gmat strategy help

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gmat strategy help

by krishhxa » Tue Apr 12, 2016 6:50 am
Hi,

I have been getting a score of 19 in verbal. I have 27 days in hand. What should be done in the time period to improve my verbal score. Further i have practiced the og rc's in feb will doing them again be waste of time.
My verbal accuracy is as follows
sc easy medium 76% hard 48%
rc 48 percent hard rc's cant do end up guessing
cr 70 percent

Kindly guide how to improve.

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by [email protected] » Tue Apr 12, 2016 9:36 am
Hi krishhxa,

The Verbal section of the GMAT is just as consistent and predictable as the Quant section is, but you have to learn to treat Verbal questions is a consistent manner. What "steps" do you go through when dealing with a typical SC, RC or CR prompt. What notes do you take? How often are you able to predict the answer to an RC or CR prompt and how often do you just "run to the answers and look for one that 'sounds good'?"

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by krishhxa » Tue Apr 12, 2016 3:16 pm
Hi Rich,

Even though i have learnt methodologies such as making notes in RC'S and doing an error analysis in SC. Keeping time into consideration i am not able to follow the tactics, Further the easy rc's i am still able to comprehend but when it comes to the harder one's comprehension becomes a problem, I misinterpret sentences, i am not able to remember key information in questions and hence make mistakes.I am at home for the next 27 days, talking about today even after being at home i have hardly done any rc's considering it my rc day. I don't know why but i am losing interest, probably giving up.I do understand the rc question types but at the end realise it's all about comprehension which i am not able to do. I thought i will give 2 full says ie 40 hours for rc's so that i get a knack of it but failed miserably and did nothing out of today.
I often choose what sounds good Rick.

Talking about the long/full underlined sc questions i freeze in them and can't think what to do and can only see the time running away.I solved all 140 og sc questions and then sat to look at the errors made, after looking at 68 such questions i lost all interest.

As i mentioned my gmat is in 27 days and i need a 650. What should i do, am losing all hope considering my verbal performance and the fact that it is said verbal can't be improved in short time

CR is not an issue for me, i hardly practice it.

Kindly guide

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by krishhxa » Tue Apr 12, 2016 3:17 pm
Hi Rich,

Even though i have learnt methodologies such as making notes in RC'S and doing an error analysis in SC. Keeping time into consideration i am not able to follow the tactics, Further the easy rc's i am still able to comprehend but when it comes to the harder one's comprehension becomes a problem, I misinterpret sentences, i am not able to remember key information in questions and hence make mistakes.I am at home for the next 27 days, talking about today even after being at home i have hardly done any rc's considering it my rc day. I don't know why but i am losing interest, probably giving up.I do understand the rc question types but at the end realise it's all about comprehension which i am not able to do. I thought i will give 2 full says ie 40 hours for rc's so that i get a knack of it but failed miserably and did nothing out of today.
I often choose what sounds good Rich.

Talking about the long/full underlined sc questions i freeze in them and can't think what to do and can only see the time running away.I solved all 140 og sc questions and then sat to look at the errors made, after looking at 68 such questions i lost all interest.

As i mentioned my gmat is in 27 days and i need a 650. What should i do, am losing all hope considering my verbal performance and the fact that it is said verbal can't be improved in short time

CR is not an issue for me, i hardly practice it.

Kindly guide

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by krishhxa » Tue Apr 12, 2016 3:17 pm
Hi Rich,

Even though i have learnt methodologies such as making notes in RC'S and doing an error analysis in SC. Keeping time into consideration i am not able to follow the tactics, Further the easy rc's i am still able to comprehend but when it comes to the harder one's comprehension becomes a problem, I misinterpret sentences, i am not able to remember key information in questions and hence make mistakes.I am at home for the next 27 days, talking about today even after being at home i have hardly done any rc's considering it my rc day. I don't know why but i am losing interest, probably giving up.I do understand the rc question types but at the end realise it's all about comprehension which i am not able to do. I thought i will give 2 full says ie 40 hours for rc's so that i get a knack of it but failed miserably and did nothing out of today.
I often choose what sounds good Rich.

Talking about the long/full underlined sc questions i freeze in them and can't think what to do and can only see the time running away.I solved all 140 og sc questions and then sat to look at the errors made, after looking at 68 such questions i lost all interest.

As i mentioned my gmat is in 27 days and i need a 650. What should i do, am losing all hope considering my verbal performance and the fact that it is said verbal can't be improved in short time

CR is not an issue for me, i hardly practice it.

