Need suggestions please(GMAT Prep score V 31, Q 47)

Chit wrote:Hello,
I am new to this forum. Let me confess that this is one of the best forums I have ever stumbled upon. Congratulations to Eric and all the members who have contributed to this website.

I am an Indian and have been staying in US since 1.5 years now. I work at Apple Inc, Cupertino and am planning to appear GMAT by end of Oct. B-schools am targeting are ISB Hyd, IIM Calcutta and XLRI Jamshedpur and GMAT score am targeting is 740.

I started my preparation nearly a month back, but somehow could not do well in the Prep test I appeared today. Below are the resources am planning to use throughly.


SC: OG10, OG12, MGMAT SC Guide
RC: OG10, OG12, MGMAT RC Guide
CR: OG10, OG12

DS, PS: OG10, OG12

MGMAT CATs and 2 GMAT Prep tests (one already appeared today).

When I attempted the diagnostic questions in OG 12 I could answer all sections in the "Above Average/Excellent" range. But somehow am not able to figure out why I managed only 640 in the prep test.

I can devote 1.5 to 2 hours everyday till Oct 30. How feasible it is to elevate the score from 640 to 740.
All suggestions are welcome.

Thanks.

Your quant seems perfect to pull you in top tier score but verbal need a little bit of workout. Have you analyzed the wrong questions in GMATPrep? I assume that 10 questions were incorrect out of 41.
-What was the breakdown of those 10 wrong questions?
-How many wrongs were of SC, CR and RC questions?
-Since wrong questions were only 10 then take screen shots of all those 10 questions and paste them on a word page and then analyze them thoroughly? If possible, make 10 flashcards of these 10 mistakes and find same type of questions in OG and verbal review and then practice them.
-Were there lot of traps in RC section or you simply didn't want to read all five choices thoroughly because each choice was 3-4 line long. I have experienced during my practice on GMATPrep that when RC question is kind of hard and choices are very long then it becomes very boring to read, analyze and examine all 5 choices with passage so immediately most attractive answer is chosen which, in turn, proves to be wrong.
-If SC area accounted for most of wrong questions out of those 10 then review grammar.
-If CR area accounted for most of wrong questions out of those 10 then look for the logical relationship in arguments.

Thanks for the suggestions.
Out of 41 questions I got 14 wrong.
SC: 7
RC: 4
CR: 3

Out of 7 SC 4 of them I could re attempt correctly. But rest 3 would have been wrong even if I had infinite time.

Doubt:
I am wondering whether I did well in CR or not, because since I was doing bad in SC the software offered simple CR questions. Is this logic correct?

Chit wrote:Thanks for the suggestions.
Out of 41 questions I got 14 wrong.
SC: 7
RC: 4
CR: 3

Out of 7 SC 4 of them I could re attempt correctly. But rest 3 would have been wrong even if I had infinite time.

Doubt:
I am wondering whether I did well in CR or not, because since I was doing bad in SC the software offered simple CR questions. Is this logic correct?

As it is evident, SC is the area where you need most of your workout. Go one level further down and find that how many were wrong in which area:

-Parallelism?
-Modifier?
-Idiom?
-Concision and style?
-Subject - verb agreement
-Pronoun reference?
-Antecedent?
-Verb - Tense agreement?

As it is evident, RC is also a weakness. Just recall what type of passage were those?

-Were there a lot of terms such as name of authors, books etc?
-Were there a lot of scientific terms?
-Was the question stem contained words such as "Passage implies?"
-Was the question stem contained words such as "Passage suggests?"
-Was there a chronology of numbered items in passage such as:

"Dr Redmond Walter identified 3 reasons of collapse....First, growth of emerging markets with extremely high rate of........Second, Ignorance of level playing field for all........., and third the monopoly of exchange system........"

-Was there a lot of "development and denial" of a idea in passage? Where author says something and immediately after saying, inserts words such as "Although" or "However" and denies the significance and meaning of same thought and idea then continues same "development-denial" in rest of the passage and at last concludes with a reconciliation of ideas.


Don't pay attention of logic of software while you know that there are two other areas (SC and RC) where you did not do well. If you consider that 15 questions were of SC then 7 errors mean that software can't throw top class CR questions. Just work on other two areas.

Thanks for the detailed suggestion. Will work on them and lets see how far am able to travel. Any suggestions on books/material other than OG 10 and OG 12 for practicing PS and DS.

Clearly verbal needs lot of work to be done from my side, but I also want to improve quants to 49/50 range.

Buddy, are you done with your GMAT?

Guys,
Need some pointers for DS. Is OG 11,12 sufficient. How difficult are actual GMAT questions compared with OG questions. I appeared Veritas free test and scored 47 in quants, what do I infer from the same? I am targetting at scoring >=49 in Quants.