Is it possible to go from 640 to 700+?

[ssgmatter]

Took the GMAT and got 640....planning a retake in august end...is it possible to touch 700 with one month preparation...

I did all the usual stuff available in the market....and did MGMAT end to end...

Any advise on verbal?? it actually screwed my score....

Cheers!

[uwhusky]

I'll tell you in 3 weeks.

[pukul79]

I went from 650 gmat (M 50, V 27, AWA 6) to GMAT 700 (M 48, V 38) AWA awaited, but expecting excellent. ( from may 11 to july 12)

The way to improve was to be absolutely sure what the question is asking. This, specially in case of RC and CR.

And the best method is to study the OG and the official math review and verbal review.

GMAT asks the same questions again and again. the best method is to learn the method and the best method is to have an absolute clarity on the questions and how they ask the details. And why a correct answer is correct.

Do every question in the GMAT OG at least three to four times. understand the pattern of the questions. This will really help.

secondly, if you need more practice, do the LSAT paper under strict timed conditions.

Thirdly, dont stress out yourself. I studied methodically. probably if I had target to study 100 pages after getting 650, I studied only 10 pages. i.e. I studied only 10% of what I targetted.

What I am trying to say is Don't overexert yourself. work on your weaknesses. My weakness was RC. what worked for me was pratice making notes.

Bottmline: I did it. I think, I could have done even better that 700, But at least no school will reject me for low GMAT now ! So am happy with it. ANd if I can do it, then so can you.

[ssgmatter]

I went from 650 gmat (M 50, V 27, AWA 6) to GMAT 700 (M 48, V 38) AWA awaited, but expecting excellent. ( from may 11 to july 12)

The way to improve was to be absolutely sure what the question is asking. This, specially in case of RC and CR.

And the best method is to study the OG and the official math review and verbal review.

GMAT asks the same questions again and again. the best method is to learn the method and the best method is to have an absolute clarity on the questions and how they ask the details. And why a correct answer is correct.

Do every question in the GMAT OG at least three to four times. understand the pattern of the questions. This will really help.

secondly, if you need more practice, do the LSAT paper under strict timed conditions.

Thirdly, dont stress out yourself. I studied methodically. probably if I had target to study 100 pages after getting 650, I studied only 10 pages. i.e. I studied only 10% of what I targetted.

What I am trying to say is Don't overexert yourself. work on your weaknesses. My weakness was RC. what worked for me was pratice making notes.

Bottmline: I did it. I think, I could have done even better that 700, But at least no school will reject me for low GMAT now ! So am happy with it. ANd if I can do it, then so can you.

Thankyou Pukul for your advise.

Is LSAT mandatory to tackle the verbal?

I mean I devoted my 2 months only on improving verbal and still got this score....

[uwhusky]

which part of the verbal are you struggling with?

[pukul79]

look LSAT is not mandatory.

But everytime you do a GMAT question, your brain has kept some memory of the question from the last time you did the question. when you give the real GMAT you see fresh questions. This difference may push you back.

What LSAT does is you get fresh GMAT level 700 + questions, so in the context of practicing fresh tough questions, it would be a decent practice. In my humble opinion, though there are many excellent GMAT coaching options, there are scope of improvement on the verbal front. Even MGMAT, considered the best by many needs to improve in verbal coaching.

I studied from Kaplan and MGMAT books, and at times I did find topics which were not sufficiently covered by either of the two. Maybe other coaching companies do a better job, I dont know. ( for a third person reading this post, if you have a choice between the two, take MGMAT. Kaplan is good. In some topics though, MGMAT has perhaps the best explanations) ( And I can't comment on other companies)

But what I do know is that LSAT papers did come the closest to what the GMAT was testing. Evidently LSAT worked for me. LSAT however was in addition to the official guides

Saurabh

[GMATMadeEasy]

For LSAT : What timings did you set for RC and CR section each ? Because LSAT mentions 35 minutes for 26 question which is too challenigg to meet in short span. What timing guideline did you follow and what are your statistics from that material ?

