Defeated by GMAT

[c23678]

I gave my GMAT yesterday and got a very disappointing 560. I initially scheduled my GMAT exam on April. Unfortunately in early March I suffered a head injury (a mild concussion that lasted for a month) which forced me to postponed the exam to Oct. The reason I picked Oct is that we were expecting and I wanted to give enough time to let things settle. That did no go as I expected either. Being a first time dad I never expected it to be difficult to manage GMAT preparation during that time. But I was reluctant to give up as I wanted to start my MBA next year. So I studied hard with all those sleepless nights. I felt it very difficult to write a four hour practice test after sleeping for 2-3 hours sleep. I still fought through it and managed to score above 700 in one of the practice test. The night before the exam I did not have a good night sleep for personal reasons. But I slept for 4-5 hours which was much better than what I have been doing in the past 4 months. So I was happy and confident about my performance.

I started my exam with full energy and wasn't feeling nervous at all. Quans went pretty smooth, except for few problems which seemed easy but I missed to score. I ended up getting a 46 in Quans. I was a little tired after Quans. I went to the restroom and told myself that I am going to focus as hard as possible in Verbal and get a good score. But I am not sure what happened during the next one hour I just couldnt focus at all. I was tired and nothing was registering in my mind. I remember I had to guess lot of questions in Verbal as I tried to read them 2-3 times and nothing was going into my brain. I ended up getting a 21 in Verbal. I am not new to 20's in verbal. Both of my GMATPrep exams I got a 27 and 29 in Verbal. But in all my MGMAT practice exams I got a an average of 37 in verbal. As I took both the GMATPrep practice exams in stress due to lack of sleep I thought it might be reason for the low score in verbal.

I am planning to retake GMAT in Dec. I need some suggestions on how to improve my verbal score. Also are there any other practice exams other than GMATPrep and MGMAT that will help me see where I am standing in Verbal? I am still not sure whether I am weak in verbal or I was just not able to score in Verbal due to stress. Any help is appreciated.

Thank you.

[Jim@StratusPrep]

Any of the exams will test your verbal, but if you are struggling, more exams is not what you need. Study answer explanations on problems that you have gone through.

[c23678]

Jim,

Thanks for the reply. The problem is I am not sure how much I am struggling with Verbal. I purchased GMATPrep pack and solved most of the questions comfortably except for some RC problems. My problem is till now I did not get a chance to write a test with full concentration. Since I exhausted all the MGMAT and GMATPrep tests I want to know if there is any other practice test out there that would help me know where I am standing in Verbal So that I can plan my verbal preparation accordingly.

Thank you.

[hsharif]

Hey man - I can commiserate as I also had practice scores in the 700's, however the actual exam crushed me down to 590. My primary issue was timing.

Verbal suggestions
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I'm all about diagnostics. Studying without a clear understanding of your weaknesses can lead to a lot of wasted time and perceived improvement without actual improvement. I would take a look back through your MGMAT practice exams and understand which sections are your weakness. I would also maybe do 10 relatively hard problems in each Verbal section out of the OG 12/13th Ed or OG Verbal Review books under timed conditions to understand which sections you're having the most hard time with.

SC - Re-read the MGMAT SC book 3-4 times. Literally. I read through it once and highlighted each important tidbit. I then re-read it 3 additional times focusing on the highlighted portions but also scanning through the other bits looking for golden information I may have missed. This is truly the only thing you need for SC improvement. SC questions ALWAYS test the same finite number of concepts, the better you become at finding the little red flags in the sentence, the better your score. E.g. Subject/Verb Agreement, MEANING (tested at the 700 level more often), Parallelism, Dangling Modifiers, the word "Being", "Possessive Poison" are all things that come up in SC over and over again. Luckily SC questions typically have 2-3 things wrong with them so if you miss one concept, you'll catch another.

CR - People seem to praise the PowerScore CR Bible however I've found it of little value. It really goes in depth into each question type which could be good for some, but I think with CR the focus really needs to be on the main 3 question types I've observed to pop up most often: Strengthen, Weaken, and Identify the Assumption question types. I realized my CR was initially quite bad, so I just drilled OG CR problems until I started to understand the concepts a bit more. A critical components of cracking CR is finding and focusing on the argument. Once found, locate the premises (it seems like there are always typically 2 premises). Lastly, ensure the answer speaks to the argument and all facets of it - i.e. if the argument is about farming and climate, make sure the answer addresses both facets of the argument. NOTE: The former is not a hard and fast rule, but something to pay attention to.

RC - This has been a natural strength of mine so I personally did not use any materials or practice problems. I have noticed however that my strategy is to slowly read through the entire passage and understand it prior to diving into the questions. I've personally noticed the upfront cost of reading the material carefully is diminished by how quickly thereafter I am able to answer the questions. Also what has worked for me is to append a 1 sentence label onto each paragraph (in my head) which tells me what that paragraph is about. By appending these 1 sentence labels I can quickly comprehend what the entire passage speaks to.

Hope this helps, good luck on your reattempt. I will be retaking again at the end of the month as well.

[c23678]

Thanks hsharif for the suggestions. Good luck on your test.