pagani88 wrote:Hello everyone,
I am curious about improving my Verbal score? I can't go up higher than 28, while managed to boost my Quant to 40+. Any advice?
Another issue is scoring. My last official GMAT PrepTest was Q44 V25 resulting in 570, but all the score tables say it is supposed to be 580-590. Where does the discrepancy come from?
Thanks in advance,
Artur
Hi Artur,
I am happy to provide my two cents.
As with anything, the only way to improve and/or
excel at something is mastering the fundamentals and applying those concepts to the more advanced situations. The GMAT, like any other standardized test, is no different. It requires a thorough understanding of the fundamentals - in both Verbal and Maths - and then being able to strategize those fundamentals so as to be able to solve a question in less than 2 minutes.
A score of V28 indicates that while you have a cursory understanding of the basic concepts and can breeze through the easy questions (this is a good start!), you struggle at the intermediate-advanced level questions, which essentially test those same very concepts, but at a more in-depth level and obfuscated within a bunch of non-essential information. To get to the next level, which should be a 650+ score in your case, you need to be able to filter out the extraneous information and recognize the basic concepts tested - say Subject-Verb Agreement/Parallelism/Tenses/Incorrect subject after the modifier in the case of SC. You also need to start eliminating by looking at the
options themselves - this is especially true for the Verbal section, since on the Verbal section, it's not necessarily about selecting the "
100% correct" answer choice but rather selecting the "
best" answer choice. For example, options containing "
Some/few/could/may/might/possibly" are very rarely correct in Strengthen/Weaken CR questions, and hence should be
actively eliminated. Similarly, in the case of Reading Comprehension, you need to be able to figure out the
basic opinions given in the passages without wasting time trying to understand the details - for example, if an experiment A and its results are mentioned in a passage, you should not be trying to understand "
how" the experiment was performed (that can always be looked at when/if there is a question on the same!), but should be able to answer questions such as "What were the results of this experiment?", "Does the author agree with the results?", "Is there a flaw in the experiment?", etc.
As with everything however, improvement does require diligent preparation, and improving by around 90-100 points on the GMAT usually takes at least 1.5-2 months of preparation. A good way to improve would be to start keeping an
ERROR LOG of your mistakes, including the time taken to solve the question and the concepts tested/question type. In terms of content, I would suggest the following plan for the next 1.5-2 months.
First 30-45 days (at least 5-6 hours of preparation per day):
- Go through the SC, CR, and RC strategy guides of a leading GMAT test-prep company - this will brush up and refine your fundamentals of the various concepts that are tested on the GMAT
- Re-solve the latest editions of the Official Guide(2018) and Quant+Verbal Review (2018) using the strategies learnt - remember, you need to be
ACTIVELY looking to apply the various strategies learnt to a particular question. Maintain a log of the concepts/strategies that you were able to identify, and also those that you couldn't recognize when you solved a question. Revisit those strategies/concepts again - practice makes perfect!
Final 15 days:
Take
full GMATPrep mocks (1-6), including the AWA and IR sections - Please ensure that you take the test under exam conditions, religiously adhering to the timings for a particular section. Take the tests in the time-slot in which you have your test booked - for example, if you have your test scheduled in the evening, then in order to get an accurate benchmark of your performance, you should take the test in the evening, and not in the afternoon/morning. Again, as during practice, analyse your errors from these tests. Also, ensure that no one disturbs you during these 3.5-4 hours during which you are taking the exam. This will stimulate the actual GMAT test-taking environment as closely as possible, and also get rid of any nerves on the actual test day, weeding out "careless" mistakes.
Note that GMATPrep 1&2 are freely available from the
official website . ExamPack 1 (Tests 3&4) and ExamPack 2 (Tests 5&6) can be purchased from the official website for $49.99 each.
Best of luck and happy studying
