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What do I do now...UGH :(!

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What do I do now...UGH :(!

by piyushdabomb » Tue Sep 22, 2009 12:03 pm
Please bear with my story:

I started studying for my GMAT last "October" and told myself that I'd give myself 4 months to prepare for it, take the exam, and get done with it for good. I even took classes. What happened was that i started off with Verbal because as an engineer, my verbal section sucked. I got so demotivated a month later that I moved to the math section and started doing better.

While my math is much better and I was scoring in the 680+ rank, my verbal was somewhere around the 500's stage; for which my overall test scores were dropping. Because of this, my demotivation with my scores, and a few personal commitments, I stopped working on my GMAT. I didn't even bother going for my exam - that's how bad of a state this was.

Its now September 22 and I've signed up for my GMAT exam scheduled for December 12 and I have just about 2 1/2 months to prepare. I'm really excited to try this out again but I don't want to screw up my studying again. I had a few questions:

1. Given that I'm coming from a math background, should I focus on math and hopefully attempt to raise my score with my math against the overall GMAT score OR should I focus on my verbal skills that is my weakest link?

2. I heard there was a new GMAT book out. Should I use that or use the previous edition orange book?

3. I really don't want to have to start from 'scratch' on my gmat, but it sounds like i'm going to have to do that. Should I try a diagnostic test out again and move from there?

4. I have 2.5 months and its super aggressive (in my opinion). What should I do here in terms of strategy?

My GMAT score: To obviously score my level best but anything over 720 appeals to me.

My last year scores were pathetic - they were in the 590's because my verbal kept dropping me down.
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Sincerely,

Piyush A.
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by DanaJ » Wed Sep 23, 2009 5:54 am
1. Go for verbal. You will never significantly improve your overall score without some verbal work. Getting better in verbal is much more "rewarding" than getting better in quant: even a 5 point increase in the raw score (from 27 to 32, for instance) will do wonders for your score.

2. If you have already exhausted all possible options for practice, there might be some value out of buying the new edition of the OG (OG 12). If not, then just chill - OG 11 is still good.

3. As you've said, you might just have to. Taking a diagnostic test is a good idea, since you'll know how much you have forgotten/what you need to focus on.

4. 2.5 months is enough to take you from 590 to 720, IMHO, provided you invest time and energy in the process. The best strategy is to go after your weak spots first, while not completely neglecting the rest. Also, make sure you figure out a plan that you stick to: consistency is very important in prep.
Here are a few resources for your verbal:
- MGMAT SC guide
- PowerScore CR Bible
- LSAT sets for advanced practice (towards the end of your prep - here are some free ones)

Good luck!
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Hi Moderator

by piyushdabomb » Thu Sep 24, 2009 12:31 pm
Hi,

Thank you for responding. You've given me hope.

I started working out of the Manhattan SC to start and while its been 2 days and I've only done 2 chapters, I already see myself improving.

I noticed that the OG GMAT book's explanations to various answers are terrible! The authors of the book use responses such as "awkward sentence". How do you go about their real explanations? Are there alternative sources for this material?

Another difficuly I'm experiencing is feeling overwhelmed by the number of items I need to apparently 'memorize'. Did you ever end up memorizing all the grammar rules to be successful? When did you use your 'sounding right' versus 'grammar right' instinct?
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Sincerely,

Piyush A.
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by cramya » Thu Sep 24, 2009 5:41 pm
Hi Piyush,
I can understand your frustation as most of us would have gone through it at some point during the prep.I am sure you already know but here are some basic pointers when approaching a SC question:

Identify what error type the question is testing(sometimes it could be a combination of error types) by identifying the 3/2 splits

a) Subject Verb agreement
b) Pronoun error
c) Modifier error
d) Idiom
e) Tense error
f) Parallelism error
g) Comparison error
h) Style and structure
i) Conjunction errors(and, or etc...)
j) Redundant words

(The list may not be comprehensive but should cover majority of questions)

The MGMAT SC guide should help you identify these once you give it a good read.In addition to visiting this forum please visit the Manhattan gmat forum and read Ron's sc explanations for gmat prep sc questions. I have mentioned in a few posts that his thought process when approaching questions helped me a lot.
Again practice as many questions as possible (not saying quanity is better than quality ) till u feel comfortable and have a good hit rate. Practice makes you perfect or atleast close to being perfect. So in essence, for every question you do make sure you understand why the 4 answer choices are incorrect in addition to the 1 being correct.

Let us know if you have any further questions.

Good luck!

Regards,
Cramya
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Hey

by piyushdabomb » Sat Sep 26, 2009 11:06 pm
Cramya, thanks a lot for your thoughts.

It's been day 4 and I just finished S-V agreement focused questions. I must say, the MGMAT SC study book is almost god sent because I'm improving quite significantly.

Question - How do I know the question difficulty in the OG book? If I'm on question 100 in the SC exercise portion of the OG book, is it a 500 level, 600 level, or 700+ level question? It's a little frustrating not to know.

Another more important question - Given that my Verbal skills are horrible and I've continuously spent days on SC, should I be switching back and forth between verbal sections, switching between verbal and math sections, or should I be sticking to one section and consecutively hitting each section? ('section' referring to topic: SC, RC, CR, ARITH, SEQ, GEO, etc...)
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Sincerely,

Piyush A.
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