GMAT Verbal is killing me

[vardhans83]

Hi,

Just took the test today. Scored 49 in math but only 26 on verbal. This was my 4th attempt. I believe that for the first 3 attempts, I never knew what I was doing with verbal so I cant blame anyone/anything but me for the poor scores (18, 19, 21). However, I believe that this time, I did study hard, learned all the strategies to deal especially with SC and CR questions.With RC, I never seem to make any improvement. Here are my weaknesses and the material I used to work on verbal

SC: GMAT PREP, Took MGMAT online class and also used Aristotle prep. This has helped me a lot and I think I have improved a lot on SC. It is hard for me to point out what I am doing wrong in SC. I did all the questions from OG 12 and Verbal Review 2nd edition. I did fairly well on 75% of the questions. I do understand that is not enough, but I did realize what i did wrong on the other 25% and worked on those concepts. In short, i get a lot of questions under 700 level correct, and with questions above 700, it is a toss up. I picked up Kaplan 800 but I felt that the questions in this book were very different from OG and I was told that 800 is not that much helpful...what else can i do to improve in SC?

CR: GMAT prep/tutor. I struggle with questions that have very complex wordings and bold face. Just like SC, i struggle with 700 level CR as well. I had my friend who is a lawyer (LSAT) teach me CR and he did do a very good job. I think i have the concepts in place, it is just an issue with using them correctly on tough questions.

RC: This is one of the worst sections I struggle with mainly because I hate to read and I am very slow at it. On all the practice tests I took, I take forever to read. I even followed the techniques that were given to me like writing down key pieces of info and skimming through the passage etc. Even after all that I still have trouble answering the questions especially because of the complex wording in the answer choices or just because of 2 close answer choices.

I am very disappointed. I honestly felt like I would do well this time. One thing I noticed during the test was that my pacing was not very good and I rushed in to answering some of the questions. Any help or advise would be much appreciated. I am even willing to get a tutor if someone can recommend me a good one around NY/NJ area.

Last thing is that I heard schools look at too many attempts in a negative way. I obviously want to target the top 15-20 schools, so I am not sure how 5th attempt will play out. At this time, should i even consider taking it one more time or with 5 attempts, I can pretty much rule out the top 15 schools? Would i even stand a chance for columbia with a 620? Please let me know what you guys think.

Thanks in advance!

[arun@crackverbal]

Don't worry about the 5th attempt. Just focus on how you can improve your score.

Also there are no clear answers to your questions but I help you analyze the situation.

Very clearly the first 3 times you did not focus in Verbal atall so for all practical purposes this was your FIRST GMAT attemmpt. A score of 26 is not too bad - just that it tells you what to pay attention to. Your goal now is to take it a 36 from a 26. Just a 10 point increase (which means you just don't get more questions right but you need to get more higher level questions right). Here are some recommendations:

1) You have mentioned your prep books but not mentioned your test scores. How many did you take? What were your scores in them? I am more interested to know the GMATPrep scores. Here is the deal - if you have been practicing 100 sprints of 100m each, you will not be able to run 10,000m. GMAT has a lot to do with your mental stamina - especially for RC (your problem with focus is attached to brain's ability to concentrate over long periods).

2) You also need to move beyond analyzing your responses in terms of "right" and "wrong" and start to look at them in terms of what you can learn from the questions. Here is a guide which can help you:
https://www.crackverbal.com/nailed-it-mi ... crewed-it/

3) At a 700+ you will be tested more for logic than knowledge of any rules. Think about it - a 730 cannot be differentiated from a 700 BECAUSE the former knows more rules. Here is an example:

Wrong: "All the guests did not arrive on time hence the introduction was missed by a few" - if no one came then how can only a few miss it?

Correct: "Not all the guests arrived on time hence the introduction was missed by a few".

4) The probability of a monkey getting the question right is 20%. On some tough questions, intelligent humans can have a lower probability. This is because the monkey doesn't understand the TRAPS the test setter has made. You need to come up with a list of the top 3 problems that are stopping you from scoring higher.

5) As you have pointed out - you are perhaps very good at a 600-level question but start struggling once you hit the 700+ range. Here is an advice for you - try to practice using GMATPrep questions that are found in this forum. This is a document containing around 200+ questions on each type. This should essentially help you practice whatever assumptions you want to test.

HTH,

Arun