GMAT Strategy

Can someone suggest ways to improve my GMAT score or the Verbal Score? I took my test last week and got a 660 (Q48 V33). My target is to get a 700-710+. Please feel free to ask questions, make comments or point out errors that you may see. I work full-time so I can't spare much time to study so the time I spend on it has to be extremely productive. This is the reason I am asking others to critic my style of preparation. I must be doing something wrong or not doing something right.

First, I took the GMAC Prep test without studying any other books just to see where I stand.

06/08 GMAC I: 560(Q39 V28)

I fished the OG-11 after taking the first demoralizing GMAC I CAT. It took me about 3 months because there were unavoidable breaks in between periods of continuous studying. Then I took the GMAC II.

09/05 GMAC II: 630 (Q44 V32)

I went through the Quantitative Review, Verbal Review and MGMAT SC. Then I took started taking the MGMAT CATs. The scores are as follows.

09/25 MGMAT I: 590 (Q43 V29)
10/02 MGMAT II: 620 (Q37 V37)
10/03 MGMAT III: 640 (Q43 V34)
10/03 MGMAT IV: 640 (Q38 V38)
10/04 MGMAT V: 640 (Q42 V35)
10/06 MGMAT VI: 650 (Q45 V34)

While doing the MGMAT CATs, I was reviewing and revising topics I had difficulties with. I also finished Kaplan 800 while doing the MGMAT CATs. However, I totally skipped out the RC portions from Verbal review and Kaplan 800. I felt pretty strong in CR while doing OG-11 and felt strong about SC after doing the MGMAT SC however after taking the 6 CATs by MGMAT, the assessment report showed that the average accuracy of three sections in the Verbal were all between 57 to 58%.
I know if I can improve my Verbal score I can improve my overall score by quite a bit. My plan was to go over the Aristotle SC Grail and then MGMAT SC again while practicing the problems from OG-11 and Verbal Review. Then I was going to go over Powerscore CR Bible and do the problems from OG-11 and Verbal review. Then for RC: do Aristotle's RC-99 and of course OG-11 and Verbal Review.

For some reason, after taking the test, I felt like I did not go over the explanations to answers of the verbal questions thoroughly. I feel like I cannot apply what I learned from the questions I got correct or incorrect, to problems I do later on. Can you please make some suggestions on that?

Any advice will be highly appreciated.

I think what is important is to really understand each and every question in detail. The good thing about MGMAT tests is that they give you questions which will help you learn and the Quant section of these tests is usually tougher than the one you will see on the actual GMAT. You should make a diary wherein you log the important takeaways from the questions because what I have observed about the GMAT is that you can really master it by practicing judiciously. I have been able to score my practice scores to a good extent by keeping this log which acts as a ready recknor for me.
Regarding RC, I think what is important is that you understand the explanations given in RC99,which I think is a simply fabulous books as it gives you detailed explanation not only of the question but gives you the passage map of each passage. Just go through each passage map and see whether what you comprehended is in sync with the passage map .

For SC, I think that doing MGMAT SC Guide and Aristotle SC Grail at least 7-8 is a MUST. The concepts should be well ingrained in your unconscious mind and come as naturally to you as does a simple calculation such as 2+2.

Though I have not taken the GMAT myself,but I am on the same path which you're on and have overcome the difficulties you are facing ,so those were my observations.
By the way, any particular reason why you have low Quant scores as well ?

msrrautela wrote:I think what is important is to really understand each and every question in detail. The good thing about MGMAT tests is that they give you questions which will help you learn and the Quant section of these tests is usually tougher than the one you will see on the actual GMAT. You should make a diary wherein you log the important takeaways from the questions because what I have observed about the GMAT is that you can really master it by practicing judiciously. I have been able to score my practice scores to a good extent by keeping this log which acts as a ready recknor for me.
Regarding RC, I think what is important is that you understand the explanations given in RC99 ,which I think is a simply fabulous books as it gives you detailed explanation not only of the question but gives you the passage map of each passage. Just go through each passage map and see whether what you comprehended is in sync with the passage map .

