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Advice on Verbal Score Improvement - 14 days to go

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Advice on Verbal Score Improvement - 14 days to go

by arindamcanada » Sun Mar 28, 2010 3:32 pm
Hello Everyone,

My GMAT is lined up in 14 days. I have practised numerous MGMAT CAT's and GMAT Prep 1. I am quite confident about my Quant Skills - though the MGMAT scores me at 48-49, the GMATPrep scored me at 50. However I am worried about the verbal - I am getting around 35 every time. When I practice the OG's or any other set of problems I can usually get 8 or 9 correct out of 10 (and this includes harder ones). However during the CAT's I think I mismanage my time or dont go through all the options and I am not getting good scores in the Verbal section. When I look at the solutions I can quickly spot my errors and many times it comes down to making a choice between the two choices I think are closest and almost always I choose the wrong one. I need to get a 730+ to be in a comfortable position to get into schools of my choice and I need a 38 on the verbal at least. Any quick resolution I can use to get over this bump? Thanks in advance.
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by becnil » Sun Mar 28, 2010 8:34 pm
For the Verbal Section, getting down to two possible choices is probably the most common event for majority of the candidates. You may try the following strategies (helped me somewhat):

1. Read all the answer choices, no matter how confident you may feel about one choice
2. For some CR questions and specially for SC questions, try to come up with a column with the 5 choices and check out the sure losers; then look among the contenders
3. It is very important, after going through the Quant section, to keep your focus while doing the Verbal section. The GMAT questions probably do not check your verbal knowledge as much as they test your endurance, reading through large RC passages or through a 48 word long SC question. Do not get intimidated by these, try to keep your focus and you will see yourself succeed
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by arindamcanada » Mon Mar 29, 2010 5:28 am
Thank you for those suggestions. I will try it out over the next couple of days and fingers crossed for an improvement in scores. I think the strategy of quickly crossing out wrong answer choices will help because quite often I find myself staring at the wrong answers and then re-reading the choices I had come up or the stimulus in the first page.
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by Brian@VeritasPrep » Mon Mar 29, 2010 9:46 am
Hey Arindam,

Good questions - that feeling of narrowing it down to two and then picking wrong is certainly frustrating, and also quite common. I wrote about that just a couple weeks ago on another thread - https://www.beatthegmat.com/regarding-cr ... 54363.html - I think you'll find this helpful:
Brian@VeritasPrep wrote:I'm glad you wrote about this, mrinal2100 - being able to narrow the choices down to two, but then not doing much better than 50% from there, is a pretty common frustration for students on the verbal section. Here's one reason why:

-By the time you've narrowed the answer choices down to two, four of the last five sentences you've read are incorrect answer choices - it's been a long time since you've read the question itself and the stimulus

-Much like sushi restaurants will give you ginger slices for between bites, or wine tastings offer soda crackers for between wines, to "cleanse your palate" of aftertaste, you may need to clear your mind of the "aftertaste" of the irrelevant information that you just read

-So, if you refresh the question as a new question with only two answers, you'll be much more able to focus on the important characteristics of the question and the remaining answer choices. Just re-read the important components of the question ("my job is to strengthen the argument that the government should raise taxes..."), and then look at the remaining answer choices as though they're new

-One added benefit to this strategy is that, often times when you pick incorrectly between the remaining answers, you're trying to apply the same thought process to those two as you were able to use to eliminate the other three (for CR questions, those other three are often "out of scope" of the conclusion). With the remaining two, however, it's fairly likely that the difference is not related to your initial thought process (after all, on your first pass you weren't able to eliminate a fourth choice), so a new process is going to be required. By treating that last decision as a new question, you're more likely to be able to adopt a new process, instead of just picking the answer choice that "feels right" based on what you've already read and thought.

Like papgust mentions, it's probably best to practice this new strategy without worrying too much about time, but I'd even argue that it can save you time. Rather than spending 15-20 seconds hemming and hawing over that final decision, if you know that you have a method to get there, you'll spend 10-15 seconds re-reading the question and answer choices, and make a much more decisive choice between the remaining two. It shouldn't cost you any time, and may actually be a bit quicker in the long run. Perhaps more importantly, if you're making confident decisions on questions, you'll approach the next question more confidently, too, and that positive energy will carry over to better pacing and accuracy on the next one.
Brian Galvin
GMAT Instructor
Chief Academic Officer
Veritas Prep

Looking for GMAT practice questions? Try out the Veritas Prep Question Bank. Learn More.
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by arindamcanada » Mon Mar 29, 2010 11:41 am
Brian,

Thank you very much. I think you have pinpointed at the right thing. I am going to try this for the next couple of days but I have a feeling that this is going to work. It might not raise my score to 44 for verbal but maybe can bring me close to 40 from my present 35.

Arindam
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