GMAT Strategy

Hey People,

I just gave my GMATPrep today after about 40 days of preparation. The score is as follows:

GMATPrep: 720 (Q49; V40)

The sad part is that I had 9 errors on verbal of which 6 were SC (1CR and 2 RC). Even on other practise tests, I consistently get just 1 CR wrong and 1-2 RC. Whereas my SC error rate is 4-6. I know that if I can manage to get a grip on my SC I can greatly improve my skill.

I am presently working with MGMAT SC and the OG. Is their anything else that I can do to improve SC as that is the only clear area of weakness that I see.

Thanks for your advice!!

Cheers!!

Hey Akhil,

Congratulations on a fantastic practice test score! That's great news and it sounds like it's certainly well-deserved.

For SC improvement, I think a big step would be to go back to the errors you made (on this test and some recent homework sets or other practice tests) and determine why you made them. A few things you may learn are:

-A particular error type is really challenging for you (for example, verb tenses)
-You missed a bunch of idioms*
-You tend to miss longer (or shorter) sentences, or those with all (or only part) underlined
-You were generally down to two, but then missed that last decision point

And whatever you learn, you now know something to work on. If it's a particular error type or type of sentence (long/short/all-underlined), you can seek out more questions of that type and work more specifically on it.

*And if it's idiom-related questions you're missing, go back and find a better reason. The GMAT isn't a test of assorted idioms - it's a test of logic and big-picture rules. One thing I've found with a lot of students is that they disproportionately miss a lot of questions when their reason for eliminating answers is "it's not idiomatic". There's almost always a better, more scalable reason than "it's wrong because that's just not the way you say it", and if you force yourself to see that deeper, more scalable reason you can make a huge improvement in accuracy and comfort with these.