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Seeking a 70 point improvement in 3 weeks

by rickyishere » Sun Aug 08, 2010 12:49 pm
I have been studying for GMAT on and off since spring of this year. My first attempt in the actual GMAT was a miserable ( Q43, V21) 530. My aim is to get a 650 and I have started studying again since last 3 weeks. I gave the GMAT Prep 1 exam today and got a 580 (Q 44, V26) with 13 incorrect in quant and 18 incorrect in verbal. For me to break in the mid 600 barrier, I need to improve my verbal by half a dozen points. From questions 30-41 in verbal I got 8 incorrect and I certainly felt rushed in the end. I see that I need to work on my speed (atleast in verbal) but was wondering if someone can offer me specific tips. In verbal, RC has been my strength ( 4 out of 13 incorrect in today's exam) but accuracy for CR/SC is not as much.

Any suggestions/opinion is highly appreciated.

PS: I am using Manhattan GMAT for SC and Powerscore Bible for CR. For quant, I have been looking at the questions in QG-11.

Thanks
Ricky
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by David@VeritasPrep » Mon Aug 09, 2010 10:53 am
You can raise your score by 70 points, especially since it sounds like you have some time before you sit for the exam. You give a good analysis of what happened, especially missing 8 or the last 12 questions. If you could correct that portion so that you miss one or two instead of 8 that should take you where you want to be.

Here are some specific ideas:

As I told one of my tutoring students the other day, for most people, Sentence Correction is the one place where you can go more quickly than the average on Verbal. In other words, working quickly on Sentence Correction puts time in the bank that you can then withdraw for harder CR and RC passages. This is where you may want to start. Work on identifying the key differences between answer choices. When you find an error quickly check the other choices for that error. Eliminating multiple answer choices at one time is one key to both accuracy and speed on sentence correction. Also, make sure you are focusing on substantive grammar differences as opposed to style difference. For example, try to find a difference like singular vs plural, as opposed to something more stylistic like "maybe vs probably."

And then when you have a problem down to two or three choices and obvious grammar errors on gone, remember that the GMAT writers' favorite way to be "clever" is parallelism. Something like, "In 1980 U.S. companies produced more cars than they produced in 2008." See the use of both "produced" and "in" twice. The first time I took the GMAT four years ago, I did not focus on parallelism and I missed about 4 sentence correction out of 14. When I took the test again recently it was rare that I would miss a question in practice. I hope this work as well for you!


As to critical reasoning, you may find that PowerScore is not specifically tailored to the kinds of questions that are on the actual GMAT. Quick recognition of question types and having set strategies for those types is essential for Critical Reasoning. If you are thinking of a dozen different types of questions you might be over complicating what is found on the GMAT.

At Veritas Prep we use the SWIMMER system to categorize questions and then apply the appropriate technique. Also please remember some simple things about critical reasoning, such as the fact that when you strengthen or weaken an argument it it is the conclusion that you strengthen or weaken. Are you able to quickly identify the conclusion when you read an argument? This is crucial. If you are looking for some specific GMAT focus on CR as well as lots of practice questions you might check out the Veritas Critical Reasoning 1 and 2 books. I mention them because until last month they were not for sale except as part of a Veritas class, but now you can get them as a stand alone at Amazon.

Hope this helps!
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by rickyishere » Mon Aug 09, 2010 2:54 pm
David@VeritasPrep wrote:You can raise your score by 70 points, especially since it sounds like you have some time before you sit for the exam. You give a good analysis of what happened, especially missing 8 or the last 12 questions. If you could correct that portion so that you miss one or two instead of 8 that should take you where you want to be.

Here are some specific ideas:

As I told one of my tutoring students the other day, for most people, Sentence Correction is the one place where you can go more quickly than the average on Verbal. In other words, working quickly on Sentence Correction puts time in the bank that you can then withdraw for harder CR and RC passages. This is where you may want to start. Work on identifying the key differences between answer choices. When you find an error quickly check the other choices for that error. Eliminating multiple answer choices at one time is one key to both accuracy and speed on sentence correction. Also, make sure you are focusing on substantive grammar differences as opposed to style difference. For example, try to find a difference like singular vs plural, as opposed to something more stylistic like "maybe vs probably."

