530 to 640-- My gmat journey

[sttam]

hello guys

i am lurker on BTG and loved the posts here....

Took GMAT and got a score of 640(49 Q 27 V), an improvement from 530 (47 Q 18 V

i have 5 years of experience and am targeting purely US schools like duke, emory, chicago, michigan....what are my chances???...should i retake it or what??

[sttam]

for your reference i used the OG 12 and verbal supplement

also used the manhattan CAT and my average score was 720 with 41 in verbal was the max.

also did the kaplan CAT with average of 620 and did the kaplan 800 book

wondering what went worng in verbal...

[uwhusky]

Unless you have some crazy profile, your GMAT score doesn't appear to be sufficient for your target schools.

[sttam]

Unless you have some crazy profile, your GMAT score doesn't appear to be sufficient for your target schools.

cool...so what would you say for verbal?.....what should i do now?....anything specific?

[uwhusky]

We're in the same shoes, my retake is in August. I can share a little bit about what I am doing for verbal right now.

I have gone through MGMAT SC for I think the 4th time (I lost track if it's 4th or 5th time), and this time around, I took my own notes that I will be studying off from instead of the book. Surprisingly, I found out that I missed 30% of what I had skimmed through by reading alone. After MGMAT SC, I realize that there are still concepts I am not familiar with, so I picked up Doing Grammar, which is a very difficult read for someone without a decent grammar foundation.

I have rest of this week to wrap up Doing Grammar, then it's two weeks of math refresh along with verbal reviews, and final review week prior to the retake.

[GMATMadeEasy]

Do you find "Doing Grammer" useful worth spending time ?

[uwhusky]

Do you find "Doing Grammer" useful worth spending time ?

It's only the greatest book in the world!!! Heh, joking.

Yes, it fills in the gap where MGMAT SC has missed. I wish I had this book back in middle school, I would have destroyed all my English classes.

Btw, there are a lot of new vocabs being used in the book, and the first few chapters seem very intimidating. Don't be afraid, write down the acronyms and their definitions, then re-read the chapters few times.