610-->570-->570 devastated by GMAT

[GoBlue]

Really sorry to hear about your GMAT experience. What were your GMATPrep CAT scores in the last week or so ? When you say OG CAT Practice, is that the GMATPrep software from MBA.com. Looking at your scores, it seems like you had a really rough 2nd half of the day. Your Q is amazing, but your V is really low especially when compared to MGMAT and other tests.

I would probably take a step back, take some time to focus purely on Verbal using Grockit or BTG resources. RC is kind of a hit or miss depending on the topic IMHO. I recently took the final GMATPrep 2 and got a string of last 4 wrongs which did me in ( yes, because of bad time management ). It could have been just really bad luck or really nasty questions. So, I would recommend taking a couple of sample verbal tests with strict time management.

Slowly but eventually I am learning to let questions go. I know its probably not the best strategy but I almost have decided on a few topics where if the question seems very tough or something that I can't solve in given time I skip it. I skip around 3 questions in Quant and roughly 1 q for every other RC on Eco/History etc.

[jeffedwards]

Did you do your practice tests with the AWA essays? I think that is something many people forget that your brain becomes fatigued and your verbal section takes a hit.

[jeffedwards]

Ok two more thoughts.

First one, many people at the end of their test tend to rush the last couple questions out of anticipation to see the final score. This can seriously ding a verbal score.

Second, one thing I am just realizing is that the books are on to something. I don't know how many times I have been told to solve problems in a certain manner (e.g. plugging in vs solving). However, I just decided to trust these suggestions and my score increased significantly. For reading comprehension, try just scanning the first time for main idea and structure. Then go back to the details for the detail questions. Eliminate instead of chose. After some practice this can free up a lot of time to devote to getting other questions right.

So the methods that work best for you may not be the ones I wrote above. However, they have significantly helped me. We'll see though when I actually take the test..haha

Anyway, good luck! I look forward to hearing you report back.

[AbhiJ]

It seems RC is your weakness which is causing you to stress out during exam and make mistake on other Q's. I say that you can take as much time as possible in one OG12 RC (Q80 onwards) or an LSAT RC but you have to ensure an accuracy of 80% or higher. Can you do so if you take 15-20 mins for an RC. If yes then practising RC can be a way , because it means speed is the issue. However if you cannot ensure a >80% accuracy even after spending 20+ mins on an RC then it means the problem is more fundamental and you would need to read books for some time to get on a good level.

[sam2304]

I completely agree with jeffedwards.

For reading comprehension, try just scanning the first time for main idea and structure. Then go back to the details for the detail questions. Eliminate instead of chose. After some practice this can free up a lot of time to devote to getting other questions right.

For RCs try the above approach. I have almost tried every other strategy for RC - taking notes, STOP approach, mental map but then the problem was in interpreting the questions and not in reading the passage. Its really helping me a lot. I was making 8-9 mistakes in RC. Now it has reduced to < 5, still trying hard to reduce. When you start eliminating, you will always be faced with only two confusing choices and between those you can believe on your instinct/reread the passage. You will get used to this strategy once you practice. Try to practice 3 RCs a day continuously for a month. Try to get OG10 somewhere it has some real hard RC passages. Check out aspiranthunt site as well for compilation of all versions of OG questions. Go through bblast's post

https://www.beatthegmat.com/ways-to-bbla ... 90808.html

Try to use Ron's approach. Its available for free in manhattan site.

[pemdas]

auh, no. Scanning first then turning back to the passage, that just sounds like a lot of time for handling RC questions
@edirik, if you like try these strategies suggested by fellow GMATters, but I apprise you of that blowing off two RC questions consequently will lower your percentile more than not killing two SC or two CR subsequently
RC is one hellish domain for non-natives and the clue how to read and understand the passage in order not to miss the questions in RC is not in one's inherent abilities to handle the verbal context but in systematic and trained approach
As the first letter or building block towards boosting your RC would be not reading scientific or social dry content articles. The very first step would be to understand what the topic for any passage and what is the idea, the differences between these two ...
and so on and on
This all takes studying and learning RC not as exposure of one's inherent abilities to dry passages but the very detailed knowledge area. Those from journalism and humanities would know better what I am talking about.

[lunarpower]

i received a private message about this thread.

it appears that you aren't approaching the RC passages in the right way. in particular, it seems that you're trying to understand everything in the passage when you read it.
that's not what you should be doing.
when you read the passage, you should *not* try to understand all the details. instead, you should just try to get the MAIN IDEA and see how everything RELATES to everything else.

in fact, this is one of the main points of GMAT RC -- they purposely don't give you enough time to achieve a full understanding of the details, because they don't want you to achieve a full understanding of the details. instead, they want you to "read like a manager": i.e., don't worry very much about details, but make sure you understand how all of the pieces fit together.

in fact, when you read through the passages, you can actually ignore all of the specifics and facts, and still get a very good idea of the main points.
here's an example:
let's take the passage from page 360 of OG12. if you ignore ALL of the specifics, and just concentrate on the transition words that indicate how things are related to each other, you get the following:
A recent study has provided clues to xxxxxx. Researchers compared xxxxxx. The xxxxx were strikingly higher than xxxxx.
In considering possible explanations for this finding, the researchers dismissed xxxxxx because xxxxxx. They rejected xxxxxx because xxxxxx. They ruled out xxxxxx because xxxxxx. The explanation they consider most plausible is xxxxxx-in particular, xxxxxx. Such xxxxxx implies to the researchers either that xxxxxx, or that xxxxxx.
even if you literally ignore all of the facts/specifics and replace them with "xxxxxx", the main point is still obvious (perhaps even more obvious!):
* research findings are described
* some explanations are rejected
* one explanation is elevated above the others
* the implications of that one explanation are discussed in detail

this is how you should be reading the passages initially.
when you get a detail question, then you should actually try to understand the details -- but only in the specific area that deals with the topic of the question. there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to try to understand everything in the whole passage; indeed, one of the main objectives of GMAT RC, from the test makers' perspective, is to select in favor of readers who can understand main points without having to wade through all of the details.

Though I really think that RC is the only part that you need to have a years of reading/understanding experience of RC, yet I thought I had this experience

well ... yes, you need to have the reading experience. the point that you may be missing, though, is that you have to have the right kind of reading experience.
i.e., if your "reading experience" consists of poring over every single detail of every article that you read, then you are conditioning yourself to read in exactly the opposite way from what the GMAT (and business management!) requires. indeed, if you practice in that kind of way, then you may be worse off than before.
try to focus on main ideas and relationships from this point forward. you may even want to ignore all of the facts/specifics and mentally replace them with "xxxxxxx", as i've done above.

[jeffedwards]

auh, no. Scanning first then turning back to the passage, that just sounds like a lot of time for handling RC questions

Oh sorry if I didn't explain that clearly. You scan the passage for structure and then you refer back to the details only when asked about the details. I too had a horrible time in verbal. I got around a 23 the first time I took the test. But then I learned that the GMAT wants to trick you into thinking you need to read and understand the entire passage. I switched up my reading techniques and just scored a 42 verbal on the GMAT yesterday.

Edirik, I feel our stories are somewhat similar. Although, it looks like you are completely rocking the quant section! Look at my post - https://bit.ly/rz2OTo

I'm confident that you can come back and kill the GMAT! Good luck!