Thanks

[sttam]

For LSAT : What timings did you set for RC and CR section each ? Because LSAT mentions 35 minutes for 26 question which is too challenigg to meet in short span. What timing guideline did you follow and what are your statistics from that material ?

Thanks

Thanks for raising that point as I was about to address the same.

It would be really great if we can have some data on this.

Cheers!

[pukul79]

For LSAT : What timings did you set for RC and CR section each ? Because LSAT mentions 35 minutes for 26 question which is too challenigg to meet in short span. What timing guideline did you follow and what are your statistics from that material ?

Thanks

Thanks for raising that point as I was about to address the same.

It would be really great if we can have some data on this.

Cheers!

"panic and stress"


You have 35 minutes and 26 questions. Would you be be able to finish off all the questions in the given time frame. No.
But that's missing the point. You have to panic, you have to feel the pressure and you must be stress out.

For the LSAT papers, I was only able to finish about 12 questions in the allotted time. Even in these 12 questions I made about 6 errors. extremely dejecting and extremely frustrating.

I completed the rest of the paper focusing on accuracy. Instead of 35 minutes I took 2 hours. And even here I got more that 50% of the answers wrong. Trust me, I honestly thought of giving up on the GMAT. What I did differently was that I did not go to the detailed answers. I Just had the alphabet that said what the answer was ( you know, A B C D E ) And then burned my brain as to why a certain answer is right or wrong. Even today there are certain answers I dont know why they are correct. But in most cases, the correct answers were correct where I had either missed out a detail in the argument passage or some detail in the answer choices. pure carelessness. There were some answers though that required me to say oh ok, thats the correct way to think. And my answer choice is wrong because of this reason.


Next I repeated the same paper, making sure that now that I know all the answers, but marking only after I have read the question properly and every answer choice fully. This time I selected an answer not because I knew it was right, but because the other's were wrong. rejecting an answer choice is sometimes a difficult choice.

I did this painstaking task for, I think 6 or 7 papers. very tiring, very demotivating and it burned my brain. but then I was desperate.

After this I saw a pattern in the questions and a pattern in the wrong answers choices. I also saw how a correct answer is sometime made to look wrong. I saw the traps, the patterns and even my speed went up. by the time I was to give my GMAT I was not only completing the entire 26 questions in 35 minutes, but also that out of these questions only about 3 to 4 would be wrong and those too careless errors. ( these papers were different from the 6 -7 papers I had used as guinea pigs. )

When I gave the GMAT practice tests, and even the main GMAT, I, for all purposes had become like a war -hardened soldier, not afraid and ready for battle. In this context I was pretty disappointed when I got 700. But atleast no school will reject me for low gmat now. So my battle ends here.

[GMATMadeEasy]

Great insight thanks. And how were you approaching Reading the passage that is reading all with detail , skimming/intial reading ? COuld you tell more on that, I agree though but each person this approach is different.

[ssgmatter]

For LSAT : What timings did you set for RC and CR section each ? Because LSAT mentions 35 minutes for 26 question which is too challenigg to meet in short span. What timing guideline did you follow and what are your statistics from that material ?

Thanks

Thanks for raising that point as I was about to address the same.

It would be really great if we can have some data on this.

Cheers!

"panic and stress"


You have 35 minutes and 26 questions. Would you be be able to finish off all the questions in the given time frame. No.
But that's missing the point. You have to panic, you have to feel the pressure and you must be stress out.

For the LSAT papers, I was only able to finish about 12 questions in the allotted time. Even in these 12 questions I made about 6 errors. extremely dejecting and extremely frustrating.

I completed the rest of the paper focusing on accuracy. Instead of 35 minutes I took 2 hours. And even here I got more that 50% of the answers wrong. Trust me, I honestly thought of giving up on the GMAT. What I did differently was that I did not go to the detailed answers. I Just had the alphabet that said what the answer was ( you know, A B C D E ) And then burned my brain as to why a certain answer is right or wrong. Even today there are certain answers I dont know why they are correct. But in most cases, the correct answers were correct where I had either missed out a detail in the argument passage or some detail in the answer choices. pure carelessness. There were some answers though that required me to say oh ok, thats the correct way to think. And my answer choice is wrong because of this reason.


