SC Preparation Strategy

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SC Preparation Strategy

by sethisankalp » Sun Feb 14, 2010 11:38 am
I have recently started preparing for GMAT and plan to take it by mid June.

I wanted some advise on what is the best strategy for SC, considering I am not a natice english speaker and am in no hurry for to give the GMAT and can spend all the required time and effort to ace the section.

I bought the Manhattan SC book, after I saw myself struggling with OG SC questions, however I am not sure what is the best way to use the Manhattan book.

After each chapter it provides a list of questions that are in the OG on that topic, but does it make sense for me to do those questions as I am reviewing the study material? Would it not be more helpful if I review all the material first and then attack the questions. The latter would challenge me to figure out what each question is testing, while in the former strategy I obviously know what is being tested and will make the questions look easier????

I am already through half the questions in SC in the OG, should I do the other half following the MSC book chapters or as a test after all the chapters.

Any advise will be much appreciated, I feel SC is the most challenging area and if these are the two important books then using them the right way can make a lot of difference on the outcome.

Thanks,
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by money9111 » Sun Feb 14, 2010 9:02 pm
What I did was went through the PowerScore SC Bible first... and now I'm going through the MGMAT SC guide as prescribed by my class syllabus. I can say that having gone through the powerscore bible first has helped me tremendously in recognizing things in the MGMAT guide.

Since you say that you are not in a rush to get through this material, I think that going through the OG guide in tandem with the MGMAT guide would be the best option because like you said... you get to do similar problems in a row. I know for me that drills in the topic.
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by David@VeritasPrep » Tue Mar 09, 2010 8:49 am
sethisankalp -

I know that this is an older post, but you are not taking the course until June so I imagine you are still battling the sentence correction blues...

I was just answering a similar question and I thought that I might pass that advice on to you as well.

"Try to view everything on the GMAT as a test of your decision making abilities. For example, the quantitative section of the test is not actually designed because business schools want to make sure that you have coordinate geometry skills, but rather just to give them a subject matter to test your decision making.

For sentence correction, you do need to know standard English grammar but you don't really have to have a lot of technical knowledge or terminology, you probably know more grammar than you realize. The key is to view each sentence correction as a series of decisions. Look at the answer choices to spot differences. Use these differences to guide you in eliminating incorrect answers. This is a completely different way of looking at sentence correction. You are not reading the entire sentence looking for the one that sounds best, but eliminating the incorrect answers based on definite choices like singular versus plural."

When you are using the Official Guide you will notice that about 80% of SC questions contain these distinct differences between answer choices. Practice allowing the difference in the answer choices to guide you through the problem and remember - answer choice A is not special just because it is the same as the original. Treat it as just another choice in the running...

As to the books - it is worth your money to get as many official questions as possible so do not stop with just one Official Guide. Get at least one of either the 11th or 12th editions - I assume this is what you currently have - as well as at least one of the first or second edition Verbal review. There are questions repeated in each pair (11th and 12th have overlaps and 1st and 2nd as well), but you will want to have at least one Official Guide and one Verbal Review. Personally I would get all 4 because you want to have done as many official questions as possible by test day.

Sentence Correction used to be my weak point because I treated it as a test of grammar, once I saw it as a test of my ability to make decisions between the answer choices it became a real strength.

Good luck with sentence correction and try to have fun with it!
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