GMAT Strategy

Ryandmitri wrote:There was a marked difference in difficulty levels of the MGMAT CATs as compared to the GMAT preps. I assume that a 650/670 on the MGMAT translates to arnd a 700/710 on the GMAT preps and on this basis I say that my level was pretty much constant.

in general, scores on our tests have had good fidelity with official scores; in fact, with non-native speakers of english, most discrepancies have gone slightly the other way (i.e., slightly higher scores on the mgmat cat verbal section).

I encountered a long RC passage, one diff CR and two pretty decent SC's in the last 15 min. I was mentally exhausted by then and I just couldn't concentrate enough to get through the RC and practically guessed my way out of the 3 questions related to the passage. The CR was also a guess because it was a pretty diff one.

ok, well, remember that you shouldn't be trying to judge "difficulty"; no student is going to be able to judge that with any accuracy (and even *trying* to do so will raise your stress level substantially).
do you have a different strategy for each CR and RC problem type? or are you making the huge, huge mistake of trying to treat all of CR uniformly and/or all of RC uniformly?

For the SCs my strategy is as follows :

1) First of all I try to find a split - any split.
2) Recognize the error on which the split is based - for this I check for tenses, subject verb agreement, modifier placement, parallelism and pronouns, in that order.

if english is not your first language, you definitely should not have verb tenses first -- verb tenses are far and away the single hardest thing for second-language speakers of any language. those should be at the bottom of your list.

ideally, parallelism should be the first thing on your list; the others can be in arbitrary order, based on your comfort level with them.
there are 2 reasons why parallelism should be first, though:
(1) it's quite common -- in fact, the single most common error type, from my last statistical analysis;
(2) more importantly, if you don't recognize a parallel structure, you're going to think it's 2 independent splits! this will be a disaster, of course, because it's impossible to decide half of a parallel structure on its own.
note that parallelism is the only error type that's like this; with other error types, if you don't see them then you just don't see them. parallelism is unique in that it will masquerade as "fake splits" if you don't see it.

when you read the initial prompt, look for exactly 2 things:
1) MEANING OF THE SENTENCE
2) PARALLELISM

look for all other errors later, in the splits.

For the CRs I pretty much used logic and common sense without following any specific rules as such.

reading this makes me incredibly happy. after months and months of seeing people post "i memorized all 10,000 pages of rules from powerscore/kaplan/pr/mgmat/xxxx sources on CR!!!", really, you have no idea how filled with joy i am from finally reading "i used common sense".
good for you.

on the other hand, there are, of course, certain problem types (e.g., "draw the conclusion") where common sense doesn't work all that well. but for strengthen/weaken -- yes sir.

For the RC's, very frankly, the only time I practiced was when I gave the mock CATs. So u can say that I must have gone through arnd 15 passages during the entire prep period. That was surely a mistake. Next time (if there is a next time) I will go through more passages just to get into the habit of reading and retaining at the same time.

"retaining" what?

seeing that word makes me a little nervous, because it looks as though you're trying to memorize details.
remember, it's not possible to read for both main ideas and details at the same time; when you are actually reading the passages, you should be reading for main themes, not details.
pardon me if you are already well aware of this -- it's just that "retention" is more commonly used to refer to details than to main themes. you should NOT be trying to "retain" details when you read the passages.

My questions were basically related to my chances regarding getting into a decent to good college with my profile, whether I need to resit the exam and whether there is much more effort to be put in to to jump from 680 - 700 ( I am ready to put in the effort but I don't have the time and I want to start my course as soon as possible).

well, if you basically didn't study for RC at all, you may want to put some work into that.
especially if nerves were/are an issue, you may benefit from the psychological edge gained from just being more familiar with the different question types, even if you don't necessarily get "better" at them.