For SC, I think that doing MGMAT and Aristotle SC Grail at least 7-8 is a MUST. The concepts should be well ingrained in your unconscious mind and come as naturally to you as does a simple calculation such as 2+2.

Though I have not taken the GMAT myself,but I am on the same path which you're on and have overcome the difficulties you are facing ,so those were my observations.
By the way, any particular reason why you have low Quant scores as well ?

thanks for your reply. I will make notes from now on. You mentioned I have a low Quant score. I got a 48. The highest possible score for Quant or Verbal is 50. Are ou saying 48 is low?

Many people on BTG will disagree with me but I still believe that doing some LSAT sample tests will help you improve your verbal score.

wharton750 wrote:Many people on BTG will disagree with me but I still believe that doing some LSAT sample tests will help you improve your verbal score.

Thanks wharton750 for the suggestion. I bought the Powerscore CR Bible. Shouldn't that be sufficient as far practicing LSAT level problems? I'm not as smart as people such as yourself so no point in being unrealistic and trying too hard. I am only shooting for a 700-710+.

haidgmat wrote:
thanks for your reply. I will make notes from now on. You mentioned I have a low Quant score. I got a 48. The highest possible score for Quant or Verbal is 50. Are ou saying 48 is low?

Sorry,I just missed that you had 48 on the GMAT. I looked at the Quant scores you had got on the Mock Test which were somehting like 44,45.
48 is a decent enough score on the Quant section.

wharton750 wrote:Many people on BTG will disagree with me but I still believe that doing some LSAT sample tests will help you improve your verbal score.

Wharton750 , I agree with you that doing LSAT questions is a good way to improve CR .I went through the 1000CR document and did some of the LSAT questions but didn't find them quite relevant to the GMAT as the argument construction in such questions is not very relevant to those tested on the GMAT. There's a good compilation of 101 LSAT questions given as CR Questionbank on www.aristotleprep.com . I have gone through the document and those questions resemble pretty much like the questions you'll see on the GMAT

msrrautela wrote:

haidgmat wrote:
thanks for your reply. I will make notes from now on. You mentioned I have a low Quant score. I got a 48. The highest possible score for Quant or Verbal is 50. Are ou saying 48 is low?

Sorry,I just missed that you had 48 on the GMAT. I looked at the Quant scores you had got on the Mock Test which were somehting like 44,45.
48 is a decent enough score on the Quant section.

you are correct. it may be 'decent enough' but not good enough considering my south asian origin. I know someone got a 49/33 as compared with my 48/33, and he had a 690 whereas I had a 660! I wish I could get that 49 in Quant and a little better in the Verbal....

Thanks a lot Ron!! I've actually started using your method while doing the MGMAT SC book the second time this time around. I think it is really working! Hopefully it will improve my score..any thoughts on improving CR and RC? Should I be using any method(s)?

lunarpower wrote:this post is pretty general -- there aren't a lot of specifics in here, beyond the level of entire departments of the verbal section (CR, RC, SC) -- so, in lieu of more specific advice, i'll give some good general advice as to how to study for sentence correction:

unless you are at a very advanced level, the best way to study for sentence correction is NOT TO DO WHOLE PROBLEMS.
the best way to study sentence correction is to study EXACTLY ONE TOPIC AT A TIME.

in other words:
* choose exactly one sentence correction topic (e.g., parallelism, pronouns, etc.) on which to focus
* go through an insanely large number of problems (say 75-100 problems from the official guide)
* look only for that one topic
* ignore everything else in the sentence
* eliminate choices in which that one topic is incorrect
* QUIT and move on -- DO NOT WORRY ABOUT GETTING THE ANSWER TO THE PROBLEM at this stage.
* if you don't see the error that you are studying, just skip the problem.

