Stuck in the low 600s - Help?

[hmgp22]

I have been studying on an off for ~1 year. During the first 2-3 months I improved rapidly, going from the low 500s to consistently scoring in mid 600s on practice tests. However, for the next 8-9 months, I simply couldn't reach the 700 threshold. Most recently, I took my first official GMAT and scored in the low 600s, which was rather frustrating.

I'm not sure what my next steps are. Can anyone give me some advice? Am I lacking on conceptual knowledge? Should I take a course or am do I need to work on my test taking strategies? I didn't run out of time.

Here's a summary of what I've completed as a reference point:
-MGMAT (all guides)
-Princeton Review Book
-Official Guide Questions (including Q and V review)
-PowerScore CR Bible

[[email protected]]

Hi hmgp22,

What were your Scaled Scores for the Quant and Verbal sections on each of your practice CATS and on your Official GMAT? That information will provide some valuable insight into the areas in which you're missing points.

Also, what schools are you planning to apply to?

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

[hmgp22]

Here are my scaled scores from various practice tests. i'm clearly struggling in verbal and IR.

Q V IR
34 28 7 530
560
41 29 4 580
45 33 1 640
47 36 3 690
45 41 690
42 28 4 580
43 28 5 590
47 36 5 680
45 34 4 650
40 31 2 580
45 36 3 670
41 37 4 650
42 31 3 590

[Brent@GMATPrepNow]

I believe that you need to spend some time carefully identifying your weaknesses.
So, after each practice test (or even practice session), you need to analyze each question you answered correctly and locate the missing concept/skill that caused you to miss the question.

While analyzing your practice tests, there are four main types of weakness to watch out for:
1. specific Quant skills/concepts (e.g., algebra, standard deviation, etc.)
2. specific Verbal skills/concepts (e.g., verb tenses, assumption CR questions, etc.)
3. test-taking skills (time management, endurance, anxiety etc.)
4. silly mistakes

For the first two weaknesses, the fix is pretty straightforward. Learn the concept/skill and find some practice questions to strengthen that weakness. To focus on one topic at a time, you can use BTG's tagging feature to isolate one concept. For example, here are all of the questions tagged as statistics questions: https://www.beatthegmat.com/forums/tags/ ... statistics
See the left side of that linked page for more tag options.

If your test-taking skills are holding you back, then you need to work on these. For example, we have a free GMAT time management video at https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gener ... es?id=1244.

Finally, if silly mistakes are hurting your score, then it's important that you identify and categorize these mistakes so that, during tests, you can easily spot situations in which you're prone to making errors. I write about this and other strategies in the following article for BTG: https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2012/09/ ... n-the-gmat

Cheers,
Brent

[Brent@GMATPrepNow]

I'm clearly struggling in verbal and IR.

You need to go deeper than this.
What kinds of Verbal questions? CR? RC? SC?
If it's CR, what kinds of CR questions" Assumption? Strengthen the Argument? etc?
If you can pinpoint your weaknesses, you'll have a much easier time strengthening them.

Cheers,
Brent

[[email protected]]

Hi hmgp22,

Your Scaled Scores for BOTH the Quant and Verbal sections seem to "swing" depending on some factors that you haven't clearly defined. Looking at the numbers, I'd say that you're really good at "math" questions, but you're missing out on "pattern" questions and making some silly mistakes on DS questions. In the Verbal section, you're taking lots of "educated guesses" without really knowing what the correct answer is supposed to be. Sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don't. Most of these problems are "tactical" - meaning that it's not about intelligence, it's about how you're taking notes and attacking questions. You might also have a pacing problem (having to "rush through" or "blindly guess" on a bunch of questions at the end of a section can have quite an effect on your score).

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

[hmgp22]

Thanks Brett and Rich for the advice.

After analyzing my reports, here are my main problems (there are others, but these seem to be the primary ones)

Verbal
RC - Timing and accuracy. Is the best way to improve is to simply read more everyday (Scientific American, The Economist...etc)?
CR - Mainly assumption questions. Even though I went through the PowerScore Bible, I didn't find it too helpful for me personally. Am I just lacking practice? The answer rarely jumps out at me.

Quant
Extremely bad at the rate/work/distance
Word Problems in general (esp. lengthy ones)
Probability/Combinatorics
Geometry

[sukhman]

Did you apply negation test for assumption questions , these are minor details we tend to ignore . for RC you can look to Examkrackers and Powercore LSAT RC you can refer to the Examkrackers LSAT Book for CR it starts with Inference type question and other type of stuff which is coming nowdays in GMAT CR , I have also benefited from e-GMAT CR which is based on Powerscore Book and other GMAT Material but in a way application based of minor theories which we tend to blink and miss.

The problem with various questions type in Verbal is that there is no one stop solution book , you learn some tricks from here some from there . Trust me I have even attended verbal live online classes with Crackverbal to get classroom experience of Verbal , Athough its Maths portion is good too. To get even 65-70 % accuracy in verbal we have to work hard for months and I have not even touched Maths which I did rigorously last time .

If you have some concept gap in Sentence Correction you can refer to Pearson book my MLV Raman Rao (its Available in India ) and Doing Grammar by Max Morenberg is what I start from to study basics , I still have to cover e-GMAT SC well MGMAT Sentence correction assumes that you already have basic knowledge , now I know why everything went on top of my head in last exam.

Exam pack 1 verbal is more representative of Actual GMAT verbal score and I dropped from 28 to 23 in GMAT prep and stayed that way . The Question types I had concerns about , I felt like they got slapped in my face during my GMAT Exam . If you are lookin for super affordable tutor , you can take classes with Vivian Kerr of GMATRockstar( Formerly of Grockit ).

Hope this helps

[Brent@GMATPrepNow]

Is the best way to improve is to simply read more everyday (Scientific American, The Economist...etc)?

That will certainly help. If you're looking for interesting, GMAT-RC-like content, here some suggestions.

For Science passages, try:
- New Scientist
- Nature
- National Geographic
- Popular Mechanics
- Scientific American

For Humanities/Social Sciences, try:
- Washington Post
- New York Times
- Guardian
- Atlantic Monthly
- The New Yorker

And for Business, try:
- Fast Company
- Newsweek Business
- The Harvard Business Review
- BusinessWeek
- Economist
- Financial Times

Cheers,
Brent