GMAT Strategy

I'm just shy of a month before I take my 1st attempt. I feel fairly good at this point although need to improve and become consistent in most areas, something I've been lacking. Please keep in mind this is for someone (myself) shooting for the 600-650 range. Highest CAT score on MGMAT thus far is 590 (Q:37, V:34) Only have taken 2 CAT's. (Will be taking 4-5 more.)

I would like some help on strategy for verbal.

SC- What are 2-3 things I should automatically be looking for on SC questions? i.e. subject-verb agreement, parallelism, concision, tenses? What do you guys feel has been the most dead on in this category/strategy approach? (Time has killed my hit rate; need new strategy)

CR- I've been falling into the trap of "unwarranted claims/assumptions". I have a hard time not reaching out of the scope of the problem and inadvertently bring in outside assumptions. How can I not do this anymore? Is there something that I could maybe focus on more? This seems to be my greatest pitfall in CR.

RC- I like to read the passages. I usually get most of the generalized questions correct as I tend to focus and get a good idea of authors intentions, subject matter, and main points. Where I get caught dead in the water is on specific questions relating to the subject matter. I often feel like there isn't enough time to "dilly dally" by reading and re-reading matter. These questions seem tricky most of the time and it normally kills my flow on the test itself. I usually just skim and guess to get by them and normally miss them=D I feel it's time to change my ways.

Any other SPECIFIC strategies would be helpful.

To our journey together!

~bp

SC: I think it's subject-verb agreement and parallelisms... I'm pretty sure that almost every question you'll see on SC deals with one or the other, or even both. You'll be able to eliminate either two or three options based on this alone!

CR: Hmm... The "out of scope" thing is pretty subtle and most times this is not the reason why you should eliminate an answer choice. I guess the obvious advice here is to "control it", but that's easier said than done. If you have CR issues, try the CR Bible by PowerScore - it's an awesome book, the best I've used in my prep. It helped me get from a verbal 36 to a verbal 47!

RC: One good way to eliminate wrong answers would be to avoid two types of questions:
- those that take full phrases from the text: the good answer will usually be rephrased. Taking unaltered phrases from the text is actually devised to appeal to you because it seems familiar, but it's a trap!
- almost 90% of the time, answer choices that include strong words such as "always", "never" and things like that should be avoided. This holds true for CR as well!

However, I have a suggestion to make: your verbal score is currently better than your quant score! Look for the percentile rankings, not the raw score. You should probably invest more time in quant than verbal!

Thanks Dana! You are right.. I have taken a look at the percentiles and noticed that quant needs to improve. I've been focusing all my time on this area but was hopefully looking for any other gaps in the verbal section.

May I ask you how you implemented and used the Powerscore CR Bible? Did you immediately do CR questions out of the OG preceding each chapter? I have the book but didn't feel as though I grasped much out of it. Being used to the ebb and flows of MGMAT guides, the CR Bible was a little different and thus was something that I sort of glided through rather than absorb.

~bp

It's dense stuff - but I think it's a bit more readable and relatable than the MGMAT guides. Their tips and chapter summaries are stuff that you need to memorize I think! Also make notes - this helps you assimilate info better. I only did OG problems after I was done with the whole book.