Next I repeated the same paper, making sure that now that I know all the answers, but marking only after I have read the question properly and every answer choice fully. This time I selected an answer not because I knew it was right, but because the other's were wrong. rejecting an answer choice is sometimes a difficult choice.

I did this painstaking task for, I think 6 or 7 papers. very tiring, very demotivating and it burned my brain. but then I was desperate.

After this I saw a pattern in the questions and a pattern in the wrong answers choices. I also saw how a correct answer is sometime made to look wrong. I saw the traps, the patterns and even my speed went up. by the time I was to give my GMAT I was not only completing the entire 26 questions in 35 minutes, but also that out of these questions only about 3 to 4 would be wrong and those too careless errors. ( these papers were different from the 6 -7 papers I had used as guinea pigs. )

When I gave the GMAT practice tests, and even the main GMAT, I, for all purposes had become like a war -hardened soldier, not afraid and ready for battle. In this context I was pretty disappointed when I got 700. But atleast no school will reject me for low gmat now. So my battle ends here.

Thankyou Saurabh for sharing your feedback and analysis on LSAT
Please discuss a bit more on your RC strategy and how much time one should devote from one attempt to next attempt.

Cheers!

[pukul79]

Reading comprehension:-

The way I used to read in my profession was I read once. kept the material away. Read it again. keep it away and then read it later perhaps a third time. My pre-gmat method suited me well, because reading a document so many times really made it easy for me to understand the crux of what the author was saying.

Now GMAT is slightly different. And I felt, correctly I think, that the best method was to get the correct answer. Time was not a crucial factor, accuracy was.

So the way I studied the GMAT RC was to make detailed notes. Both in the GMAT RC as well as the LSAT RC. I was doing I think one passage in I think 35 to 40 minutes. But my goal was to make sure, that firstly not to lose focus, secondly not to get mentally tired and thirdly, to be absolutely accurate. ( all given equal importance)

Now, detailed note making is time consuming. But it is accurate. After some practice, when I could focus for such a long time ( on a single passage) and not get tired or exhausted( I told my brain, you are not tired, you are not tired) I started cutting corners. for example, now that I knew that I am accurate, where for the phrase "earthquake in haiti, caused large devastation and many deaths, and now many diseases are spreading" earlier I would note "equake- haiti, large devast...., deaths and many diseases spread" After some practice and self belief I would write "qk-hti = (+) D + dth + d"

Since the time is short, I learnt that when I would refer back to notes if required, I more often than not would not get confused by the acronyms. And even if i did i could always refer to the passage. But all this requires practice. lots of practice. Because knowing how to make small notes is just part of the game. You must also have the eye as to how the passages are written. This I say because there are only some patterns that are repeated again and again on the GMAT. Practice will get you there.

Hope I have covered everything.

Saurabh

[HornedToad]

Took the GMAT and got 640....planning a retake in august end...is it possible to touch 700 with one month preparation...

I did all the usual stuff available in the market....and did MGMAT end to end...

Any advise on verbal?? it actually screwed my score....

Cheers!

I would say yes it's possible. I took the GMAT today and got a 700. I started 3-4 weeks ago studying off and on and my first two Princeton review practice tests were right at 600 and third practice test was 640. For Verbal, the most important thing is to slow down and take your time. I would look at how much time you had extra on Verbal when you finished and adjust accordingly.

[siddaggarwal]

hey ssgmatter I am in a similar situation I got a 620; what do you think? also UWHUSKY and pukul79

I have taken the LSAT before so the Verbal is alot better for me than other people; now for Quant I really want to bump it up...what should I do and do you guys think 5-6 weeks is enough to bump to 660-690 range?


it wasn't that good on the Quant end even though my abilities are better I know that....

Scaled score Q-41; V-35

Percentiles: 58, 73 respectively

Total 620; 70th percentile overall

[Elena392]

Yes, it is possible. I went from 590(42/29) to 730(449/41)