EXAMPLE
let's say that the topic of choice is parallelism.
also, let's say that you are doing problems out of OG12.
when you get to problem 6, you'll notice that there should be a parallel structure between "fungus was growing" and "salt ... was crystallizing". therefore, because this parallelism needs to be maintained, anything other than "salt ... was crystallizing" is incorrect.
therefore,
* eliminate (b) (c) (d)
* write down these eliminations
* quit
* move on! don't get distracted by miscellaneous other errors!

--

you may find this sort of method a little bit irritating at first, because you will rarely, if ever, actually solve a problem all the way through (that will only happen if you can eliminate all four wrong answers for the same reason).
however, after going through enough problems looking only for one type of error, you will probably find that you are now able to recognize that error like a champion.

... then go back through the same hundred problems, looking for another error.

... then go back through the same hundred problems, looking for another error.

etc.

try it!

gotcha. I'm going to try and find out my weak areas in each of the Verbal sections and then ask some specific questions.

Thanks again!!

lunarpower wrote:

haidgmat wrote:any thoughts on improving CR and RC? Should I be using any method(s)?

every problem type in cr/rc is different; there really isn't any such thing as "general advice".
in fact, the proper strategies for some problem types are often directly contradictory to the proper strategies for other problem types. (as one very particular example, correct answers to "draw the conclusion" type problems must stay strictly within the scope of the passage, but correct answers to "explain the discrepancy" problems MUST actually go OUTSIDE the scope of the passage.)

so this isn't a question that can really be answered unless we know which particular type of cr/rc problems you're talking about.

if you can't name any particular problem type, then that probably diagnoses your problem right there -- you're probably trying to think of all the problems in the same way, rather than compartmentalizing your strategy according to the problem type.

this is crazy! I was getting 50-53% accuracy on MGMAT tests before taking the GMAT for the first time, but by following exactly what you said, the accuracy went up to about 80-95% (depending on the section of SC)!! But I think the reason I'm doing better is because I took time to read, understand and absorb each chapter in MGMAT book before hitting the questions and was focusing on finding the particular type of error associated with the respective chapter. I also noticed other types of errors on many questions that differentiated two answers with no errors with respect to that particular chapter. How do I carry this on to doing problems in the exam or practice test where I don't know what the question is testing? Do I look for each of the error types one by one (subject-verb, verb tense,...., idioms)? Wouldn't that take too much time during the test?

lunarpower wrote:this post is pretty general -- there aren't a lot of specifics in here, beyond the level of entire departments of the verbal section (CR, RC, SC) -- so, in lieu of more specific advice, i'll give some good general advice as to how to study for sentence correction:

unless you are at a very advanced level, the best way to study for sentence correction is NOT TO DO WHOLE PROBLEMS.
the best way to study sentence correction is to study EXACTLY ONE TOPIC AT A TIME.

in other words:
* choose exactly one sentence correction topic (e.g., parallelism, pronouns, etc.) on which to focus
* go through an insanely large number of problems (say 75-100 problems from the official guide)
* look only for that one topic
* ignore everything else in the sentence
* eliminate choices in which that one topic is incorrect
* QUIT and move on -- DO NOT WORRY ABOUT GETTING THE ANSWER TO THE PROBLEM at this stage.
* if you don't see the error that you are studying, just skip the problem.

EXAMPLE
let's say that the topic of choice is parallelism.
also, let's say that you are doing problems out of OG12.
when you get to problem 6, you'll notice that there should be a parallel structure between "fungus was growing" and "salt ... was crystallizing". therefore, because this parallelism needs to be maintained, anything other than "salt ... was crystallizing" is incorrect.
therefore,
* eliminate (b) (c) (d)
* write down these eliminations
* quit
* move on! don't get distracted by miscellaneous other errors!

--

you may find this sort of method a little bit irritating at first, because you will rarely, if ever, actually solve a problem all the way through (that will only happen if you can eliminate all four wrong answers for the same reason).
however, after going through enough problems looking only for one type of error, you will probably find that you are now able to recognize that error like a champion.

... then go back through the same hundred problems, looking for another error.

... then go back through the same hundred problems, looking for another error.

etc.

try it!