GMAT Strategy

Hi!
I recently took a GMATPrep test to gauge my initial ability. I did not study for this at all and scored a 590 V41 Q30. I am mapping out my studying plan and will obviously focus heavily on Quantitative.

My question is does anyone have any experience with studying for the verbal section with an initially good score?

The thing is that when I took the verbal section and did subsequent practice questions I just sort of knew or saw the answer I didn't think in terms of "that verb and subject don't agree" or by mapping out grammatical rules. I am worried that if i start studying the grammatical rules and other things I will start second guessing my own instinct. Is it safer to stick with just high level strategies on verbal and really attack Quant?

Did anyone have a similar experience or concerns? How did it work out?

Any input is appreciated.

On the Verbal section, you'll see rules primarily on Sentence correction. RC and to some extent CR doesn't have any great rules as such. Whether you should learn grammar to tackle Sentence correction questions depends on what score you're aiming at . If you're aiming for a 700+, then learning the grammatical rules is a must for the simple reason that the options in 700+ SC questions are close enough to prove your instincts wrong.
The macro level strategies on Verbal can help you to a limited extent only.

Hi Powers18,

By way of background, I started with a strong GMAT Verbal score but leveraged the following strategies to earn a 790 on the Real GMAT.

Here are my tips for you:

First, to improve an already good verbal score, you need to pinpoint exactly which concepts and types of questions are giving you trouble in each of the three verbal sections (Sentence Completion, Critical Reasoning, and Reading Comprehension). Then concentrate on improving specifically those areas.

Second, for the sentence correction section in particular, you definitely NEED to learn and apply all of the grammatical rules analytically. If you want a very strong verbal score, you will need to get the more difficult questions correct. In the sentence correction section, those harder questions will test you on rules that contradict your instinct or intuition, so knowing the actual rules is essential. This will allow you to choose the right answer confidently even when it sounds wrong.

Good luck!
Shawn

I had a very similar experience to yours: I just "knew" the answers to the verbal section - mostly, but not completely. Even though you have a natural instinct for verbal there is always room for improvement. For me the easiest place to improve was in SC. I was similar in that I could just tell what "sounded" right and what didn't. I knew many of the rules but certainly not all of them. This will only get you so far though. If you can learn all the rules properly your score and speed in SC will improve, putting less pressure on the other sections. I went through the Manhattan SC guide and at first felt that it was too confusing and potentially a waste of time when I could just naturally pick out the right questions. I stuck with it though and eventually it all just started to click. I pretty much got myself to 100% correct hit rate in practice questions. I really to recommend that you do this too. Since you already have a good ear and intutition for grammar learning all (or at least most) of the rules should be pretty easy for you. Once you have them down answering SC questions gets much much easier!

As for RC, it was a bit of a struggle for me at first. Not too bad, but I had a hard time staying focused on the passages. I read a lot so I didn't find them that difficult but a lot of them are long and boring so often my brain would just tune out. I overcame this by going through the passages and taking lots of notes as I read them. Over time I found that I could make less and less notes (just a few words per paragraph) and that kept me focused on the passages. Practice and repetition also helped with making these questions easier. Eventually I also got close to 100% correct in practice.

I didn't do too much studying of CR strategy because I could usually just pick out the right answer, but it stayed my weakest area. It didn't really matter that much since my SC and RC were strong so it all balanced out.