GMAT Strategy

I plan on taking the GMAT by November 2009 (which means I have at least 3 months) and I am aiming at 700+. Note: I have started preparing already and have the following books: Kaplan 800, Kaplan Verbal Workbook, and OG Verbal Review.

As I think SAT and GMAT test similar skills, I think my SAT score can give you an idea of my strengths and weaknesses. I got 800 (Math) + 660 (Writing) + 580 (Critical Reading) = 2040.

Hence, I believe I can do best in Math and that I have to work on the Verbal section of GMAT.

For this reason, I've started with the verbal section but instead of taking entire practice tests, I want to focus on individual sections, question types and timing, leaving complete practice tests for the end.

I've been a bunch of Practice Sets in the Kaplan Verbal Workbook and would like your opinion on my scores. I don't know how to interpret them as they are only in terms of how many I got right/wrong in how much time.

Also, after every practice set, I looked into why I got questions wrong and made notes.

Sentence Correction:
Set 1, 22 Questions, 25 Minutes, 19 Right & 3 Wrong.
Set 2, 22 Questions, 25 Minutes, 20 Right & 2 Wrong.

Reading Comprehension:
Set 1, 18 Questions, 25 Minutes, 10 Right & 8 Wrong.
Set 2, 18 Questions, 25 Minutes, 16 Right & 2 Wrong.

Critical Reasoning:
Set 1, 16 Questions, 25 Minutes, 13 Right & 3 Wrong.
Set 2, 16 Questions, 25 Minutes, 10 Right & 6 Wrong.

Taking the WORST of these results, I would get 13/15 SC questions right, 8/13 CR questions right and 7/13 RC questions right. THAT means, I'll get about 28/41 right.

If I take the BEST of these results, I would get 14/15 SC questions right, 10/13 CR questions right and 11/13 RC questions right. THAT means, I'll get about 35 questions right.

What do these results mean? And how many questions do I need to get right if I want to get 700+? I'm only concerned about Verbal right now because a) I have generally been better at Math and b) It was possible for me to get 800 in SAT Math. I know GMAT must be different and more difficult than SAT but it is still a decent comparison.

come on people. i need some help.

What do those results mean? Not much. It depends on how hard those questions were. If you got 28/41 super hard questions right, you're in fantastic shape. If you got 28/41 super easy questions right, you're in really bad shape. You need to take a computerized adaptive practice test to get any idea of where you stand. There's no way to project a score simply using raw number correct.

By the way, I have noticed a strong correlation between SAT scores and GMAT scores. Of course, many people didn't study for the SATs but did for the GMAT, which would make a big difference. But I think that most people who put in similar levels of efforts on each test (and who took the SAT in high school and the GMAT after college) would get about the same percentile. Personally, I think that SAT math is harder than GMAT math, once you get the hang of data sufficiency at least. It's been a long time since I've taught SAT, but I remember the SAT requiring more advanced math than the GMAT does. The GMAT is just trickier. Also, there are fill in the blank questions on the SAT, whereas the GMAT is all multiple choice.

Well, I know my post may have been a little ambiguous but I was actually hoping someone would know the difficulty level of the Kaplan Verbal Workbook Practice sets.

What do you think about the Kaplan 800 book? I started doing Math from there today and except for Data Sufficiency which I haven't reached yet, it seems to be quite easy. I just made a bunch of silly mistakes that I can rectify if I read the question carefully.

I used Kaplan Premier for my practice as a general book for tips/strategies. I also took all their tests and had Kaplan 800 as well. My opinions about the material is:
- quant focus in Kaplan = straightforward math problems. If you've been out of college recently and had a quant-heavy major, these will probably seem pretty acceptable. If not, then you'll probably struggle.

- Kaplan 800 quant is not as difficult as the name implies; I actually breezed through most questions, while I did find quite a few tricky ones on test day

- Kaplan verbal is... meh... SC is ok, as with most prep books. SC questions are really not that hard to "manufacture". RC passages are waaay too long and convoluted, while CR is basically a total waste of time. CR was my biggest weakness and you can imagine my frustration with Kaplan, when they just threw that "out of scope" phrase everywhere to avoid actually having to explain why an answer is wrong

I see your weaker areas are RC and CR. IMHO, Kaplan won't do much to improve those two sections (although I must say I used it successfully for SC improvement). You should invest in some other books. I found PowerScore CR Bible to be the best material I've used for CR and RC (you'll see that there's actually a strong resemblance between the two: CR is actually RC with smaller, trickier passages).

What about OG Verbal Review?

The OGs should be the heart and soul of your prep. The quality of the questions in the OG/OG verbal is unmatched (maybe only by the PowerScore CR Bible). My only complaint is that there are too few questions for my taste!