Kindly guide

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by [email protected] » Wed Apr 13, 2016 8:54 am
Hi krishhxa,

Based on what you've described, it sounds like you've done a lot of practice problems, but you haven't actually practiced any Tactics. The GMAT is a consistent, predictable Test, so using the proper Tactics can make most questions 'relatively easy' to handle. Thus, on a fundamental level, you have to change how you're dealing with the Exam.

You've defined your score goal as 650; before we can discuss how best to get you to that goal, I'd like to know a bit more about your studies so far:

1) How have you scored on each of your practice CATs (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores)?
2) When was the last time you took a FULL-LENGTH CAT (including the Essay and IR sections)?
3) If necessary, do you have the flexibility to push back your Test Date?

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by krishhxa » Wed Apr 13, 2016 2:15 pm
Hi Rich,

Thanks for the prompt reply.
I wrote the gmat prep exam nearly 2 weeks ago and scored a 570 quant 46 verbal 19 or less. Since then feel writing cats will be a waste since i cant match the speed in verbal, can't do rc's.Quant majorly silly mistakes.
Till now what i have learnt is:
There are certain type of questions which are constantly being asked in rc's but realise for them aswell comprehension is required.
SC most important meaning ananlysis, modifiers, parallism, comparisons
cr easy for me
I can cancel the exam and go for it a year or so late, but shifting dates shall not solve my purpose.
I have wasted much of today aswell, is it true getting a verbal score of 38 isn't possible in the time in hand? iS there any strategy that shall help me?

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by krishhxa » Wed Apr 13, 2016 2:15 pm
Hi Rich,

Thanks for the prompt reply.
I wrote the gmat prep exam nearly 2 weeks ago and scored a 570 quant 46 verbal 19 or less. Since then feel writing cats will be a waste since i cant match the speed in verbal, can't do rc's.Quant majorly silly mistakes.
Till now what i have learnt is:
There are certain type of questions which are constantly being asked in rc's but realise for them aswell comprehension is required.
SC most important meaning ananlysis, modifiers, parallism, comparisons
cr easy for me
I can cancel the exam and go for it a year or so late, but shifting dates shall not solve my purpose.
I have wasted much of today aswell, is it true getting a verbal score of 38 isn't possible in the time in hand? iS there any strategy that shall help me?

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by [email protected] » Wed Apr 13, 2016 3:34 pm
Hi krishhxa,

Taking everything that you have said into consideration, there are a number of 'issues' that need to be addressed:

1) You CAN make some big improvements to your Verbal Scaled Score in the time that you have remaining, BUT it will take work. Your posts make it sound as though you have "given up" on RC and that you refuse to take CATs. You will need to change your attitude about both of those things to pick up the missing Verbal points that you are after.

2) With a V19, you are losing points in all 3 major Verbal categories (SC, RC and CR), so CR is NOT a 'safe category' for you - you will need to practice in that area too.

3) If you can score a Q46+ on Test Day, then you will NOT need a V38 to hit a 650, so it's not clear why a V38 is suddenly part of the discussion.

Other than the OG questions, what other practice materials have you worked with? What resources have you used to learn Tactics?

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by krishhxa » Wed Apr 13, 2016 4:43 pm
I learnt tactics for rc from surfing the net ie veritas blog, magoosh blog and i even purchased the egmat rc module which hasn't helped improve much.

After scavenging the net i learnt there is only one tactic for rc's ie summarizing each paragraph by making notes. I tried this strategy but it didn't help me in inference based questions. When a sentence comes up whose meaning i misinterpret or don't understand, it's game over for me then and there because there is always a question for that sentence.
when it comes to supporting idea questions at times i can't find whats being asked for in the limited time frame.
There's this one problem which i beleive is a sin which i often commit i find two answer choices close to the answer for the question, which i beleive is big faliure since in RC's there can never be two answers. This always disappoints me.
Presently i have egmat rc module and magoosh subscription,while solving magoosh rc's accuracy is 50 percent.

In short even though i am cognizant of the tactics it's not beneficial since i beleive comprehension is an issue for me when some bizare topic or words come up.

