GMAT Strategy

Hi All -

After 3 months of intense math review, I have raised my quant score.

My average score my first month of study:
Q 24 (20%) / V 26 (43%) / 490 (40%)

My average score my second month of study:
Q 32 (35%) / V 32 (67%) / 530 (46%)

My average score to date
Q 42 (71%) / V 29 (53%) / 590 (68%)

As you can see, I raised my quant score, but for some reason my verbal hasn't improved. I am a native english speaker and since I sucked at math, my strategy was to raise my quant score bc I felt my undergrad work showed that I had strong verbal abilities. So I put 80% of my time into studying quant and 20% on verbal.

At this point, I think if I can get a balanced score in both quant and verbal (aiming for 70-80th percentile) I would be happy. I take the test in 2 weeks, so any advice to improve verbal in a short time frame would be extremely appreciated.

Also, across the board in verbal (RC, CR, SC) I am scoring btwn 50-60%, so I can't really identify which one is the weakest. However, if anyone has any feedback on which verbal area I can improve on fastest (yah i know, good luck with the shortcut)...lemme know

care to share how you raised your quant scores so much?

for me, princeton review helped my verbal scores quite a bit. they help you dissect sentence correction problems which has greatly improved my V scores.

I went through all my resources (Kaplan, MGMAT, OG) and from the table of contents of each book, I created an outline/checklist of areas that I needed to cover within quant - roughly 5 diff math topics with 20-25 subtopics each. The list provided me structure on how to study, but more importantly, I had a checklist to refer to (I'm a bit of a checklist freak)...

From there I studied everyday for 2-5 hours depending on my schedule. Once I was done doing a thorough review on a particular area I marked it off of my checklist.

All in all, probably commited about 20-30 hours a week for the last 3 months on quant and only 5-10 hours a week on verbal.

Now my focus is improving Verbal - here's a general idea of what's been my trouble spots:

RC - Science Passages - BORING - blah blah blah antigens, isotopes, tryptophan levels, blah blah blah, metamorphic fluids, oligoosaccharins, electrorecptors, who gives a flying f***...how does one go past the first paragraph without falling asleep - i have way too many "huh???" moments after reading these type of passages...and even when i take notes or employ kaplans "scope/topic approach" or mgmats "headline/bulletpoint approach" i end up with the longest notes and not much comprehension....

CR - Inference Questions - geez, these are driving me crazy...I mean come on, have i really been taking things too literally my whole life...wah wah wah...i can't seem to read between the lines...frustrating (eyes roll)

SC - OMG, where do i start...how many years have i been speaking english now? as a native i am at a loss...

jazzcat4u wrote:
Now my focus is improving Verbal - here's a general idea of what's been my trouble spots:

RC - Science Passages - BORING - blah blah blah antigens, isotopes, tryptophan levels, blah blah blah, metamorphic fluids, oligoosaccharins, electrorecptors, who gives a flying f***...how does one go past the first paragraph without falling asleep - i have way too many "huh???" moments after reading these type of passages...and even when i take notes or employ kaplans "scope/topic approach" or mgmats "headline/bulletpoint approach" i end up with the longest notes and not much comprehension....

i have exactly the same problem .. science passages
its still fine when i do it from og or kaplan ..but while giving the practice test .. all messed up and takes too much time

I would suggest getting a copy fo the Manhattan GMAT SC guide (the red book), you can get them used pretty cheap off of amazon. Princeton Review does an excellent job with reviewing Verbal and I would start there. You can get an older copy (2007, 2008) off amazon for pretty cheap as well and get an idea of where you stand with verbal then.