Looking to improve my VA score from 29 (in GMAT) to 36+

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Hi,

I recently took GMAT and scored a 630 because I slumped badly in VA, where I scored a mere 29. I scored 48 in QA.
I am looking to hit that magical 700+, and it is essential to improve my VA score. I have gone Here is my debrief of my GMAT experience:

https://www.beatthegmat.com/a-630-on-gma ... 17116.html

Experts please help and guide me to a well defined plan which gets me super prepared for VA for the next time around. I am ready for the grill.

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by digvijayk » Mon Apr 15, 2013 12:10 pm
M sure the experts will answer soon. Personally, my verbal score jumped the day i started doing better at RC (because i was already ok with sc). There are tonnes of resources/techniques for RCs and CRs, focus on them and just add something to your repertoire everyday! Don't go to bed without one new technique or fact you can use.
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by vabhs192003 » Mon Apr 15, 2013 7:39 pm
Hey,

Thanks for the pointer. I have started with CR and I have started to solve everything and anything under CR and look to get it right. I wish to continue this till I reach 90% consistently. I also ordered Aristotle SC book (I already have MGMAT SC), hoping that the book will help me achieve 90% accuracy consistently. For RC I do need to plan hows, whats. :|

Waiting for more pointers.


Vaibhav.

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by digvijayk » Tue Apr 16, 2013 10:41 am
RC specific pointers:
1. Use only the official resources at first - og, verbal review, old tests. Solve like 3 passages max in a day and review review review.
1. Focus on the COMPREHENSION part first. Which means you should GET the gist at least. Don't go into details. A not so good example is-> if a sentence says, "he sold n number of goods in y days", all you should get is he sold something and the price of that thing is given.
1. At the end of your reading, you should know WHAT the author wants to convey, HOW he does it(using words like 'although','also',etc), and WHERE in the answer choices could the testmakers trick you.

All have 1 in front of them, because each one is as important as the other.
Hope that helps :)
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by Maulik_gmat » Tue Apr 23, 2013 3:09 am
Hi, I had been through a similar phase see my debrief may be it can help
Below given is my story....
From 610 to 720.......has been a journey worth remembering.......employing strategies and methods, changing them, and redeploying them until you arrive at the right one for yourself.
I will tell the method that worked for me......word of caution is that this strategy may not work for you so take this as a guideline and implement and adapt ur strategy.....After all Adapting is the key to survival....since Darwin.....
So here it goes......
Got a real dip in confidence when I got 610.....could not study and focus for about a month.....but then I refocused myself on what to improve and how to go ahead.

For Quant:-
1. Identify your bottleneck(where ur falling short in score) DS/PS, once you have done this 50% of the work is done.
2. Use about 3 preliminary tests to analyze this, for this u can use the diagnostics in OG and the 2 power prep thats what I did.
3. My weak area was DS, so I then shifted my focus to DS in Quant....always remember when ur working on DS u also have to use the other skills so they also improve....so improving the problem area leads to improvement in the already strong area.

How did I focus on DS:-
1. Every day I used to solve 20 examples of DS in a timebound approach. Maintained an excel giving me the % of correct to track my improvement.
2. I also maintained an excel detailing the responses that I got wrong...so that I can know where am I faltering.
3. I also created a label for error i.e error was due to oversight, Fundamental understanding, Fatigue or any other cause. This labeling helped me pin point my reason for problem in DS.
To my surprise i realized that my Understanding was strong, I just never checked the option upto C whenever i was done with A I used to set a judgement in my mind.....so for me I had to go through a thought process shift.

How did I focus on Verbal:-
This is the bone of contention for most..............
I adopted a similar strategy....though I needed to improve in all the areas, my weakest was Sentence correction.
1. Every day I used to solve 20 examples of SC in a timebound approach. Maintained an excel giving me the % of correct to track my improvement.
2. I also maintained an excel detailing the responses that I got wrong...so that I can know where am I faltering.
3. I also created a label for error i.e error was due to oversight, Fundamental understanding, Fatigue or any other cause. This labeling helped me pin point my reason for problem in SC.
To my surprise i realized that my Fundamentals were weak.
How to improve Fundamentals:- Please read this carefully......
U cannot know all the rules in english...you do not want to be William shakespeare.....So u need to focus on the rules asked in the GMAT......
How to do this is tricky, get all the OG sets 10,11,12,13 now you have a pretty exhaustive set of Sentence correction. Now when u solve a question you will get a rule, even if you get the answer correct always go ahead and see the understanding, this will help u solve the doubts in the fundamentals.
Formulate an excel with the rules and the problem of SC written in the row next to it. Later when you want to understand the rules better, read and go through the problems that you have identified....
In GMAT you will never face a problem you have faced, so the focus should be on rules and these will get u through.

For RC:-
Only option is read I read a lot of novels , magazines, newspaper articles to improve my understanding.

For CR:-
I was just good at it, so just practiced from the OG.
Importance of online forums:-
I used to regularly browse through them to see the responses of people and understand their reasoning, though i did not post actively on beat the gmat I read a lot of posts daily i spent around 30 mins on this website........

Hope this may help people understand my process and helps u improve the score......Hope u all achieve your dreams
You can write to me for help on [email protected], and can see my daily blog of MBA journey on https://maulikhelpsu.blogspot.in/

TC, hope this helps.......ATB for the test.....
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