GMAT Strategy

Hello All,

Yesterday evening I attempted GMATprep1 test ( a week after I started my preparation) and received

a pathetic sore of 540(Q48, V18),far below my expectations.

I am pretty satisfied with my Quant score even though I made couple of silly mistakes in Quant(selected the incorrect options while submitting answers).

I can manage the Quant but my main concern is Verbal. As I am non native, it is a big challenge for me (except CR section).

Prior to practice test I went through the concepts of MGMAT SC book. I remember the concepts but on most of the occasions was unable to apply those during the exam.

Also,I always have weak link when it comes to RC.

I know I have a long way to go but i would really like to hear from you guys some ways to improve my Verbal score, specially when it comes to SC.


PS: My G DAY is in second week of May and i am expecting target score of somewhere around 720.



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GMAT Aspirant

The good news for you - you know exactly where you need to improve...your Q48 is strong and you may notch that up a bit, but nearly all of your improvement should come from verbal, so you now know where to devote at least 75% of your study time.

And actually - I'd argue that your situation is pretty common in your SC frustration. Many - I'd say most - test takers spend most of their SC studying time studying "WHAT" (what you should know, what are the rules) and not "HOW" (how to do questions, how to know which rules are important, how to trim down a 45-word sentence into the 12 that are important).

My suggestion to you: Do problems and spend more time on "how should I have known it was testing ________" than on "what was the rule?". The solutions rarely do you any favors, as they tend to focus only on the rule ("(A) is wrong because it violates parallel structure...") but you can learn to spot patterns in questions like:

*If the beginning of the sentence is a description followed by a comma, and the underline is anywhere near it, it's a Modifier question.

*If there are any singular/plural differences between the answer choices ("has" vs. "have" or "its" vs. "their", for example), your job is to determine which noun/subject those choices refer back to.

*If you see words like "both" or "neither" setting up a construction, you're responsible for parallel structure between "both x and y", "neither x nor y", "not only x but also y", etc.

Based on what you've studied you're probably pretty close to where you need to be in terms of content, but the GMAT isn't a content-driven test. You now need to evolve your preparation to encompass what to do with that knowledge, and that comes from practice and strategy.

Thanks a ton Brian for your inputs.

I am going to follow the approach suggested by you for SC.


Thanks again!!