Verbal Score stuck around 30

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Verbal Score stuck around 30

by ruhi_m » Fri May 06, 2016 5:07 am
Hi,

I am following the 60 Day program and I gave the Veritas practice test yesterday. Even though I got only 9 questions wrong out of 41, my score was 30.

How is the score calculated and what can I do to boost my score?

Thanks!
RM

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by MartyMurray » Fri May 06, 2016 5:55 am
ruhi_m wrote:Hi,

I am following the 60 Day program and I gave the Veritas practice test yesterday. Even though I got only 9 questions wrong out of 41, my score was 30.

How is the score calculated and what can I do to boost my score?

Thanks!
RM
Hi Ruhi.

First, regarding how the score is calculated, here's basically what is going on.

When you get a right answer, your level goes up and you get a harder question next. If you get that one right your level goes up again. If you get it wrong, your level goes back down a notch. So check this out. Unless you get consecutive right answers, your level won't go up.

So on that verbal section, probably you got up to a certain level, and then bounced up and down around that level. So even though you got many right answers, since you didn't get many right answers in a row, you didn't drive your level up. You got one or two right, and went up a level, and then got one or two wrong, and went back down, and so on.

As a matter of fact, it is possible to increase your score merely by focusing on getting longer streaks of right answers. From what I have seen, you are better off getting long streaks of right answers and thus driving up your level, even if you end up guessing on a few toward the end of the section.

Beyond that, generally, increasing one's verbal score takes getting better at noticing key details and seeing the logic of the questions. The GMAT is basically a test of vision and of skill in using logic to arrive at answers. So those two things are what you need to work on. Anything else you may have learned about handling GMAT verbal may be useful, but is less important than developing vision and skill in using logic.

To develop those things, you are best off doing verbal questions on an untimed basis, seeking to see all key details and to really get good at understanding the logic of the questions and answer choices. Read sentence correction answer choices from end to end, seeking to really see what's right or wrong about them. For CR questions, go beyond using strategies to really seeing the logic of why each wrong answer is wrong and each right answer is right. Can you prove the right answers to CR questions right? To get a high hit rate in CR you need to understand what's going on well enough to do that. For RC get good at not getting fooled into thinking that the passages are about things that they are not actually about and at seeing what the passages do and do not say.

Likely none of this is going to happen via your spending two to three minutes per question. I have seen people ponder questions for a half hour or more each, training themselves to see what they need to see in order to consistently get right answers.

Anyone with a reasonably good understanding of the English language can score high on GMAT verbal if he or she understands that it is a test of vision and decision making skills and trains accordingly.
Marty Murray
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by DavidG@VeritasPrep » Fri May 06, 2016 5:55 am
ruhi_m wrote:Hi,

I am following the 60 Day program and I gave the Veritas practice test yesterday. Even though I got only 9 questions wrong out of 41, my score was 30.

How is the score calculated and what can I do to boost my score?

Thanks!
RM
You can see a nice summary for how we model the algorithm here: https://www.veritasprep.com/blog/2013/07 ... ice-tests/

The thing to bear in mind is that the number of questions you miss is just one factor involved in computing a raw score - the difficulty level of those questions is another important factor. Essentially, you'll want to make sure you're not missing questions that the algorithm deems to be on the easier side. But mostly, don't read too much into a single data point. Review your test, come up with a couple of strategic tweaks you can make before you take the next one, and pay attention to broader scoring trends.
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by OptimusPrep » Tue Jun 14, 2016 9:12 pm
ruhi_m wrote:Hi,

I am following the 60 Day program and I gave the Veritas practice test yesterday. Even though I got only 9 questions wrong out of 41, my score was 30.

How is the score calculated and what can I do to boost my score?

Thanks!
RM
Hi RM,

The best suggestion I can give is to not to pay attention on the number of questions that you get wrong.
The GMAT algorithm is quite complex and it is better if left alone.

What you should focus on is to get more questions correct.
I think Marty Murray has explained the algorith excellently.
Having said this, focus more on the the initial 10 questions to build your score at a higher level.
To improve your verbal in general, you can take a look at the following tips:

You need to find your pain areas and then remove them by drilling down deep in each problem type.

SC: The questions test various concepts such as S-V agreement, modifiers, parallelism etc. Find out what troubles you.
CR: There might be certain types of questions that are troubling you. May be Assumption, may be conclusion, inference etc.
You need to find that out and then practice them
RC: This again can be drilled down into different types of questions and also different topics. See what questions and topics trouble you the most and then practice accordingly.
As an addition, start preparing an error log and keep a note of all the mistakes you made and the lessons you learnt from the problems. This will ensure you do not make the same mistake again.

Make sure you complete all of the OG and the Verbal review and if required, you can buy the Question pack1 from mba.com