For sentence correction-I had the egmat module which is expired now i did go through it but couldn't utilize it to the fullest. The error analysis did teach me alot, but since my grammer is not very good it's hard for me to follow the step by step approach in limited time frame specially for complex sentences. The step by step approach is superb but doesn't suit me, if i start doing meaning analysis and error analysis i won't have any time in hand.
What i do is read the sentence and find splits i choose the one which i feel sounds the best

For sc i have majorly gone through egmat module and minorly through manhattan sc but when it comes to applying the tactics or the rules in the limited time frame, i don't remember the rules that need to be applied. In simple words even after going through the module/book i don't remember much. Is it recommended to go through manhattan sc? since i beleive now that the time is less i should focus more on solving sc questions because application is an issue for me.

For CR i just try to find the conclusion. The CR questions that i go wrong on are the assumption and a few conclusion questions.
Apart from OG i solve magoosh questions.

So after the long post,just wanted to thank you,Rich.I must say i am very grateful to you, for being so pateint and helping me out in the time of misery.KUDOS man.

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by MartyMurray » Thu Apr 14, 2016 5:57 am
Hi krishhxa.

One key thing for getting good at handling GMAT verbal questions is practicing them SLOWLY.

So for instance, yes, you could back through the OG verbal questions again, this time taking all the time you need to do the toughest sentence correction questions and to figure out what those RC passages are saying.

If you work to understand an RC passage, for instance, for long enough, you will figure out what's going on in it and be able to get the right answer to pretty much any question asked about it. Yes, doing that could take an hour, the first time, but in doing that you will be developing the skills necessary to do it faster the second time.

The same thing goes for SC questions in which the entire sentence is underlined and for the types of CR questions that you aren't getting right. You need to learn to see what you need to see, and slowing down until you learn to see those things is key.

If you end up with two answer choices that look right, figure out which really is, and overall figure out why every wrong answer is wrong and every right answer is right. Once you get good at seeing those things, speed will come naturally. You have to develop solid processes for getting to right answers first though.
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by [email protected] » Thu Apr 14, 2016 9:37 am
Hi krishhxa,

Your last post defines all of the things that you choose not to do, but that you actually MUST do to raise your Verbal Score. You seem overly concerned about understanding every little idea in every prompt, but that is NOT what the GMAT expects of you (so you don't need that level of comprehension).

Further, it sounds like you faced some tough practice problems, got flustered, then 'gave up' on all of the Tactics that you had barely practiced in the first place. The Verbal section of the GMAT (and the various question types that you'll face) are all remarkably predictable, so you CAN learn to handle them. But you have to train, practice, make mistakes, hone your skills, etc. In real simple terms, it's no different than learning to play a musical instrument - in the early going, practice will be slow and you'll make mistakes and get frustrated. However, the instrument is consistent, so you can learn to play it. You won't be able to perfectly play the most difficult songs after a week of practice though - THAT level of ability takes time and effort to work up to.

You can either continue to use the resources that you have, or invest in some new resources (and perhaps learn a new way to 'see' the Verbal section). Either way, you're going to have to commit to practicing Tactics. Right now, "your way" of dealing with that section earns you a V19. To score higher, you're going to have to EARN those points.

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by krishhxa » Tue Apr 19, 2016 12:08 pm
Hi Rich,

Thanks for the detailed reponse, I will surely work on my tactics. Further wanted to know what other sources should i use for gmat quant and verbal.Also,practicing gmat prep questions available on the net before giving the free gmat prep cat is advisable, are there similar questions?

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by MartyMurray » Tue Apr 19, 2016 6:43 pm
krishhxa wrote:Further wanted to know what other sources should i use for gmat quant and verbal.
You might want to look into a self study course, which would include many quant and verbal practice questions and provide detailed explanations. You can go here to see what others have said about self study courses. https://reviews.beatthegmat.com/
Also,practicing gmat prep questions available on the net before giving the free gmat prep cat is advisable, are there similar questions?
If you mean practicing questions from the GMAT Prep software before you take the tests, doing that is not a good idea. You may end up seeing many of the same questions on your practice tests and so not get the test experience or an accurate score.
Last edited by MartyMurray on Fri Feb 08, 2019 8:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
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by krishhxa » Tue Apr 19, 2016 8:31 pm
Hi Marthy

Thanks for the promt reply.'

Here i was addressing the gmatprep question documents available on the net, not actually the gmat prep software. So i saw a document with around 116 rc's saying gmat prep rc's. Will doing those be a good idea before actually taking the gmatprep mock or there are gonna be similarities.Asking since am done with OG 16 and verbal review for RC'S,need more practice

Kindly guide