How to overcome Verbal Plateau ?

[Digvijay01]

Hi.. I have been preparing for GMAT for 2.5 months now..and my exam is on Dec 11, 2013.. I have prepared quite thoroughly, and have improved my quant skills a lot.. but seems to have hit a plateau in verbal.. always scoring 35-36 ..and giving me total of 680-690 (Quant scores are stable) ..any advice on how to overcome this in 3-4 days.. I'm targeting 730+ total and verbal seems to be holding me down.

Desperate for some advice.

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Hi Digvijay01,

Unfortunately, you don't have much time to really change your tactics, practice them consistently and then use them on the GMAT with any consistently. What you CAN do is take a good look at EVERY Verbal question from your practice CATs (not just the ones that you're getting wrong) and do some analysis. Ask yourself HOW you go about getting a question correct and then do your best to repeat the steps/logic. Every time you've "narrowed it down and guessed" but still got the question wrong, ask yourself WHAT you missed. For SC questions, it's all about grammar and style. For CR and RC, it's all about notes, understanding WHY material is included in the prompt and linking ideas.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

[VivianKerr]

Hi there,

To be honest, I don't know if you're going to make a gain of 40-50 points in 3-4 days. It's just not realistic. The question you have to answer for yourself is WHY the Verbal is "holding you down"? Are there SC concepts you don't know as well as you think? Is there a certain type of CR question you always find yourself getting wrong? Are you falling apart on harder RC Inference Q's? I would select 3 concepts or Q-types for Verbal -- the things that you're having the most trouble with, and ONLY focus on those in the next 3-4 days. You can't go back and do EVERYTHING in such a short amount of time, but you can target 3 things effectively. For example, your 3 things might be SC - Meaning, RC - Main Idea, and CR - Weaken if those are 3 areas where you get a lot of questions incorrect. Or, if you've got a handle on one Q-type (let's say SC is no prob for you), then you might focus only on the other two (RC and CR in this case).

Long story short, 3-4 days isn't much time, but if you really hone in on mastering 3 weaknesses and re-evaluating your strategic approach to all of the Verbal q-types, you've got a shot!

[Digvijay01]

Thanks Vivian.. I think this might help.. Fingers crossed..

Hi there,

To be honest, I don't know if you're going to make a gain of 40-50 points in 3-4 days. It's just not realistic. The question you have to answer for yourself is WHY the Verbal is "holding you down"? Are there SC concepts you don't know as well as you think? Is there a certain type of CR question you always find yourself getting wrong? Are you falling apart on harder RC Inference Q's? I would select 3 concepts or Q-types for Verbal -- the things that you're having the most trouble with, and ONLY focus on those in the next 3-4 days. You can't go back and do EVERYTHING in such a short amount of time, but you can target 3 things effectively. For example, your 3 things might be SC - Meaning, RC - Main Idea, and CR - Weaken if those are 3 areas where you get a lot of questions incorrect. Or, if you've got a handle on one Q-type (let's say SC is no prob for you), then you might focus only on the other two (RC and CR in this case).

Long story short, 3-4 days isn't much time, but if you really hone in on mastering 3 weaknesses and re-evaluating your strategic approach to all of the Verbal q-types, you've got a shot!

[Digvijay01]

Thanks Rich for advice.. Will try to implement this and hopefully might see some improvement.

Hi Digvijay01,

Unfortunately, you don't have much time to really change your tactics, practice them consistently and then use them on the GMAT with any consistently. What you CAN do is take a good look at EVERY Verbal question from your practice CATs (not just the ones that you're getting wrong) and do some analysis. Ask yourself HOW you go about getting a question correct and then do your best to repeat the steps/logic. Every time you've "narrowed it down and guessed" but still got the question wrong, ask yourself WHAT you missed. For SC questions, it's all about grammar and style. For CR and RC, it's all about notes, understanding WHY material is included in the prompt and linking ideas.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich