GMAT Verbal & Essays

When I do verbal practice problems day-to-day, I usually breeze right through them. But after crushing the quant section, my mind is tired and I tend to score much lower on the verbal after 2 essays and a bunch of math problems.

Any tips on how to reset my mind or power through this?

I used meditation / breathing exercises. (I know it sounds nuts, but man did it work for me.)

During the 8 minute break, I make sure to spend at least 60 seconds with my eyes closed freeing my mind of any connection to the GMAT. I, instead focus on breathing. My favorite cadence is 3 seconds in, 3 seconds hold, 6 seconds out. That's 5 breaths per minute. I challenge you to close your eyes, take 5 of those breaths, and not become more relaxed.

(NB, the timing on the breaths seems to matter. I don't know if mine is ideal, but it works and other rhythms don't work.)

Also, I actually used this technique DURING the test. I have the exact same challenge you do, but I hit the wall after about 45 minutes. So, I use this technique in the middle of the section. Meaning, I only use 74 of my 75 minutes to answer questions. I have found that the tradeoff is worth it for me.

I probably do this about 4 times during the whole test.

I will definitely have to look into this breathing exercise. I definitely have enough time to do a few during the verbal, since I generally end with 15-20 minutes left (need to also focus on slowing down).

Thanks!

The fact that you are ending with that much time left on the verbal is an indication that you are actually not digging into the question and using the same techniques that you use in practice. You should finish with a few minutes left only. That much time left is more time than GMAT instructors would normally have left.

Here is one key to the verbal section that should help with focus/attention as well as tiredness issues.

You need to have reliable methods that allow you to develop routines for each type of question. On the verbal (and the quant) you should know what you are going to do at the beginning of each question. On something like Critical Reasoning you can take 2 minutes per question. If this is 2 minutes of your brain on the highest setting you will not last! You need to have more than 1/2 of this be automatic based on your routines and then you can turn your brain on high for a few seconds. For example, if you see a strengthen question the first period of time is not high brain power. You simply read the question stem recognize the type, then read the stimulus looking to identify the main conclusion. No mystery, no reinventing the wheel. Once you have the main conclusion you can reconstruct the argument by focusing on the information that truly matters. With some practice this will also be nearly automatic. Now you can turn on the brain and a little predict in general what would bring together the evidence and the conclusion. This is what you are looking for in an answer choice. Now you can crank that brain up to high and efficiently evaluate the answer choices looking for the one that brings together the evidence and the conclusion.

You see any one of us would be tired after three hours of the brain on high power. So you need to have reliable methods that allow you to work through most of a problem nearly on automatic. If you work the problems all the way through you will less time left, but you will be less exhausted as well and you will get many more answers correct.

This is an interesting post. A remedy prescribed that could be useful for many. Thanks a lot for in depth analysis and to the original poster for sharing such a question .

I ,personally, feel the most impacted question types because of brain tiredness ( reduced efficiency because of that) are CR and RC if it needs some logical processing and has some objective language.

The kind of convoluted arguments GMAC present -- with all sorts of modifiers associated with them where you need to decode and paraphrase -- look blurry after Q 18 or 20. I will put a GMATPrep question tomorrow under this link that is ,of course, a hard one but that becomes way too complex when you encounter it after having spent already more than an hour fighting all sorts of questions.I faced the same issue.

havok wrote:I will definitely have to look into this breathing exercise. I definitely have enough time to do a few during the verbal, since I generally end with 15-20 minutes left (need to also focus on slowing down).

Thanks!

I have the exact same problem! Will be trying the breathing exercise on my next practice test.

I thought, I only have this problem but seems others are facing the same. Well breathing exercise. seems a solution. Need to try it. Thanks for the tip.

Any other tips apart frm the ones mentioned here. Let me rephrase the tips
1) Use the best way to solve the QUANT questions so that the brain is ready even after 2.25 hrs -> This is something I have tried, but again after 2.25 hrs, get sleepy.
2) Use the least effort to solve the VERBAL questions -> Correct, but the problem is again if you are sleepy, we can easily miss out something
3)* Apply the breathing techniques - This is something I need to definitely give a try. Why I don't know, but feel this should work in any situation...

Anyone else wants to pour in their thoughts on this particular aspect.