Mrrinali wrote:Thanks @MartyMurray
My section scores were:
Verbal - 33 (Percentile 67)
Quant - 46 (Percentile 71)
Please advise.
Thanks!
OK, so, to get to your target score of 740, you are going to have to score at least 40, and probably 41, in verbal. Scoring 40 in verbal is going to take seeing a fair amount more than you have been. So, you have to train yourself to see more and get more verbal questions correct.
To do so, probably you have to slow way down in your verbal practice and really seek to see what makes the questions work. You have to train yourself to see the subtleties of the logic that makes the wrong answers wrong and the correct answers correct and to see the key details that matter. So, you have to go beyond just answering questions to spending time with each question, analyzing each answer choice, and asking questions such as, "Why is this one wrong?" "What is key difference between this incorrect answer and the correct answer?" "How would this choice trap someone?" "Why did I choose this choice although now I can clearly see that it is incorrect?" You have to learn to see more.
You can score V33 using simple tricks and gimmicks that you might have come up with or learned from a test prep company. To get to V40+, you have to forget about any gimmicky methods and learn to see EXACTLY what's going on in the questions.
Also, to score higher in verbal, you have to improve your approach. So, as you are answering questions, consider how you are approaching them. To get the harder verbal questions right, you have to give them respect, really pay attention, and notice details. Remember the GMAT is an entrance exam for graduate school. So, the verbal questions are pretty sophisticated and you have to handle them accordingly.
If you miss a verbal question, consider what about your approach could have been better. Did you really pay attention to the different versions in a Sentence Correction question, or did you quickly choose a choice because you thought that you noticed a pattern that you could use to eliminate most of the answers quickly. Did you pay close attention to the logic of the answers to a Critical Reasoning question, or did you get sucked in by a trap that sounds somehow correct but actually doesn't even come close to doing what the correct answer has to do. If you choose the wrong choice to a Reading Comprehension question, figure out what you did that allowed you to get sucked in by a trap answer that doesn't actually reflect what the passage says.
It is likely that, to get to 740, you will have to increase your quant score also. You can increase your quant score point by point by finding areas of your quant skills that could be stronger and strengthening them one by one by focusing on questions one type at a time. You can discover these weaker areas by reviewing your practice tests to see what types of quant questions you didn't answer correctly and by honestly considering your comfort level with quant questions of various types. Think about it. If you find a type of quant question that you are not that good at answering and become very good at answering that type of question, logic dictates that your expected quant score will increase. If you go through that process ten times, your expected quant score will increase a little bit each time, and if you do so enough times, you can achieve any quant score that you want to achieve.
So, there are some ideas for you. In verbal, slow down, learn to see more, and improve the way you handle the questions, and in quant, drive your score up point by point by strengthening your skills area by area.
[/b]
