How do I push from 610 [Q44,V29] to 700+?

[ronit1894]

Hi,

I am planning to give my GMAT in January end/Feb mid week. I just gave an initial mock test and I have scored 610 [Q44,v29]. I have around 80-90 days, and I can study for 2 hours a day on weekdays and 4-5 hours on weekends. I am aiming to score a 700+. I have basic understanding of all the concepts. I need to practice.

I wanted to ask how can i improve my Verbal score and push it to V40. Will I be able to do it within the given time and number of hours that i can invest? Please suggest me some good sources where I can get good questions for SC,CR and RC.
Will I able to score 700-750?

[[email protected]]

Hi ronit1894,

Two months ago, you posted the following:

https://www.beatthegmat.com/how-to-scor ... tml#780929

This recent CAT score is a nice improvement over your prior score. However, in these 2 months, your Quant Scaled Score has stayed almost the same. Thus, you're going to need to make some significant improvements to BOTH your Quant and Verbal Scores to hit your goal score.

1) What study materials have you used during these last 2 months?
2) Did you take the FULL CAT (including the Essay and IR sections)?

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

[ronit1894]

Hi Rich,

Yes i have managed to improve it by 70 points. Actually my quant concepts were pretty okay earlier also. But I am aiming to improve it and hit at least Q48. My verbal has improved but not as much as i wanted to.
1: I took the coaching from a local institute to clear my concepts. And i had their study material plus the manhettan material.
2: I gave the IR but I skipped the AWA.

How can i improve more on Quant and verbal both in 2-3 momths?

[[email protected]]

Hi ronit1894,

To start, Test Day is a rather specific 'event' - the details are specific and they matter, so you have to train as best as you can for all of them. The more realistic you can make your CATs, the more likely the score results are to be accurate. The more you deviate, the more "inflated" your scores can become - and that has happened here. By skipping sections the AWA, you took a shorter Exam that required less effort and energy, so you weren't properly training for the FULL GMAT 'experience.' If you did anything else that was unrealistic (taking the CAT at home, pausing the Test, facing questions that you had already seen, etc.), then your score could be further 'inflated.' From now on, you really MUST take your CATs in as realistic a fashion as possible.

You can still improve a great deal in 80-90 days. Since you've already put in some significant study time, you would likely find it beneficial to focus more on Quant and Verbal Tactics and patterns.

1) Are you still enrolled in that local institute?
2) How many hours do you think you can study each week going forward?

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

[ronit1894]

Yes, that is true. From now on I will give the entire test.

1: I have almost complete the course. Just left with geometry in maths. And a little bit of CR.
2: I study 2 hours on weekdays. And around 4-5 hours on weekends.

I have been practicing questions. I know the concepts. But somehow I do them wrong sometimes and when i see the explanations i feel like -'Damn, i knew that'. So i guess more practice is what i need.
I want to know how to improve my tactics/strategies in every section so that I can save time plus i can improve my accuracy.

[[email protected]]

Hi ronit1894,

Before you invest in any new practice materials, I suggest that you finish your current Course and then take a new FULL-LENGTH CAT. By that point, you will have studied all of the broad GMAT subjects and you'll have a realistic score result to look at. From there, we can analyze that score and discuss how best to proceed.

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

[ronit1894]

That sounds fair.

I will get in touch as soon as i give another test. Probably after 2 weeksz
Thanks for the suggestions

[MartyMurray]

Hi ronit1984.

First off, one way to increase your quant score is to just keep finding less strong areas and working on each in turn. For any type of question that you kind of don't like to see show up, work on that type until you would be EXCITED to see a question of that type show up.

By taking that approach with maybe a dozen types of quant questions over the next few months, you could significantly change what you have going on in quant.

There is, though, another aspect of scoring high that you have to consider. You have to get right answers consistently, in both quant and verbal. Many people don't realize that learning how to get answers is not quite the same as learning how to get right answers. In other words, it's one thing to understand how to answer a question and another to actually end up getting the right answer.

So you have to work on getting right answers. If you were to spend five minutes per question, would you get 90% right? What about 20 minutes per question? At this point in your training, take as much time as you need in order to get at least around 85% right. Get used to getting the right answers consistently, and once you can get right answers consistently, only then seek to speed up.

That leads to another point.

Recently someone who was scoring around 30 on the verbal section asked me what to do in order to score higher. He had been prepping for a while and already knew all about GMAT verbal. So I told him that he didn't really need to learn anything else ABOUT GMAT verbal itself to score higher. He just had to change his way of handling the questions, doing things like paying more attention to what he was reading.

Guess what, within six days, he scored 42 on the verbal section of the test, a jump of 14 points from the last score he got before our conversation.

Why he could do that is that scoring high on GMAT verbal mostly takes noticing details and using logic. So your path to a higher verbal score is similar to your path to a higher quant score, in that in verbal also you need to focus on figuring out what you need to see and do in order to get RIGHT answers. Whether you are looking at a Sentence Correction question or a main idea Reading Comprehension question, basically the same skills apply. You have to see what's going on and to use tight processes that lead to you to the right answers.

So keep learning concepts as necessary, learn to apply them, and, most of all, look at HOW YOU HANDLE QUESTIONS in general to figure out how you can see things more clearly and get right answers the first time.