And then when you have a problem down to two or three choices and obvious grammar errors on gone, remember that the GMAT writers' favorite way to be "clever" is parallelism. Something like, "In 1980 U.S. companies produced more cars than they produced in 2008." See the use of both "produced" and "in" twice. The first time I took the GMAT four years ago, I did not focus on parallelism and I missed about 4 sentence correction out of 14. When I took the test again recently it was rare that I would miss a question in practice. I hope this work as well for you!


As to critical reasoning, you may find that PowerScore is not specifically tailored to the kinds of questions that are on the actual GMAT. Quick recognition of question types and having set strategies for those types is essential for Critical Reasoning. If you are thinking of a dozen different types of questions you might be over complicating what is found on the GMAT.

At Veritas Prep we use the SWIMMER system to categorize questions and then apply the appropriate technique. Also please remember some simple things about critical reasoning, such as the fact that when you strengthen or weaken an argument it it is the conclusion that you strengthen or weaken. Are you able to quickly identify the conclusion when you read an argument? This is crucial. If you are looking for some specific GMAT focus on CR as well as lots of practice questions you might check out the Veritas Critical Reasoning 1 and 2 books. I mention them because until last month they were not for sale except as part of a Veritas class, but now you can get them as a stand alone at Amazon.

Hope this helps!
David,

Thanks for your message. Let's take it step by step, for this week I am planning to study SC (again) and do a revision of quant from OG-12. I plan to give a diagnostic exam by end of the week to gauge my performance. In SC, I am planning to concentrate on :

a) subject verb agreement
b) parallelism
c) tense

Since in actual GMAT, no one concept is tested in a single question, do you think the above three concepts will be good place to start the revision? Also, when you say you can save time on SC, I am assuming you mean spending no more than 1.30 minutes per question, correct? Finally, I am thinking that in order to get into mid 30's in verbal , I need to perform i well in atleast 2 of the 3 main verbal topics (RC/SC/SR). Let me know what you think.

Thanks
Ricky
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by David@VeritasPrep » Tue Aug 10, 2010 5:50 am
Ricky -

Sounds like a plan. I would add to your sentence correction list a couple of things -- things that we emphasize in the Veritas Prep Sentence Correction 2 lesson/ book.

First, I would add to your subject verb agreement all other forms of singular vs plural like pronoun agreement, etc.

Also you should really look into modifiers. Modifiers are huge on the test. You should especially study relative clauses.

When you say that no one concept is tested on any problem you are correct, but let's put that a different way. It is rare that a single concept like subject-verb agreement would allow you to eliminate all 4 incorrect answers. Instead, you are going to need to evaluate the remaining choices using another concept like parallelism.

And do remember the one most important thing - sentence correction is not about choosing the perfect sentence or even the best sentence but rather eliminating the four incorrect choices.

When I say add time to the bank, that does mean less than 1 min 30.. in fact, 1 min 15 seconds for sentence correction is better because that allows you a full 2 minutes each for CR and RC. It is true that you will need to do well on multiple aspects of the verbal. Hopefully with more time you can do reasonably well on all three.

Good luck!
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by rickyishere » Tue Aug 10, 2010 5:40 pm
David@VeritasPrep wrote:Ricky -

Sounds like a plan. I would add to your sentence correction list a couple of things -- things that we emphasize in the Veritas Prep Sentence Correction 2 lesson/ book.

First, I would add to your subject verb agreement all other forms of singular vs plural like pronoun agreement, etc.

Also you should really look into modifiers. Modifiers are huge on the test. You should especially study relative clauses.

When you say that no one concept is tested on any problem you are correct, but let's put that a different way. It is rare that a single concept like subject-verb agreement would allow you to eliminate all 4 incorrect answers. Instead, you are going to need to evaluate the remaining choices using another concept like parallelism.

And do remember the one most important thing - sentence correction is not about choosing the perfect sentence or even the best sentence but rather eliminating the four incorrect choices.

When I say add time to the bank, that does mean less than 1 min 30.. in fact, 1 min 15 seconds for sentence correction is better because that allows you a full 2 minutes each for CR and RC. It is true that you will need to do well on multiple aspects of the verbal. Hopefully with more time you can do reasonably well on all three.

