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Please Suggest A Good Private GMAT Verbal Tutor

Critical Reasoning, Reading Comprehension
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Please Suggest A Good Private GMAT Verbal Tutor

by aiming800 » Mon Jan 05, 2015 9:35 pm
Hi Guys,

I have recently taken GMAT and scored a 650 (Q48,V31). i am not happy with this as my target score is 730.

Although I feel i have under performed in the Quant Section( i already scored a Q49 in my previous attempt ) and i can improve the score on my own.

I think i need some solid guidance as far as my verbal is concerned. Hence i have decided to go with a private tutor. The budget is a problem as the rates of tutoring provided by the big names are quite high and i don't feel i can afford it.

Another problem is that there is not much of information/reviews available about the good private GMAT verbal tutors( apart from of those from the big companies). Therefore i request you all to suggest few names of good GMAT verbal tutors, who are also relatively economical and can help me to reach my target verbal score of 40.


Cheers,
Last edited by aiming800 on Wed Jan 07, 2015 8:01 am, edited 3 times in total.
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by [email protected] » Mon Jan 05, 2015 11:56 pm
Hi aiming800,

If you're convinced that a Verbal Tutor is the solution to your Verbal "problems", then you might want to reach out to Mitch.

It might be that you just need to work with different Verbal GMAT materials though - using some different tactics might be exactly what you need to improve your Verbal Scaled Score. To that end, I'm curious about how you've studied so far:

1) How long have you studied?
2) What GMAT resources have you used during your studies?
3) How were you scoring on your practice CATs?
4) Do you have a pacing problem in the Verbal section? Do you finish early or do you have to rush just to finish?

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by aiming800 » Tue Jan 06, 2015 1:56 am
[email protected] wrote:Hi aiming800,

If you're convinced that a Verbal Tutor is the solution to your Verbal "problems", then you might want to reach out to Mitch.

It might be that you just need to work with different Verbal GMAT materials though - using some different tactics might be exactly what you need to improve your Verbal Scaled Score. To that end, I'm curious about how you've studied so far:

1) How long have you studied?
2) What GMAT resources have you used during your studies?
3) How were you scoring on your practice CATs?
4) Do you have a pacing problem in the Verbal section? Do you finish early or do you have to rush just to finish?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
Hi Rich,

Thanks for your response. I have tried to answer your questions in detail.Please find them below.

1) How long have you studied?

I have been studying on and off for GMAT since last 2 years. Because of my hectic work schedule it becomes very difficult to devote time exclusively for GMAT.
But this time around i made few sacrifices to make sure i can provide substantial time for my gmat preparation. My previous score in GMAT was 620(Q49,V26).
This time around i gave almost 3 months to my preparation,giving 2-3 hours on weekdays and 4-5 hours on weekends.

2) What GMAT resources have you used during your studies?

I went through almost all the well known resources last time around,hence this time i focused mainly on

1>e-gmat sc course
2>manhattan CR guide 5th edition
3>Aristotle RC grail
4>GMAT prep question pack 1
5>gmat club test and magoosh for Quant

3>How were you scoring on your practice CATs?

I personally think that i was short on practice which was required to achieve a 700+ score. Nevertheless, i took 5 practice tests.

Veritas prep CAT1-720(Q48,V41)
Veritas prep CAT2-710(Q50,V38)
Exampack1 CAT3-690(Q47,V38)
Exampack1 CAT4-680(Q48,V35)
GMAT prep CAT1-710(Q50,V35)


4> Do you have a pacing problem in the Verbal section? Do you finish early or do you have to rush just to finish?

Yes i do feel so. i think this is one of the problems i could not find an answer to. if i increased my speed in the test, i felt my accuracy suffered and vice-versa.



In addition to the above answers i would also like to add few of my observations which might help you to analyse my situation better.

1> My hit rate was quite good in the questions that i solved from the above mentioned resources. for example, In the exam pack 1 in verbal questions my hit rate was around 85-90%,but
i took a little extra time than stipulated. Hence i think i need to know how to solve them faster without affecting the accuracy.

2> I could have taken few more CATs without skiipping the IR and AWA , strengthening my time management,enabling me to solve the quant questions faster, and increasing my stamina
in the real test.

3> I felt that the RCs which i faced in my real test was more difficult than anything i faced in my mock tests or practice questions.


Kindly let me know if you want to know something more about my preparation.

Cheers,
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by [email protected] » Mon Jan 12, 2015 6:15 pm
Hi aiming800,

You were scoring considerably higher in the Verbal sections on these last 5 practice CATs than you did on your last Official GMAT, so we need to try to define why.

1) Did you take the ENTIRE CAT (including the Essay and IR sections) on ANY of those CATs? If not, then you were not properly preparing to face the full GMAT.
2) What time of day were you taking your CATs and what time of day was your Official GMAT?
3) How often do you "narrow it down to 2 choices and then 'guess'" in the Verbal section?

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by VivianKerr » Sat Jan 31, 2015 4:08 pm
Hi Aiming800,

You can definitely benefit from a tutor, especially on the Strategy side of things. Remember that the GMAT is a three-headed beast: Content, Pacing, and Strategy. But you can also do a lot on your own to improve.

Question to ask yourself:

1) Content

-what are your three weakest SC areas, your weakest CR/RC question-types?
-do you have Error Logs for you CATs so you can actually see the NUMBER of each type of Q you're getting wrong?
-how are you reviewing and cementing your knowledge about incorrect questions?

2) Pacing

-what Q-types slow you down the most?
-how can you regularly be doing pacing drills to improve in between CATs?
-are you regularly checking in with benchmarks as you take your CAT?
-how comfortable are you "walking away" from problems?

3) Strategy

-are you taking notes on CR and RC passages? are you simply summarizing what is SAID, or are you diffing deeper to identify the topic, scope, function of each paragraph, components of the argument, author's point of view/tone, purpose, etc.?
-are you identifying the difference between "Y/N" data suff questions and "Value" data suff questions and adjusting your approach accordingly?
-how comfortable are you backsolving and picking numbers in Problem Solving?
-can you identify the type of CR question from the question-stem, and do you understand what your JOB is based on the Q-type?

I hope this gives you some food for thought! You can find some examples of how I strategically approach questions on my blog: https://gmatrockstar.com/blog/

Feel free to PM me if you'd like the strategy sheet I hand out to all my students or if you have additional questions.

Best,
Vivian
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Former Kaplan and Grockit instructor, freelance GMAT content creator, now offering affordable, effective, Skype-tutoring for the GMAT at $150/hr. Contact: [email protected]

Thank you for all the "thanks" and "follows"! :-)
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