recommend to start with CR before RC).

So here's how I approached RC problems. Think like you are reading a big CR stimulus. And read it just a bit faster. That pretty much sums it up. If you can mentally construct CR problems, then you'll just need to expand it to RC passages. I've seen other experts say that you need to read quickly and don't focus on picking up a passages' facts. I agree that you don't need to remember EVERY granular detail, but for me, I read slow enough so that I understand all the elements that were talked about. Some passages are trickier than others. If it is a science passage that this talking about metamorphasis and alluvial deposits, then, absolutely, you don't need to know all the information before reading the question stem. But for passages about civil rights, the details aren't too tricky, so you should know each of the general concepts that the author is talking about. On the actual test, I probably spent 3-4 minutes reading each passage. The passages were simple enough that I could spend 30-60 seconds to answer each question. A key benefit to being good at CR is that some of the RC questions are logic questions. I think my CR skill helped me a lot in RC.

The last thing to say about RC is that you should know the difference between seemingly similar terms - e.g. enumerate, contrast, illustrate. They seem similar, but the nuances of their definitions will determine whether you get the question right or wrong. I took OG 11 and OG verbal and went through all the answer choices and picked out the similar terms and made sure I knew the differences of each. I think this boosted my score a lot.

General Verbal Tips
1. I would study CR before RC as I saw RC as just one big CR problem. As for when to study SC, I think it is totally a personal preference.
2. I read this tip somewhere, so I wish I could give due credit to the author of the suggestion, but use your fingers to record which answers are wrong and potentially right. This saves tons of time! What you do is put your left hand flat on the table. Each finger, and I hope you have five, if not, my bad, represents a different answer choice - i.e. your pinkie is A, your ring finger is B, ... thumb is E. As you read through the answer choices, if the answer is obviously wrong curl your finger in and put it between your palm and the table. You may go through all five choices and have two fingers showing, but it is a lot faster to look at your hand to see what problems to go back to, than marking off a grid on a piece of paper (that's a lot of looking up and down). This approach allowed me to fly through problems. As I read an answer, I prepared the appropriate finger to get ready and curl back. It is a little odd at first, but you'll get used to it.
3. I didn't write anything down on verbal. I've read that some people scribble illegible notes while reading an RC passage, but I found that I didn't need to spend the time. I wasn't good at verbal at first, I actually sucked a lot, but I was able to get to the point where I didn't have to write anything, so you may be able to do it too.
4. Read deliberately. I mean, I attacked verbal problems. I was leaning forward all the way through this section. I forced myself to comprehend each thing. I never sat back for a second and thought "well, I'm not sure, could it be this one, ..." I found that when I did this, my score would plummet. So attack the section hard all the way through.

General Tips Overall
1. Flash cards didn't work well for me. After awhile, I felt that as a visual learner, flash cards were too small for my mind to remember visually. I needed nice BIG pieces of 8.5 by 11 inch paper to capture in big words and simple drawings of the principles.
2. I found that in due time I would increase my score, I just didn't know how much time that would be. There is no hard and fast rule that says how long it takes to get to X score. I feel that a person must act as a sponge and let the principles that are tested on the GMAT absorb into you at your own rate. You really can't force it, you can only be persist in soaking yourself in what you need to learn.
3. Most of all, you can do it!
4. Last, but not least, remember that Eric is the man and Beat the GMAT is awesome!

Best of LUCK!


Reference Information
I took a couple of practice tests that were from other sources - i.e. MGMT and Kaplan - but I found the questions to be significantly different. GMATPrep quant tests principles, while many of these other tests test more mathematical calculation. Between MGMT and Kaplan, I would say that MGMT's quant is closer to the actual test. As for the verbal sections of MGMT and Kaplan, I found each of them to be significantly different than GMATPrep. So, I decided to focus on taking the GMATPrep tests until I scored high. The pool of questions is very large. Even after taking the test six times, over half the questions in each section were new.

Scores
GMAT Prep #1 (1st time): 600 Q39 (57%) V34 (70%)
GMAT Prep #1(3rd retake): 740 Q48(85%) V41(93%)
GMAT Prep #1 (4th retake): 710 (Q47 81%, V41 93%)
GMATPrep #1(5th retake): 770 (Q50 95%, V47 99%)
GMATPrep #1 (6th retake): 780 (Q51 99%, V46 99%)

GMAT Prep #2 (1st time): 710 (Q47 81%, V41 93%)
GMATPrep #2 (2nd retake): 710 (Q50 95%, V37 82%)
GMATPrep #2 (3rd retake): 740 (Q49 89%, V42 95%)
GMATPrep #2 (4th retake): 760 (Q48 85%, V47 99%)
GMATPrep #2 (5th retake): 770 (Q50 95%, V46 99%)