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Not sure how to go from here

by vabhs192003 » Sun Oct 14, 2012 9:06 pm
Hi,

I wanted to get an experts' insight into the theme of things. Yesterday I gave the my first diagnostic test(GMAT Prep1) with a little bit of brushing up of my skills in verbal and quant. I scored..

QA:47
VA:25 ( I clearly need a lot of effort here).
OA: 590
I would like be guided from hence forth. What should i be planning to achieve and what books are best for me. I am planning to take my GMAT in Feb, 2013 applying for Fall-2014. I am really targeting a score of 720+.

Any help or guidance is deeply appreciated.

Thanks,
Vaibhav.
Last edited by vabhs192003 on Mon Oct 15, 2012 6:31 am, edited 2 times in total.
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by ivyctor2010 » Mon Oct 15, 2012 1:51 am
To improve verbal you may follow the following strategy:

Critical Reasoning (CR)
Preparation: Critical reasoning Bible by PowerScore®, helps with all CR basics.
Practice: All GMAT® Official Guide (OG-12) questions alongside reading the Bible.
Aim: Achieve accuracy greater than 85% in all practice sets.
Sentence Correction (SC)
Preparation: Manhattan® SC 2007 edition, is an amazing book, one may call it the SC Bible as it prepares you exhaustively for SC.
Practice: Read the GMAT® Official Guide (OG-12) for SC & understand the
concepts through Answer Key. Re-do all questions, if possible. Please pay
significant attention to idioms as questions on them are tricky but relatively easy.
Modifiers also require significant attention.
Aim: Achieve accuracy greater than 85% in all practice sets.
Important Tip: Don't spend equal time on all types of SC questions. Practice all of
them initially & identify your weak areas. Focus your efforts more on these for
more robust & efficient preparation.
Reading Comprehension (RC)
Preparation: Read editorials from NY Times® or Washington Post® online on daily basis. It helps in building your reading speed. It should
be a daily exercise.
Practice: Practice from all possible sources as a lot of raw practice is required to
ace RCs. Practice at least 100 RCs before you start giving mocks.
Aim: Read easier passage in 2-3 minutes & understand the basic gist of it. If the
passage is really tough you can take up to 4 minutes. Do not rest until you
achieve accuracy > 85 % in all practice sets.
Important Tip: We also advice against jumping to questions first & then looking
for answers in the paragraph. Reading essay first makes answering "main point"
& "summary of essay" questions seem like a cakewalk.
Ivyctor Mobile App packed with school selection, scholarship, application management and alumni connect
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by vabhs192003 » Mon Oct 15, 2012 2:58 am
Hi ivyctor2010,
Wow. This looks great. I have got the gist in Verbal. Anything you want me to do for QA too? I have relooked at my QA performance and found that I could have done better with 3-4 Qs there by, would have taken my score 50+. Any specific books you suggest to brush up my QA skills?

As for RC I have tried to complete most of the OG's set. In some of them I have been pretty good (getting 80+ accuracy) while in others it has been hovering about 60-70% accuracy. I need more practice and more GMAT standard RC collection. Any particular source you suggest for the same?

Also, while i was giving the mock GMATPrep Test1, I realized something and I wanted to get this cleared out in open forums. Is section IR ever going to be considered for evaluations. Currently, IR is out of the scope of most B schools hence I was easy with the section guessing and moving not caring much about right or wrong. But since I am targeting Fall of 2014 and giving my GMAT in Feb-Mar 2013, they might reconsider the IR scores for evaluations of my applications; in that case I could be caught up in a spin. I wanted to get this clarified how this works?


Thanks,
Vaibhav.
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by ivyctor2010 » Mon Oct 15, 2012 5:06 am
1) For QA I suggest getting hold of some CAT notes and practice specifics from them, your speed and accuracy will improve.

2) For RC check out books from Veritas prep, Kaplan etc. RC idea is to get as much practice as you can and get habitual to tough reading comprehension.

3) IR needs to be focused on. Don't neglect it just because you think B-schools wont be looking at it this year. You never know how things pan out in future, you may not want a bad score on your IR, when you are working on everything else this year, why neglect this section.

Regards,
Varun
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