Good luck!
David,

Thanks for your detailed explanation. Would you recommend that the exam I give this weekend be the second GMAT Prep I have available or use some other CAT's ( I have 2 MGMAT CAT's left) which I have? Just trying to see what would be the best exam to gauge my performance weekly until I give me exam.

Thanks
-Ricky
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by The Duke » Tue Aug 10, 2010 8:00 pm
Hi Ricky,

A 70 point improvement in 3 weeks is definitely attainable. I was able to increase more then 100 points in roughly a month.

Also If your considering doing another prep exam, I would recommend doing another Manhattan GMAT exam. I like these because they provide you with detailed answers. Taking the exam is good, but reviewing every question afterwards, as if your redoing is more important... it shows what you were likely thinking on the test, whether it was right or wrong. If your right you know you may be able to speed up on those question types if you 2nd guessed yourself eating up time. If you were wrong, it allows you to attempt to learn the process and possibily get it right the next time, or to recognize that your likely not going to solve this type of questions, and its best to dump it with a quick educated guess.
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by David@VeritasPrep » Wed Aug 11, 2010 4:58 am
Remember that you can take each of the official GMAT tests more than once. You will get some questions repeated, but even so it is better to use official questions and the official interface. It is true that there are not the bells and whistles that come with unofficial tests, but just remember that according to a Business Week article that I read on steps that GMAC takes to prevent cheating, each official GMAT question costs nearly $3000 to write. There is a level of subtlety to official GMAT questions that is very hard to capture. So, if you have not yet done each test at least twice that is what I would focus on until test day. Also, for extra quant work, do not forget the "GMAT (quant) Focus." Also at MBA.com. For an additional fee that is a very thorough quant review.

And also remember that you cannot estimate your score using non-official tests, no matter which company they are from. Manhattan tests are good as are the Veritas tests that our students use when enrolled in one of our courses. These tests have their place, but in both cases you cannot use those scores to predict what you will do on test day. These tests are to be used to help you with stamina, the awkwardness of taking the test on the computer vs paper, and timing.

If you do encounter repeat questions when retaking the official GMATPrep just remember to let the clock run so that you do not answer questions correctly in 20 seconds if they would take 2 minutes!

Happy studying!
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by rickyishere » Sun Aug 15, 2010 6:28 pm
David@VeritasPrep wrote:Remember that you can take each of the official GMAT tests more than once. You will get some questions repeated, but even so it is better to use official questions and the official interface. It is true that there are not the bells and whistles that come with unofficial tests, but just remember that according to a Business Week article that I read on steps that GMAC takes to prevent cheating, each official GMAT question costs nearly $3000 to write. There is a level of subtlety to official GMAT questions that is very hard to capture. So, if you have not yet done each test at least twice that is what I would focus on until test day. Also, for extra quant work, do not forget the "GMAT (quant) Focus." Also at MBA.com. For an additional fee that is a very thorough quant review.

And also remember that you cannot estimate your score using non-official tests, no matter which company they are from. Manhattan tests are good as are the Veritas tests that our students use when enrolled in one of our courses. These tests have their place, but in both cases you cannot use those scores to predict what you will do on test day. These tests are to be used to help you with stamina, the awkwardness of taking the test on the computer vs paper, and timing.

If you do encounter repeat questions when retaking the official GMATPrep just remember to let the clock run so that you do not answer questions correctly in 20 seconds if they would take 2 minutes!

Happy studying!
Hi David,

I gave the GMAT Prep 1 again today, score 650 (Q 48, V 31). However, this time I did not write the analytical section again. How inflated is my score ? (since I gave the GMAT Prep again and did not write analytical section this time). Here are few other things to consider :

a) Total incorrect in quant = 12. Questions I saw repeated = 3 ( all medium difficulty) , got 2 correct out of it. Did spend alloted 2 times to each of those questions. Would add that I guessed 2 difficult questions correctly. 4 out of last 10 questions incorrect.

b) Total incorrect in verbal = 13. Question I saw repeated (SC) = 1, got it correct and alloted adequate time. Total SC questions = 17, incorrect = 5. Total CR = 11, incorrect = 4, Total RC = 13, incorrect = 4. 4 out of last 10 questions incorrect.

Thanks as always
-Ricky
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